Story #166: Not a Scare in the World

Story #166: Not a Scare in the World (Content Tags: Forced diapering, bedwetting, bedpooping, pantspooping, pantswetting, humiliation, infantilization, moralistic antagonist, slice of life) He lamented the new content that had been deemed appropriate for him. Sitting there with a puffy pair of Pampers, ones meant for older kids like him, he was repulsed more by the saccharine garbage on the screen than he was of the fuming mound that had plastered itself to his buttcheeks. Hard to say which caused more embarrassment either; one would think it obvious that the poop-filled diaper was a bigger shame to him, but one couldn't discredit just how much he despised this vile preschool programming. He felt the same about the games he'd been given in exchange for his collection of spooky titles. It didn't make him feel very bold to be stuck playing 'Pajama Sam' while sitting in a loaded diaper, though it was certainly an appropriate state for the intended audience of the franchise. No, this wasn't how things were supposed to be for Jaime. This wasn't who he was. At least, this wasn't who he used to be. Bendy and the Ink Machine, Five Nights at Freddy's, Poppy's Playtime, Choo-Choo Charles... Jaime loved them all. He loved all things that went bump in the night and aimed to scare him. He liked scary games and horrific movies; he liked to read creepypasta and discover new Youtube videos about analog horror. There was no limit for him, no threshold that could be crossed. He could get dumped in Silent Hill or Raccoon City and he wouldn't bat an eye. That was all well and good, but Jaime was also just shy of being nine. There were genuine questions over what was actually appropriate for his age, regardless of his supposed fearlessness, and those questions would be most insidiously posed by someone who shouldn't have had any say in the matter. The person to be concerned on behalf of those who actually made such decisions would be none other than the neighborhood Karen. A woman in her late thirties or early forties, who had the moralizing stick up her butt of a fundie boomer; the kind of lady that would have touted Jack Thompson and 90's era Hillary Clinton as her guiding light, or who would have maligned metal music as devilish during the satanic panic of the 80's. Mrs. Jones, who lived down the road and suffocated her own children with her stifling sense of decency. Apparently it wasn't enough to ruin her own children's fun though; she also couldn't bear to see other kids on the block be happy in ways that ran counter-intuitive to her madness. She especially had problems with the concept of Halloween, which she derided as being too 'scary' or 'slutty' for her delicate little angels to enjoy. It was her fault that his class had missed out on watching The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and instead had been forced to suffer through 'A Barney Halloween'. Third graders made to languish through the condescending tone of the purple dinosaur like they were eating paste and peeing their pants in Kindergarten. She had that kind of power as both a PTA warrior and a frequent volunteer at the school. That meant questioning the educational value of movies in the classroom, making a stink about 'equity' during field days (though only in favor of her own children), throwing conniptions over sugar content in the treats for class parties, and making even the most exciting field trips completely insufferable with her stifling rules and naked favoritism. In so few words, she was a pain in Jaime's rear end. If she wasn't causing problems at school, then she was causing problems in their neighborhood. In this case though, it was worse than that, because she was causing him grief in his own house and directly in his life. To back things up a little, Jaime had been dealing with a little 'problem' at night for a few months. Going to bed dry and waking up the next morning wet. It was highly unlikely that he was the only boy in his class that had such an issue, and it was still something developmentally appropriate for a little boy his age. It was embarrassing and he wasn't happy about it, but the issue was more or less handled. It was handled with bedwetter Pull-Ups and a shrug from his pediatrician about how it would eventually be something he grew out of. Relatively painless, except for the boy's pride. The second pertinent event was when Mrs. Jones had pulled him aside during the class party that she was helping out with. She'd made a big fuss about the fact that he was wearing a 'FNAF' shirt and how inappropriate it was for his age. The woman was undoubtedly a glutton for getting her vacuous opinions from places like 'Media Matters' and Facebook mom groups. That's how she recognized what he was wearing and already had such a developed critique, when she'd clearly never engaged with the content personally. She questioned if he even knew what it was that he was wearing. She couldn't believe that a boy in her son's third grade class could possibly already be poisoning his mind with horrors he couldn't hope to withstand. Once he snidely confirmed that he'd played the whole series, she just about fainted. Those 'Karen credentials' had their limit and as hard as she clutched her pearls, the teacher shot down her demands that Jaime be made to change into something else from the lost and found box. His shirt didn't break any school rules, and while it had creepy imagery, it was subdued enough to squeak by with impunity. Jaime had left school that day with his beliefs about the woman being a nutter only reinforced. He didn't think much more about it, since she'd always been an uptight pest, but he did wonder if she'd escalate the matter if she saw him repping his horror affection again. What he hadn't realized was that she didn't view him as the purveyor of evil he thought she did. To her, he was but a young victim of a corrupt, morally bankrupt culture. The same culture that legalized the weed and idolized unsavory media. Truthfully, Jaime could be considered a bit of both: he was a victim of a society that had failed him, but he was also a bad influence in his current state. When he went over to a friend's house that weekend, to play whatever spooky new releases that a twenty dollar Steam giftcard could provide, his stepmother would get a visitor. Jaime's relationship with his stepmother and his stepbrother were tenuous; his father had only remarried a little over a year ago, and there was still a good deal of friction in the household between the merged family. Him and his older sister hadn't totally meshed with the woman that his father had fallen in love with, but they'd done their part to make it work. Things weren't outwardly hostile, but there were certain differences that they hadn't rectified yet. For example, his older stepbrother absolutely hated horror and Jaime had teased him about that fact. His stepmother also didn't fully understand his obsession, so she couldn't engage over his interests. That lack of understanding would be a pivotal component of what would happen next. Mrs. Jones would take a walk down the street to have a discussion with the boy's stepmother, and the subject matter would be about the games she was letting the little boy play. To his stepmother's credit, she wasn't on the same sterile wavelength as the killjoy who was making this braindead pitch. His stepmother could recognize a wet blanket when she saw one, though that specific term would become a point of dialogue in a more literal sense. Mrs. Jones talked at length about the corruption of the youth and the merits of retaining a child's innocence. She spat her talking points like a good drone and butchered the sordid details of the 'terrible games' that Jaime had confessed to playing. She talked about how traumatized Jaime must be and how that may manifest in shifts to his behavior. Not thinking much about it, his stepmother mentioned the bedwetting. She hadn't meant to agree with the crazy woman in her kitchen, but she'd more thrown it out as something to placate her. That'd been an ignition spark. Mrs. Jones leapt at the opportunity and gave a whole screed about how the bedwetting must be from nightmares he'd gotten from playing all these awful games. How he must just be an anxious mess, and that things would only get worse. His stepmother nodded, but she'd already discounted her neighbor's opinion by this point. She made a noncommittal comment about thinking on it all and then sent Mrs. Jones on her way. Jaime wouldn't suspect the gambit she would play next. It was about a week later, when he'd been approached on the street before dusk. He'd been playing with some of the other kids in the neighborhood and was about to head home for dinner; seemingly out of the blue, he'd been stopped by Bradyn. Bradyn was the older of the Jones boys, being in the same class as Jaime. He was the reason that Jaime had to keep suffering the boy's mother, since she came to be a 'class mom' for every little event. Jaime didn't hate the boy by any means, but they weren't friends either. To Jaime, Bradyn and his little brother were just the weird kids. It was no fault of their own, since they had such a batty mother, but that didn't make them any more pleasant to share company with. Bradyn had come with a little 'Halloween' cupcake. The holiday was still weeks away, but he said his mother had bought too many and that he was told to go hand out the extras to his friends. Jaime's sweet tooth was strong enough to not correct the boy about the part of them being 'friends' and he happily took it without a second thought. Jaime would wake up the next morning to an awful surprise. He would wake to a smelly, squishy surprise. He hadn't just wet the bed last night, he had pooped it. His Goodnite wasn't only soaked, but had a devastating pile smeared all throughout the back. He reeked something terrible, and whenever he was late to come down the stairs, his stepmother had come looking for him. There he'd been standing, fighting tears with a bowed gait and a foul odor radiating off the sagging seat of his messy Goodnite. It was unexpected, and unlike the bedwetting, there was nothing developmentally appropriate about what he had done. Toddlers poop the bed, or infants, but definitely not third graders. Not unless they were sick or intellectually disabled, neither of which were an apt description for Jaime. He'd had no way to explain himself, at least not in a manner that even approached satisfactory, and he'd given his stepmother second thoughts on everything that Mrs. Jones had prattled on about. The woman had said that things would get worse, and here the worse thing was a week later. It made his stepmother take the loon a little more seriously. "Did you have a nightmare?" His stepmother had asked as she helped to get him cleaned up. He'd sniffled and shook his head head, not remembering any bad dreams that might have been cause for something so extreme to happen. There had never been a nightmare that'd done something like this, at least not since early childhood; Jaime thrived on fear, he didn't recoil from it and he certainly didn't soil himself because of it! It would happen again a couple of days later, and then Jaime would also have a daytime accident at home that had left his shorts soaked and a puddle underneath him. In both instances, he’d accepted ‘holiday treats’ from the Jones kids, but he hadn’t made that connection. It was getting closer to Halloween, so it didn’t come across as too terribly odd that there would be free sweets, even if coming from a miserable crone like Mrs. Jones. His stepmother wasn’t exactly sure what to make of all of it, but she had to take steps to at least mitigate the mess that her stepson was making. Goodnites were meant just for bedwetting, not for bedpooping, and underwear was meant for kids who were going to stay dry during the day. She’d had him wear a Goodnite after he’d peed his pants, letting him know that it might be best for him to go a couple of days with one on, just in case he had a UTI or something, since he denied there being any real trigger for the soaking to happen. As for the bedpooping, which had happened twice in one week now, she had to take more defensive precautions. He would come home to her holding a package of youth diapers and he would get the ‘talk’ on how she couldn’t risk him having a blowout in his pajamas. This wasn’t a punishment, just a precaution, and if he didn’t have any more messy accidents at night, then he could get out of the crinkly undergarments in a couple of weeks. It was also the first time she made mention that perhaps Jaime’s own media consumption was playing a role in these sudden accidents; she was gentle at first in positing it, but she wouldn’t hesitate to do more than merely suggest if things continued as they were. Needless to say, Jaime hadn’t really been able to enjoy his favorite month very much this year. Wearing Goodnites under his briefs during the day, and then having to get taped into a real diaper at night, then there was his stepmother’s ominous comments about him getting too ‘scared’, as if that was even an option for him. The final nail in the coffin for Jaime had been a few days later. Once again, Bradyn had offered a delectable bounty to his neighbor and classmate; this time, it was a little satchel of chocolates, and Bradyn had mentioned that eating one or two a day would bring good luck. Jaime needed all the luck he could get, so he’d taken the bag and squirreled it away in his bedroom. As instructed, he ate one that afternoon, with the thought that he might have another before bed, and then he sat down at his desk to play something spooky. After playing for a little bit, his stepmother had come into his room to talk with him about which chores he’d done off the list. It was a completely innocuous discussion, and Jaime hadn’t even stopped playing his game during it; midway through, he felt an uncomfortable pressure down below and he tried to squeeze out a silent fart. It wasn’t silent, and it wasn’t a fart. It’d come out as abruptly as one of the jump scares in his game, and now it felt like he was sitting in a warm mud-pie. The Goodnite held around the leg gathers, but the force of the explosion had forced the mush upwards and it was nearly out the top of his waistband. His stepmother thought he’d farted, and she chided him about being polite, but then she saw how freaked out he looked and realized that the smell wasn’t going anywhere. Without asking him, she gently lifted the back of his shirt and saw his Goodnite poking out of his shorts. She didn’t have to pull back the waistband to deduce that he’d messed himself. “Oh, Jaime… That’s it! Time to cut back on all this horror stuff! You’re clearly not ready to be playing these games or watching these movies! I can’t believe that crackpot was right…” The woman sighed as she looked around his room and realized there would be a lot of work to do to rid it of all the ‘scary’ elements. Crackpot? That’s when Jaime had realized that Mrs. Jones had talked to his mom. That’s about the time when the tantrum started, where he threw a fit that would make a toddler blush, about how he wasn’t scared and how she couldn’t take away the things he liked the most. Shockingly, his juvenile conniption proved wholly unsuccessful, and his stepmother added that he’d be wearing diapers all day if he couldn’t behave like a big kid about this. Which he couldn’t. Which was why he was wearing a diaper during the day, which he’d filled with poo while watching the cartoon that had been screened for approval. Hopefully that wouldn’t make things worse, since it may very well look like he’d gotten scared of this wimpy Disney crud and dooked in his diaper because of it. This was just the beginning though. He was still just a work-in-progress for Mrs. Jones, and she intended to save him from himself completely.