Tale #27: Found Footage, Lost Minds (Part 2)

If this was a prank, then it was absurdly well organized and cast. It was becoming less likely that it was a prank though, and much more likely that Juniper had made the right move to leave the house when the option was afforded to her. The boy's feet carried him down the hall, there were several doors, but he didn't stop. He knew he needed to hide, but any one of these could be a dead end...Dead ends were still better than just being out in the open though. He took a sudden right into an open room and quickly, yet quietly, shut the door behind him. His heart was beating out of his chest; he looked around the room and recognized it as a young girl's bedroom. Rodrigo heard the slow but solid thuds of steps coming from down the hall and scampered into a nearby closet, he ignored the creepy dolls and squeezed himself against a corner wall. It was dark and had a faint odor of something acrid, but it felt safe. What the hell was going on? Who was the terrifying woman in white? He looked down at the camera and sighed quietly; what other choice did he have but to finish it? He was too scared to leave this cramped closet, and maybe Jimmy had left him something he could learn from. He hit play again, but turned the volume low. Instead of fast-forwarding, like on the other two tapes, he just let it play out. Eerily, Jimmy had tried hiding in this same room. Over the next thirty minutes, Rodrigo got a front seat to the daring boy being unwound before his eyes, in real time at that. Jimmy sounded scared. He was sobbing, he was mentioning that he'd pissed himself, and he was starting to sound more... juvenile. It was honestly bizarre to watch, and oddly intimate, like he was reading someone's diary. Jimmy's vocabulary took a serious dip over time, and by the time he was standing back up from his position in the closet, he sounded like an oversized first-grader. "I-I want my m-mommmy..." The boy sniffled. The camera suddenly dropped from Jimmy's hands, accompanied by a sharp gasp, and Rodrigo could suddenly get a view of the boy. He looked very different from the last glance he'd gotten of him on the tapes; Jimmy had shrunk, at least by over a foot. His shirt was hanging low on him, and his pants were... Rodrigo looked down and realized for the first time that the pair of jeans on the floor were definitely not originally from this little girl's bedroom. His eyes darted back to the screen, just in time to see the closet door swing open, and for the back of Jimmy's briefs to bulge outward with a fearful torpedo. The tape suddenly ended, and Rodrigo hadn't gotten a good look at what had opened the closet door, though he had a pretty good guess. Before he could formulate what his next step should be, the closet door followed suit with the video and opened. "..You watchin' my videos?" It was Jimmy, or at least the altered form of him. Up close, it looked like his age had been reversed, by more than half. The boy couldn't be much older than six now, and his new ensemble looked more befitting of an infant: an elegant white romper that ballooned in the midsection from what could only be a giant diaper, and an old-fashioned looking pacifier that hung from the garb like a pendant. "I knew you'd find 'em. Come on, we gotta hurry, before mommy comes back. B'sides, dis is big sissy's room." It was too surreal to compute. Rodrigo let the little boy take him by the hand and start to lead him out of the bedroom, he felt as if he had no choice but to be led. They emptied out into the hall, and Rodrigo thought they'd head for the stairs, but Jimmy instead began to lead him further down the hall. "Mommy n' sissy get real mad when people come into their house." The boy chirped, squeezing Rodrigo's hand more tightly. "Dat's why they punished me." Rodrigo finally found his voice again, even though it still felt like he had a lump in his throat. "Uhh...T-that's why you're like this, Jimmy? Like...Umm, all little now? They aren't gonna do that to me, are they?" "I was naughty." Jimmy responded plainly, coming up on a door at the end of the hall, "Dey prolly won't make you little though, not like me. They gonna let us leave, too." His words felt oddly reassuring, even being a walking example of what kind of punishments were possible here. "Oh, so why are we going this way? Does this lead to more stairs and a back door or something?" "Nuh-uh. You was still naughty, so we gotta go in the punishment room." Jimmy opened the door and while Jimmy was in shock, he pushed the boy into the room. It was a nursery of some type: crib, rocking chair, toybox, changing table...And two glowing white figures, like something out of a haunting. Rodrigo opened his mouth to scream, but it was suddenly occupied by a large pacifier. The larger of the two figures stepped closer, now undeniably a matronly phantom, and she put her finger to the pacifier. "Shhhhh..." "I brought him to you, mommy! Just like you asked! And I--I--Mmmph..." Jimmy's giddiness took a pause while his face scrunched up. The awkward silence was soon filled by a gross squishing sound, and it suddenly looked like the boy was smuggling a softball in the back of his romper. "--Need a diapee change. I pooed." "Go see sissy, I need to have a stern talk with your little friend." Her voice didn't match her ghastly appearance. She sounded terse, but motherly, and with a poshness that wasn't fitting for what this town was now like. She lifted Rodrigo off the ground like he weighed nothing, "You've been very naughty, just like little Jimmy. Breaking into homes that don't belong to you, all for some childish game?" Rodrigo whimpered behind the pacifier and nodded slowly, too afraid to disagree with the phantom. She clicked her tongue and pulled back Rodrigo's waistband, "...And you've made in your slacks too! How shameful!" When had that happened? Once she mentioned it, he could actually feel it, the warm mush pressed up against his buttcheeks. She laid him on the changing table and his clothes suddenly vanished, leaving him only in his messy underwear. "Boys like you want to pretend like you're grown, but clearly you're still just infants! You must not have been thinking at all." She tapped him on the head and things started to feel foggy. The boy's thoughts were slowing, becoming more simple; a trail of drool began to leak past his lips and stain his chest. "Just empty-headed little delinquents in need of a good diapering." Diapers? No, he was too big for that, right? He tried to lift his head and saw that his underpants had gotten much, much thicker; in their place was a stack of cloth diapers over a dozen thick! "Noo diapooo.." He whined, the pacifier finally releasing from his mouth. She picked him up and put him back on the ground, patting his thickly padded rump. "Yes, I think that this punishment will do quite nicely. You and your friend obviously need more time in the nursery before you're mature enough to act grown." It was nearly two hours since Rodrigo and Juniper had first come in. The group of waiting kids had dwindled, but there were still several of them hanging out in front of the house. The door finally opened again, but what came out wasn't what they'd expected. Rodrigo in a drooly stupor, wearing nothing more than an enormous diaper, and a little boy leading him along like a pet. "R-Rodrigo?! What happened, why are you wearing that? ...And who is the little kid?" Juniper was the first to ask. "It me! M'Jimmy!" The pipsqueak answered promptly. Rodrigo's answer was less immediate, he just let out a dumb giggle and stuck his finger in his nose. "Hehehe...Makin' poddy.." "H-huh? Making *what*?" There was a sudden gurgling eruption from the back of Rodrigo's diaper, and while it was muffled by the sheer bulk of all his cloth diapers, the sound made it apparent that the boy was having the most explosive diarrhea of his young life. Brown stains rapidly formed on the swelling seat, and Rodrigo just leaned forward with a delighted look on his face. "Nnnghhh...Pooooopy!" The door to the house suddenly shut behind them. It might have been a secret before, but now the kids of the street knew why nobody dared to talk about this house.