Tale #150: Side-Effects and Side-Tapes

Tale #150: Side-Effects and Side-Tapes (Content Tags: Messing, humiliation, evil stepmother, neurodivergent protagonist, medical braindrain) Nora despised the way that her stepson, Carl, behaved himself; he was a clever boy, but also a loud, obnoxious, and rambunctious one. The runt was too noisy, too energetic, and too disobedient for her liking. For contrast, her own son, Blake, who wasn't much younger than her stepson, was the perfect picture of behaved. He was respectful to his elders and didn't run around the house hollering like a toddler. He did his homework and chores in a timely manner, and he never complained about the meals that his mother prepared. Even her youngest, Ricky, was often better behaved than Carl, and he wasn't even finished pottytraining yet! From an outside perspective, there wasn't really anything wrong with Carl. The boy was frenetic and boisterous, but he was also very intelligent and creative; he was more of a handful than the average little boy his age, but his stepbrother was a terrible example to compare him to, as Blake was far more subdued than other boys his age. Regardless, Nora had enough of the chaos that came from the boy, and she wanted a quieter household. After speaking with one of the other moms in her book club, she'd come back with the prospect that her stepson had ADHD and ODD, and that was the reason why he was so spastic and unruly. She'd been given an explanation about how the two disorders were treatable with the proper medications, and so that was the path that Nora had chosen. She had to shop around for the right doctor, but it hadn't been too hard with the recommendations given at the book club. She needed someone who wouldn't shy away from busting out the heavy duty pharmaceuticals, regardless of how much her stepson really needed them. Dr. Roberts ended up being that doctor, and soon she'd brought Carl to his office for an examination. She listed the problematic behavior, she gave anecdotal evidence of how troublesome he was, and she gave Carl only the tiniest voice in rebutting any of it. Carl was fairly distracted as it was, so he didn't appreciate the gravity of what was happening, nor did he pipe up all that much to give his own input. He was too busy playing a game on his tablet to realize that his stepmother was angling to destroy his current way of life. The good doctor, who wasn't as good as someone may think, was all too willing to peddle the pediatric prescriptions that Nora had sought out. He didn't say it, but he got kickbacks for certain medications, and that deeply influenced not only his willingness to prescribe drugs, but the specificity of which drugs he'd choose. Carl did in fact have ADHD, and he would have benefited from a small handful of reputable pharmaceuticals with a trustworthy history, but those weren't on the radar for Doctor Roberts. No, the medicine that he would push was a much lesser known one that worked to dull the symptoms of both ADHD and ODD, one of which he really didn't even have. The medication, called 'Tardizol', was barely fit for market as it was, and had only squeaked by the FDA with the slimmest of margins. In patients with both conditions, it did a decent yet sloppy job of calming them to far lower levels, but it faired much poorer when used on kids who only had ADHD, and came with a slew of very unpleasant side-effects. The informational insert that came with the pill bottle was lengthy, and Nora only skimmed it, but a few particular lines did make her pause. It wasn't for any worry about the safety of her stepson, but concerns about how it might make things more difficult for her as a caregiver. The boy's father was hardly ever home, being in the military, so it fell to Nora to care for the brat and to make medical decisions for him. Some of the more peculiar side-effects were: weight gain, excessive production of saliva, severe fecal incontinence, and diminished cognitive abilities. In short, the medicine very well may turn a clever yet rambunctious boy into a chubby, drooling, pantspooping retard. It was a bit of a toss up to her, as to whether or not Carl would be more manageable that way. Dumbing him down seemed like a plus, since he theoretically should then be less oppositional to what she asked of him, but the incontinence made her pause, only because she wasn't sure if she'd want to deal with dirty underwear. Hearing a shattering crash from the living room, and coming in to see both her son and stepson standing in front of the fragments of an expensive vase, had helped to make up her mind. Carl tried to accuse Blake of being the one to break it, but Nora didn't believe that for a second! Her perfect angel wasn't a destructive hellion like Carl, and it grated on her that he would even try to fib about it. And so Carl's new medication would begin that very day. Just a small pill with some water, and his life would begin to take on drastic changes. Some of the side-effects would come sooner than others; the first he would notice was actually the dramatic increase in saliva that he was dealing with. His mouth began to feel perpetually wet and he caught himself having to wipe his lips or chin, especially whenever he was talking, or else he would straight up drool on himself. To Nora's joy, this actually put a quick end to Carl's constant yammering, because the boy felt as if he had to be more selective with when he wanted to speak, lest he prove himself to need a drool bib fastened around his neck. The next would come when he woke up the next morning, and when he realized that his bedroom smelled of poop. His stepbrother, who he shared the room with, had actually been the first one up, and he'd already smelled the strong fumes wafting from the back of Carl's pajamas. Blake had gone to get his mother to tattle, and she came marching into the room just as Carl had discovered the large load in his owm briefs. The woman wrinkled her nose at the offensive odor and put her hands on her hips. "Did you poop the bed?" It was a simple question, at least in a way, but it had no simple answer. Carl had indeed gone to bed clean and woken up dirty, but it hadn't been intentional, nor did he have any idea of how it could have happened. Carl had wet the bed plenty in the past, but he'd never *pooped* it. She didn't wait for a response from him, though he was stammering to get one out; the woman took a firm hold of his shoulders and turned him on his feet, so that his backside was facing her, and then she yanked down his pajama pants to his ankles. What she was presented with, along with Blake, was the sagging seat of a pair of cartoon-printed underpants that had been thoroughly loaded with fairly firm feces. Blake was torn between disgust, amusement, and shock; he laughed at the sight, but he was every bit as confused as his stepbrother about what had happened. While he despised the boy he had to share a room with, he hadn't considered Carl to be capable of such a lowly act; bedwetting, the few times it'd happened, had been bad enough, but to wake up with britches full of poo? "I-I d-don't know why...I-I didn't do it on p-purpose!" Were Carl's desperate cries as his hands settled on the side of his bed, with Nora probing at his filthy underoos. As he frantically defended himself, slobber poured from his lips and dripped onto the front of his pajama top. Nora knew it wasn't an intentional act, and on some level, she had been expecting this to happen. The fecal incontinence hadn't been a sure thing, but it had been notable enough on the list for Nora to mentally prepare for it; grimly, she hoped that the cognitive effects would come too, since she'd considered the pantspooping to be the tradeoff in that scenario. The next couple of days would see Carl soiling himself in his sleep each night, but his bowels were also dangerously loose during the day, and he ended up skidding his briefs on more than one occasion. He still wasn't aware that it was a potential side-effect of the medicine he was taking, and Nora wanted to wait until he was a little deeper into treatment, before she informed him that it was something he would have to get used to. On the third day, Carl had been playing in the backyard with Blake, which itself had been a compromise of Blake needing to practice his soccer skills; glad to burn off some energy, Carl had agreed to play goalie, so that Blake could work on his shots. He blocked each one without much trouble, much to Blake's chagrin, until Blake had enough and decided to play dirty. "Is that a rocket?" The devious boy asked, feigning interest in the sky above. While Carl was distracted with the supposed rocket, Blake reeled his foot back and kicked the ball as hard as he could; the soccer ball launched across the air, but instead of going past Carl and into the goal, it ended up slamming into Carl's tummy with a meaty sounding thud. The impact had hurt, but it really only stung; the actual problem was that it'd been a shock to the system, more specifically his gut, and as he let out a groan and bent forward, he was immediately releasing a squishy mess into his underpants. It squelched and squirted in his briefs, like chocolate pudding, and like pudding, it was soft enough to render his undies insufficient. "...Ewwww! You just pooped your pants!" Blake suddenly cried out in disgust. If the noises or the smell hadn't been a tip-off, then the fact that the muddy mess was literally oozing down the back of his thighs was more evidence than needed. A few filthy farts sputtered afterwards, and a few larger clumps plopped wetly onto the grass, with a groan coming from the one fertilizing the soil. That was his first poopy accident during the daytime, but it wouldn't be his last by a longshot. Still, his stepmother kept the true nature of it under wraps, at least for a little longer; she was still waiting to see how things would shake out, once his body had fully adapted to taking the medicine, which the doctor had mentioned would usually take about a week. He pooped the bed every night that week and had a handful of daytime soilings as well, his drooling had become harder to manage, he'd put a couple of pounds on, and in the last half of the week, he had started to notice a peculiar fog in his head that kept slowing his thoughts down further and further. It was that Saturday, officially past the line of 'one week', when Nora decided it was time to move forward with things. Carl's symptoms had only worsened over the course of the week, and it looked unlikely that they would reverse course while he was taking Tardizol; she had been adequately satisfied with the results thus far, since Carl had become less noisy and his style of play had begun to become less active. That's when she decided to go ahead with mitigating the messy part of Carl's medication; while the boys were at school earlier in the week, she had done some shopping, and now it was time to present Carl with what he'd now be wearing instead of underwear. Nora made sure to get all three of the boys in the room at the same time. Partly so she wouldn't have to explain things twice, and partly because she took some enjoyment in humiliating her stepson. With Blake, Carl, and Ricky on the couch, she pulled out some plastic grocery bags and put them on the coffee table. "Now, Carl, about those potty accidents that you've been having..." "I'm trying not to! Really! I-I dun' know what's happening!" The drooly brat spoke up to defend himself, unaware that it wasn't necessary. "Yes, I know. I spoke with your doctor about it, and he let me know that it was just a side-effect of the medicine that you're on now. It isn't your fault." She fibbed, having known from the start that this was likely to happen. "O-oh! Den I can jus' 'top takin' it?" Nora shook her head slowly, as if to act as though she felt pity for his circumstance. "I'm afraid not, honey. You need to take this medicine for your condition, so we'll just have to learn to manage the side-effects." She pulled a package out of one of the bags and put it on the table. "These are...Special 'undies' that you will wear during the day, just in case you have an accident." Even in his diminished state, Carl could see right away what they really were. They were Pull-Ups, just like what Ricky was currently wearing, except big enough for a boy his age. Before he could vocalize his unease with the idea, Nora was already unveiling what was in the second bag. "And these are for night time..." She didn't outright announce them as being diapers, but there was a little boy modeling them on the packaging, and it was obvious exactly what they were. "D-diapers?! P-Pull-Ups?" Carl squeaked, his face getting pink and his mouth hanging open in shock. Appropriately, that sudden shock was enough to prove his need for the garments; there was a gnarly sounding fart, muffled by the cushion of the couch, and a mushy log propelled itself into the last pair of big kid undies that he might ever wear. "...And not a moment too soon, it would appear." Nora sighed, starting to open up the package of Pull-Ups. In the same bag as the diapers, she had also bought baby wipes and powder, so she didn't even bother to take Carl out of the room to change him. His stepbrothers watched in awe, gawking and giggling at what had become of the little smart-alec, as their mother wiped his muddy rear clean. She mentioned that the drool was another side-effect as she pulled the training pants up his legs, but she kept the imminent mental retardation under wraps for the moment; she wanted him a little stupider, a little more pliable, before she dropped that particular bombshell. Uncontrollable soiling was already a hard sell, and she'd rather not make things more complicated by admitting that she was fine with turning him into a dimwit too. It would come off as especially egregious, since she was plainly ruining his mind for the sake of her own petty comfort. She wouldn't be able to hide it indefinitely, since his intellect already appeared to be slipping, but she just needed a  little bit longer to get him past the point of no return. After getting him changed into a pair of what would be his new 'underwear', at least until his toileting devolved enough to stick him in diapers fulltime, she told him to keep working at getting to the potty, and that he'd likely improve as time went on. She would then go up to the boys' bedroom to fill his dresser with both the pull-Ups and diapers, while Carl was trying to pick up the pieces of his shattered pride. As she did, she made a mental note that she would likely have to find him some new clothes eventually, if the weight gain became more pronounced, and if not for that, then for the bulk of the diapers he'd need to wear. She went ahead and took the rest of his underoos too, which he'd already cut down pretty significantly from his previous acidents. She knew he wouldn't be needing them any longer, and their presence would just be a distraction to the process he was undergoing. The woman made a note to get another appointment set up with Dr. Roberts too, so that she could keep the prescription coming indefinitely. With how unscrupulous he was, he likely wouldn't see anything wrong with the state of his patient, especially if that patient's mother was satisfied with the results. With how quiet the house had become? Nora was certainly satisfied thus far.