Tale #23: The Potty Monster Is Real

Tale #23: The Potty Monster Is Real (Content Tags: Messy and wet accident, diapers, intentional diaper use, horror, humiliation) Nobody will listen to me. Nobody believes me about the beast below; a demon shrouded in porcelain and life-long preconceptions. In every bathroom, in every stall, the creature waits and bides its time, until it's time to gobble you up whole. The potty monster is *real*. It lies in ambush, picking off those stupid enough to sit down on the throne, when people are alone and at their most vulnerable. Not me though, not anymore. The toilet, like a portal to an underworld of unknowns, and grownups really just expected you to sit there and do your business? With the lid atop the abyss, it even looked like the mouth of a monster; such arrogance, to think you could just sit in the mouth of a monster! The toilet itself is not the only creature to fear, but is also the hunting grounds that us pitiful humans have willingly wandered right into, like flies into a spider's web, for a valley of horrors from beyond. The rest, in their unfathomable horror, were entities that came up through that dark hole in the bottom of the bowl. How many would go missing each year, after that last fateful trip to get some 'reading' done? Not me, I wouldn't become just another unwitting victim of this morbid world. I'd weathered the storm of social pressures, of goading toward acting my age, but I had no intention of budging. Shame and punishment were but a light cross to bear, in order to stay alive. I'd returned to the only sensible option, to the only one that assured total security. Diapers. Yup, that's right, you didn't catch that wrong. After years out of them, I'd ardently self-advocated myself back into their safe fold. There was nothing physically or mentally wrong with me to necessitate them, no, this was my own choice. This was a conscious choice based on a very rational fear. I'd met a lot of resistance on this little journey. My parents, my siblings, my peers, and even my closest friends. They couldn't understand, because they just *didn't* understand. How was I even supposed to explain it? This type of knowledge just appeared to be too much for their minds to conceive. To live their whole life under this lie, this conspiracy to use our species as prey! It'd started over a year ago, when this terrible truth had first been revealed to me. It was a firsthand account that I'd never be able to forget, no matter how much I wanted to. I was still in second grade at the time, and I'd been sent to retrieve a classmate who'd been in the boy's room for much too long. It'd seemed like a good deal; a chance to stretch my legs and to get out of class for a few minutes, so I'd been all too eager to accept the task. Dawdling my way into the boy's room is where I first felt the presence of something evil. If was that feeling of 'fight or flight', like a rabbit in the shadow of a hungry wolf. I couldn't even speak from how anxious I felt, so I just stood there in the entryway. Then I heard the scream. One of the toilet stalls busted open and out stumbled Harry, the mischievous boy I'd been told to retrieve. The look on his face was immediately etched into my mind; such fear, confusion, and horror. His pants were still around his ankles and he ended up tripping face first onto the tiled floor. He turned towards me, his eyes pleading for a savior, "HELP!" Tendrils suddenly shot out from the stall and wrapped themselves around his ankles; I heard a gurgling, blood-curdling roar, and they began to drag their quarry backwards into the prison he'd just tried to escape. I was scared. Not just normal scared, but a fear that felt primeval in nature; thousands of years of evolution had meant nothing, humanity still existed on a lower rung of the food chain. My world was collapsing around me. Harry's final plea for help finally got me off my feet and I rushed to see what was going on inside the stall; thinking back, that was probably the stupidest thing I could have done in that situation. I wasn't ready for what I saw: I heard the splashing of water, violent and turbulent, and these guttural growls. I saw Harry already halfway inside the maw of the beast, his legs kicking as fast as he could muster. The toilet was shaking, the seat was flatly battering Harry's backside, and I could hear it beginning to flush over and over. Harry spun like a cyclone and disappeared down the impossibly small hole without any trouble; the toilet continued to rumble, then stopped and snapped the lid closed with a final flush. My feet were already carrying my as fast as they could in the other direction. I'd just seen one of my classmates devoured by a *toilet*! What nightmare had reality grotesquely contorted into? This shouldn't be real, it *couldn't* be real! "M-miss...m-miss Becker! I-I..I..!" "Johnny! I told you not to dawdle on your bathroom break! Potty passes are a privilege, young man, not a chance to go goof off and miss class!" "B-but, but...H-harry, he..!" "My goodness, you didn't make it?" My return to the classroom was a show all its own. It'd been confusing but ultimately informative on the nature of the monster that'd eaten Harry. First of all, I have to admit that I'm not as brzve as I thought; I hadn't noticed until my teacher pointed it out, but I'd fully 'used' the bathroom while in there. My only real accidents since younger days. My jeans were soaked, my underoos were filled, all courtesy of the horrors I'd played witness to. This was also the rebirth of me doing my business in my pants on *purpose*, so it was a befitting christening. More importantly, my teacher didn't remember Harry. In fact, nobody did! I later asked classmates about him, and even Harry's sister, but they all just thought I was trying to make stupid jokes. I cracked open a yearbook, but there was just an awkward extension of empty space where his picture should have been. Harry wasn't just gone, it was like he'd never existed, and I was the sole keeper for any evidence that he'd ever graced this awful planet at all. This was the true insidious might of the potty monster; this was how it had feasted for countless years on an unsuspecting populace. Every victim was erased from memory, erased from existence. Even now, I struggle sometimes to remember Harry's name, or what he was like, as if the creature is trying to wipe my mind of him too. But I can't forget that fearful expression, that scream for help, and I can't forget my own terror, an overwhelming feeling I now lived with. I started going in my pants instead after that day. I tried to explain what I knew to my parents, but they weren't buying anything except diapers. They thought I'd just suffered a regression on the potty front; uncommon for a boy my age, but not completely out of the realm of possibility, especially since I had a younger sibling who got so much attention. After a few weeks of trying to proselytize, I gave up. The only people to believe me at all were kids young enough to still be in the diaper range themselves, but everyone else was starting to laugh at me for really believing it myself. I got pantsed on the playground by the school bully fairly early on because of it; after all, if I was so scared of a 'potty monster', that must mean I don't use a toilet, and if that was the case... Yup, anyone who was already thinking it, had their suspicions confirmed that I was diapered like a toddler. I feel like that was probably a good thing, to rip the bandage off so early. If everyone in my class already knew, then at least I wouldn't constantly worry about guarding it as a secret. I made sure not to give anyone any more fodder for my humiliation, so I planned my 'potty breaks' so I could use my diaper in private, and then immediately go get changed afterwards. I treated it like I still needed the dignity and serenity that I used to get from sitting on a toilet. That also insured that I kept a steady level of control. If I just peed myself, or pooped, whenever I felt the need, then I'd surely lose my ability to hold it when I needed to! Full time diapers or not, I would not sink to *that* kind of infantile chaos. I felt bad for my classmates, so I tried not to think too harshly or their cruelty. Their own incredulity would be their downfall. My only solace was the disturbing fact that I wouldn't notice anything if any of them went missing; they'd simply blip out of my memories forever. That knowledge kept me up at night, thinking of all the people I must have known at some point, who were now just gone. Any person important to me could just disappear one day during a trip to the toilet and I'd live on in ignorance. The only control I had left was keeping myself safe, and even that was a shaky prospect. The potty monster knew that I *knew*. I'd seen it feast, and I'd gotten away to learn from the experience for another day. It'd growl and groan at me whenever I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth or take a shower, for some reason it couldn't attack me unless I actually sat down to use it. It'd even talked to me. It'd tried to coax me closer. It was a surreal experience, almost mesmerizing like a dream between the waking world and that of sleep. I'd just been passing by the door in the hall and it'd called out to me. No trick was too low, but it was no matter to me; I'd become resolute in my stance. It had become difficult though. My little brother had just finished pottytraining, and now he was making fun of me for still being a 'diaper baby'. It'd be problematic to retain control and respect over the younger brat, when he'd advanced to underpants, and I was, well... I caught a glance of myself in my bedroom mirror; bulky white diaper sticking out, fists curled up as I strained to push out a large log into my seat. Watching the bump grow in my backside, I had to admit that I didn't look very respectable. That was fine, I thought as I grunted and pinched off the large stinking loaf. I'd rather be a stupid poopy diaper boy than risk a fate as bad as the potty monster could dole out. I'd be the one to get the last laugh here.