Story #30: Paradigm Shift

Story #30: Paradigm Shift "You straight up smell like shit, little dude. Did you crap your pants or what?" That was supposed to be my friend, Jacob, but there was such a callous distaste in his mouth; he would have never said something like that to me. "Aww, come on, don't be so harsh. You know what Lee said; the little dork's autistic or whatever...He probably can't help it. He wears those diaper-things, remember?" And there was my other friend, Kevin. Well, at least he was supposed to be. Now they were both Lee's friends, and it was like we had no real history together. All the memories we'd formed and cherished, and out of the three of us, my head was the only place they now resided. Lee was my new little stepbrother. Him and his mom had moved in a few weeks ago, right after the wedding, and we hadn't gotten along very much. He was eleven and a dorky, obnoxious little autistic twerp that was intruding in my life. It was bad enough that he'd taken over the extra room, the one that had been where I gamed, but the little bedwetter had made it stink like piss too! Then there were all the little things. Vexing idiosyncrasies and obsessions that he couldn't shut up about; as if I could be assed to give a damn about seeing his Minecraft projects or Sonic fanart, or hear about the lore to some dorky franchise of obscurity. The dweeb was a walking, talking, dorky-as-all-get-out cliche. Me on the other hand... I was sixteen and enjoying the prime of my teenage years. I had a car, a part-time job, and a gang of friends to hang with. Me, Jacob, and Kevin were a rough crew that liked to have fun and didn't give a shit about the consequences; it landed us in trouble sometimes, but we always managed to scrape on past it. But now it was just me in trouble, and my partners in crime didn't even seem to really know me anymore. I was sitting here with them, a fresh load of shit pancaked underneath my ass and probably barely contained by this stupid wannabe Pull-Up that I had always seen Lee have to wear to bed, and they were heartlessly ribbing me about it, like I was some wimpy shortbusser. I'd begged to come along for this little outing, in hopes that I could do something to spark their memories of me, but it'd all turned sideways. I'd been the butt of every joke, and my very presence had been barely tolerated by the trio of teens. They really did just see me as the dorky baby step-brother that Lee was saddled with watching over; the irony was bitter, because this whole thing had happened before, just not to me. It'd started a week ago. I'd already been giving Lee a hard time for his bedwetting, hoping that a little shame might motivate him to grow up and cut that shit out; I'd already pulled down his Minecraft-themed pajama pants in front of my friends, whenever they had been spending the night to pull an all-night gaming sesh, and they'd reacted as expected to his 'Goodnite' or whatever the hell they were called. He'd gotten teary-eyed and defensive, but all I was trying to point out was that he wasn't mature enough (or cool enough for that matter) to be hanging with us. Jacob had straight-up called it a diaper and asked if he was retarded, and I'd shrugged and mentioned the autism; I mean, basically the same, right? Afterwards, the twerp had gone to our parents with teary-eyes and a tattling tongue, and I'd gotten chewed out for it. I rolled my eyes and had vaguely promised to make it up to him. The next day though, I'd cut him into him again, because Lee had gotten too distracted with Roblox or some shit, and had gone and pissed in his pants during the daytime. My stepmother, bless her misguided heart, hadn't given him the proper talk he needed, but had at least told him that he'd need to wear those Pull-Ups during the day for a little bit to be safe. Lee hadn't been happy about that, but apparently his toileting problems weren't exclusively a nighttime deal, and this kind of thing had happened before. Personally, I thought he needed his spoiled little ass whipped, but I just had to roll my eyes and watch him get coddled over something that most three year olds had gotten a full grip on. Whatever. The day after that though, is when Lee was wanting to call in that little favor that I owed him. Me and the boys were going to go to the mall and pick up the newest 'Call of Duty', with the additional prospect that we'd be smoking some top-shelf shit and cruising around for some good old fashioned 'T and A'. Hearing where we were going, of course the dweeb wanted to go too. He wanted to pick up a new game with his allowance and wanted to see if the mall had a hobby shop for comics or miniatures, some geeky bullshit like that. I'd first brushed him off, but of course he'd gone and tattled, and I had to be reminded about how I promised to 'make it up to him'. So he came with us. I at least made sure that if he was going to be riding around in my car, that he'd wear his 'protection'. I made it very, painfully clear, that this was a prerequisite I would not budge on. My car was my baby and I wasn't going to let him ruin my backseat with another pissy pair of Pokemon underoos. I also made it pretty clear that he'd need to listen to me without question, because I wasn't in the mood to play babysitter to some unruly brat. My friends weren't really happy about the arrangement, but they understood that my hands were tied. We would try to enjoy the trip, even with the dork latching on and killing our vibes. Things were going as well as could be expected for a while...And then, well, Lee started to smell. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was just gas, but the odor wasn't fading. I felt humiliated; had my stepbrother literally shat his pants at the mall? I thought the pants wetting was bad, but was he seriously crapping his pants too? The answer was yes. His cheeks were red and I could see his eyes getting wet with tears, but I was just too angry to feel any sympathy for him. I pulled down his pants in the middle of the game shop to check for myself; sure enough, the little retard had taken a dump in his Goodnite. I was seeing red at the revelation. Lee kept stuttering and sobbing some nonsense defense of his deed, but I wasn't having any of it. I told him off in no uncertain terms how embarrassing he was and how I never should have let him come with us. My friends got in on the action too, feeding off my ire with mockery of their own. It felt cathartic to tell the brat off, though it did put a damper on the rest of the trip. I wasn't about to help clean him up either. We got what we had come for and I marched his stinky ass down to the little pharmacy at the far side of the mall. I hadn't let him buy a game, as punishment for what he'd done, so instead I used that allowance of his to buy him a package of what he really needed: some goddamn diapers. I directed him to the bathroom and told him to go get taken care of, and to do the best he could, because I didn't want him stinking up my car. When we got back home, I'd given our parents a very sanitized rundown of what had happened. I left out the parts that might make me seem kind of mean, and Lee was still too crestfallen to really call me out on it. Now that I'm thinking about it, he was probably just desperate for me to accept him, and he had to have known that this whole incident had ruined any real chance of that for some time. I left him to wallow in his sorrows and went to go install my new game. The rest of the evening was a boilerplate night of gaming, toking, and making off-color remarks on my headset. I didn't think much more about how sad that Lee had looked, or at all the things I'd said to him in the depths of my fury. Even then, maybe I'd already known that I was going too far. Maybe the universe thought so too. The next morning was where my current predicament had really started. Opening my eyes at the sunlight breaking through my blinds and noticing almost immediately that I wasn't in the room I fallen asleep in. The layout of the architecture was the exact same, down to even the unique imperfections of the crown molding, but everything else seemed very, very wrong. Juvenile posters on the wall, action figures and stuffed animals around the floor, and a vague aroma of ammonia in the air. That smell had been coming from me, and it hadn't taken long to deduce exactly why. I was wearing one of those Goodnites under my pajamas, and it was HEAVY. Feeling the front of it, I could feel it squish under the pressure of my fingertips, indicating how swollen it really was. The weight became more obvious when I got out of bed and the whole thing sagged dangerously low against the fabric of my pajama pants. That was honestly small potatoes though, at least when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I couldn't accept it at first, it was just too bizarre and unsettling, like a fever dream or a bad trip. I wasn't sixteen anymore. If I had to have guessed, then I would have said I was probably the same age as Lee. The years had just melted away, taking with them the transformation that puberty had so graciously given to me. My height, my muscles, my body hair...It was all gone. In its place, I could see the return of some baby fat, and a dorky haircut that definitely wasn't something I would have consented too on my own. In all honesty, it wasn't even as if I was just sent back to being eleven. I'd been 'cooler' than this at that age; I hadn't been a bedwetter or had such embarrassing interests, nor had I been so dainty and uncoordinated looking. What it really looked like, was as if I had changed roles with Lee overnight. This was all stuff that fit him. I hadn't been wrong on that. Lee was no longer the doughy little dork that I'd gotten so mad at before; now he was a teenager, and he was making snide little comments about me. I was the only person that seemed to remember how things had really been; to everyone else, the world was spinning just as it always had. It was madness, and I couldn't stop myself from falling into the role I had besmirched so much. I found my emotions becoming more volatile, and I found myself genuinely being captivated by that same crap that I'd mocked Lee over liking. It was as if my old memories couldn't override the inherent personality of this new form. I even found myself trying to impress Lee and feeling hurt when he just teased me or blew me off. That's when history really began to repeat. I peed in my pants while playing some game, and got sentenced to daytime protection just like Lee had, and then a couple of days later, I was going out with him and 'his' friends. I couldn't even recognize the pattern while it was happening, even though it was really the same formula. And that's where I was now. I'd been too embarrassed to mention I needed the toilet, and I'd waited too long. Lee had went to grab me something from the McDonalds in the food court, and so I was left with my former friends. They'd been talking like I wasn't there, and I'd been suffering in silence...Right up to the point that my body shuddered and I felt a chill run up my spine; then I'd just kept my eyes glued to the table as a big log had gone from turtle-heading to making a full-blown crash course with my Goodnite. I had crapped my pants, just like Lee, and after a minute or two, Jacob and Kevin had smelled my dirty deed. Now, as they laughed and made jokes about me, I could foresee that things would go the same as they did before. Lee would have a meltdown over my accident and publicly shame me in front of everyone in view, and then he'd take me to go get myself some actual diapers. I could only hope that when I woke up tomorrow morning, that the lesson would finally be over, and that the universe might be a little more merciful than me. (To be continued...?)