Long Story #19: The Last Meeting of the Midnight Society

“...An’ dat’s the end of the story!” The boy giggled, finding his own immature tale to be quite amusing. His lips were damp with drool, which had started to accumulate near the end of his story. Kyle gave a little clap, “That was a good one! What’s worse than an untrustworthy diaper pail?” Erin felt like he was taking crazy pills here. That hadn’t been all that scary of a story, and just as he’d criticized the last two tales, it’d heavily featured diapers as a plot device! Jean had always been the ‘kid’ of the group, at least until tonight when Marvin supplanted that role, but he’d never been known for being this immature. And why was Kyle just going along with it? Was this some kind of practical joke? “...Ugh. Enough baby stuff!” Marvin looked over at Erin and smiled sweetly, “You’re the only one who still has to tell a story, right?” “Yeah, and I’m going to break this stupid streak that you guys have going on. No more diapers! I swear, it’s like hearing a scary story from my baby brother. My story is about a bully who tries to pull a fast one over the tooth fairy, it’s called…” The Tooth of the Matter Every kid knew about the tooth fairy. A mysterious intruder that sneaked in during the night and exchanged money for human teeth. It was conceptually very unsettling, but getting quarters or dollars under their pillow helped to put those bigger questions at ease. It was fun and whimsical, but also something that every kid would eventually outgrow. There were only so many baby teeth that a kid would lose, and the hope was that they wouldn't end up losing any of their adult teeth afterwards. Once there were no more baby teeth, then these nocturnal visitations from beyond would cease. Billy had lost his last baby tooth a few weeks prior. He'd gotten a crisp fiver under his pillow the morning after, but it'd been disappointing to realize that the passive income would be no more. Getting the extra cash had always been a pleasant gift, which he'd usually spend on whatever caught his fancy at the store. But then, when hope seemed lost, he found what he thought to be a loophole. Without mincing words, Billy was a bully. He was the biggest kid in his class and he threw his weight around however he pleased. This itself was another form of income for him, to steal money from other kids, but it'd had seriously diminishing returns as kids stopped walking around with cash in their pockets. After trying to shake down some dork for change and realizing he was broke, Billy had been enraged enough to sock the kid right in the mouth. That loser had a loose tooth and it'd popped right out from the strike. That's when he got his brilliant idea. If he had no more baby teeth to offer, then he'd just have to harvest from those who were still lousy with them. This theory held water when he put that tooth under his pillow that night. The next morning he would find a dollar waiting, even though it'd been through ill gotten means. The cogs in his head turned and the industrious villain had found his new source of income. His classmates were all too scared of him to tattle about his brutish abuse, so no authority stood in his way of getting free money. He didn't specifically tell anyone his plan until he'd spent a week punching; one kid finally asked, after getting his tooth knocked out, and Billy casually explained what he was doing. That got around to the other kids in the school pretty fast, and they began to make offerings. Instead of waiting for a punch in the face, kids would bring Billy their baby teeth as they fell out, and some would work the usual tricks to speed up the process. Those who couldn't offer a tooth would instead offer whatever they had to appease him. It became quite a racket. Billy had never been making so much money in his life! He'd go to bed with a baggy full of his 'product' under the pillow, and he'd wake up with an appropriate sum for his trouble. For those who couldn't 'pay', he would still strike them, and he ended up having more and more permanent teeth to offer as well. This would go on for longer than it should have, until the day that the gravy train stopped. Billy woke up one morning and checked under his pillow for his payoff, but no cash was to be found. Instead the tooth fairy had left him a note: 'I took one for every adult tooth you took from someone else. Enjoy the baby food.' It would have been too cryptic for a dunderhead like Billy to find out organically, but the flood of drool coming from his lips was a good place to start. Probing the inside of his mouth with his tongue, he'd quickly discover he no longer had any teeth of his own. Just as the tooth fairy had mentioned, it had been tit for tat. While this toothless nightmare should have been grounds for serious intervention by his parents, they took one look at the note and shook their heads in disappointment. They still sent him to school. Considering the nonstop way that he drooled, and the fact that he could no longer talk properly, it didn't take long for his peers to realize what had become of him. He swiftly got put on the other side of the bully dynamic, especially when they saw him opening his lunch box and finding little jars of mushy baby food. The school administration took notice too, but it wasn't their place to mock or bully a kid for that. What was their duty was to insure proper 'placement' of every student, and where would be the best place to send a student with no teeth? Who ate food meant for a baby? Who could hardly communicate any more? Billy landed himself in the special room. His dental issues were specifically labeled as an indicator of the worst severity as well; only the most mushbrained morons were drooly and toothless. As regulations would stiffly decree, that also meant a change in required uniform. Billy was put in diapers. Not just normal diapers, but the biggest diapers he'd ever seen. It was a chore to walk upright in them, and to add insult to injury, they were the only place he was allowed to 'go potty'. Kids like him weren't given the dignity of having the toilet as a choice, regardless of their actual ability. So Billy the bully would have no other option but to dump in his diapers and drool on his bib. With his new pureed diet, his bowel control suffered anyways, so the diapers ended up seeing a tremendous amount of noisy usage. Over time, he would adapt to his surroundings, until it was like he'd never been fit for anything except the SPED room. Kids would walk by the room and peer in at the bully that had tormented them, now reduced to drooling all over a teething ring and splattering his massive tardpants with mushy sludge. They'd gawk and laugh at the sight; they'd revel in the poetic irony of his fate. Above all else, they would learn there was no gaming the tooth fairy. ---------------------------------- “...An’ dat’s how it’s done!” Erin boasted, now sporting a drooly chin of his own, and not seeming to realize that he’d gone against his own rule by incorporating diapers near the end, not to mention the story’s innate childishness by being about something as infantile as ‘the tooth fairy’. There was sudden muffled explosion of flatulence that came from beside him, and the sound of heavy, squishy plopping would follow. “Supah scawy!” Jean chirped, “Made me make big, BIG poopie in my diapee!” “Yuh! I did an oopsie in my Pull-Ups!” Kyle confessed, fidgeting awkwardly on his own log. Erin’s nose wrinkled at the smell of poop that had filled the air, but even with that foul odor, the earlier sweet scent still remained as strong as ever. “You stoopid babies! Can’t even keep your pants clean! Did you go poo too, baby-butt?” He directed over at Marvin, who still appeared as calm as he had at the start. Marvin nodded slowly, “I pooped before I sat down to tell my story. The one you didn’t let me finish.” “Dat’s cuz your story was stoopid an’ for babies. It wuz all ‘bout diapers—” Erin stopped mid-sentence and looked around. Kyle was sucking his thumb, the back of his jeans bulging with a lump; Jean’s clothes had morphed into a onesie, and the huge diaper underneath was pretty clearly very full. When had everyone become so babyish? The only one that still looked and sounded normal was… Marvin. “Well, you’re all in diapers now, and you all told stories about diapers, so I guess it wasn’t so stupid, huh?” Erin looked confused and he looked down at his own pants; he gave the material a prod and felt there was something bulky underneath. Hadn’t he come here in undies? Wasn’t he a big kid? “...Wut yoo do? Why I in a diapee? Why is smell like…” There was a flash of recognition in his eyes as he figured out what that sweet smell was. “Baby powder.” Marvin grinned, “If you’d let me finish my story before, then you would’ve known the ending. Someone who watches as everyone around them becomes a dumb baby, left wondering why they aren’t becoming one too. It wasn’t a made-up story; there’s a reason I came to a new town. Guess you could say I was a carrier the whole time without really knowing it… But now that I do, I just can’t help myself; its like an instinct to make other boys into drooly little diaper-dumpers…” “N-nuuu… I dun’ wanna be dat...I…” Erin tried to argue, before his face twisted and he started to loudly evacuate his bowels into the crinkly confines of his hidden diaper. His outfit began to change, shifting into a cute romper that better accentuated his puffy bottom. Meanwhile, Jean was rocking back and forth on his squishy butt and Kyle was holding his crotch as he began to wet his training pants. Marvin picked up a red bucket from off the ground and dumped the water inside over the fire to extinguish it. “I declare this meeting of the Midnight Society closed. The last meeting. Thanks for the fun.”