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The New Narnia: Chapter 52- Regrouping
🕑 Added 2021-12-03 21:02:09 +0000 UTCChapter 52: Regrouping
Tommy’s shock did not get a chance to abate. There was no quiet to contemplate. No time to absorb what had been revealed. No chance to stir.
“Mommy!” He whined from the carseat. “No! I don’t wanna go to Charlie’s house! I wanna go home!” That wasn’t true at all. Home, arguably, was worse, or at least more dangerous. The portal to Malacus was in Tommy’s house. Home didn’t guarantee the presence of Charlie though.
Fate had given Tommy an extra twist of the knife. His mommy and Charlie’s crossed paths in the parking lot. They hit it off and made a playdate right then and there. Since the entrance to Malacus’s ‘daycare’ was connected to Tommy’s old highschool, it was nothing to swing by and pick up Katy.
“Can I play with the babies when we get there?” Katy asked, talking over her ‘little’ brother.
“When your homework is done,” Mommy said, checking the rearview mirror. “Not before.”
“Awwww!” But she didn’t whine further. Neither did Tommy. What was the point? He could be understood well enough, but in the big scheme of things he was still a baby and the mommies had made up their mind.
There was nothing else to do but to brace himself for the oncoming- he shuddered- father son chat.
Charlie’s house was right next door to Tommy’s; perhaps proof that this revelation was predestined, or that Malacus was very lazy in where it plopped its victims after regression. Just another two-story in a well to do part of town.
Inside, Tommy could already tell that the floorplan was nearly identical. Same greeting area that lead to the stairs if one walked straight, or a slight right turn would lead to the living area.
The biggest difference was that the living room was that in lieu of a coffee table there was a playpen directly in front of the couch. A baby clearly had run of the place and infantile toys from rattles to playmates to stuffed animals, to chewables and board books and non-choking hazard action figures littered the ground. Nearly twenty years of baby toys would do that. So would being a spoiled only child who had a doting mother to wait on him hand and foot.
Tommy ignored his own hypocrisy and pushed the shopping trip he’d taken out of his mind.
“Sorry,” Charlie’s mommy said, welcoming them. “The cleaning ladies come earlier in the week.” There was no hint of sarcasm there. It was very likely that a crew of professional cleaners came in week in and week out to re-organize and clean things just so Charlie could tear everything down again. Mommy was the boss at a job she hadn’t had at the start of this. Charlie’s Mom had been buying diapers and baby toys for twenty years; was it really such a leap?
Charlie, was already in the playpen when Tommy was lowered in. He looked like he’d been crying, with red puffy eyes and a nose that was still slightly runny, but nothing was dripping anymore. Good. He’d been crying. Screw him.
The first thing Tommy said after being placed next to his ‘new friend’ was, “Dude! What the hell?!” So many emotions that Tommy hadn’t known he’d been bottling up were now bubbling to the surface.
Charlie held out the palm of his hand as if preparing to fend off an attack. “Tommy, just listen!”
Young Master Dean decided against it. “What the holy fuck?!”
Only Charlie winced. Both their caregivers had already wandered off, with Mommy being given the traditional ‘bougie’ greeting of a grand tour of the house. “Kid,” Charlie said, “ya gotta believe me! I had no idea-!”
“Don’t call me that!” Charlie shouted. “I’m not your…! I’m not your…!” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Something in him knew it would have been a lie. “Fuck you!”
Charlie looked like he’d been slapped. His shoulders slumped and his face fell. “I’m trying to wrap my head around, too.” He averted his eyes. “Believe me.”
“You want me to believe you?” Tommy spat. “You want me to fucking believe you?! What am I supposed to believe? That for my entire life my dad has been crawling around town, living like a baby that never has to grow up?”
A moment passed. Mommy was admiring the tiling in their kitchen. Charlie just shrugged. “I mean...kinda…?”
Tommy scratched at the sides of his face, digging his nails in and praying he’d draw blood. His breath was starting to be come ragged and his vision threatened to blur.
No. He wasn’t going to cry. Not now. Not with so much happening and so much left to do. It wasn’t okay to cry. He wanted to tell Charlie how much he’d been hurt without showing him. “There’s not a pamphlet for that Charlie!,” he shouted. “That’s not something that’s covered in storybooks or textbooks or...or...any-fucking-thing!”
“Tommy,” Charlie started. “Son, I-”
“DON’T CALL ME THAT!”
Tommy was loud enough that both of the women poked their heads in to see what was the matter. Like Woody and Buzz when Andy popped in, both man-children went still and quiet until their caregivers shrugged and wandered off upstairs.
“Can’t I stay and watch the babies?” Katy asked again.
“Why do you think we’re showing you the house?” Mommy said. “We want you to know where everything is for if you need to take care of them.”
“Oh! Okay!”
A conspiratorial wink between mothers showed this for a lie, but Katy was the only one not bright enough to get it.
When they were alone, Charlie allowed himself a defeated sigh. “Okay. Fine. Fair enough. But it’s not like I’ve been living my best life, either. Y’know? I’ve been stuck here,” he gestured down between his splayed legs. “I’ve been being treated like a baby.”
“You still get to be a baby!” Tommy countered. “A very….very...affluent baby!”
Charlie rolled his eyes. “Babies don’t make money, dude.”
“Ugh! You know what I mean!” A quick look and Tommy second guessed himself. Maybe Charlie didn’t get just how shitty Tommys’ life had been. “Since you’ve been like this, have you been stuck in a diaper because you’re running low and your mom can’t afford or can’t be bothered to go out and buy more so she’s trying to make every one last until you’re leaking or poopy?”
“Wha-?”
“Have you had to choose who gets to sleep in a bed each night? Do you know how long you can go without washing clothes or taking a shower until people notice the smell because water bills sometimes don’t get paid and soap isn’t expensive?
“No I-”
“Do you know how to cook food that’s past the expiration date? How bad it can be before you get sick? How much ketchup or hot sauce to cover up the taste as long as you don’t think about it?”
“Uh...um…” Charlie was beginning to look pale. Very pale.
“How many of your onesies and rompers and baby clothes are second hand from Goodwill? How many birthday parties have you missed because the other moms won’t invite yours? Do you know how much scratch-offs and pawn shops pay out? Because I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“Geezus,” Charlie gasped. “I had no idea.”
Tommy didn’t let up. “You’ve spent the last...the last...my entire fucking life never having to dress yourself, or pick up after yourself, or worry about getting a job, or having to take care of anyone. We’ve been barely scraping! I’ve had school, and a sister and a...a…” was Mary Dean pre Malacus even really a mother? “...a Mary to take care of! You don’t even have to take care of yourself! You don’t even have feed or bathe or wipe yourself!” Tommy lowered his eyes and the volume of his voice. “And if you’re anything like me, as much as part of you is embarrassed by...by...this, you also love it.” After so long in denial that last part was hard to admit.
“Wow,” Charlie finally said. “We are definitely related.”
“I was talking about magic, you asshole!”
“Tommy!” his mother scolded. Tommy tensed. “I am so sorry,” she apologized to Mrs. Watson. “I have no idea where he heard that.”
“It’s okay, Charlie can’t repeat it. And I don’t think the little guy knows what he’s saying anyways.”
Tommy tensed. Great. The big people were back and now he couldn’t cuss. They couldn’t understand exactly what he was saying, but enough to hear him say the bitter angry words that were so needing to come out of him.
“Mommy? Now?” Katy already had one leg inside the playpen. She was shorter than she was, but she was still so much bigger comparatively.
Mommy didn’t bat an eyelid. “Is your homework done and colored?” She held out a worksheet. It was a simple color by numbers page, but to figure out the numbers one had to do a basic arithmetic problem.
“No…”
“Then no. Finish your work.”
Katy cast her gaze to the living room rug. “Can I do it on the floor instead of in the kitchen?”
Mary Dean seemed to consider it. “Fine, but if I catch you playing with any of the baby toys instead of doing your work, you’re sitting at a table.”
“Yes ma’am!” Katy took the sheet and dug around for the crayons inside of a My Little Pony backpack that she wouldn’t have been caught dead with a few days ago. Tommy’s ears pricked when he heard the dry crinkle of and noticed that her underwear was thicker than it had been. The flimsy pink waistband of a girl’s pull-up peaked out from her stretchy pants.
Mommy slipped in a plastic baggie containing a balled up Lamb Chop training panty. “Thanks for letting me change her upstairs,” she said openly to Mrs. Watson. “I don’t want her to have an accident and sometimes it’s hard to get her to go potty in our own house.”
“Not a problem at all. Completely understandable.”
“We’re going on a road trip this summer,” Mommy said. “I might just diaper her too just in case.”
Mrs. Watson nodded. “Smart. Smart.”
Charlie blinked, staring at the back of Katy’s head. “Does she have my nose? I think she has my nose.”
“Quit talking about my sister you jerk! Do you have any idea how sh…” Tommy stopped and did a double take. They’d distracted themselves again.“How bad my life has been up to this point?” he finished with a whisper.
Charlie had the good sense to look embarrassed and ashamed. ”It’s Scrumpton, so...kinda...but I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“I was the loser!” Tommy fumed. “The smelly kid! The wimp! The geek! The outcast! Do you know how many friends I had? I’ll give you a hint, babies can’t count it because they don’t introduce the concept of zero until Pre-K!”
“My life sucked, too!” Charlie tried. “That’s why I kept going back into the clock until this happened! It wasn’t food-stamp bad, but it still sucked.” He looked at Mary in a way Tommy had never seen someone look at his mother before. “ I thought Mary I mean your Mom I mean...whatever...I thought she had more going on than that.”
“You abandoned me,” Tommy said. “You abandoned my sister. You abandoned my Mom. You abandoned us and it wrecked us!”
Tommy might not have been able to fully scream, but Charlie had no such need to filter. He was more the baby. Red faced and angry, he balled up his fists and screamed. “I! Didn’t! Know! How many times do I gotta tell you!”
“There there honey.” Mrs. Watson stood, picked a near bawling Charlie up out of the playpen and sat back down on the couch with him in her lap. “It’s okay, Charlie. What’s got you so fussy, baby boy?” She snuck her fingers past the leg gathers. “Soaked!”
Ignoring hte adults, Tommy stood up and raged back. “How could you not know? Didn’t she tell you or hint or something? How...how? How the fu-uuuuuuuuuudge?!” Tommy’s sentence was cut off by a sudden rude noise coming out from behind him accompanied by the feeling of his cheeks spreading and two or three little nuggets dropping down inside his diaper.
Charlie cocked his head. “Did you just get so mad that you shit yourself?”
“No”
Mommy lifting him out and pulling back the waistband of his Pampers put the lie to that. “Thought so.”
“Mommeeeee!”
Barely settled, Katy popped up from the floor and ran over to Tommy’s diaper bag. “I can help! I can help!” She handed each of the adults a diaper. “One for you, and one for you.”
“Thank you Katy,” Mommy smirked, keeping her patience. “Now back to work.” With both babies in their laps, Mommy looked over to Mrs. Watson. “Do you mind if we use your changing table?”
As if in reply, Mrs. Watson turned around, laid Charlie down on the couch and popped his poppers open. “Sure if you want. We can change them down here though if you don’t want to go all the way there.”
Mommy repeated the same action. With just a T-shirt and diaper, there were even fewer steps to preparation. It gave Mommy time to put a pack of wipes between the two prone man-children. “Sure, sure.”
“I’ll pay you back for the diaper,” Mrs. Watson said. “Hope you don’t mind Luvs.”
Mommy waved it off. “A diaper’s a diaper.”
“Don’t say a word,” Tommy grunted as the tabs came undone and the sound of velcro ripping ricocheted off their ears. “Not one. Let’s just be quiet and get this over with.”
“Awww,” Mommy cooed. They can’t stop being little chatter boxes even while gettin’ changed.”
“Fine.” Charlie said, crossing his arms. “I won’t.”
Tommy’s ankles were crossed and his legs went to the ceiling while fecal residue was dabbed off his backside. “And quit staring at my mom.”
Charlie, who was only wet, was a precious few seconds ahead of his change. The new padding was already being slipped beneath him. “I wasn’t.”
“Good. Don’t.”
Both waited in silence, finishing the change as the nice fresh Pampers were pulled up and refastened around their waists and were put back in the playpen so their conflict could resume. The steam had gone out of each of them. It’s hard to argue from a position of strength after just being re-diapered.
They sat there sucking their thumbs, staring blankly, waiting for Katy to get distracted by something else and for their mothers to continue their much more polite (but less important) discussions.
“So where were we?” Charlie quietly began.
“Talking about how you abandoned us,” Tommy grumbled.
A loud knock at the door stopped Tommy’s offensive. Both boys stood up, Charlie having to grab onto the playpen’s railing and stared at the door. A delivery? Company?
“Come in!” Mrs. Watson called “Door’s open.”
In sauntered a woman about Mommy’s age, carrying yet another familiar face from that day, this one decidedly more vacant than even Katy. Amanda was still wearing the same pure white dress she’d shown up to daycare wearing that morning, and giggling happily in her mother’s arms.
“Sorry I’m late,” Amanda’s mother said. “I got the text, but I had a few errands I needed to run. Didn’t want this one,” she gave Amanda slight bounce, “getting fussy later tonight so we got it out of the way.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Watson said. “We were just making small talk and changing the boys.”
“Oh!” Katy piped in. “Another baby! A pretty little girl!”
“Katy,” Mom said. “Homework. Now.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Amanda was lowered down into the playpen. Two was a company, but even with their reduced forms, the tiny mesh square was starting to feel crowded.
“Hiiiiii…” Amanda said, followed by a bunch of babble. She wasted no time in giving Tommy a hug. Tommy shivered all over as she nuzzled into the nape of his neck. He didn’t even mind the line of drool dripping from her lips. More than just the playpen was feeling crowded all of a sudden. “H-h-hey Amanda.”
He gently broke off the hug and adjusted himself. All the padding up front, and it was still easy to tell how Tommy felt.
Charlie plopped back down to his butt and scowled. “You know what, kid? Fuck you! You want to come at me high and mighty? What about her?”
“What about her?” Tommy was doing his best to keep Amanda from glomming on. “Amanda. Baby. We’re talking.”
“Tok-ok-ok-tawk!
He blushed just hearing her voice. “Okay you can hug me.” Perhaps he wasn’t actually trying all that hard.
“We just spent all day playing with that brain drained piece of ass,” Charlies said. “A brain drained piece of ass that you did that too.”
Amanda took her free hand and started munching on her fingers. Briefly Tommy imagined a part of him being in her mouth...
“I had to!” He said. “It was a mercy! At least everybody thinks she’s a cute baby instead of a gross idiot adult!”
“Yeah,” Charlie pointed. “And who in this playpen got her like that? Who squirted milk in her mouth” Tommy was suddenly feeling less amorous than before. “And besides not being interested in you, what did she do to deserve getting stuck here biting on teething rings and getting spoonfed mush forever?”
Tommy went limp. “I...she...I already told you….I..?” He gave up. “What? How?” He couldn’t remember how much he’d told Charlie.
Charlie’s jaw stiffened. He spared one last glance at Amanda, only it wasn’t at Amanda. Not really. “You know...after that first trip to Malacus?” Charlie stage whispered. “You’re not having accidents in your pants yet and nobody talks to you like you’re an idiot, but people get a little bit nicer?”
Tommy blinked. “Yeah…” He had a bad feeling about where this was going. Quietly, he envied that Amanda was content trying to figure out how to make her toes touch her head.
“Mary Dean was a friend,” Charlie admitted. “Just a friend. Just another loser hanging out in the courtyard and moaning about how messed up it is to be a teenager. I liked her but…” A single tear of regret dripped down the man child’s face. “ But after I went through that beat up old clock for the first time, she was nicer. Not a lot nicer...but nice enough to..”
The color in Charlie’s face rose as it drained from Tommy’s. “Please don’t finish that sentence.”
“But then I went through again and there was this elf with Mary’s face and...”
Tommy finished the thought in the most polite way possible. “She knew what she was doing.”
“Yeah,” Charlie nodded. “And here in the real world when I got back, Mary didn’t remember...she was just my tutor. Then my babysitter. It wasn’t good enough, I kept wanting more and...well you know how it is. It just got to the point where I got in too deep in the crib and kinda forgot about her.”
Tommy felt his anger evaporating. At least the anger towards Charlie. Anger at himself was another matter entirely.
“I didn’t run away,” Charlie promised. “I just didn’t know. Honest.” As if in solidarity, Amanda scooted up next to Charlie, cuddling him. Charlie didn’t break eye contact with Tommy, instead lightly disentangling himself from the girl.
This time, Tommy believed him. “Okay.” He nodded. “Okay. Sorry.”
“Yeah…” Charlie said. “Okay.”
“Tamatay!” Completely missing the solidarity of the moment, Amanda all but tackled Charlie like an obnoxious labradoodle whose master had just come home.
“Ooof! Stop! Stop! Get off me!”
“Mommy!” Tommy called. “A little help?”
The three women on the couch heard Tommy’s call. “I don’t think the boys feel much like snuggling.” Mommy said. “Come on, let’s have some lap time.”
All three found themselves back in their mother’s laps and only Amanda seemed to mind, with her squirming and mewling. Her mother let out a gasp and clutched at her chest. “Uh-oh,” Amanda’s mother said. A rosy blush overcame her cheeks. “Um..good thing my nursing bra has extra padding.”
Mommy’s lips thinned as she inhaled. “Yup. Mine too.”
Mrs. Watson started adjusting her blouse. “Same. Even after thirty six years, I hear a little one cry and I start dripping.”
“Motherhood,” all three said in unison.
“Let’s get to it shall we?” Mommy asked.
No further consensus was needed or asked for, certainly not from the cursed babies. Tommy felt himself being shifted around, his eyes locking on the exposed milky nipple presented to him. “Well damn,” he heard Charlie say, just before he himself latched on. “Guess we’ll talk in a mmmmm…”
Tommy stopped talking, stopped thinking as breast milk dribbled past his lips and danced onto his tongue. He reached up with his hands and started kneading the breast like a kitten to increase the flow.
So good! Enchanting! Entraning! Ambrosia: Nectar of the Gods! Time stopped. Sight lost all meaning. He just kept his eyes closed. Sound meant nothing either. He tensed up for a second when he heard his big sister’s voice, but he couldn’t process what was being said. What did big people talk about to each other? He honestly didn’t care as long as he could stay here, attached to his Mommy’s breast and remain her little titty baby.
A slight tug at his head and Tommy let go just long enough to start whining. “WAAAAAAH!” It was cut off when a fresh nipple entered his mouth and a second course. The relief was palpable. For a split second he was worried that he was going to have to share with Katy. “Mmmmm-mmmm!”
Mommy gently rubbed his back and murmured sweet nothings while Tommy greedily gorged himself until he began to feel as bloated as a tick on a deer. When he came up for air, as it were, he felt more in control of himself.
A series of popping burps signaled that the other two were done with their snack as well. “Urp.” Tommy joined in, letting himself be draped over his mother’s shoulder. “Urp!”
Each gas bubble leaving him gave Tommy a kind of clarity. In a twisted way it was a little bit like cumming. All that excitement and anticipation and pressure release at the end made the real world seem a little more real.
Speaking of ‘real’, this felt more special, more real than any of the times he’d fed from the Nanny. It was like the difference between name brand and imitation. Even if it was just a placebo effect, there was a difference, and Tommy could taste it both literally and figuratively.
“It’s a...urp…trip. Isn’t it?” Charlie called out between belches.
“Yeah...urp…” Tommy agreed. “Kinda.”
Amanda burbled and burped.
“Kind of runs in the family now, wouldn’t you...urp... say?”
Tommy’s eyes hardened. “Not cool, Charlie.”
“Yeah...fair, sorry.”
“All done.” Mommy said, putting Tommy back down on the floor.
“You too.” Mrs. Watson agreed.
“I’m gonna check to see if Katy needs help wiping,” Mommy said, getting up from the couch and walking off to the bathroom.
“Sure thing,” Amanda’s mom said, still cuddling a dozing girl in her lap. “Go for it. We’ll hold down the fort.”
Call it intuition, but the two boys wandered over to the other side of Charlie’s living room without discussion or signalling. Tommy went to scratch himself and found out that he’d wet his diaper again without realizing it. It was like bedwetting while asleep.
“Question,” Charlie asked. “What kind of deal did you make with that mismatched bitch?”
“Huh?” Tommy felt himself wake up a little more.
“What did you have to do so that Nanny let you keep the best parts of talking and walking? DId you write your middle name on the goo wall or something?”
Tommy got quiet. Anxiously he bit his lip. “I promised I’d tell her about the goo wall…”
You could have driven a truck through Charlie’s mouth with how wide open it was. “You what?”
“She doesn’t know why you and me are like we are. She’s kind of clueless about it. She let me keep what I had if I promised to tell her.” Guiltily, he watched Amanda resting on the couch. “I kind of bought some time because of Amanda, but I have to go back and hold up my end of the deal. Tonight.”
“Don’t tell her!” Charlie whispered, as if afraid somehow the mad god creature could hear them. “If you do, what's gonna stop her from turning our brains to mush like all the others she’s done? What’s gonna happen when she lures some other sucker through to Malacus and tells them all they have to do is smudge our names out or something?”
“Will that even do anything?”
“How the hell should I know? I did it as a gag! Do you want to chance it?”
Tommy frowned. “If I don’t tell her something she’s going to finish off Katy.”
The older of the two started to say, “Better her than-” then he stopped himself. “Damn. You’re right. I can’t give you shit for what you did to Amanda and then be ready to throw my own daughter under the bus.”
“Thinking like a dad, now?” It wasn’t meant to be an insult, even if the delivery was a little harsh.
“I swear, dude,” Charlie said. “If I’d have known, life would have played out a lot differently. For all of us.” He looked back down at the floor. “I’m still processing it.”
“Yeah.” Tommy said. “Me too. I guess that runs in the family too.” Out of the corner of his eyes he caught Mrs. Watson readjusting her blouse. “Wait...does that mean she’s my grandmother?”
Charlie gingerly started tracing circles on the floor. “I mean. Kinda.”
“Weird!” Tommy exclaimed. “My dad still breastfeeds from my Mee-Maw!”
“Mee-Maw?” Charlie giggled. “No way. I always figured she would have been a Gam-Gam or a Grammy or something. Not a Mee-Maw.”
“It’s still weird!”
“I...I...fuck...I mean...okay. Yeah. It’s weird.” Dramatically, Charlie laid back and flopped on the floor. “I was so not ready for this...”
“For what?”
“For growing up,” Charlie said. “Do you know how...old I feel now that I know I got a kid?”
“I didn’t much want to grow up either,” Tommy said. “Not that I wanted to go back to anything. I just never really got to be a kid the first time around.”
“Another thing we got in common.”
Tommy copied Charlie sprawled out, although he preferred his belly to his back. “Like father, like son.”
“Please don’t say that, kid.” Charlie said. “I’m getting less and less comfortable hearing…” Charlie shot back up. “I got an idea!”
“What?” Tommy asked. “What idea?”
And so Charlie whispered to Tommy, carefully laying out his plan. “That’s stupid,” Tommy said.
Charlie smirked. “You got any better ideas?”
He didn’t.
It was worth a shot.
Comments
Areat
I'm very curious to see what this plan exactly entail. It never seemed to me this story could end on the main character getting the upper hand. How intriguing.
