The New Narnia- Chapter 46: Navel Gazing

Chapter 46: Navel Gazing

“So what are we doing?” Charlie asked.  “What game?”  

He still looked a little uncomfortable given their recent conversation as to how and why he ended up in this eternal nursery.  Tommy might have noticed it if he hadn’t been so busy trying to distract himself.

The eighteen year old who seemed closer to eighteen month old picked himself up and looked around the room.  Reflexively Tommy tried to smooth out his pants and put his hands in his pockets to appear casual.  His palms scraping against bare skin, and fingers sliding down the not-quite cloth sides reminded him that he wasn’t wearing any pants.

He poked the front of his diaper, and felt the squish.  By his own recollection, he’d never spent a particularly long time in a wet diaper before; not awake anyways.  Perhaps that afternoon on the playground.  Did that time with the wet training pants count?

“Hey, dude,” Charlie interrupted. “Why are you looking down at your dick?”

That snapped Tommy out of his contemplation.  “I’m wet…”

“Yeah?” Charlie said, sounding unimpressed.  “Me too.  So?”

Tommy blanched.  “But nobody is...I dunno...checking me or changing me...or making fun of me...?”  Echoes of the elf-queen yet lingeredin Tommy’s grey matter.

Charlie sat down so he could properly shrug.  “Why would they?  At any given time, the ratio of dry to wet pants is fifty-fifty at best.”

If Tommy hadn’t just emptied his bladder while playing ‘Kaiju’, he might have peed a little.  “Wait? Really?”

Charlie snorted in reply.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Unless you’re close to leaking or take a massive dump and stink up the place there’s no reason to change you right away.”

Tommy looked at all the crawling, barely walking shrunken adults around the daycare’s playroom.  To think that at least half of them were walking around in soggy diapers just like him, when a few days ago he was being rushed off to a nurse’s office to change or a training potty to try and get a few fleeting dribbles out.

“But normally when I have an accident, somebody-”

“It’s not an accident when your’re this small,” Charlie interrupted.  “It’s something you’re supposed to do.  Something you’re expected to do.  It’s just...I dunno...natural?”

Tommy blinked at the confusion.  He’d started to understand the rules of Malacus, or he thought he had until relatively recently.  This time he wasn’t understanding at all. “Is it because they want us to play longer?”  It was the closest thing he could think of, and something the Nanny might say. Free-preview or not, the mismatched woman-child wasn’t exactly a trusted source.

“Play longer?” Charlie scoffed.  “That’s a by-product, sure; but it’s not the reason.  You never had any little cousins or whatever, did you?”  Tommy shook his head and waited for his new guide to continue.  “It’s a matter of convenience.  As long as the kids aren’t crying, the place doesn’t smell bad, and the furniture is protected, who cares how wet they are?”

“That hasn’t been my experience,” Tommy replied.

“Of course it hasn’t,” Charlie answered.  “You’ve been too big.  When a kid is big enough, you change ‘em quick so that they get the right idea.”  Charlie used his hand to indicate the room.  “When everybody thinks you’ve got the size and mind of a baby, what’s it matter?  You’re not crying, the diaper is holding everything in, and it’ll take a lot longer than a couple minutes before you have to worry about getting a rash.  Do you change a bandage after it’s got a little blood on it or do you soak that thing?  Less hassle for everybody to just let you play.  It’s not like you’re gonna grow-up and toilet train anyways.”

An interesting way to put it. “Did you have any kids, Charlie?”

“Nope!” Charlie answered quickly.  His fairly genial expression molded into an annoyed and indignant frown.  “I’ve just lived it probably longer than you’ve been alive.  Lived it, and had the free time to think about it.”

“Fair point,” Tommy conceded.  He looked around the room again, feeling more at ease than he had been.  “What to play, what to play?”  

The blocks were used up and not an option for the time being.  While Charlie had been busily explaining the time and opportunity cost of diapers and when to change them, three to four other forever children had crawled and waddled up and snatched pieces for themselves.

Nothing they made was so complex or elaborate as the faux city Tommy and Charlie had labored to build and destroy, but they seemed to enjoy themselves creating piles and stacks, however disorganized.  Just because he could foresee himself being on top of the physical and the intellectual pecking order didn’t make him a bully.

He looked to the pretend play areas; plastic kitchens and such, but quickly dismissed it. “Naw.” They’d just finished pretending, and Tommy didn’t want to take the time explaining any of his own dorky obsessions just yet.  

“Do you like Paw Patrol?” Tommy asked.

Charlie shook his head.  “I’m more of a Mr. Rogers type, myself.”

Damn.  New friendship.  Similar background and circumstance.  Not many common interests.Maybe if this whole thing panned out like planned, the pair would find something else to have in common besides being stuck.  Didn’t they make a Mr. Rogers cartoon?  Something to think about later.

Having a companion that could crawl faster than he could walk was going to make things difficult.  “What about over there?”  Off in a quiet corner were playmats and hanging mobiles.  Something that could be crawled onto and then stared up at.  Very accessible all things considered.

“I’m not feeling?” Charlie responded.  “They’re fun enough when you’ve got nobody to play with and nothin’ better to do but listen to grown-ups talk, but…” He let the silence finish his sentence for him.

Tommy thought back to their first encounter in the park.  “I see your point.”  He saw a big wheeled tricycle and pursed his lips slightly.  Could Charlie’s babified body have the coordination to pedal something like that?  “What about...oooooooooo!”

Tommy cooed. He actually, literally cooed; cooed with wonder like a child on his first trip to Disney.  “What’s that?”

Charlie started crawling towards the dual harnesses hanging from the ceiling.  “The bouncers?”

Tommy fell in line behind Charlie, the pair crinkling all the way.  “Yeah, that.”  The Scrumpton Mall had something like those.  Bigger and beneath giant trampolines, allowing people a few minutes to jump much higher and perform fancy flips without fear of breaking their necks.  One of those things that poor kids always looked at on the rare trip out into the world, but parents like Mary Dean didn’t have the spare cash to provide for a momentary distraction or cheap thrill.  Tommy wondered...

“It’s your lucky day, kid.  Those things are almost always occupied. They’re like trampolines in reverse.”

Tommy broke out into a jog,, tromping on the carpet with thunderous footsteps.  He grabbed both harnesses. “Got ‘em!”

 “No, no, no, Tommy.” One of the (if Annie/Nanny was to be believed) magical automotons said.  “You have to share.”

He pointed to a quickly approaching Charlie, panting on his hands and knees.  “I was saving a spot for Charlie.”

The caregiver stared and seemed confused for a brief moment.  “You’re…saving a spot...for your friend?  Sharing?”

Tommy nodded and the confusion seemed to dissipate.  “Good boy! That’s very thoughtful of you.  Your mommy will be so proud!”  A hand reached down and ruffled his hair.  “Would you like uppies?”

“Yes, please!”  

“One...two...threeeee!” And just like that Tommy was lifted up by his armpits and lowered back down into a waiting harness.  “Watch your feet, babe!”  Tommy helped his legs go through the holes.  He felt the harness catch him, supporting his weight while trying to yank him up like a slingshot.  He felt his diaper press back up against him.

“One...two...threeee! Charlie was placed in the jumper next to him.  “Watch your feet, babe.”

“Yeah yeah.  I know, I know.  Not my first time.” Charlie grumbled.

“You two have fun!”  That’s and the crying of someone with spreading crescents on the back of their shorts was enough to buy them some privacy.

“What do you think?” Charlie asked.  He had enough weight so that he was firmly down on the balls of his feet.  

Intuitively, Tommy gripped the harness ropes above his body.  “It’s kind of like a swing.,” he noted.  “Mixed with…” Where had he seen people his own age get restrained like this... “a roller coaste seatr?”

“I never thought of it that way,” Charlie said.  “Not quite, but close enough.  Give it a try.  Jump!”

The highschool senior was just heavy enough that he could bend his knees and shift his weight down to the ground.  That gave him enough power to push up with his knees.  “WHOOOOOOOOOOAH!”


Up! Up! Up! He bungeed into the air.  Rationally, it couldn’t have been more than a foot, but Tommy might as well have been leaping a skyscraper in a single bound.  It had the same slogging yet powerful feel that people got when they pushed off the bottom of a pool.  So much of him was being supported by the harness that when he leapt, he felt lighter than air regardless of height.  So strange that this felt so much more ‘real’ to him than when he’d literally leapt over mountains of Malacus as Tom the Titan..

Maybe it was because this was more real.

Maybe because this was closer to what he’d wanted.

So shocked was he, that he drew up his legs and bounced like a tennis ball.  He was cackling like an idiot when his own inertia slowed to a stop.

“Heh,” Charlie said.  “Pretty cool, huh?  Watch this.”  Charlie forced himself down and leapt into the air, and whether it was his experience or his confidence, he seemed to go higher that Tommy had managed.  To add to that, he started pumping his legs, seeming to run in the air like a certain roadrunner (or a coyote that hadn’t figured out he’d run out of ground).

“Oh cool!” Tommy really put his legs into it and started copying the older, smaller man. It was hard to tell - they accidentally started alternating bounces- but Tommy was pretty sure he was getting more height than his friend.  

Friend!

What mattered is that they were both having fun!  He felt like he was soaring! He felt like he was flying!  Tom the Titan had only gotten better and with fewer monsters to conquer!  And every fall was broken with a gentle bounce on his feet and a gentle squish beneath his bottom.  Both man-babies were breaking into fits of laughter that refused to stop.

“This!  Is! Greeeeeat!” Tommy huffed.

“Knew! You’d! Like it!”  Charlie was starting to sound winded.  

“Need a break?” Tommy reached out his hand.  

Charlie took it.  “No,” he said.  “If I do, I might get taken out.” The two’s weight played against the other and they steaded each other out.  Their legs had to push a little harder and they didn’t go as high, but they could talk without screaming.  It was easier to bob than to bounce.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been in one of these before,” Tommy said.

“You probably have,” Charlie said.  “Just don’t remember it.”

A bit of sadness crept into Tommy’s eyes.  “I don’t think so.  My Mommy couldn’t afford much the first time around.  Pretty sure I’d have been in cloth diapers if she’d had the time to wash them.”    That was a nice statement, Tommy felt, on his part: the part about his Mommy not having the time to wash cloth diapers instead of Mary Dean who couldn’t be bothered to do it.  They were almost too different people in Tommy’s brain.  “What do you think of cloth diapers versus disposables? Was it hard to adjust?”

Charlie looked genuinely offended.  “I’m not THAT old. My first time in diapers, they were more plastic-y I think, but they weren’t that different.  Huggies, Luvs, Pampers.  They’ve been around for a while.  I wasn’t walking around with a triangle towel and a safety-pin close to my dick!”

“How old are you again?”  Tommy asked.  “It’s kind of hard to tell.”  Between the body alterations of Malacus, the baby clothes, and that to Tommy’s brain anybody older than twenty looked like an ‘adult’, Tommy was getting seriously mixed signals.

“I’m thirty-friggin-seven!” Charlie barked.  Then his eyes got glassy.  “Sheesh. I’m thirty-friggin-seven... This is not where I thought I’d be at this point in my life.”

“At least you can still think,” Tommy said.  He felt a jolt of guilt.  If he revealed his secret- their secret- about the cave, might that undo it, and Tommy and he would be not only stuck like this, but as empty headed as the rest of the lot in the nursery?

A young woman, couldn’t have been older than twenty five, punctuated Tommy’s own inner monologue.  Tommy watched her, clad in a baby blue dress, crawl along the floor and then stop.  The back of her Huggies ballooned out as she pushed a solid mass into it.  Just as quickly she started crawling again over to a stuffed animal.  When she shifted onto her seat so she could hold the thing, Tommy got a good look at the perturbed look of surprise on her face as the mush spread out beneath her.  Then in a flash, it was forgotten and she was chewing on the stuffed animal’s ears.

To have that little memory, that little retention of basic cause and effect.  To someone like Tommy, whose mind and intellect were one of the few things he didn’t consider to be completely terrible, the thought was disturbing.   Was it a kind of euphoria? Or was everyday just another crazy disjointed adventure where giants manhandled her on a whim with no seeming rhyme or reason?

Who was she? Who were any of them before Malacus stripped them of their big kid clothes, bodies, and thoughts?

Speaking of giants, a caregiver stepped in the way and cut the random baby woman out of Tommy’s line of sight.  “Do you want a baba?” she asked.  Tommy turned his head and saw that Charlie was already sucking down his own bottle of milk with gusto, no sign of the hesitation he had shown that day at the park and cafe.

“Yes please,” Tommy said out of reflexive habit.

“So polite!” the woman who had put them in the harness gushed.  “And so articulate! Your Mommy must talk to you all the time and teach you the best manners!”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tommy blushed, despite the condescending nature of the complement.

The spare bottle in the woman’s hands did not go anywhere near Tommy’s mouth.  “Be right back. I’m gonna get you a special treat!”  She started power walking away, most likely to wherever they kept the baby bottles.

“Lucky stiff,”  Charlie mumbled. “Getting chocolate milk because they think you’re polite.

“CHOCOLATE?!” Tommy practically howled in delight.

“Or strawberry.  I don’t get that stuff. They can’t even understand me.” A beat. “That and I’ve given up being polite to them.  Couldn’t help you notice staring at that girl with the stuffie.”

Tommy’s blush turned from flattered to embarrassed.  Was he staring that hard?  “What about her?”

“You like her?”

“I mean...she’s kind of pretty.”

Charlie’s voice turned harsh. “Don’t even think about touching her.”

Tommy’s eyes bugged a little. This conversation took a decidedly unexpected turn. “Huh?!”

“Everybody in here, save you and me, has brains made of mush.  Baby brain and grown-up body aren’t a good mix.  I haven’t taken advantage of them and neither are you.  Right?”  For a guy who openly admitted to crawling around in wet pants a while ago, Charlie was sounding an awful lot like the dads off of T.V. threatening their daughter’s boyfriend.

“Right.”  Tommy hadn’t even gotten down to that line of thinking.  Honestly, it probably showed more about Charlie than Tommy.  Charlie had been trapped here a lot longer, though.

The tension mounted until Charlie cut it by saying.  “Still.  Padded butt make ‘em look bigger.  If you’re an ass man there’s worse ways to get fap fuel for later in your crib.”

Tommy laughed, out of shock and anxiety more than humor.  It was a relief though.  The more he thought about it, the more he was beginning to realize just how lonely and isolated Charlie might have felt until today.  Not unlike Tommy.

“Gross!” Tommy said, then laughed despite himself. Charlie was letting off every stray post-adolescent thought his brain came up with without filter to the first person who could actually listen in good faith.

“You wanna cop a feel on the sitters, that’s fine.  As far as I know, they’re not even human.  Fair game.” Charlie continued.  “And between you and me.  If you learn to rock the right way in these harnesses...with a wet enough diaper...feels just like sex.”

“Oh my god!” Tommy guffawed, “You’re a total pervert!”

Charlie smirked.  “Takes one to know one, kid.”   They laughed together.

The caregiver came back.  “Do you want chocolate, Tommy?  Or Strawberry?”  Two baby bottles, one dark brown and one pink were held out.  She jiggled each bottle indicating the flavor, as if Tommy wouldn’t know by the color.  “Chocolate?  Or strawberry?”

Tommy turned his head and saw a glint of jealousy in the older ‘baby’s’ face.  “Can I share with Charlie?”

“Well…” The caregiver said.  “Sure, but you pick first.”

Tommy half-ignored the faux-lady.  “Which one do you want?” he asked Charlie.  

“I’m allergic to strawberry.”

“I’d like the strawberry, please.” Tommy said in his best ‘sucking up to grown-ups’ voice.

“Awww, how cute!” The woman gushed.  “Pretending your little playmate can talk! Well okay. Here you go Mister Charlie.  Here you go Mister Tommy.”  She handed them the bottles, and took away the half-drunk one that Charlie had been nursing.  “Don’t drink too much, Charlie.  I don’t want you to leak.”

“Bife me,” Charlie mumbled, not wasting time to stop guzzling his new bottle down.  The sing-song and condescending nature of their tone could either be exhilarating or frustrating.  Sometimes both.

Leaning into each other they managed to clink their  bottles together.  “To being Adult babies,” Tommy said.  “With a capital A.”

The two drank in silence, relaxing in the harnesses and bouncing lightly and idly.  Whether influenced by the intake of more fluids or just by coincidence, Tommy felt his bladder fill slightly and immediately let it out.  He admittedly was enjoying the sensation of the padding wicking up the moisture and swelling up around and beneath him.   Clearly, Charlie knew his stuff regarding this life.

Speaking of which.  “Hey Charlie,” Tommy asked.  “Question.”

“What’s up?” Charlie said, still slurping on the chocolate milk.  

“You said this place was like a backdoor to Malacus?”

“Yeah.” Charlie said.  “Why?”

“Remind me? How’d you figure that out?”

Charlie seemed thoughtful.  “Most people who get here are at least a little aware of what’s happened to them before they finally snap.  So I got enough info before they lost their language to see the pattern.”

“Yeah,” Tommy interrupted.  “But how do you know THIS place is part of Malacus?”

“Oh? That?” Charlie said. “That’s cause of the playground.”