Tale #142: Holiday Cheer

Tale #142: Holiday Cheer (Content Tags: Age regression, reality alteration, messy diapers, wet diapers, soft and tender) The holidays bring forth a cheer in the hearts of everyone who will let them, and those are the days that forever live in memory. Eggnog and the smell of freshly baked cookies, the crackling of the log on the fire, and the merry smiles of friends and family together. No better is this illustrated than during the magic of childhood. The sense of anticipation as you count down the days until Christmas, and the sense of wonder as you look out the window and watch snowflakes drift from the sky. Your mother handing you a cup of hot chocolate, with marshmallows galore, as she gives you a blanket to warm up under. Thoughts set adrift in a sea of possibilities, wondering whether or not Santa will bring you what you asked for. These memories are warm, and they are tender. They are moments to be treasured, to be captured and happily remembered years later, when times maybe aren't as good. Even under the oppressive weight of adulthood, with the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can look back and think about how happy you once were. All of it culminating in the catharsis of Christmas morning. Trudging down the stairs in your pajamas, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, and being blown away by the bounty of gift wrapping and bows that have mysteriously appeared under the cloak of the frigid night before. It puts a warmth in you. A fire that melts away your fears and keeps you cozy in these coldest of days. But not everyone was so nostalgic. Not everyone had held onto that sense of joy. Some people weren't just alone by the holidays by incident, but by choice. Some people found greater value in material matters, rather than sentimental ones. Scrooge, The Grinch, the Burgermeister, it was an archetype as old as the holiday itself. Men who had forgotten what it was like to be a child on Christmas morning, who instead would scorn the idea of stopping the world to feel warm for just one day. Those icy hearts were a tragedy, but the season had a way of melting even the most frozen of men. Alexander Kersch was a successful man. He'd spent the last decade making sure that he'd be a successful man, and that had meant turning his back on everything else. He was the young president of a major tech company, and he devoted all his time into building it up, piece by piece. He was a harsh taskmaster on everyone he employed, but none more than himself. He wasn't like Scrooge, who paid very little and expected his workers to buck their familial duties; on the contrary, he was a rather generous man that didn't expect his workers to share his same burden. The success of his company was his own dream, so it made little sense to expect others to share it. Alex would let his employees enjoy the holidays, with a Christmas bonus to thank them for their efforts, but he wouldn't be as generous to himself. It was Christmas eve and he had once again decided against flying back home to see his family. There were deadlines to meet, and there would always be more time for family, wouldn't there? He was still in the office, completely alone, which wouldn't be any different than going back to his house. It was just another day for him, albeit a quiet one. The office building was adorned in festive colors and decor; the halls had been decked, and vibrant lights were strewn around the columns in the lobby. He'd done it for the morale of his workers, since he could still remember a time when Christmas had meant something more to him too. On this third cup of coffee, analyzing contracts and eating a sandwich from home, he couldn't help but feel a deep sense of loss. It came every year, no matter how much he tried to repress it. It was like his heart knew something that his mind couldn't hope to understand. A knowledge that this wasn't the way things should be; that his dream had been bastardized during his lofty journey, and that he was now lost in his own misery. He'd built this company from the ground up, and he'd come from humble backgrounds, which made it all the more impressive. Most people in his position had been handed their success, they had inherited it, but he'd had to work his fingers to the bone to earn it. But he wasn't happy with it. The aspirations that had brought him here had all faded away; the reality of the ship he was at the helm of, wasn't what he had dreamed as a child. There had been so many mistakes and compromises along the way, that by this point, he was president of something that he hardly believed in anymore. His honesty had been turned against him; the business world had no place for a man with a soft soul. He looked out the window and watched snow drift from the sky. The earth below was blanketed in the serenity of the flurry. It was almost hypnotic and he could feel his eyelids getting heavy. "...Just a few minutes, that's all I need." He sighed, leaning back in his chair and shutting his eyes. When Alex woke back up, he could swear that he smelled his mother's hot chocolate. There was a particular blend of peppermint and cinnamon that had made the warm beverage unique; he hadn't had it in years, but his nose had never forgotten the delightful aroma. It reminded him of childhood, of an innocence that had long been abandoned by his cynicism. As his eyes opened, he realized that he wasn't in his office anymore. He wasn't in a desk chair on the top floor of his building, but instead was snuggled under a blanket that had a Scooby Doo theme. It wasn't at all unfamiliar, but it was something that he hadn't seen in decades. His eyes slowly circled around the room in a confused analysis. There was no denying it: this was his bedroom, but from when he was a little kid. It didn't even look like the way he had left it whenever he'd left home; it was like a time capsule that had been closed in 1999, and he was only just now opening it again. Ninja Turtles, Pokemon, Hot Wheels... The room was colorful and littered with nostalgia of times long past. His car rug on the floor, his Yoshi plush on the bed next to him, it was surreal. Alex pulled the blanket off of himself and started to awkwardly scramble out of the racing car bed that he'd seemingly been sleeping in. He was groggy and his body felt strange, as if not everything was working like it should; something felt bulky and squishy around his waist, which itself was oddly familiar, but it was also the least of his worries. Looking down at his feet, he could see that he was wearing footed pajamas. They were cozy and warm, but he hadn't had anything like them in his wardrobe since he was a little kid. "Oh, good! You're awake. Mom told me to come make sure your butt was in gear, because breakfast is almost ready." Alex cocked his head toward the door and rubbed his eyes, still confused and now even more so. Standing in his doorway was his older brother, Kevin, but he didn't look like he was supposed to. Alex had seen Kevin, albeit briefly, earlier in the year; Kevin was supposed to be a couple of years older than him! Here though, he was a kid again. "You better hide your binky. You know what mom and dad were saying about not using it anymore, even if you *are* just a big baby." Kevin snickered, turning to leave the room. Binky? Alex hadn't even realized it, but there was something resting between his lips. He pulled it out and saw that it was indeed a little pacifier, with Mickey Mouse on it. Digging into his memories, he could faintly recall having to fight with his parents about keeping it, but that'd been so long ago! He hadn't even turned six yet... He tossed it on the bed and left the room, starting to think this must be a vivid dream;  the stress of his work and the pining for home, that must have put him in a precarious position to have such a lucid dream! It was the only thing that made much sense. Toddling down the steps, he could hear the rest of his family in the kitchen. His older brother and sister, his mother, and his father. Poking his head through the threshold of the doorway, he could see them too; much like Kevin, they too had been seemingly tossed backwards in time. "Did you sleep well, baby?" His mother asked as Alex sheepishly made his way in. "U-uhh, yes?" What could he say? It might have been a dream, but he couldn't look at his mother and simply ignore her. "Good! Let me just give you a little check and you can have some yummy pancakes." Check? What did she mean by that? As if to immediately answer his question, the woman came over to him and unbuttoned the dropseat of his pajamas. It was during this moment that Alex became acutely aware of how big everyone seemed. Alex had been taller than his mom since halfway through high school, but now she was towering over him! He could feel her squeezing the back and underside of what he had mistakenly thought was his underpants, but what was now undeniably something far thicker and much more squishy. "You're about to float away, Mr. Tinkle-Trousers, but I think you'll be good until after breakfast." She playfully teased, buttoning the dropseat back up and giving the boy's bottom a little pat. He hadn't thought about it in years, and for good reason, but his early childhood had seen some difficulties with toileting. He'd wet the bed all throughout elementary school, and he hadn't really been reliably pottytrained in time for Kindergarten, which had meant diapers for a lot longer than most kids dealt with them. All the context clues were adding up to give him an idea of 'when' this dream was meant to take place, which was likely when he was five or six, but there were things that he found harder to explain. Most pressing was the fact that this dream felt *really* real, and not just because he had his wherewithal, but because there was nothing janky about it. Dreams usually had peculiar elements that could act as tells, especially when one had lucidity during them. Wrong faces, gibberish text, bizarre instances, but there was nothing like that. This was down to earth as it got, and it played more like an interactive memory than any dream he'd ever had. Alex sat at the table, his chair obviously being the one remaining with the booster seat. The soggy diaper squished underneath him and he grimaced; it was unpleasant enough from a tactile perspective, since the material had grown cool and it was beginning to chafe, but there was also the humiliation of it. Nothing made him feel smaller than sitting in a pissy pair of Pampers in front of his family, especially when his mind was still that of a highly successful, independent adult. The pancakes, adorned with whipped cream and carefully placed fruit to make a smiling Santa face, were as delicious as ever. Even if this wasn't real, it made Alex realize how much he'd missed his mother's cooking, and the hot chocolate reinforced that. "Are you excited about tomorrow, sweetie?" His mother would ask. "Tomorrow?" "It's gonna be Christmas, puddle-butt." Kevin interjected, getting a 'look' from their mother. "That's right, so you know what that means, right? You kids are going to have to put out some cookies for Santa." Their father chipped in. "And carrots for his reindeers!" His sister, Dana, added. "O-oh, yeah! Can't wait." Alex meekly responded, feeling a little strange for conversing with what he thought was his own subconscious. It was uncanny though, how much they all acted like the real thing. He'd also forgotten that Kevin had called him 'puddle-butt' at one point, much to his teary-eyed tattling. His waking memory wasn't nearly as good, especially for something that had been so long ago. While he ate, Alex felt a sudden pain in his stomach. It was deep inside and it was making his gut churn, as if he was bloated. Was physical discomfort something that a dream could present? It felt very real, and it felt very much like he needed to do something to alleviate it. Thinking it must be gas, as improbable as that seemed, the little boy didn't waste much time in giving his bowels a push. There was a fart, at least to start, but that wasn't the only thing that came out. His childlike sense of bodily control was punctuated perfectly in that moment, because trailing right behind the fart was an explosive deposit of something that heated his cold diaper right up. His face burned in shame while he felt the sensation of something warm, mushy, and sticky, starting to smear all across his buttcheeks. "Hehehe, eww! Liam tooted!" Kevin giggled, pointing a mocking finger at his brother. Dana looked less amused, instead recoiling from the rude series of noises and wrinkling her nose. "Oh, gross...Liam, did you just go number two at the table?" The mature side of him would have come clean and apologized for the outburst; he would have used logic and unemotional dialogue to explain that he thought it would only be gas. That side of him, the adult side, seemed to completely dissolve in that moment, only leaving the Kindergartner in a stinky diaper behind. "I-I...N-no!" He awkwardly denied, feeling his ears get hot. His mother sighed, "Oh, and you'd been doing so good at being a big boy... I don't know if Santa will be bringing you big boy pants if you're doing *that*." "He probably won't even bring you coal in your stocking, since you've already got your own!" Kevin teased, pinching his nose in an exaggerated way. Alex would have thought the dream would have ended there, or soon after, but it didn't. He got his messy diaper changed, he was dressed for the day, and he went on to do all the sorts of things that he used to do for Christmas. He decorated cookies, he built a snowman in the front yard with his siblings, he watched the holiday specials that they were airing on all the cartoon channels, he threw snowballs, he snuggled up under a blanket by the fire, and so on. There was no sense of time dilation, where a dream might snap from scene to scene; it really was like he'd simply returned to the past. As the day dragged on, turning eventually to night, Alex felt worried that he'd somehow dreamed the rest of his life up. It didn't feel possible, but it felt like he was actually still only five, and that all the years after had been some elaborate dream in his young mind. He knew that was ridiculous, since he still felt as intelligent as an adult, but he'd also found himself getting lost in childish whimsy throughout the day. Aside from the diaper changes, Alex had caught himself slipping into this old role without skipping a beat. He bickered with his siblings, watched cartoons with genuine interest, and even talked just like a little kid would. The wonder in his heart over the holiday season had regained sincerity and it had all felt genuine. It'd made him realize just how much he missed these feelings. Childhood might have come with shame and frustration, but it had also been a time of real joy and peace. It reminded him how much he loved this holiday, and how much he loved his family; it made him think about how much he'd taken for granted, and how these truly had been the happiest times of his life. Running a business couldn't give him that, and such feelings couldn't be found at the bottom of a bottle. As he got tucked into bed, freshly diapered and dressed in another cozy sleeper, he gave his mother a big smile and let her kiss him on the cheek. He promised he'd go to bed like a good boy, so that Santa would come, even though he knew it'd be his parents who played the role of putting gifts under the tree. As he felt himself drifting off, he made a mental declaration: if this was a dream, and he woke up, then he'd get a plane ticket and immediately go back home for the holidays. If this wasn't a dream? Then he'd be thankful for a second chance, where he could truly appreciate everything he'd forsaken; even if that meant returning to diapers like a big baby. He'd force himself to forget the adulthood he'd squandered, allowing himself to become a child again for real. Either way the wind blew, he wouldn't be spending another Christmas in a stuffy office.