The Orphanage (IV)
Added 2023-06-21 22:21:56 +0000 UTCThe Orphanage
An ABDL Horror story by Blake Rose
IV.
Well, this is off to a rip-roaring start.
Marcus didn’t know what to think. Christine’s behavior was jarring, especially since nothing in the remarkably infantile room they were leaving was even remotely scary. In fact, given that they were only still at the beginning of this show, Christine’s reaction was the most disturbing thing so far. Some blinky lights, stuffed animals, and a chick dressed like a baby. Not exactly horror show material. Don’t know why she freaked out so bad…
Only ever hanging out as friends of friends he didn’t know Christine terribly well, but in all the times he had seen her spooked and frightened (and that was rare enough) he had never seen her react to anything like that before. He remembered the amused mutterings in the crowd around him and Tyler quietly ribbing Kelly, comparing her costume to the oversized baby in a hushed voice and prompting a bemused smirk from his girlfriend in turn, but nothing scary enough to spook someone that badly.
As the door closed with a loud creak and a CLUNG! the group quickly spread into the next room. Like the previous, this room showed the underlying “base” decor of the Heartstead House which couldn’t be completely covered, and the level of mature and elegant sophistication in this room from the finely carved wooden statuettes to the wrought iron window panes betrayed the idea that this was supposed to be an orphanage. It was only slightly smaller than the last, moreso considering the entire far side of the room was a rectangular alcove lined from floor to ceiling with dusty books and encyclopedias, nearly all of which were bound in leathers stained brown and blue and black and red. They were sitting in cabinets behind metal mesh gates, organized neatly. Marcus suddenly noticed how warm it was in this room.
There was a fireplace in this room as well, sharing its brick back and chimney with the one they had just left behind. An intricately carved oak fireplace surrounded the brick of the fireplace, regal and royal and too fancy to be justified in any particular story way. However, the fire crackling away on the hearth didn’t seem as warm and welcoming as the last. It was off-color, and Marcus got the impression that the light flowing over the crowd and the room had somehow been stained with urine.
Sitting within the dark alcove end of the library were two square pens a few feet apart near the window, each containing a grumpy looking figure. Half silhouetted in shadow, two young men were wearing stained clothes that hid neither of their stomachs. Small cotton shorts did nothing to hide what were undeniably large diapers underneath. One pair of feet was bare, the other in thick socks with two toes poking through a hole on the left foot. They both sat arms folded and mouths curled up in angry pouts eyeing one another, each with their own pissed-off gaze.
Not as cute as the last one, that’s for sure.
The smell of soap and hygiene crept into Marcus’s nostrils alongside the scent of burning wood logs. He looked up. Overhead, along lines that stretched out and overlapped and cris-crossed like a spider’s web across the ceiling, fabrics and clothes in many shapes and colors were dangling by their clothespins, and beneath them there was a man was standing at a small table with his back to the crowd. He was muttering to himself as he lifted clothes and fabrics out of a large hamper, holding them up to shake any just-laundered wrinkles loose, quickly folding them with a well-practiced gesture, and placing them in a second hamper to his side.
“...don’t know what’s gotten into you rotten-ass kids. Nothing we can’t fix, that’s for damn sure. You keep this up and see where it–” He caught the audience in his peripheral vision, then turned to the library end of the room and muttered, “Now you little bastards better behave,” before bringing his full attention to the group.
He was a man of average height with the beginnings of middle age starting to show in both his stature and in the thin wrinkles in his dark chocolate skin. He was slightly hunched and walked with a mild limp that echoed an injury from long ago. He moved right up to the edge of the group near Marcus and asked without any hint of preamble, “Which one of you folks knows how to fold clothes?”
The briefest of awkward silences fell on the group before the man turned to the nearest person which ended up being Marcus. He barely waited for a reply from anyone before putting a calloused hand on Marcus’s shoulder and guiding him gently but firmly away from the others. Marcus heard Tyler chuckle to himself. This close, Marcus could smell the ashy char of tobacco leaves and marijuana on his breath. Marcus wondered if this actor liked to work stoned. “Come here. Do me a favor and get to folding these. Don’t worry, I just cleaned them myself. Just fold them nicely and put them in a pile right over here. Think you can do that?”
“Uhh.. yeah, I–”
“Wonderful. Alright then everyone, they call me Chapal. It’s nice to meet you.”
The man named Chapal quickly turned his back on Marcus, leaving him to fold the clothes while the rest of the group was addressed. Marcus heard chuckles behind him as Chapal spoke to the rest of the group, excluding Marcus completely, and he even felt himself grinning in amusement to be the butt of the joke for this scene. Looking down at the baby-printed fabrics, he gingerly picked up one of the shirts like it was contaminated with some contagious disease and held it up to let the weight of the fabric unfurl itself.
He was holding a legless onesie bodysuit with four metal snaps at the crotch. It was patterned with kittens and puppies and was surprisingly soft. It only took a moment to realize that it was large enough to fit an adult. Beneath his fingers the material felt smooth and soft and far stretchier than it had any right to be. Then thoughts of the garment’s function outweighed its fashion, and Marcus realized what was in his hands. Something about touching an adult-sized onesie made his skin crawl. This wasn’t helped as he lifted the next onesie up to unfurl it and saw that the white parts of the toy train pattern was slightly stained yellow near the leg holes. He scoffed to himself to try to allow bemusement and humor to swallow the feeling of cringe sliding up his arms.
“Don’t worry,” Chapal was saying, “you didn’t catch me at a bad time. These two got a little too rowdy, and now they’re in time-out. See this here? Nicholas, Nigel, show these nice folks what you been up to.”
The two grumpy boys rolled their eyes and turned their heads to the audience with disinterest. Chapal slid quickly over to Nicholas and Nigel and in a fluid motion he pressed a finger under one chin.
“See this here?” he asked the crowd, tilting the boy’s head up, “This is the kind of behavior we don’t tolerate here.”
Marcus could see the beginnings of a black eye beginning to surface. The other had a cut and swollen lip. In the firelight, Marcus could just barely make out the dark brown speckles near the collar of his shirt of something that once used to be brilliantly scarlet.
“Program’s supposed to help put an end to this kind of crap. Don't let this frighten you, though. Our kids are mostly well behaved. They only get put in time-out on rare occasions. This here,” Chapal displayed, gesturing to the room, “is where the staff kick back from time to time or take care of our daily duties. Mostly laundry as you can see. The grown-ups need a break too, am I right? We need our own little time-out every now and then too. How’s that folding coming along?”
Marcus, having been still examining the two boys out of the corner of his eye and was only half listening, snapped back to his assignment with a small “hep! My bad!” for an apology. Chapal took a moment to be satisfied Marcus had resumed before continuing. “Yessir. I’ve seen it all, too. What these boys are doing isn’t anything new. It looks like they caught the love bug a little early. Cupid shot more than one ass cheek and now they both have eyes for the same girl.” Chapal had leaned into the group closely at this, barely trying to contain his amusement. He let out a wild chuckle, and his whole demeanor seemed to soften as he turned back to the overgrown toddlers with smug amusement. “Isn’t that right boys? That caveman instinct comes right out, doesn’t it? That’s neanderthal stuff. We don’t do that here. Can you say, “ne-an-der-thal”?
And then, taken aback and freezing half way through folding a pair of huge fleece footed pajamas, Marcus froze.
In the space of an instant, Marcus felt the word, or rather, the way the word was spoken, ripple up the back of his neck. It rested at the base of his skull and then seemed to reach around to tunnel into his ears.
He twitched as he felt a memory kiss him gently just below his right eye.
The sting of something across his face. The hot pins-and-needles shock as a band of metal wrapped around the back of a ring finger connected with his cheekbone. His heartbeat now carried an echo of the smack, and it pulsed hotly through his memory for the next few seconds. The sting was always quick. It was that lingering reminder that was bad.
He was five years old. He was standing by the sink in the kitchen of his childhood home on West 13th and Roosevelt. Tears were welling up yet again, but not, this time, out of pain. But in confusion. His mind reeled, trying to make sense of things. Despite hearing Mami shouting back at Papi in his defense, Marcus didn’t really absorb many of the words…
Papi.. papi s-said… said to throw out the orange juice. S-so I did… I… I did wh-what he ssaid…
He felt his five-year old resolve crumble. With no way of understanding what had happened, what he did wrong, or why he was punished, he felt himself collapse on the kitchen floor and begin to sob confusedly and wordlessly as his mother ran over to comfort him.
Wha… What did I do wrong?
He didn’t remember what had led to the argument that night. Nor of any night. Every night at dinner in the Perez household sort of bled together. Just entering kindergarten, the ability to understand the reasons behind adult behavior was, naturally, non-fucking-existant.
Having leveled up from sippy cups a bit early, Marcus was allowed to begin running the risk beginning to drink out of open cups. Unfortunately, Marcus had not quite mastered the art of covering his mouth when sneezing, and a badly timed and positioned burst sent boogers into his drink, causing some of the juice to burst out onto the dinner table in a splash.
The resulting explosion of anger was the kind of thing he tried to avoid. Papi liked things clean. All the time.The angry exclamation from his father and the order to “throw away that orange juice,” he didn’t want to disobey and risk getting yelled at. Papi would often yell and shout that they “didn’t make a life in America just to live like pigs,” so Marcus muttered his apologies as loudly as he could muster, then got up from the table to do what he was told to do.
He wiped the juice from his face and walked the plastic Spider-man cup half filled with snotty juice to the garbage can, opened the lid, and dumped the remaining contents in. Then he turned back to the table. He had only gotten a glimpse of his mother bending down to wipe up the juice from the floor when he felt a sting against his right cheek.
In truth, it wasn’t much more than (what he would later learn to refer to as) a ‘duster’: a mild smack on the head or face or neck, just enough to make a child ‘dust off la cabeza’. He had experienced it many times before, a mild THWACK on the back of the head for being too giggly with his brother in church, An encouraging tap to get the confidence up when you weren’t being mach enough, etc.
He didn’t know if he had received a particularly strong one, or maybe because this was the first time it was with the back of his father’s hand instead of the palm and was new to the feeling of knuckles, or perhaps it was feeling the ring connect more solidly with cheekbone than it had done in the past, but something about this one stung more…
He said ‘throw it away’... So… so I…
So he threw it away. In the garbage. Not the sink. By taking the instructions literally he thought he was doing the right thing.
“Ernesto!” his mother exclaimed, “What did you do that for?!”
“Do what?!” Papi roared.
“He spills some juice and you yell at him? You gotta hit him?! You told him to throw it away, he did!”
A deep grumble. “He knows what I meant. He knows that liquids goes in the sink. He’s watched us do it a thousand times by now. If he doesn’t know that by now just by watching, how much longer is it gonna take him, huh? You wanna let him get stupid? Like trying to teach a damn neanderthal. You hear that, Marcus? Can you say, ‘neeee-aaannn-ddeerrrr-thhaaaallllll?”
The moment of frozen stillness seemed to thaw in an instant as Chapal’s voice yanked Marcus back to the present. “Yep,’ he was saying, “We don’t do that kind of thing here. You little shits ought to know that by now,” a few chuckles pittered through the crowd. “And something for you to all remember as well. You all remember the rules, right? Pop quiz, what’s rule number four?”
Immediately, a few people in the crowd responded. “Speak only when spoken to.”
Marcus was among them.
And as Chapal continued on there was a definitive decrease in the speed of Marcus’s folding once he recovered from shock.
What the fuck? Why did I say that?
He hadn’t meant to. Like everyone else he had listened to the rules before entering and took in the instructions but the fact that he had responded so immediately, so readily, and so in sync with the only few who spoke… like the answer was there waiting for him to call upon it at a moment’s notice. A faint shiver of fear trickled up Marcus’s spine. Turning around as slyly as he could he saw a few members of the crowd who also looked hazy as well, evidently just as confused as he was.
The fuck just happened?
“Thaaaat’s right,” continued Chapal, “Good to know at least some of you kiddies are paying attention. It ain’t without it’s drawbacks. We had a stomach bug go around a few years back, and having to run contractor bags full of these kids’ diapers out to the dumpster every hour is a job I wish I never had to do again. There was one time with alphabet soup where we had to– actually nah, some of you probably just ate. But all that is a small price of what we gotta do as caregivers. We’re all these little bundles have for the moment. It’s our job to keep these kids on track and help them develop into who they’re supposed to be while they wait to be adopted by the right family. I tell ya, for as tough as it can be at times, all the crying and time-outs and headaches it can be, I gotta tell ya each one of the kids is a blessing and a privilege to watch grow, so while they’re with us we want them to feel as loved and protected as–”
As Chapal went on, Marcus growing slightly bored of being the one who was left out of the group in this room. He looked at the onesie he was currently folding. There were four snaps along the curve which hung below the crotch. The material was very soft and Marcus felt himself gently rubbing it between his fingers. This one was blue and had cartoon puppies on it.
I like puppies… This wouldn’t be that bad to…
Marcus blinked and shook the thought from his mind, confused at himself for even thinking it.
No. That’s ridiculous. This is freakwear for freaks. You’re not into this kinky shit. And besides, you couldn’t even wear normal underwear with something like this. He shifted slightly and felt his briefs rub against his body. Soft spandex-like material though it was, he still imagined it crushing his balls against his body. If you’re going to wear this you’d almost have to wear a–
But his thoughts were cut off as the battle between the two oversized babies, which had been steadily and covertly growing behind Chapal’s back, reached another peak and the hard packing sound of knuckles against flesh popped the air. Marcus was snapped from his ponderings. Several people in the audience gasped in shock.
Chapal turned around to see Nicholas and Nigel struggling with each other, grabbing, pulling, and punching. Nigel had punched Nicholas in the face with a clumsy fist. “–oh for crying out–!” let out Chapal in frustration. He was quickly upon the two boys, pulling them apart, which was proving difficult as their limbs were beginning to flail wildly. They fought with clumsy anti-dexterity but still having the physical bodies of grown men, they weren’t pulling punches.
And it showed. With a wrench, a jerk, and a howl of anger, Chapal managed to break up the two boys. “You know what boys, THAT’S IT!! You just added another half hour onto your time-out. The Nurse will see if you need to be taken for a check-up. Ah-AH-AHH! I don’t want to hear another sound from either of you,” for the faces of the two boys twisted into looks of shock and disbelief and then began to protest in gibberish but Chapal cut them off, “–setting a bad example for these nice people. If you two keep this up after tonight I don’t know if any family’s going to want to take you in.” And with that, he moved to a small old fashioned kitchen timer ticking quietly away, snatched it up, and cranked another thirty minutes into it.
With a sigh he set the timer back down as the two big babies began to cry. Marcus could see real tears flowing from what looked like mortified faces. “You know what folks, thank you for stopping in, but I think these two need a more watchful eye, so why don’t you run along with the tour. There’s a reason why they call it the Terrible Twos’.” He turned to Marcus. “And thank you for helping with the laundry, young man. I really appreciate it. But I’m afraid I’m gonna need that back from you.” He was gesturing down to Marcus’s stomach.
It was only then that Marcus realized he was standing there facing the group, his back to the pile of laundry, gripping something tightly. He looked down in surprise and unfurled the thing in his hands. He was clutching the adult onesie he had been folding when the fight broke out, and he quickly shook it loose and folded it neatly. “There you go,” he said a little mechanically, before falling in line with his friends and making his way through the door.
As he walked, he tried as hard as he could to ignore how incredibly thin and flimsy his navy blue briefs felt beneath his Luigi overalls...
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More to come.
B
