The New Narnia- Chapter 51: Fallout

Chapter 51: Fallout

“How the fuck do you know her?” Charlie asked.  “That doesn’t make any goddamn sense!”

Tommy looked askance at his new friend.  “What are you talking about?” Unable to play it completely cool, his eyes kept flitting back to Amanda, sitting blissfully on the carpet; a line of drool coming out of her mouth as she chewed on her finger.

“I’ve been here for close to twenty years, and you’re the first person I’ve recognized from Scrumpton.”  A quiet intensity burned in Charlie’s every syllable.  “I’ve heard new victims babble in French, German, English, Spanish, and a whole buncha other languages that I can’t even guess about.  Seeing another local kid end up here?  After twenty years?  Yeah. I can buy that.”  He pointed at Amanda. “Two?  The fuck’s goin’ on?”

Amanda offered no explanation.  “Hi!”  It was likely her infantilized brain  didn’t even understand the meaning of the word; just that it was a noise made when seeing people for the first time.  “Hi!”  Kind of like how cats meow around humans more than each other, and are thought to have first picked up the habit by mimicking crying babies.  It was communication, sure, but not quite formalized language.

“Charlie,” Tommy hesitated. “I...I...

“Are things speeding up?  Is that creepy mismatched bitch sucking in more of us?”

“Charlie…”

“Hi!”

“Oh shit! Is it something about Scrumpton that makes her more likely to snatch people from there?”

“Hi hi!”

“No...Charlie...that’s not…”

“Why now? Did something change? Did aliens crash land? Somebody find something buried? Is this some kinda Raiders of the Lost Ark thing?”

“That’s not what…”

“Shit, do you even know what Indiana Jones is?  I’ve been stuck with kiddie shows so long I don’t know what’s cool anymore.”

“Hiiiiiiii!”

“Charlie!”  

“Why now.? Are we...are we the chosen ones?”

“Charlie!” Tommy barked. “Shut up and let me explain!”  Charlie looked like he’d been struck.  Tommy sat down so that he, Amanda and Charlie were roughly in a triangle. “I did it,” Tommy said. “I did this to her.”

“What do you mean you did-”

“Dude,” Tommy said. “Look at her.  Ignore her size and look at her.”

Charlie did for a moment and pouted out his lower lip. Tommy knew when his friend had recognized her.  It was the kind of expression that little kids got when it occurred to them that their teachers existed outside of school. To be fair, Tommy supposed, that when you’ve no prospects of growing up, big people tended to blend together over time.  “Holy fuck.  That’s the girl from the coffee shop!”  

“Yup.”

“The one you squirted mlk on.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How is she?  Why-?”

“We had a sleepover.”

Charlie was trembling.  “You...oh...fuck.  You pushed her through the clock, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Tommy said.  “Pretty much.”  He hung his head, still feeling Charlie staring at him.

While all this went on,  Amanda leaned back and grabbed her feet, not noticing or caring that either of them could see up her dress.  “Bububububub Tommeeeeeeeeeee!”

“Wait a sec,” Charlie said. “You had a thing for her, didn’t you?”  Tommy gave no reply.  “Oh fuck, you did!  The hell is wrong with you?! Why would you do that?”

Tommy snapped his head up. “It wasn’t like that! I squirted the milk at her for...for...reasons!  I was mad at her! She was awful!”

“Awful enough to deserve this?!”  Both boys turned at just the right (or wrong) time to see the wetness indicator on Amanda’s diaper go from a pale almost unnoticeable yellow to a bright blue.

Tommy looked away.  He pretended to be interested in a couple of forty-somethings chewing on board books. “No.” He admitted.  “I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“You could of gotten her to….you know!”  He started tracing his name in the air.  “Like we did.”

The younger adult baby felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on in.  The Nanny or whatever she was could be anywhere in this place. If Charlie wasn’t careful, Tommy might lose hisone  bargaining chip.  

Tommy stood up on much steadier legs.  “Dude,” he whispered.  “Shut up.  Are we sure she can’t erase it if she knows about it?”

Charlie lost his balance, and with it, his anger.  “Shit,” he whispered back.  “I never thought of that.”

“Anyone,” Tommy continued. “Would that have fixed her? Or would it have just frozen her in place?  I don’t remember being into any of this stuff before I went through the clock.  I didn’t sign my name the first time.”

The older of the two licked his lips in concentration.  “Shit,” he conceded. “Me neither. The first time through I thought it was just some trippy dream.  It wasn’t till my second or third time, and I did it for shits and giggles more than anything..”

“Me too,” Tommy said.  He gestured to Amanda. She’d rolled onto all fours.  “So what was I supposed to do?”

“Shit…” Charlie said, finally realizing it.  “I guess...I guess this?”

“Yeah.”  Tommy exhaled, feeling like he’d just given a confession of sorts and had been absolved.  “So what do I do now?”

Charlie dug some wax out of his ear and flicked it. “I dunno.  Wanna see if we can find bouncers or something?”

“Huh?”  Tommy said. “No. I mean, about her.”

“Seems to me like you already did it, kid.”

“There’s gotta be more that I can do, though I...I…” Tommy looked at where Amanda had been.  Only a bare patch of carpet remained where she’d been.  “Where did she go?”  

Bored and blessed with a small child’s attention span, Amanda had crawled off. “There!” Charlie pointed. Amanda had started amusing herself,  alternating between crawling and rolling aimlessly.  It was unsettling how quickly she’d blended in to say the least.  The pair continued crawling towards her, careful not to let her out of her sight.

“I’m just saying,” Tommy told Charlie. “We should...I dunno. Help her acclimate? Play with her.”

“Pretty sure she’s acclimating just fine,” Charlie said. “The only thing you gotta do to not acclimate in this place is not think about it.  She seems real good at that.”

“Come on,” Tommy said. “Let’s at least keep her company for a while.  Be her friends.  Play with her.”

Charlie’s eyes were almost looking at his brain.  “Fine,” he said.  “If it’ll make you feel less guilty, we’ll play a couple games with the mush brain.

Another weight was lifted from Tommy’s shoulders.  “Cool,” he said.  He looked at Amanda, giggling while she rolled on the floor.  “So...what do we do?”

“How the heck should I know?” Charlie said. “This was your idea.”

“You’ve been here how long?” Tommy raised his eyebrows. “You’ve never played with anyone else?”

Charlie got defensive.  “Not game games! I sit in circle time, and do stupid baby shit with them when I have to, but why would I be a babysitter when I don’t have to be?  They chew on everything, they can’t pay attention for nothing.  Best you can do is play next to them and not mess with them.” A beat. “Or knock over there blocks when they’re not looking.”

“Dude!”

“What? They don’t get upset all the time.  Sometimes they barely notice it happening.” Charlie looked aside.  “She’s moving again.”

Tommy ran in front of the wandering, drooly mess that used to be his bully crush.  “Amanda! Amanda!” he said. “Wait!”  

Amanda nuzzled his legs like a cat.  “Bubububububububub…”  She sounded nothing like.  Nor was her tongue as dry.

“Ew!”  Tommy stepped back, wiping off his knees.

“I think she likes you now.” Charlie said.  “If that’s what you wanted, mission accomplished, kid.”

“It’s not what I wanted!” Tommy collapsed to his knees.  Amanda rose up enough to give him a hug.  It only made him feel a little better.  “None of this is what I wanted. Just one thing led to another and another and another and another….and there’s no going back.”  Were he an alcoholic, Tommy might have described this as either ‘rock bottom’ or ‘a moment of clarity’.

“Yeah,” Charlie nodded. “I know that feeling. Best not to think about it.  Just figure out how to like what you’ve got. You can’t pick up the dominoes after you’ve tipped them over.  I mean, literally sure, but metaphorically? Not so much.”

With Amanda still nuzzling (and nibbling?) on his shirt, Tommy brightened a little.  “That gives me an idea.”
***************************************************************************************
Three hours later…

“I want to knock them down this time,” Charlie whined.

“No way,” Tommy said. “You got to set them up.”

“That’s why I want to knock them down.”

“Amanda gets to knock them down.” Tommy said. “It’s the one thing she’s good at.”

“She gets to do the best part of playing with dominoes because she’s not good at anything else?”

Tommy covered up Amanda’s face for one last peekaboo.  She laughed so hard, when he uncovered her eyes and stuck out his tongue, that one might think it was the first time she’d seen someone make that face.  It wasn’t.  Not by a long shot.  “The fun part isn’t knocking it down, it’s watching them get knocked down,” he said over Amanda’s rapid uncoordinated clapping. “She just gets to knock the first one over.

This was kind of  true.  In their first of now close to a dozen set ups, Amanda had trampled over and smashed down the little domino bricks. Charlie and he had gone too short and simple, with just a dozen or so dominoes in a straight line.  Amanda had just crawled over them. She’d giggled when she saw the last one that she hadn’t touched topple over at least. Tommy made a mental note to include her the next time they played kaiju.  She might like that.

Every other domino the pair had set up was more intricate and ornate than the last, with an extra long line leading to the main design to act as a sort of ‘fuse’ for Amanda to stopple over.  

They worked in shifts, with one carefully setting up the design, while the other protected it from Amanda or any of the other eternal babies wandering along the periphery of their play space.  Keeping Amanda busy. was frankly, exhausting, but a kind of game in itself.

Tommy did so with various tickling games and stuff he just barely remembered from Kindergarten.  While doing nothing, save for holding her hands up for patty cake and what not, Amanda seemed to enjoy it.

During his shifts, Charlie took a different approach.  He’d hand Amanda a toy to jingle, shake, or chew on, crawl around the perimeter of Tommy’s temporary masterpiece, and then crawl back with another.  In a pragmatic way, it made sense.  Being able to still walk and even run, it was easier for Tommy to ward off random padded passerby.  Charlie had to be more vigilant.

They both breathed an audible sigh when a worker drone checked Amanda’s diaper and took her to the changing table.  Tommy felt guilty watching her get changed, even if the guilt didn’t stop him from watching. At least she seemed happy.  

“You were never much for kids, were you?” Tommy asked.

“Nope.”  That was all Charlie cared to say on the matter.

That had been half an hour ago.

“Hurry up and have her light the fuse,” Charlie said. “Before somebody tries to pick us up.  It’s almost lunch time!”

“Okay Amanda!” Tommy said, guiding her over to the long single file of dominoes. “Your turn!” He kept his voice happy and cheery.  Funnily enough, this was the most grown-up Tommy had felt in a hot minute.

“Yo-yo!”  It was as close to ‘your turn’ as she could likely get.  With clumsy awkward hands, she knocked over the first in a long line of dominoes.  Charlie waved Tommy over to him and the boy who could run instead of crawl raced the black domino chain to be with his friend.

He just barely saw the plain black dominoes collide with the green that spread out into a thick tail. “Hmmmm….”  the chain reaction slowed down as the tail dominoes weaved and spiraled, spreading the effect out.  Two tyrannosaurus legs took shape.  Above it, along the back, white spikes knocked over.

A dinosaur.  Or at least the outline of one.  Or was it a dinosaur?  Charlie had taken great care to choose the color of the tiles, so the gout of red flame at the very end coming out of the mouth- also the part that was the most ‘filled in’ - was very obvious and intentional.  Was it a dragon? Were those little white spikes supposed to be wings?  

A dragon? A dinosaur?  Tommy connected the dots. “Godzilla?” Tommy asked. “You made a domino Godzilla?”

“Got it in one!” Charlie beamed. He was surprisingly good at this. It’s amazing what eighteen years of boredom and untapped creative energy could accomplish.

From her point of view at the tail, Amanda couldn’t fully appreciate the picture Charlie had constructed.  It didn’t stop her from bouncing on her pampered bottom and giggling like it was high comedy.  “Haaaaaaheeeheeeheeeheeehahahahahehehe!”

The two men trapped in boys’ sizes nodded to each other.  A job well done. Based on how their fellows were being scooped up and carted to highchairs, it was a job they wouldn’t get a proper chance to repeat.
***************************************************************************
Tommy lay in the crib at naptime, the lights in Malacus’s daycare were  out, and it was as quiet and peaceful as the middle of the night. An upside to having an extra dimension space where all aspects of the environment could be controlled.  Perfect temperature.  Perfect amount of barely perceptible white noise.  

It made it easy, tempting even to fall asleep and just drift off. Were it not for the person literally sharing a bed with him, he might. Snoring gently beside him, almost like the purring of a contented cat, Amanda slept next to him, cuddled up with her head on his shoulder, a pacifier wedged between her lips.

The Nanny had made one more appearance just after lunch. “Looks like I forgot to add an extra crib,”  It was a lie, punctuated by a playful wink.  “I know you’re real good at sharing, Tommy.  So be a good baby boy and share your crib for naptime.”

Tommy said nothing.  Did nothing.  He hadn’t needed to.  Amanda had been given a pacifier and had drifted right off to sleep, nuzzling into Tommy and just snoozing.   Tommy closed his eyes, but guilt and excitement wouldn’t let slumber claim him.

He lay in the darkness, the world outside the wooden bars ceasing to exist. Just him and the girl he’d  lusted after sharing the space together.  He’d wanted this.  On some level, he’d always wanted this.  His masturbation fantasies had been a lot raunchier and a lot dirtier.
“Tommy.”  Hearing his name on her lips excited him.  Even with all the brain drain that affected most everyone in this place, his name was something that stayed in her mouth and mind.  Did that mean something?  Or was it just a cruel carrot purposefully left over that Nanny hadn’t eaten in orderr to tempt and torment him?   He didn’t know. He might never know.

Watching her breast gently rise and fall with each breath she took, he knew how unbelievably horny he was.  He tried to calm himself down, and tell himself that she very likely had pissed herself, and was very much likely wearing a soaked diaper that would need to be immediately changed when the lights came back on.  It didn’t help in the least. How strange, Tommy thought.  He’d literally fucked a magically created doppelganger of her, like her in every way save the ears.  But this heated his blood (among other things) so much more.

Skin so soft.  Hair so silky.  Even her breath, laced with baby food and formula, smelled wonderful

“No,” Tommy promised himself.  “Not gonna do it.”   He wouldn’t force himself on Amanda.  She couldn’t give him permission, and if she were still in her right mind, she wouldn’t have. Memories of a lifetime of mockery and disgust did their best to temper his dark fantasies.

They were failing.

“Look but don’t touch,” Tommy repeated to himself over and over. “Look...don’t touch...her.” Would it be that creepy if he relieved a little personal tension right there?  Not if he didn’t wake her.  It would make it easier to go to sleep...

Tommy Dean never got the chance to finish the lie on himself.  Amanda gave a hearty yawn, and the pacifier fell out from her lips while she stretched beside him in the crib.  The girl’s eyes fluttered.  In the darkness, the pure stillness, he could still see every feature of her face as she rolled over. “Tommy…”  He laid completely still, quivering as drool covered lips puckered out and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Tommy.”

That did the trick.  One kiss.  One innocent kiss, fish lips and fully puckered like someone pantomiming an actual smooch was enough to send Tommy over the edge.  He squirmed and squirted in his diaper, feeling his heart pound in his chest.  The shame lasted only as long as it took for his dick to stop quivering.  

Not noticing his excitement, Amanda grabbed her fallen pacifier and shared it with him, putting it in between his lips.  Drowsily, Tommy sucked on the pacifier, his eyes closing and a dumb goofy smile blossoming behind the binky while he started to doze to the sounds of Amanda’s renewed snores.

******************************************************************************************
The after nap afternoon went by in a blur for Tommy and Charlie.  Having felt like he’d done right by Amanda, or at least as right as he could, he decided to spend.  His ‘accident’ during naptime, he decided to forget about as soon as his padding had been swapped out.  No ill intent, no harm, no foul, as far as he was concerned.  

Amanda had been taken to a group and taught a song about the itsy-bitsy spider. Good for her. Overall, it had been a good day, and Tommy was feeling awfully refreshed.  Things were looking up.

“You know,” Charlie said. “We gotta have a sleepover sometime.”

“Huh?” Tommy asked. “Why?”

“We’re in the same town.” Charlie said. “Hanging out is what buds do.  I haven’t seen your mom, either.”  He smirked and paused a beat.  “Is she hot.”

“Dude!”

Chalire didn’t blink. “What?  I’m just doing the math!”

“Not cool! That’s my mom!”

“She’s probably closer to my age than you are,” Charlie said, barely containing his laughter. Little fucker was getting a kick out of this, Tommy could tell.  “I’m not gonna try and breastfeed from her or nothing…”

“Good. Don’t.”

“But if she insists on it, I’m not gonna fight it.”

Tommy stood up, trying to look intimidating despite the fact that he was dressed like Tommy Pickles.  “Stop!”

“What?” Charlie broke down into laughter. “ We’re best buds. We could be like milk brothers or something. Like ‘blood brothers’ but suckin’ on titties!”

“Charlie! Stop!”

“Fine fine,” Charlie pretended to be upset.  “I’m sorry. I’ll stop pretending to hit on your Mom.  What is she like, forty? Forty-three?”

“Thirty-five,” Tommy said.

“Oooooh!” Charlie’s eyes lit up.  Tommy did not like how he was wiggling his fingers, copying an imaginary feel.  “She is about my age!  Charlie likey!”

“I’m gonna find a way to make you pay,” Tommy growled.  How to embarrass someone who’d long since outgrown it, though?

“Oh Tommy!” A daycare worker interrupted.  “Your Mommy’s here!”

“Now we’re talking!”

Tommy grit his teeth.  “It’s a good thing she won’t be able to understand you.”

“For me,” Charlie joked.  Charlie’s expression changed completely, however, when Mommy walked in through the door and into the daycare proper.  She waved to her son, all smiles.  “The fu-?!”

“You just need to sign him out here,” Tommy heard one of the drones instruct his mother.  Mommy looked down at the big sign-in/sign-out book and started padding her pockets for a pen.

Charlie looked like all the life had gone out of him. “Dean?”

Tommy looked down at his friend.  “Yeah? My last name’s Dean. How’d you know?”  Had he ever told Charlie that?  He couldn’t quite remember.  Had it even come up? He knew Charlie’s last name because of the magical algae wall just outside of Malacus proper, but such things like family names seemed like relative trivialities compared to what either of them had gone through.

His friend was having the exact opposite reaction, though. For some reason he’d fallen back like someone had just punched him in the face. Tiny beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead. “Oh fuck.” Charlie sat back up and started pushing himself back against the nearest wall.  “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! Jesus! No!  Fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

Tommy waddled forward and Charlie pressed himself up against the wall, clutching his chest.  “Charlie!” Tommy said, grabbing his friend by the shoulders. A second ago, he’d been making lewd jokes about the possibility of meeting his mom.  “Calm down!  Chill!  What’s wrong?”

“You’re eighteen.” Charlie said as if he were saying something profound. “Not seventeen...or sixteen...or fifteen?”  There was this crazy, panicked look in Charlie’s eyes; a dying man just realizing the diagnosis was terminal yet begging the doctor for a second opinion.

Tommy felt confused. “Yeah.  I’m eighteen.  Why?”

Charlie’s eyes were going back and forth, connecting dots and knocking over dominoes.  He wasn’t hearing Tommy as much as he was doing calculations in his head.  “And you’ve lived in Scrumpton your whole life?”

“Yeah...”  A kind of heat was rising up between Tommy’s ears.  He didn’t like where this was going.

“Oh fuck,” the curse words were coming out in panicked little gasps.  “Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick!”  Charlie was now as pale as a ghost and trembling despite the fleecy sleeper he’d been wearing all day.  “And...you don’t know your father, do you? Your mom...your mom is Mary Dean?  Never got married or nothing?”

Tommy rattled his head around, the feeling in his face burning so much as to become numb.  His own rising panic mingled with Charlie’s.  “She never talked about him.  I never thought much to ask…”  That thought burned more than anything else.  He had never given serious thought to his parentage. No one had.  He hadn’t asked about it.  Out of all the things he’d been mocked for in school, being a bastard had never been one of them.   Curiosity and minutiae were practically core tenets of Tommy Dean’s personality.  He’d only ever encountered one thing that could quash those kinds of questions in a person.  “No...no, no, no, no….!”

“I’m so sorry, kid.” Charlie started babbling.  “I just thought...I didn’t know...I wouldn’t have gone...I…!”

“Charlie?” Tommy felt something wet start dripping down his cheeks. His pulse was already starting to hammer in his ears.  “Charlie?  What are you trying to say?”  Tommy already knew. He knew damn well what his new best friend was trying to say.  He just in no way wanted to hear it.

“Tommy…” Charlie’s voice had broken down into near sobbing cracks.  “I...I...I think I’m your dad!”

Mommy came running and scooped Tommy up just as the screams of denial and despair exploded out of the pair of babies.