Story #61: Hush Little Baby

Story #61: Hush Little Baby ((Content Tags: Wet accidents, messy accidents, Pull-Ups, diapers, mental regression, brainwashing, female antagonist, adult protagonist that looks young)) *'Hush little baby, don't say a word.' 'Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird.' 'And if that mockingbird don't sing.' 'Then mama's going to buy you a diamond ring.'* The mobile spun overhead, around and around; a whirlwind of optimistic imagery, of 'the places you'll go'. I didn't feel comforted by it. I could watch the stars, the moon, passing by on a loop, but they only cut through my gut with a dagger of dread. It was a bleak reminder of where I was, and the position that I found myself in. This crib felt like a cage, and the puffy shame around my waist felt like manacles. Crying, screaming, shouting, none of it would make it past the rubber bulb of the pacifier in place. I was afforded no verbal release from my woes, no primal scream. This is what happened when you let your guard down. This is what happened when you didn't listen to your gut instinct about someone in that first impression. I could have avoided this fate by just following my own initial reactions. Had it been overconfidence? Loneliness? Or maybe naivety? It felt like it'd been far too long to remember what emotional state I'd been in at the time. I didn't even feel like that person anymore, it was like having the memories of a stranger. I'd so desperately tried to hang on to who I was, to not let her take that from me, to not become what she wanted me to be, but could I point to any real success? Every thought I'd arrived with, every sentimental bookmark in the archives of my mindscape, they kept getting pushed out. It was all overwhelmed by that darned tune. It was a melody that mama wielded like a cudgel, and with it, she bludgeoned me into cooperation. Or perhaps I wasn't giving her enough credit. It wasn't some blunt club, but a fine chisel, and I was the block of marble that sat in front of her, ready to be carved into the image that she already saw me as. That was a more appropriate analogy, because it really did feel like it was more subtle in the beginning. Sure, maybe there was the shock and awe of her brutal methods, but the real damage had been done with the death of a thousand cuts. I'd been obstinate about the diapers at first, in denial about my slipping control, but I'd come around fast enough. A few weeks of her tricks, and I'd started to lose control. I woke up wet, I could only keep my bladder at bay for ever-shortening periods, and eventually it would just happen without me even recognizing it. I'd be dry one moment, and sloshing around soggy, the next. My bowel control had taken longer, but it'd become a distant memory all the same. It was hard to believe that I'd once been a professor of psychology, wetting and dirtying myself like a helpless tot. That's where I'd first met her, in my classroom. I'd just thought she was a student then, working on her doctorate like most of the others. She'd been an impressive pupil too, which had surprised me, since I was only teaching an intermediate course. Her best test scores had been on the section where we went over classical conditioning, which now made a lot more sense. She hadn't needed to take my class, it was only a pretext to hide what she was really interested in; being her captive long enough, I knew full well that she was well versed in psychology already. Her interest had been in *me*. Interesting fact, I have a rare condition. It's a genetic aberration that has affected my hormones my whole life. Bottom line, my body has not physically seemed to age much past the age of three or four. I've always been self-conscious about it, and when I was younger, it was something I suffered the cruelty of my peers for. Respect is a difficult thing to garner when you look like a toddler. Maybe that was what had drawn me to psychology in the first place, to not only better understand those who victimized me, but to understand my own thoughts on living in such a way. In a place of higher academia, there was also the fact that my students were *compelled* to respect me, or at least act like it, for the sake of their grades. I'd thought that she respected me. Hell, I'd actually thought she had something more than that, but I'd been misguided. When she wanted to pick my brain over a cup of coffee, I didn't expect that she'd be leaving marionette strings inside. We started going out for a cup every Friday after class, where she would ask me more and more probing questions about my life, and the struggles that I'd had. It had started with simple questions about psychology itself of course. It wasn't until a few weeks in that she veered away from that to start asking things that were far more personal. She had a fixation on my condition, and she wanted to hear about how I'd handled it over the course of my life. I was young and stupid, so I babbled on about my woes, and she just listened attentively while humming a gentle tune. It felt almost therapeutic. Then things had started to get strange. One Friday afternoon, at our coffee 'date', I'd wet my pants. I dressed professionally for my job, but in that moment, I just looked like an overdressed preschooler with urine-soaked slacks. Mortified didn't even come close to relaying how I'd felt; it was like being back in elementary school and having all the kids pushing me around, saying that I was a baby that needed to wear diapers. ...Had I told her that? It was difficult to remember. My condition had meant bladder problems when I was young, which had lasted nearly into high school before they'd fully subsided. That meant bedwetting until I was fourteen, but it also meant the occasional pair of pissy pants throughout much of elementary school. Regardless, she'd been understanding, perhaps *too* understanding. I thought it had just been a symbol of her respect for me, but now I knew better; she'd seen me as nothing more than her baby boy to be, so obviously there had been no criticism, there was only consolation. I started wetting the bed again that week. It was becoming every night, and as much as I wanted to call it stress, I was afraid there was a greater issue. I went to a urologist, but they'd said I was fine and referred me to a therapist. I'd been arrogant there at first, tossing the referral sheet aside; I was an esteemed professor of psychology, I didn't need a shrink! Then there had come the day that I'd pissed my pants in the parking lot on my way to class. I'd felt urgency, but it'd gone from a mild need to pee to the dam breaking in under two minutes. I called class off with the lie that I was sick, and I caved; I picked up a package of generic brand Pull-Ups from the store and made an appointment to see a therapist. Getting on and off the bus had been soul-crushing that day. The daytime accidents increased in frequency that week while I was waiting for my appointment. I was changing two times a day at the least. My dates with her have to stop for the time being; I tried to just make up an excuse of being swamped with grading papers, but the truth was that I felt too emasculated to see her, when I had cartoon characters on my 'disposable underpants'. The therapist couldn't help me. He could see that I was stressed about my current predicament, but that didn't explain the initial cause. The best he could offer was that I was dealing with a type of post-traumatic stress that stemmed from my soggy childhood. The accidents got worse. One day, while sitting behind my desk, I felt something damp against my thighs. Looking down, I'd noticed that my training pants had started to leak, and that my corduroy slacks were getting more than just a little damp. In a vain attempt to prevent such a thing from reoccurring, I began to check myself more frequently, and I tried to limit my fluids more. I also caved and bought on-brand Pull-Ups, humiliatingly enough with pictures of Mickey Mouse adorning them. She finally wouldn't take no for an answer. She said that she knew I must be embarrassed about that accident from the month before, but that she didn't think any less of me. Technically she wasn't lying, but I wasn't clear then on how little she thought of me to begin with. So I agreed to dinner at a restaurant. Things were going well enough, except for the fact that the waitress tried to ask if I needed a booster seat or a kid's menu. I also had brought along my satchel bag, which I'd lied and said it was full of books I needed to return to the library, when in actuality it contained everything necessary to change myself if the need arose. I can't remember what I ordered that night, it was a French place, so I'm sure I just went with whatever the staff suggestion was, paired with a small glass of red wine, for which they were incredulous to my ID. After some chatting, after hearing that little hummer tune of hers, I'd loosened up and let myself have a good time... ...And then I'd noticed that I *really* needed to use the toilet. Not to pee this time, but to relieve the immense pressure that'd come on in my bowels. Before I could properly excuse myself from the table, I could feel something hot and mushy rushing its way into my Pull-Ups. I'd soiled myself, on my dinner date, at this nice upscale restaurant. I just sat in my own droppings. The world had come to a stop, and whatever my date was saying, it might as well been gibberish for all I was picking up. I had no idea what to do, or what to say, I just felt like crying. The odor cut through the complex banquet of smells that otherwise would have permeated the restaurant, and I wondered how she wasn't getting a whiff. Only later on did I realize that she was completely aware, but she'd wanted to see me squirm. Much like a real parent, she had been waiting for *me* to be the one to fess up to what I'd done in my pants. That moment didn't come. Instead, one of the waiters had to come over and politely mention that they had changing tables in the bathrooms. "Is there something you want to tell me?" Things got murky after that. I vaguely remember the awkward conversation about how I'd been having some control issues as of late, and that this was the first time it'd been a number two. I showed her the juvenile garments I'd been reduced to and against my own wishes, I let her help me clean up. Afterwards had been a very quiet cigarette and an apology for the way that the evening had turned out. The messy accidents began to become more of a problem after that, which meant the Pull-Ups weren't going to cut it. I tried looking for something that wouldn't be so embarrassing, but for my size, I ended up having to settle on actual toddler diapers. It felt like a new personal low, and it signaled my tailspin into oblivion. I became spacey. I was anxious, I was distant, I sometimes found my thumb in my mouth... It was escalating, until the point where I finally was in the middle of teaching a lesson in front of the class, and I dropped an enormous solid steamer in my Luvs. It wasn't subtle, nor explainable in any other way. Not much later, I got a recommendation from the school board that I should take a 'vacation' to clear my head. There really wasn't a choice there. If I wanted to keep my job, then I needed to figure out what was happening to me. That day, after class was over, I was packing up some of my personal things. I didn't know how long I'd be gone. That's when she'd come to me with a parting gift. Opening the neatly wrapped parcel, I found a music box. I remember finding it to be a strange gift, but she'd said something about how it reminded her of me, and how it might help me find some peace. She reached over and wound it up for me, and when it started to play, I finally understood why the tune she hummed sounded so familiar. "Hush little baby, don't say a word..." My eyes drooped, my shoulders slumped, and my knees began to buckle. The world had started to spin and my thoughts felt slow and clouded. I tried to talk, but the words came out wrong, like baby babble. "...Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird.." Her eyes didn't have the same warmth that I'd known for the last few months. There was a darkness there, the same I'd seen when I had first met her on the first day of class. The same eyes I'd ignored, the red flag I'd put in the back of my mind. "...And if that mockingbird don't sing..." I felt something warm. It was difficult to tell in the state I was in, but I was definitely soaking my diaper. From the smell of things, I was messing myself too. "...Then mama's going to buy you a diamond ring.." It had all faded to black. It was impossible to know for how long I was out, but I remember waking up in a carseat, with a pacifier in my mouth, and something sticky underneath my buttocks. That's when she'd finally let her mask completely slip. She'd told me her true intentions, and what she had in store for me. I was going to be her little baby forever, and she'd be my mama. After enough conditioning, she promised that I wouldn't remember anything about my old life, and that we'd both be happy. I went in and out of consciousness a lot on that drive; we were on the road such a long time, that it became clear my old life would be thousands of miles behind me. Nobody would ever know. I already looked like a toddler, so once she molded my mind to match, it'd be fairly impossible to tell the difference between me and the real thing. That was a long time ago now. She wasn't wrong either, I've lost so much of myself, that I don't really know how much is left. I find myself experiencing life as a hapless tot more and more. Pacifiers, highchairs, and an endless parade of poopy Pampers. Maybe it's time to give in to it. Maybe its time to let go.