Pay Up, Baby! (Part 2) (Patreon)

“What the actual fuck?” Ryan blurted out.  He doubted anyone heard him though over their own delirious applause.  

It was Tony’s voice that managed to pierce through the scream.  “EXCUSE ME!” he shrieked over the din.  The crowd of woman kept at bay by the giant baby gate stopped screaming, but not before a wave of cooing aws issued forth.

“AWWWWWWWW!”

The host, a so-called “Molly Cawdle”, turned to the scrawny man trapped in the highchair. “Yes sweetie?”

“What is going on here?”  

“AWWWWWWWWW!”

It seemed to Ryan that that one shout was all the courage Tony had left in his system.  The poor guy started shrinking back down, as if trying to hide in the ridiculously sized infant chair.  Like a modern June Cleaver, the host walked elegantly up to the highchair and pinched his cheeks.  “We’re playing a game, sweetie.  A game you signed up for.  Remember?”  Her tone had immediately changed from game show schpiel to preschool playful.  “Or did you already forget?”

“How did I get into these clothes?” Tony gestured with his chin to the plain green shirt he wore.  Ryan

HOLY SHIT!  Ryan looked down at his plain yellow shirt.  Red. Yellow. Green.  Like colors on a stoplight they all wore basic t-shirts.  The problem (one of them, anyway) was that Ryan definitely hadn’t been wearing that before he lost consciousness.  Had they been abducted?  Had someone actually stripped him naked and redressed him like some kind of manakin?

Or a baby?  Size 8. Size 9. Size 10.  Pampers, Huggies, and Luvs.  

Still trapped in his highchair, Ryan sucked in his gut so he could see past the tray and down to his waste.  He was still wearing pants.  Loose fitting shorts, actually.  Good.  Shorts were good. But what about beneath?  Ryan wriggled as much as he could.  It wouldn’t help him escape- there was a codpiece between his legs preventing him from sliding all the way down- but wriggling could help with something else.  He wriggled his hips trying not to jostle the chest restraint keeping his back against the chair.

Nothing.  No extra padding.  No rustling or crinkling.  No extra bulk.  It had been forever and a day since Ryan had been toilet trained, but based on how puffy those diapers on the boxes looked, Ryan figured he would have been able to tell had he been wearing one.  Based on the chafing, he might in fact be going commando.

Oblivious or uncaring of Ryan’s self-examination, Molly Cawdle addressed the question more directly. “We couldn’t have our little contestants show up naked could we?” She gave all three a wink.  “Don’t worry though.  You might not be wearing those outfits for very long.”

More applause.

“BULL!” Sammy roared out over the clapping.  “I didn’t sign up for this!”  Ryan looked at the bigger man and mentally corrected himself.  Nope. Sam.  Definitely Sam. “LEMME GO!”

Tickling fingers skittered from one man’s leg to another until they arrived at the bigger man’s knee.  “Awwww,” Molly jeered.  “Looks like someone didn’t read the terms and conditions!”  The laughter that followed from the audience was knowing, condescending, and certainly more mean spirited than anything Ryan had yet heard.  “Does that mean you don’t want to play anymore?”

“Fuck no I don’t wanna play!”

“That’s a shame,” the host smirked.  “That means you won’t be able to get your shot at half-a-million dollars.”  She gestured out past the baby gate. “Not to mention the devoted attention of any one of these beautiful audience members!”

On cue, the horde of women all started waving frantically.   Once again, they were the headliners of a sold out stadium tour.  “Uh...uh...uh…”  Sam started to stammer.  It wasn’t the studio lights causing Sam to start breaking out into tiny beads of sweat.  Ryan wasn’t a doctor but he was willing to bet that the bigger man’s cargo shorts were starting to get smaller.  The fact that the host was slipping her hand beneath the highchair was not lost on anyone.   “Okay…” the big man panted.  “I’m in.”

“Well then,” Molly smiled.  “Choose who is going to help you.”  

Hands shot up towards the ceiling and heads and hair (among other things) bobbed up and down as women jumped for attention.  

“Pick me, Sammy!”

“No Sammy, pick me!”

“Me me me me me!”

“We can have so much fun together.”

Sam narrowed his eyes as the skinny Bob Barker-esque mic was raised up to his mouth.  “Uh...Dee Dee?”

The microphone came back down to Molly’s lips.  “You have to say their whole name.”

“Are you serious?!”

“As a week old rash.”

Sam sighed.  “Fine…’Mommy’ Dee Dee.”

The giant baby gate blocking the audience was opened long enough for a dark haired woman to trot through.   “THANK YOU!” she ran up and hung her arms over the big man’s shoulder in a kind of one-sided hug.  Molly Cawdle got a more gentle hug.  “Thank you so much!”

Polite applause- the kind that people who are being good sports about losing- followed Dee Dee all the way to the highchair. “Uh...Am I gonna be sharing the money?”  Sam asked. The dark haired woman took a place next to Sam’s highchair and his question was ignored in favor of the second contestant.  

The mic went up to the much smaller man’s lips. “Little Tony,” Molly asked.  “Which Mommy will you choose?”

Tony was quicker to decide.  “Um...M-m-m-Mommy Mona?”  A blond woman with a short pixie cut swiveled her hips past the gate to more polite and disappointed applause.  Without waiting, she gave Tony a peck on the cheek.  It had been awhile since Tony had gotten that kind of attention, Ryan guessed, but that was only due to the massive shade of pink he was turning.

Ryan was last to be consulted.  Not that it mattered.  There had to be at least (at least) fifty women if not more, all clamoring for his attention.  “So...what exactly is my ‘Mommy’ supposed to do in this game?”  He received a semi-painful pinch on the cheek for his question.

“Just like any good Mommy, whoever you pick will support you and encourage you to do your best and to give you the tools you need to succeed.  Or in big boy terms, think of them as...” the June Cleaver-ish host clicked her tongue.  “-Advisors.”

The young man scowled to himself.  That description was every bit as helpful as the info he’d found searching for this game and the company that ran it:  Comforting without actually telling him anything.  Still, if he was going to be playing blind in some bizarre dating game (if that’s what this was) he might as well have someone he’d want to go on a date by his side.

He likced his lips and scanned the nametags “Mommy Rose…?”  

Ryan hadn’t heard so many disappointed ‘aws’.  They sounded like they’d all invested their life savings into lottery tickets and no one had called their lucky numbers.

“Don’t worry ladies,” Molly said as a cute little redhead trotted her way on stage, next to Ryan. “We’re taping multiple episodes today.  Everyone else will get their chance next session.  Till then, enjoy the show.”  That seemed to settle the audience down back into their seats.

“Thank you,” the redhead, Rose, whispered to Ryan.  “I was hoping I’d get to be your Mommy.”  With all forced perspective with the props, Ryan couldn’t be too sure, but he was fairly certain that the top of ‘Mommy Rose’s’ head would end at right about his eyebrows.  The tickle up his leg was met with giggles, and flirt that Ryan was, it wasn’t entirely faked.

Heels clacking all the way stage right, Molly gestured to the refrigerator shaped board.  “So here’s the game, Mommy’s and little ones!”  She made a grand gesture.  “We’re going to put dollar amounts up on the ol’ fridge here!”  

ON cue, the panels all filled up into various dollar amounts.  And they were ridiculous sums!  Thirty thousand?  Fifty?  Sixty?  All of the amounts on the board were more than Ryan made in a year!  The other two guys seemed equally as flabbergasted. 

“But behind each of the dollar signs is something you have to give up, boys.  Whoever gives up the most wins the money!”

It was Sam who asked for clarification.  “So it’s like Lent, but a game?”

“Kiiiiiiiind of,” Molly grinned like cat with a mouthful of yellow feathers.  “BUT! Don’t bid too high, because even if you’re outbid you lose what you’ve wagered.  And at the end of each round it’ll be time to…”

“PAY UP, BABY!”

Ryan jumped a bit at how loud the audience had gotten.  That HAD to be some kind of audio track, right?  For his panic. He got a comforting hand squeeze just beneath his tray.  “It’ll be okay,” Mommy Rose whispered.  “Just go with it.”

Pride hurt, Ryan would have ripped his arm away had he been able to move his arms  Instead, he just chose not to squeeze the stranger’s hand back.

“Tony!” the hostess walked over to his highchair.  “You’ve been randomly chosen to go first.  So how much will we be playing for first in round one?”

Tony waited until the microphone was close enough for him to speak.  “Well uh...um...let’s start with thirty thousand dollars…?  Did I do that right?”  The question sparked an adoring reaction from the audience.  For her part, Tony’s ‘Mommy’ seemed enchanted with his timidity.

“For thirty thousand dollars, what are we looking for?” 

The placard signaling 30K slid away, and in its place were the words “Hair”.

“Lucky first round pick!” Molly exclaimed A thin smile spread out from her lips. “So contestants...for thirty thousand dollars...how much hair are you willing to lose.”

Tony seemed to consider this for a moment.  “Um...so what do I…?”  His advisor leaned in and whispered something.  “Um...my armpit hair?”

“WE HAVE OUR FIRST BID!”

“Fuck it,” Sam called out.  “Pits AND the hair on my  junk.  I’ll do some manscaping for thirty-kay.”

“ARMPITS AND PUBIC HAIR!”

Okay...so this was like a dare show.  Ryan looked down to the redhead holding his hand, her eyes hopeful, verging on mania.  “How about, pits, pubes, and butt...all of it?”  Fuck it.  He’d get a full Brazillian for thirty thousand dollars.

“OOOOOOOOOOOOH!”  Molly turned to Ryan’s ‘advisor’.  “You’re a very lucky woman.  He’s going to be so much easier to clean like that.”  The redhead nodded in complete agreement.

“All of that AND my chest...no fuckit! My torso!” Sam shouted.

“That AND my limbs!”  Ryan countered.  His Mommy started rubbing her chin in pantomime  “AND my facial hair!”  BOOM! Nail in the coffin!

“Looks like we have a bidding war between little Sammy and Ry-Ry.  This is the part where I mention that if a bid is matched but not topped, the contestant who made that bid first wins.”  

Ryan smirked.  He was in the lead and about to be thirty thousand dollars richer.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tony’s advisor whisper something into his ear.

“What Ryan said,” Tony piped up.  “All of that And the hair on top of my head!”  Gasps resounded from the audience as his Mommy clapped her hands.  Ryan gulped.  What else did he have to lose in this category?  Eyebrows?  A vigorous shaking of Rose’s head told him that it wasn’t such a good idea.  Not worth it.

“We’ve got a full Caillou going on!” Molly Cawdle crowed. “Going once!  Going twice!  DONE! Thirty thousand dollars to Little Tony!”  A series of bings and bongs not unlike a pinball machine rang out as Tony’s name went onto the refrigerator; 30K by his name.

The poor guy was actually tearing up in disbelief, Ryan saw.  Thirty-thousand dollars, and all it cost him was hair.  Ryan couldn’t help but feel a little jealous.

The hostess turned to face the audience.  “Now on any other, lesser gameshow,” she said, “this would be the part where I ask the lucky winner of thirty thousand smackeroos on what they were going to do next!  But the game is far from over, and we already know EXACTLY what they’re going to do next.  All three of our contestants are about tooooooo….!”

“PAY UP, BABY!”

A flash of white covered up the sight of the audience as privacy curtains were wheeled out in front of the highchairs.  People in pure white hazmat suits ran out with nasty looking implements, all buzzing and sparking. Ryan was no doctor, but the instruments looked like something out of a medical horror movie than anything that might actually show up in a hospital.

“The fuck?!” Sam cried out as the first jolt of electricity leaped out.   Was he being tazed or shaved?  Ryan couldn’t tell.  But he soon found out…

Both.  Both actions were happening.  Ryan shook uncontrollably as the smell of burning hair filled his nostrils and his muscles spasmed uncontrollable.  Sharp blades whirred out clipping and trimming while electrical current raced through his muscles in little snips and zaps.  Every single hair on his leg, on all of their legs, was being burned and lasered off.  

“THAT FUCKIN’ HURTS!!”

“WHAT THE FUCK?!”

“NO CREAM?!”

All three women stood beside the high chairs, cooing and encouraging the men as the hair on the easiest parts of their bodies was quickly zapped away.  A pair of thick gloved hands held Ryan’s head still while what felt like an electrified piece of barbed wire was being dragged over his chin, cheeks, and upper lip.

Even Samuel’s swearing lost coherence, the pain was so great, and tears were trailing down Tony’s cheeks.  This hurt.  ALOT.  Neither their pain, nor their humiliation was complete though.

As agony drove the three beyond words, Ryan was faintly aware of talking on the other side of the curtain.  Another show was going on.

“OUR THREE BOYS ARE GETTING ALL BABY SMOOTH,” Molly Cawdle’s voice rang out, “THANKS TO THE NEW AND IMPROVED LASER SHAVER!  LASER SHAVER! A FEW MINUTES OF ZAP AND A LIFETIME OF CLEAN SHAVEN SMOOTH HYGIENE.  LASER SHAVER: RENT YOURS TODAY, BECAUSE YOU’LL NEVER NEED IT MORE THAN ONCE!”


All three high chairs, as it turned out, could recline; with footrests elevating themselves so that they were parallel to the floor.  With the pull of a lever, each highchair became a kind of operating table.

Faceless, white clad tormentors closed in on Ryan, blocking his view of the others.  Still, he knew  He had wagered more than just the hair uncovered by clothing.  They all had.

“My pants!”

“My shirt!”

“MY BALLS!”

More vulnerable, intimate parts were zapped and shaved. Ryan blacked out for a moment and woke up with a gag in his mouth sitting upright; likely to muffle the screams and to prevent him from biting his own tongue off.

Ryan looked down at the gag and realized that there was a shield on it.  A gag might have been the device’s practical function, but a pacifier was its aesthetic.  Just like everything else about this madhouse, everything skewed baby.  

“There’s a numbing agent in the bulb.” Rose told him.  “Go ahead, baby.  Suck.  It’ll make you feel better.”  She was right, of course, and the burning stinging sensation began to ease the more Ryan worked the rubber teat in his mouth.  Without waiting, the three Mommies attached clips to the respective contestants' shirts...at least they had been redressed.  “Use it as much as you need it, sweetie.  Now go win some money.”

The white screen removed, Ryan let the over large pacifier drop from his mouth and surveyed the damage.  He was completely hairless from the eyebrows down.  The clothing felt weird, too. He hadn’t realized much sensory input he really got from his leg and body hair.  His t-shirt felt alien against his bare skin.  There was just something unsettling about it. 

Sam looked rough, too.  Tony looked like a cancer patient.  And every woman in the building, including the host and three standing beside their highchairs, looked absolutely thrilled.

“Next round belongs to Sammy!” the hostess declared.

All three men looked at each other nervously.  A new element of fear had been factored in:  Unspoken words were exchanged between the three.  If thirty thousand dollars was this kind of punishment, what would a higher dollar amount do to them?  Ryan prayed that he had developed some kind of psychic abilities, bowed his head so no one else could see his lips and whispered to himself,  “Pick low….pick low…”

“Twenty-thousand,” Sam bellowed. The lowest dollar amount on the board. The panel slid away, revealing the thing they’d be bidding on.

“WORDS!”  The applause swelled into a crescendo of hoots and hollers.  “The way this little bid works is that you choose what words you want to give up!  Whatever you bid, you won’t be able to say again!” 

Ryan frowned.  How the fuck could they do that?  Hair was one thing, but the ability to speak certain words...how would that work?  Shock collar?  Maybe, but unlikely.  He could always take a shock collar up.

The insane woman running the game show went over to the biggest of the men and offered him the first bed.  “Well...um...I guess….” he paused and winced, struggling with himself.  How did one bid something as intangible as a word? “Fuck!”

“You heard it, folks!” Molly crowed.  “After today, little Sammy will no longer say the dreaded ‘F-word!”

“Huh?” Sam shouted. “That’s not what I meant, I-”  But it was too late.  The sadistic woman in the 1950’s housewife garb just walked away. “How about you, baby Ry-Ry?”

“What if I don’t want to bid any words?” he asked.

The microphone snapped back to Ms. Cawdle.  “Contestants who fail to participate are disqualified and will lose any winnings they might have accumulated….”

Great.  So if he dropped out now, he’d have nothing to show for it beyond ridiculously smooth skin.  Might as well test the limits of what these people were willing to hear.  Boldly, Ryan leaned forward in the highchair as high as he could and let out a string of expletives that would have made any burgeoning middle schooler proud.  “Shit, cunt, fuck, bitch, ass, damn, piss, tits, cocksucker, motherfucker, pussy, dick, asshole, dickhead, bastard, choad, twat, crap, hell, prick, slut, bullshit, blowjob, beat off, clit, cock, jizz, and taint.”  Might as well go for the kill.

“You could have just said ‘every swear word’ you know.”  Molly said.  She was not amused.

Ryan couldn’t help but smirk.  “I did…”  A little pinch on his leg and stern look from the stranger he’d picked from the audience let him know that while he hadn’t technically broken any rule, he was toeing a line.  Fudge it.  Rules are rules.

The two seconds it took to go to the last highchair was a tense silence.
“And you?”

Now bald headed Tony sighed, and closed his eyes.  Ryan had put him in a pickle.  Everyone had to bid at least once or lose.  And every bid had to top the previous one.  That’s why Ryan had done it, to be honest, (that and it was fun to let loose a random string of profanities).

“All words commonly associated as curse words,” Tony said calmly.  “As well as racial, ethnic, sexual, or any other kind of phobic slur designed to other another human being.  I won’t need them anyways.”

“And once again, Tony takes the lead!”  

Ryan gritted his teeth and clenched his fists beneath the highchair tray.  Why hadn’t he thought of that?!  Tony’s so-called “Mommy” seemed pleased.

“So, Sammy?” Molly walked back round.  “I think the bid moves to you.”

Sam just gritted his teeth.  “Nope.  I’m out this round.  I need my swear words.”

The “AWWWW that came from the audience was one of disappointment.  Such disappointment seemed mirrored tenfold in his personal helper.  Molly even spared a second to pat the woman on the shoulder consolingly.

“Ryan?” There was something menacing in her tone.  “What about you?  Got any words left for us?”  Oh that was a dare, alright!

The redhead was whispering in his ear before he could reply with something suitably snarky.  “Go all out,” she hissed.  “Say all words except...and then choose which words you want.”  Ryan pictured himself, shock collared with only the ability to say whatever handful words he could think of.   No.  That wasn’t the way to go.  He didn’t want to lose THAT much.  That being said, he didn’t want to lose either.  Twenty thousand dollars might be worth getting shocked for swear words et. al.

“Everything that was just bid...aaaaand…” Ryan thought for a second, “the letter “R”.”

“MMMM?” The confusion rippled through the audience all the way up to the host.

“What do you mean?” Molly asked.

“I mean,” Ryan said, “I promise not to pronounce my R’s.  I’ll talk with a speech impediment.”

The shriek of delight from the random redhead he’d picked was contagious.  “Thank you!” She said to him.  “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!  That’ll be so cute!”  Ryan felt an unexpected flush of blood to his face.  Was he being hit on?

The microphone was moved back to Tony.  Bald boy was already shaking his head.  

“Looks like we’ve got a winner this round! That’s twenty-thousand dollars for Ryan.”  She gave a wink to him.  “Or as he’ll be pronouncing it from now on, ‘Wyan!”  

The bings and bongs as Ryan’s name and twenty thousand dollars were added to the board.  Quietly, Ryan wondered how much it cost to get a high quality shock collar turned off?  Probably less than twenty thousand, right?  Right.

“But now!” Molly gleamed.  “It’s time to…”

“PAY UP, BABY!”

The second time Ryan was ready for the white privacy curtain to separate them from the crowd.  As the people in all white rushed from backstage, Ryan held his head up a little higher, smirking over at the two men he’d just beat.

What Ryan wasn’t ready for was when white gloved heads put both sides of his head into a death grip.  The pain killing pacifier gag was lodged back between Ryan’s teeth.  “Just suck,” Mommy Rose said.  “This won’t take but a minute.”  She grasped his hand and held it, patting it gently and making comforting shushing sounds.  Ryan saw the look in the woman’s eyes and saw the the glint of steel.

It was then, combined with the telltale whirring of power tools that Ryan realized how wrong he’d been.  There was no shock collar coming.  Only the dull whir of a drill pressing into the back of his skull.

“LADIES,” Molly shouted from her end of the curtain. “DOES YOUR LITTLE GUY LIKE TO TALK UP A STORM BUT HAS NOTHING TO SAY? DOES HE CURSE AND NO AMOUNT OF SOAP WILL FIX THAT FILTHY MOUTH?  THEN TRY VERBO-CHIPPING HIM. VERBO-CHIPS CONTAIN CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY THAT ZERO IN ON THE NEURONS CONNETED WITH PARTICULAR WORDS AND THEN CUTS THEM OFF AT THE SOURCE!  IT’S LIKE SOAP BUT FOR HIS BRAIN.  V-CHIPS! WHEN LESS IS MORE!”

Brain surgery.  They’d just had brain surgery done on them.  With fudging power tools!  It didn’t hurt thanks to whatever heavy duty stuff was in the  pacifier gag.  It didn’t stop Ryan and the others from crying as their skulls were burrowed into and chips were grafted into their brains.  

“It’ll be okay,” the redhead promised. “That’s what I’m here for.”

As if NASCAR had a team of neurosurgeons, the people in white disappeared backstage seconds later, just as the white curtain was lifted.  Any blood or other signs of violation had been cleaned up.  What hadn’t been removed were the men’s tears. 

“This…” Ryan realized out loud.  “This is puhmanent.”  A final tear leaked out onto his cheek. He would have sworn...but he just couldn’t anymore.

Molly Cawdle turned back to them. The glint in her eye wasn’t anything short of terrifying.  “Who’s ready for round three?”