Tale #66: The Here, Then, and Now (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1) At the bottom of the pit, where the darkness felt so thick that it was suffocating, there was a shining light that etched the path forward. It was my reel again, or rather, *our* reel. This time, there was no fogginess to the imagery, but many parts of it looked to be missing in sporadic areas. From the looks of it, there no longer existed any evidence of my adulthood, or even much of my life past the age of the 'me' that was standing besides me. The creature had devoured almost all of my history early on, and what was left of the reel was now sluggishly being digested in here, barring whatever pieces of it that the monster hadn't had the chance to take from me by this point. Another possibility prodded at the back of my mind. By what measure could I prove that my adulthood had ever existed in the first place? Could my own memories be trusted, especially when they had become so diluted during my time as prey? For that matter, was I even the real 'me' at all? The version of myself that stood behind me was by all measures a more 'fully-actualized' being than I was. While I was a hodgepodge of temporal leftovers, the other boy was almost entirely untainted by the hunger of the entity. Aside from the dirty diaper sagging around his waist, there was no part of him that had been altered or devoured. If I could destroy the demon, then that boy would have a chance at a normal life, whereas my life was under threat of eternal recursion. The question left to me was where I should go from here. At the bottom of infinity is where I'd found the tattered remnants of myself, and if I were to pull hard enough, then I could likely dislodge the ethereal film strip from the pit and I could take it back from the monster. Then, with the help of 'myself', I think I knew how to end things. If Vincent was hungry for my life, then I was going to give it to him. Up the spiral we ascended, with my reel torn from the stomach of oblivion. I explained my plan to the younger form of myself, though I didn't tell him everything that I theorized might happen. It probably didn't matter that my lips were shut on the matter; after the earlier unification of our wills, he could probably grok all the terrible thoughts that ran through my head. Slaying the monster would mean a sacrifice for the both of us. Like the first time I was swallowed, there was a gaping light above, and it forced us out of the creature's gut. On the outside, back in the grassy backyard of my childhood home, the monster was still paralyzed and the reel was being ripped from his innards like an organ torn out by a wild animal. Black sludge poured out from the 'wound' and the inky fluid leaked from his mouth as well. "You...can't...you...can't..." I had already had the epiphany down below on why Vincent was acting this way. It was a hunter that could only stalk one prey at a time; as far as I could tell, it only even existed when it was being seen by one person at a time, and that didn't appear to be a conscious ability, but some hardline requirement. My sudden appearance, being split away from the 'host' I had inhabited, had shut down his ability to act. The same thing likely would have happened if I'd been able to somehow manifest my 'home' around him in a way that he had no time to react to, since that was the other hardwired requirement I'd noticed of him. I looked at the long tendril that I'd excised from him. In the 'real world', it didn't look as mystical as it did inside the abyss, and it was covered in that peculiar oil that was still pumping out from the creature's stomach. If my theory was correct though, it held the key to victory. Working from the top, I was at least three layers deep. At the top of that heap was the altered reality that I'd been living, where I kept getting attacked and where I kept becoming smaller and smaller. The next layer was the creature's stomach, which after accidentally falling into it, I had gained the ability to access in my dreams. Then the bottom of that pile was where we were right now, which was through the doorway of my own reel, where this last vestige of my true self had been contained. I'd already seen what the bottom was like. There had been no other doors once I'd been inside the creature's void at this level. The top was what I couldn't reach, and that didn't mean the 'top' that I'd been living in this entire time, because that wasn't the real top layer. The reason I'd been able to enter the void in my sleep after becoming familiar with it, was because I'd been inside the belly to begin with. The entity, as I had known it, wasn't the real thing. It was like the gut flora of a much larger creature, which was why every reel had always seemed to include an appearance from him; it wasn't some simple memory of his attack, but was one of an infinite number of 'bacteria' that served to break down the sustenance of the larger being. My hell had been a prison, and my warden hadn't even been the genuine article. No longer would I allow myself to be a meal. I found an exit from my own reel and took with me everything that I'd come to find inside of it: the deepest reel, the paralyzed entity, and my own younger self. I took the reel we'd just been in as well and with help from myself, we were able to rip it from the door. This was such a delicate ecosystem that every impact I made was causing the whole thing to tremble. One well-planned paradox and the creature might collapse in on itself, like a pathogen that wouldn't stop replicating until the host was dead. I wrapped one of the reels around the creature and it came to have my own appearance. Then, with boy versions of 'me' in tow, I allowed myself to wake from the abyss and to go one layer up, where I lived as a squishy-seated preschooler. All three of us were inside my toddler bed, just as I'd hoped would happen. Since I'd forced myself awake, it was much earlier than I'd usually be up, which was fortuitous for what would come next. Me and the six year old dragged the catatonic 'me' out of my room and to the backyard door. Wearing the skin of my own reel, the entity had been allowed in my house, and similarly, it too would be viewed as prey by its fellow predatory organisms. I opened the door and we pushed him out, wearing little more than a diaper and a frown. I'd been worried at first that this wouldn't work out. Me and my other self had to keep our eyes on the shrouded Vincent to keep him paralyzed, but the concern was that if we were watching him, then another Vincent wouldn't come to attack him. Luckily, my fears were quickly dissuaded. The entity on this floor of reality had grown emaciated again in the months that I'd kept safe. The gaunt demon appeared in front of its 'prey' and begun to do the same thing to it that would usually happen to me. I couldn't hear what questions were being asked, but I could see the results of what they did. Being draped in my reel, the imposter was forced to play my role. Before my eyes, the imposter's diaper began to fill with lump after lump of steaming filth; the garment bulged with every turd and began to stain brown as the questioning wouldn't cease. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing myself being destroyed, which in a way was true, since I'd transformed that creature into being a duplicate; the reel had assured it wasn't a simple superficial skin, but a complete rewrite. Unlike other times though, nobody would come to the rescue. I thought that the doppelganger might regress into nothingness, but I became surprised by what actually ended up happening: the two were stuck in a loop. The diaper filled to massive proportions and then things glitched out and it reverted back to a clean state, where the process started again. Apparently they couldn't feed off of each other in the same way they fed off me; I was able to open the door and walk out without them ceasing. This pocket dimension, or whatever it could be called, was breaking down; the only two people who seemed unaffected was myself and my six year old self. Suddenly, while I heard the gurgling rasp of a fresh load getting deposited, the looping pair got mirrored forms. The creatures had discovered the anomaly and were coming to fix it, but instead of fixing it, they were becoming trapped in the same terrible loop. Each one that appeared took on my image, and then got absorbed into the original imposter. It truly was like a virus that was propagating itself wildly. As this continued on, a ripple appeared in the fabric of reality; it was another doorway, and if my theory held up, then it was the way back to the real world. The only problem was that to create this escape, I'd had to give up my reel, which meant I had nothing to escape to. My old life was gone, and all I had was the reel that belonged to the six year old me. We couldn't both go into that reality as we were. We would have to unify completely into one person, and that'd mean that I'd have to start my life back as a six year old, while also likely being fully diaper dependent and bringing along a whole host of other infantile quirks that my current form was laden with. So be it. We embraced and I twirled the remaining reel around the two of us. What emerged was one boy. A boy who has just turned six, but who had a very long way to becoming a big boy. I walked into the light and finally left the nightmare behind. The entity would be forever caught trying to eat itself, while simultaneously being forced to endure the humiliations that it had forced on me. It was caught in its own trap and it would never be able to escape it. For me, I appeared back in the grassy backyard of my house, with action figures in front of me and a crinkly diaper underneath me. Whatever had remained of my adult mind was diminished during the merging, and the same went for the mind of the six year old that had been a part of the equation. So my growth, both physically and mentally would be quite stunted. I'd be a very late bloomer for my entire second childhood, but it was a small price to pay. I leaned over in the grass and gave a grunt, and a firm load crackled out into my already soiled diaper with a juicy fart. I sat back down in the hot filth and smiled at the squishy sensation under my buttcheeks. After months and months of enduring the fumes and discomfort of a doo-doo diaper, I actually took some solace in the low-stakes simplicity of dumping in my pants; dare I say, I actually liked it. This wouldn't be too bad. I'd grown up too quickly the first time around, so this time I'd try to enjoy my childhood; dirty diapers and all.