Tale #7: The Dim Passenger

Tale #7: The Dim Passenger (Content Tags: Psychological horror, messing, diapers, mushbrained, multiple personalities, public humiliation, therapy, room for continuation) After nearly a decade of feeling completely safe, it was happening again; the signs were undeniable, no matter how much he wanted to stick his head in the sand. Timmy was back, and he was more vindictive than ever before. The young man had hoped against hope that the menace was gone for good, that he'd somehow drowned into the inky blackness of eternity, like a nightmare vanquished by the morning light, but he could now see how naive that had been. Timmy was an inner demon that couldn't be vanquished, not forever, and it had only ever been a matter of time before he would return to wreak havoc. No cage could contain him, least of all one where the bars were forged by the unconscious mind. "So, tell me about Timmy, Levi. Why do you think he's come back? What makes you sure that he has?" The line of questioning hung in the air like a wisp of smoke; while the office was spacious, it felt cramped and suffocating, like the walls kept threatening to close in on him. It'd been years since Levi had stepped a foot into this room, or even this building, and the reasoning for his visit was like a boot weighing heavily on his chest. The woman in front of him, Dr. Trujillo, was someone that Levi had a long and decorated history with. While he saw her as a liberator, he couldn't help but also see her as a sign that things were going horribly wrong in his life. The only times that he saw her, was when the worst possible things were threatening to topple him. "Well, I... I don't have proof, I guess, but I know what I know, ya know? I've started to lose time again, and there's been..." His words quietly trailed off, a faint amount of color coming to his face from even the vague implication of what he was trying to get across. "Accidents?" "Y-yeah...A few. I've only ever had them when Timmy comes around, and they aren't happening while I'm aware of them. I was so embarrassed the last time it happened, that I actually bought some, umm, you know..." "Protection? That's understandable, Levi." The woman nodded, jotting down notes on her pad. Her tone stayed fully professional, never betraying amusement or disgust at the nature of her patient's condition. He wasn't lying about buying protection either; after the most recent incident, which had left his boxers in a filthy state of disarray, he'd bitten the bullet and gone by the local pharmacy. For the first time in many years, he'd purchased a package from the incontinence aisle: Adult pull-ups, generic and medical. They were on under his slacks at that very moment, obviously still in a pristine state, but evidence nonetheless of his anxieties. He couldn't risk sabotaging everything he'd worked for by letting Timmy embarrass him with a pants-ruining toilet-failure. His current position was too lofty, too prestigious, and the way he appeared was something that actually mattered. He was a lead architect at a prominent tech company, one of the youngest in the industry to reach such a senior level, and there were dozens others who would kill to have the job that he had. "Do you think it might be stress?" The woman asked. "...Maybe? I mean, my job is stressful, but it's also fulfilling. I'm proud of where I am now, I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing; I enjoy the pressure that my role offers. I don't know why Timmy would show up now, when I'm hitting the apex of my career." The resurgence of the phantom within was inexplicable to him; he'd arguably been put under far worse stress whenever he'd been working his way up into the position to begin with, and Timmy had been happy to remain silent then. So why now? Why, when things were going so well, did Timmy want to screw it all up? "Do you remember the last time he showed up, Levi?" "Yeah, of course..." How could he forget? Timmy had shown up, albeit briefly, during his second year at university. The stress of midterms had been pressing down upon his shoulders, like Atlas lifting the globe, and Levi had turned to stimulants to keep sharp. The study sessions had been brutal, and so had all the papers, but Levi had thought he had a handle on everything. Wasn't that how it always was? Things are fine until they're not? Levi had woken one morning, to discover three critical issues: the first was the load of shit in his diaper, which honestly, the diaper probably deserved to be an issue separate from the rest. The second was the disarray he'd woken up to, with his dorm trashed, his phone stacked with unanswered messages, and a roommate who had a fuckton of questions. Third? He'd lost two entire days to Timmy. His entire weekend, where he would finally give his brain a break, had been spent asleep at the wheel. His roommate, Darren, had been surprisingly cool about the whole situation; the other man had thought that Levi had melted his brain on some long-lasting psychedelics, and so Darren had stepped up to the plate to 'trip-sit' during that time. Apparently that meant buying some diapers for the pantspooping buffoon that Timmy always presented himself as, and even changing him a few times. It hadn't been worth explaining at the time, not that he had been sure that Darren would have believed the truth anyway; the drug angle was far more simplistic to roll with, so he'd nodded along to that. Right after midterms, and with Timmy thankfully staying away, he'd immediately gone to see the doctor, and he'd upped the dosage of his medication. From that point forward, it had seemed like smooth sailing; Timmy had been quiet for about a decade, allowing Levi to live a very productive and fulfilling life. Until recently, of course. "Do you see any similarities to your situation back in college, to how you are now? Any common denominators?" Levi shook his head, "Not really, no. I think the stress and the drugs were what let him loose last time, but I'm in a pretty good place now. I'm healthy, I'm successful, and I'm happy." She clicked her pen, "Maybe we should look back further? You went a long time without Timmy after we first got your medication schedule settled, and perhaps the lapse last time was indeed from pharmacological interactions." Further back? That was a darker tapestry to unfurl. Before the college incident, his last run-in with Timmy had been his freshman year of high school. He'd just made the debate team, which was highly unusual for a student his age; it should have been a joyous occasion, but of course Timmy had trampled all over it with his dirty feet. At that time, before the pharmaceutical intervention had prevailed, Levi had still been making sure to protect himself at all times. His run-ins with his alter ego had diminished during middle school, so it was around that time he had switched to a sort of disposable briefs. Well, Pull-Ups, if he was being honest with himself. They weren't adorned in cartoons and bright colors like how Huggies might make them, but were instead a plain white affair to offer some semblance of dignity to their undignified purpose. He wore them under his underpants, a tactic he'd held onto for years by that point, as to diminish their sound and to tighten their bulk into a more compressed state. The nature of them made it easy for him to still use the toilet, which of course he always did, and he didn't need any help with getting them on or off, which was a huge advantage over the true-blue diapers he'd ditched only a few years prior. The thing with Timmy, was that he knew how to be subtle when he wanted to be. The separate personality may have been intellectually challenged in a lot of severe ways, but he had a certain deviousness about him, and a coy cleverness that frankly came across as often impressive. Relatively, at least. If a Kindergartner showed advanced manipulative tactics, then people would find that impressive too, but only because they were so stupid on average. Many of Timmy's attacks, where he clutched control of the pilot seat, only lasted for a few short moments. He would pop in to make a fool out of Levi, and then he would leave to make Levi pick up the pieces. The abruptness and the brevity were part of what made him so insidious, and what made him so difficult to pin down. This... had not been one of those times. It hadn't been subtle, it hadn't been brief, and there was no way Levi could have fixed what Timmy had gleefully broken. From what Levi had seen on the recording, he had readily agreed with his parents to immediately move schools, and to look into more serious solutions with his psychologist. The depravity displayed, in front of the peers he had worked so hard to impress, wasn't something anyone could ever bounce back from; it was the sort of thing where you had to just burn it all down and start anew elsewhere. A fresh start with no one to judge him based on his other half. Thank god he hadn't been going to high school during the social media age, or else a hundred different phones would have recorded the spectacle in 1080p! His college interview would have never happened, and certainly he would have never gotten this job. Luckily the footage was unlikely to be still floating out there, and the quality was grainy. It was shocking to think about how mortified he had been at how 'crisp and clear' it had appeared back then, when his parents had brought a genuine camcorder to the debate. It hadn't happened until Levi had taken to the stage to battle wits with his opponent; he couldn't remember the exact topic, but he think it had been about the morality of keeping animals caged in zoos. If he recalled, he was advocating for it, which was a position he'd actually opposed at the time. The debate had started normally, respectfully, with questions being curated from the moderator. Levi had felt it coming on, which itself was rare. There was a certain internal tug-of-war, where his vision would fade for a few seconds, and he'd feel a shudder ring up his spine. He tried to keep it together, he really did, but Timmy was just too strong... While the footage wasn't spectacular, Levi could point on the screen when the changing of the guard had happened. Drooping eyelids, goofy gaping grin, a knock-kneed stance, and a total shift in his overall aura. What came next, was Timmy making some inane point about zoo animals not wearing any clothes, and how it was wrong to go look at 'nakie am-i-nals' at the zoo. Punctuating that point was the total stripping of his clothes on the stage, until he was down to just his puffy Pull-Up in front of everyone. Then, while drooling on the microphone in his hand, he started to loudly grunt, while the shocked audience was caught between surprise and amusement. The microphone would lower with his hand, rubbing against his padded backside, and that's when the gassy eruption of muck would be loudly announced to the entire auditorium. Long bubbling spurts of shit, with a Pull-Up sagging and staining from the filth. Was that the end of it though? Before he could be stopped by any adults in the room? No, not quite. He babbled something about monkeys at the zoo, dropped the microphone, and instead stuck his hand down into the back of the Pull-Up. What came after, well... It'd definitely been some monkey business, that was for sure, and it was the perfect cap to the reasoning of why he had to move schools. But were there any similarities then, to how he was now? "I think he might resent your success, Levi." The doctor finally said, after Levi had awkwardly recapped the past to her. "My success? Why?" "The why of it might be more complicated, but I think that it tracks. He was a lot more prevalent in elementary school for you, wasn't he?" "Y-yeah...I had to move between the GT program and the special class a lot, and he was never gone long enough for me to take the diapers off." She nodded and scribbled something down, "He had more control back then, because you hadn't built any walls yet to truly separate the two of you. He might have even had an equal share of your life, wouldn't you say?" The direction she was going was making Levi uncomfortable, "Sure, I guess. Him showing up so much made it so no one liked either of us that much. He wrecked my life all the time back then. Where are you going with this?" "When I talk about your success, I'm not just talking about you being in gifted classes, joining the debate team, or graduating college. I think the success he most resents is how you were the one who got full custody of your body. He believes that he has an equal stake to it, that he's entitled to live life the way he wants." "Okay...But he isn't. He's just a figment, an abnormality in my brain. He's not real, this isn't his body..." His therapist had a kind smile, but it was one that betrayed some sense of sorrow. "Don't you think that might be the way he feels too? Whether you like it or not, he's as 'real' as you or me. He has thoughts, and wants, and needs..." A heavy sigh came from the couch, "Doc...Look, I appreciate the philosophical discussion and all, but I'm looking for a solution, not a puzzle. Can't I just up my dosage again? Or try something new? I can't have him coming out while I'm in a meeting or something." The room was eerily quiet for a few moments, only allowing the soft ticking of the clock on the wall to fill the air. "There are some things that we can try, but it'll be touch and go. There's no silver bullet here, I'm afraid. If you're willing to take some time off work, then I'll help you the best I can, using everything I've come to know about the two of you. You might have been in remission for a long time, but my research never stopped: there are new things we can try." Things got silent again, and the doctor thought her patient might be mulling it over; she knew that it might be asking a lot to convince him to go on sick-leave, but it was really the only pragmatic move here. "...Levi? Are you still thinking about it? I could write a note, if that would help you with getting the time--" Her soft voice was suddenly disrupted by a very sharp toot; the fart sputtered wetly, muffled by the padding, though still impossible to miss. It was a familiar sound from Levi, or from Timmy at least, back when he was but a boy... Levi's face tilted up, and it became obvious that Levi was no longer in the building. That slack-jawed, drooly stupor was Timmy's trademark. "...Timmy? Is that you?" The man tilted to the side and scrunched up his face, the next gassy outburst sounding far more fecal in nature. The sloppy sound of plopping, squishing, and smearing. It was the same old Timmy, only assuming control seconds ago, and he was already happily shitting in his pants like a moron. "Yuh-huh, doctor lady, me Timmy!" "...Do you remember me, Timmy? I'm Dr. Trujillo. I'm Levi's doctor, and yours too; we used to have sessions here." Timmy stuck a finger in his nostril, to start digging for boogers, while squinting his eyebrows fervently as he pushed more foul muck into his pants. "Mmm...Uh-huh, doctor lady...Timmy remember." "Can you tell me why you're doing this? Why you want to hurt Levi?" The man rolled onto his back and lifted his legs, beginning to pull off his shoes, and then his pants. Timmy had never much cared for the constraint of clothing, particularly of his lower half; the doctor pursed her lips, a little nervous that her patient might deign to make the mess currently internal to his diaper, into an external problem. "Timmy life, not Lee-bye. Me make him no wanna come back." The dimwit chirped, fully admitting he was trying to burn down Levi's life, as to make it too inhospitable for him to ever want to return. "Him turn over now. He go sleepy an' let me play." The man still had his legs in the air, while one hand began to happily massage the warm bulge he'd just created in his diaper. "Mmmm...Poopie...Timmy like poopie...Lee-bye no let me make poo-poo diapees." The doctor wrote down what she was seeing and wondered what her course of action should be; truth be told, it was Levi and Timmy who had made her career in the past, whenever she had published her findings to the broader psychological community. As unethical as it might sound, getting the opportunity to write a follow-up, would do wonders to revive a career that'd largely fallen off in the last decade. Another fart rippled out into the room, and she watched as the diaper swelled another inch, filling up with more sticky droppings. Dealing with Timmy, she may have to bring back a certain maternal edge that she'd had before to deal with him; a caretaker's authority was all that someone like Timmy might obey. "Timmy, sweetie. What would you say if I told you that I could give you some time out here in the real world? If we let Levi take a big nap, and you came to stay with me a while? Would you like that?" She wasn't just playing with fire, she was playing with the fate of a man who had put his trust in her. Was that trust well placed?