Rose Wears Diapers (Patron Exclusive!)

As per the popular vote I did last month, here's a short story sequel to, 'The College Bully', which can be read here! 

Rose Wears Diapers

‘The fastest growing organism in the world is a rumor.’

Rose’s mother had always repeated that particular thought-terminating cliche any time Rose tried to talk about what was going on at school. She’d always hated the phrase, because it never seemed to be about rumors–she was just repeating what she’d heard from friends about what the other kids at school might have been doing.

Okay, maybe it was rumors, but it wasn’t like Rose’s mom had been about to go spreading them.

Regardless, she’d never found herself on the short end of the rumor stick, not until she got into her third year of college, not until that stupid girl had torpedoed her social standing.

One glance. One photo had been taken, of her holding a puffy, baby-print diaper that had clearly been made for an adult. It didn’t matter that Rose didn’t own the diaper, it didn’t matter that she’d only been holding it because some other girl gave it to her in the hall and she didn’t know what to do with it, it didn’t matter that she’d never so much as had an accident since she was five, she had a nickname now. ‘Diaper girl’.

Someone had done the googling to find the diaper’s print pattern, discovered that it came from a website for something called ‘Adult babies’. That had to be what Penny was, but even though Penny had openly admitted to Rose that she wore diapers for fun, it was Rose who’d been branded Diaper Girl.

And like her mother had warned, the rumor only grew.

First, it was reasonably close to the truth, and Rose had hoped it might peter out before too long. But then, ‘I saw Rose holding a diaper’ turned into ‘Rose wears diapers’, and ‘Rose doesn’t use the toilet anymore’ and ‘I saw Rose poop her pants at a party’.

Maybe it was a side effect of, for lack of a better word, her demeanor. Rose wasn’t exactly the kind of person to have everyone fawning to be her friend, but she’d always been respected. Nobody wanted to get on her bad side, nobody wanted to cross her, nobody wanted to so much as get in her way walking down the hall…until they saw the chip in her armor.

Now, the girls that had previously stood to the side when she walked down the dorm hall giggled and pinched their noses as she walked past. They made her walk around them. Her intimidation of her floor had vanished, replaced with sneers and teasing behind her back.

It was all so juvenile–kiddie level jokes and teasing that Rose thought was out of place on a college campus–but then again, she’d never treated her peers particularly well. Maybe they were just looking to get revenge on her level.

But the rumor only continued to grow.

Girls outside her floor–and guys, too–didn’t tease her as openly, but they all knew. At parties, she’d walk by a group of frat dudes and hear one of them quip about ‘The diaper girl’. They all told the same jokes, and they all laughed as though it were the most original thing they’d ever heard.

No attempt to reassert her old status worked. Someone drew a stick figure of her in a diaper, with big stink lines, right on her dorm room door. Someone else–or maybe the same person, she couldn’t be sure–posted fliers that’d been photoshopped, showing Rose dancing half-naked in a diaper at a local party. The photoshop job sucked, and the faculty took down all the posters they saw, but the damage had been done.

And then someone drugged her food.

She didn’t know with what, exactly, but one day after she’d left her burger unattended to refill her drink, she came back, finished it, and then a few hours later felt the sort of gastrointestinal distress that couldn’t come naturally. Horrifying desperation in her guts, all while she was in the middle of class.

And Rose didn’t put it together in time. She thought it was just a weird cramp, that she could hold it, and by the time she knew she couldn’t, there was no time to get out of class and get to a toilet.

She ran, a desperate flight down the classroom aisle to the door, but the laxatives she’d been drugged with won out. Her pale blue denim jeans were stained a dark brownish navy as her bowels emptied themselves into her panties in full view of the whole class. Mortified, there was nothing she could do except feel the warm, sludgy muck trail down her pants and wince in humiliation when she heard an artificial sound effect of a camera shutter.

And naturally, that only fed the rumors further.

Everyone knew. Everyone. Even those not actively taking part in the teasing, the bullying, still giggled when she walked past. She had to start watching her food carefully to avoid a second round of laxative poisoning. When she used the shower in the common bathroom, someone reached over the shower door, swiping her bathrobe and towel from off the hook. When she stormed out to confront them, naked, she found the bathroom was empty, her robe was gone, and a diaper with ‘For Baby Rose’ written on it in sharpie sat on the counter.

She refused to participate, storming back to her room naked rather than wearing it. She wouldn’t give in.

The RA was no help. When Rose went to her for help, the RA just made an announcement asking everyone to stop teasing Rose about wearing diapers–phrased in such a way that it could be claimed as innocent, even if her intent was obvious. ‘Just don’t tease her where I can see, and you’ll be fine’.

When someone swiped homework she’d spent all day on at the library and replaced it with a coloring page for learning numbers, she couldn’t take it anymore. It was just too much. Desperate, unable to turn anywhere else, she finally tracked down the girl who’d started it all. Penny.

“What the fuck is your deal?” she demanded, throwing open the door to Penny’s room.

Penny removed her headphones, glancing up at Rose. She was–fucking hell–wearing a tank top and a diaper, just out in the open at her desk. Sure, her roommate was away for the moment, but still. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“What did you do?” Rose threw at her. “How–everyone is treating me like shit, and it’s all your fault.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Penny said, “Except give you a diaper, since it seemed like you wanted one. Don’t blame me for the consequences of your own actions.”

“My own actions?” Rose spluttered. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Shut the door,” Penny advised, getting to her feet. Her diaper sagged a little, and Rose realized it was wet.

She actually uses them!

Rose shut the door. “How come nobody teases you? You actually wear diapers!”

“Well that’s why,” Penny said. “I’m not exactly trying to hide it. Sure, I get a comment here or there, but it is what it is–I don’t care, so why should they?” Walking over to her closet, she opened it up.

“But I don’t wear diapers,” Rose fumed. “It’s just made up crap!”

“Yeah, you aren’t cool enough to wear diapers,” Penny replied, “But you get real mad when people joke about it and, sorry if this is a newsflash for you, but nobody really likes you. You’re kind of a renowned jerk.”

“So they get to bully me because I’m unpopular?” Rose said. “That’s–what are you doing?”

Penny crouched, opening up a plastic pack of diapers and taking one out. “They don’t bully you because you’re unpopular, they do it because you’ve got a track record of being an asshole. I don’t really like it, but I’m also not going to act shocked. And if you want to stop the rumors, you’re going to have to put up or shut up. Show them you don’t care.”

She stepped up, extending the diaper out to Rose. Offering it.

“What, you want me to wear it?” she asked.

“Yeah. You’ll get teased at first, probably. Maybe for a while. But it’ll stop, once they see that you genuinely don’t care–and I can guarantee it won’t stop if you keep doing what you’re doing,” Penny explained. She still had the diaper extended, not demanding that Rose accept it, but at least offering.

“Screw you,” Rose said. “You’re just trying to get everyone to make fun of me even more.”

“You don’t have to take it,” Penny said, “But you came to me for advice. This is my advice. Wear it–you don’t even have to use it. Nobody cares that I do. They’ll stop caring when you do, too.”

Rose slapped the diaper out of Penny’s hands, wheeled on her heels, and stormed out, slamming the door behind her. A pair of blonde girls, heading out to cheer practice by the looks of them, saw her, pinched their noses, and waved their hands in the air as they passed. When Rose turned beet red and spluttered for an insult that wouldn’t come, they burst into giggles.

Unsure what else to do, Rose went back to her room.

A couple more days passed. Things got no better. She didn’t feel safe outside of her bedroom, even going to class or taking a shower.

Maybe Penny was right, but I’m not going to tell her.

She didn’t need a diaper from Penny. She already had one–the one she’d been given before this all started, when she first tried picking on Penny in the hallway. She’d stashed it in her closet because she didn’t know where to throw it away, and then because she just didn’t know what to do with it.

Now, she turned it over in her hands, inspecting the rustling plastic material.

Penny was just lying, right? Trying to make me do something stupid?

But…

She hasn’t teased me. At all. She’s not part of it, is she?

Why would she lie?

Slipping off her skirt, Rose unfolded the diaper. She initially wrapped it around herself backwards, had to flip it over. The tapes were sort of velcro-ey, so she was able to restick them a few times to get it comfortable.

It felt…fine. She felt no particular rush at wearing it, and it was a bit hot, but it didn’t suddenly devour her with embarrassment either. She pulled her skirt back up–she’d chosen a short one. One that wouldn’t totally hide what she was wearing, especially not when the waist was pulled down a little so that the top band of the diaper poked out the top, and particularly not when she’d chosen a crop top to go with it.

She inspected herself in the mirror. Sure enough, her diaper poked out both the top and bottom of the skirt. There was no modesty here, just a babyish, crinkly bit of padding that she’d been insisting for a month and a half that she didn’t wear.

Everyone would see.

Rose prayed to nobody in particular that Penny hadn’t been lying about this.

Shouldering her purse, she got to her feet, pushed open the door, and walked out with her head high.