Crystalline

Chapter 5
10:20 AM

Chapter Description: A crystal clear resolve.

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As the violet light bathed the room, he tried to lift his head, but couldn’t. Through blurred vision, he realized he was no longer in the laboratory, he was in a brightly lit room. It was cold.

“Aww, lookit him!” Jenn said, bringing her face closely to his, allowing it to focus in his vision.

“So cute! Look at his tummy! I could just eat him up!” cooed Miranda, coming into his vision.

Ben lay naked on his office desk. He kicked and squirmed, but it was no use. Jennifer easily held him in place with a warm, delicate hand on his stomach, tickling him on his sides with the other hand.

He was a baby again! All the years of growing up: graduating high school, going to college, applying for graduate school, earning his Masters, earning his PhD! Gone. As he felt the cool wooden desk under his naked body, he kicked with his pudgy, fat legs, brushing his bare toes against the spines of all the books he would never read again. Hot tears came to his eyes as he realized he would have to grow up all over again.

“I hope Ben doesn’t mind we’re using his desk for this,” Jenn said, pushing important papers and folders out of the way to make room for a shopping bag that Miranda had laid down, “Also, thanks for picking up the stuff, I can’t believe someone would just leave a little baby, completely alone like this!”

“I know, right?! Ben won’t mind. He’s cool, I’m sure he’d think it’s funny that we changed a little baby on his desk. He’s so refined, it’d be a good contrast, I think,” she said, pushing novels and a stapler out of the way to make room for a plastic bag of disposable diapers, baby powder, bottle, pacifier and baby rattle.

He tried to focus in on the books that lay around his desk, but couldn’t. The blurry lines no longer held any meaning. His mind felt like a handful of sand, only his fingers were being forced open, the grains slipping out, gone forever.

“Shh, it’s okay, baby, lookie what Auntie Jenn has for you! Your favorite!” she said, handing him the colorful rattle, emblazoned with bright yellow ducks.

“Look at you, you’re a rockstar!” Miranda said, shaking Ben’s hand for him and forcing him to make noise with the rattle as he gurgled up at her.

“Mmmmaaaa! Mmaa-mama-ma!” Ben gurgled up at her, spitting drool onto his naked chest, tears streaming down his fattened cheeks.

“Aww, whassamatter, sweety?” Jenn asked sweetly, wiping the tears from his chubby face, “Oh, I know what you need! You need your diapey! Yes, you do!”

Miranda handed Jennifer a disposable diaper after tearing open the plastic package while Ben kicked, sobbing on his own desk, knocking over a small folder of work on crystalline structure whose contents spilled onto the floor, papers scattering everywhere.

As she unfolded the white diaper, it crinkled noisily, and she grabbed baby Ben by the ankles, hoisting him up and sliding the plastic diaper underneath his soft bottom. As she laid him back down onto the infantile garment, she grabbed his feet and kissed them, tickling them in an effort to stem his crying.

“This usually works on my little nephews! I don’t understand why he’s so upset. My nephews are a little older than him, though, maybe he’s just not mature enough yet?”

“He IS being a little cry-baby right now, maybe when Ben comes back, he could teach him a thing or two about being a man.” Miranda suggested.

Miranda took the bottle of Johnson’s baby powder from the desk, opened it handed it to Jennifer who shook it generously over the crying baby, the white powder flecking the smooth soft skin of her former labmate who cried pitifully in front of the girls, his eyes squeezed tight as he pulled at his toes and screamed.

“Sheesh,” Miranda said, rolling her eyes and placing the baby blue pacifier into her colleague’s open mouth.

Baby Ben suckled instinctively on the pacifier as he choked back more tears and watched Miranda fiddle with the pocketwatch.

Jennifer rubbed the powder into her co-worker’s skin, treating him like she would any other baby, massaging the talc into the folds of his skin, in between his legs, grabbing his tiny penis, now barely a half inch long and tucking it away into the diaper as she pulled the tapes closed.

“This watch isn’t even keeping time right, it’s way off, look,” she said, showing the watch to Jennifer, who shrugged.

“Weird,” she replied.

The plastic bottom of the white crinkling diaper slid easily across the smooth surface of the desk as baby Ben tried to wriggle free of the soft, maternal embrace of his lab mate’s arms. Jennifer pulled the baby bottle off the desk, removed the pacifier from his mouth and replaced it with the nipple of the bottle.

“Maybe this is why he’s such a cranky baby? Anyways, I don’t know what to tell you about the watch. We just have to wait here until Child Protective Services gets here for little crybaby here.”

“Well, I might as well make SOME use of it,” Miranda said, taking a small pocket-knife from her jeans. She flipped the knife out and began to dig at the amethyst crystal on the back of the watch.

Electricity seemed to fill the air with every jab at the crystal. As Ben gurgled, half-awake, leaning his head against the breast of his former labmate, he noticed the fine hairs on her arms were standing up straight.

“Almost got it out. Once I get this stupid crystal out, I’ll have Ben grind it up and see what the results are.”

“Sounds good,” Jen remarked approvingly as Miranda dug back again at the crystal.

As she slipped the blade behind the purple gem and pushed, the crystal came out with a loud pop, sending the room far away as light blinded the babbling infant who slowly turned to see the room moving in slow motion, books suspended in the air, people frozen and fading in space. No more struggling to fix what had happened. Blackness and lightness at once.