Pay Up, Baby! (Part 3) (Patreon)

Possibly due to the brain trauma Ryan was still in shock when the game started up again. “Looking a little light on the scoreboard boys,” the hostess said as a stagehand wheeled a cart out. It was silver and upon it were three bottles filled with clear liquid. If their distinctive shape weren’t enough, the rubber nipples on top were dead giveaways.  “How about another round to rack up the points?”

“No.”  It was Sam who spoke.  “No more bets.  No more bidding. I’m done.  Get me out. I quit.” Everything about his body spoke of someone not used to confinement.  Even with the highchair harness and restraints, his muscles bulged. His highchair started to shake and rock a bit from side to side.  His so-called ‘Mommy’ and a few stage hands rushed out to steady the chair.

In truth, Ryan was mildly surprised to see the big man break.  Ryan would have thought that either himself or Tony would have been the first to have a major freak out.  Goodness knows Ryan was toeing the line.

The show’s host held up her hands, palms out, in a calming gesture. “Betting?  Betting?  Who said anything about betting!  We like to change it up here every now and then.  It’s time for a physical challenge!”

A renewed wave of energy rippled through the crowd.  “And this is one that EVERYONE CAN WIN!”  More applause as Molly Cawdle grabbed one of the bottles.  “All each of you has to do is drink one of these down.  First one to drink theirs gets one hundred thirty thousand dollars.  Second place gets ninety thousand dollars, and third place gets eighty thousand!”  

“Excuse me,” Tony said as the applause died down.  “One hundred thirty thousand dollars?  For drinking a bottle?”

“That's correct!”  Tony got another pinch on his cheek for his trouble.  “Isn’t he a smartie, ladies?”  The cheers and coos seemed to agree.

“How are we supposed to do that while restrained?”

A cheeky grin blossomed on the leading lady’s face.  “Why, your Mommies will help you, of course! And you thought they were here just to look pretty for you.”  That got a knowing chuckle from everyone not trapped in a highchair.

That much money being offered was enough to stoke Ryan’s greed over any sense of self-preservation. That was a combined three hundred thousand dollars all told! “What’s in them?  They’uh cleah, but I’m bettin’ it’s not watuh in them.”   The young man grimaced at his own newly acquired speech impediment.  He’d known three year olds who talked better than him!

In reply, the hostess quickly unscrewed the caps on each (very large) baby bottle, took a sip, gargled, swallowed, then replaced the nipple. “Just water,” she said. “Look, I even gave you each a head start.”  More laughter.  “So boys.  Ready for the easiest money you’ve ever made in your life?  Or do you wanna go home hairless and broke?”

The three trapped men didn’t look at each other.  They didn’t need to.  Desperation, financial or otherwise, must’ve been a qualifier for contestants.

“Alright. I’m in.”

“Sure.”

“Bwing it on.”

The bottles were handed off to the audience volunteers and held up to each of the boys’ lips.  “On your mark,” Molly said.  “Get said. Drink!”  

Ryan’s lips reached outward as his Mommy pushed it closer. The audience erupted, cheering and chanting.  “GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!” Furiously he began to suckle as the water trickled into his mouth.  For the first few pulls from the bottle, Ryan’s tongue braced itself for the bitter taste of some kind of chemical additive or nasty trick.  

None came, however.  It tasted like...water.  At the confirmation Ryan suckled even harder, afraid that he’d lost time with hesitance.  For over a hundred grand, Ryan could deal with a speech impediment.  “That’s right, baby!” Mommy Rose cheered.  “Drink it all up!”  She angled the bottle up a bit.

And he did.  Quickly, he worked out a rhythm of breathing suckling and swallowing so that there was a steady flow gushing into his mouth at all times.  He only stopped once, when his stomach insisted he must long enough to let out a massive belch.

“Looks like we’ve got a self-burping baby!” Molly joked.  Ryan just tried to ignore the lady’s taunting and doubled down on his nursing.

Something felt off when Ryan was approaching the bottom of his bottle. He felt good.  Really good.  Almost like he was glowing.  Everything felt fuzzy and edges of his vision developed little rainbows on the periphery.  Such...pretty...colors...  

Ryan had been drunk enough times in his life to draw the comparison, but it wasn’t an apt one.  This wasn’t quite like that.  It was both subtler and stronger.  When Ryan’s appendix had burst he’d been rushed to the hospital.  They’d given him the good shit there; better than morphine and infinitely harder to pronounce.  This was more like that.  A lot more.

“But how?” he wondered even as he kept drinking. The host had sipped from all three bottles before screwing the nipples back on.  Just as he was gurgling down the last of the water did something click.  There was nothing in the water.  But what if there was some kind of film or dust or chemical component inside the nipples?  Just add water.

The thing about chemical alterations to one’s brain is that it makes bad decisions much easier to make.  Even as the rational part of his brain screamed out drowning in the euphoria, Ryan let out a silly grin, letting the last few droplets dribble out the corner of his mouth.

“You like that, don’t you baby?” Ryan’s Mommy asked.  “Ry-Ry loves his bottle.”  Ryan didn’t respond, but only because he was so focused on trying to finish.

“Looks like little Sammy was super thirsty!”  Molly announced.  “We have a winner!”

“I WON!” Sammy screamed.  “I WUUUUUUUUUN!”  Ryan turned his head to see Sammy bouncing up and down in his highchair, craning his neck like a cock crowing at dawn.

Ryan drooped a bit, sagging his shoulders.  He still felt amazing, but decided that he should at least look dejected...y’know...to be a good sport.  It was just so much easier to emote right then.  He got a peck on the cheek for his troubles.  “Don’t worry,”  Mommy Rose told him. “You’ll have another shot.”  

That’s right, his drug added brain realized.  He would.  Game wasn’t over yet.  And even coming in third place put him at a hundred thousand dollars.  Now he just had to make it through this game.

More bings and bongs and scores were updated.  For some odd reason, (not that odd come to think of it) Ryan didn’t care too much about how much money he’d earned.  He’d already earned enough as it was.  All he had to do for the rest of the game was bid low, not get disqualified and walk out of here as whole as possible.  

It didn’t seem so bad in the moment that he had a speech impediment, couldn’t swear, and was almost completely hairless.  Mommy Rose certainly seemed to like him better as the game continued.  Why?  Maybe she was a gold digger or something.  Ryan didn’t much care just then.  He didn’t have to.

“Now that we’ve all had some refreshments,” Molly joked, “Let’s go back to bidding.  Shall we boys?” All three lazily giggled and nodded their consent.  This was some good shit!  “Okay then.  Then the amount we’re bidding on passes toooooooo….” she paused.  “Baby Ry-Ry!”

Ryan was so stoned out of his gourd he didn’t care that his entire name had been butchered and infantilized.  “Fohty...thousand,” he slurred.  The money amount slid away as the Ryan read  “Potty twaining?”  Had his vision become as fucked up as his speech?

Thunderous cheering erupted from the audience.  “First bid goes to Ryan!”

Ryan blinked.  His entire face felt kind of numb, not to mention the rest of him.  “What am I bidding?”

“How potty trained do you want to be?” Molly asked. “A simple bed wetter? Daytime accidents? Pull-Ups?”  Of course, you could always opt out and lose all of the money you just won by drinking your ba-ba all down.”

A tap on Ryan’s shoulder alerted him to the beautiful redhead he’s handpicked to be his Mommy.  “Bet big,” she said.  “Scare them into being too afraid to escalate.”

Mommy Rose has a point.  That’s how Ryan had won before.  Now that he was first to bid, he could up the ante from the very beginning.  Besides, based on the audience reactions and the decor, this is what everyone was looking forward to most.  Not a single enlarged box of Pull-Ups was on stage.  That meant something.

Fuck it. “I wanna be unpotty twained!” Ryan declared.  Give the people what they want. “Diapuhs twenty-foh seven.”  The gasp from the assembled women was one of pure delight.  

“I’m so proud of you!” Mommy Rose cooed seductively in his ear.  “You won’t regret this I promise.”  That promise was almost immediately broken.

“The fudge?!” Sammy cried out. “That’s no fair!”

“How can we lose MORE than everything?” Tony added.

Molly Cawdle pressed a finger into her ear.  “Judges?” she asked.  Her gaze went into the middle distance as someone in a booth told her what to say next.  Her mouth twerked in amusement at what she heard based on whatever the producer/judges were telling her.

“Because of Ry-Ry’s...unorthodox bid…” Molly said into her microphone. “Little Sammy, and Tony are going to be allowed to match the bid.  If they do, they’ll split the fifty thousand dollars among them.”

“Alright,” Tony said, earning a kiss from the woman he’d picked to Mommy him.  “I’ll do it.”

“Fudge it...I’m in.”

“Congratulations.  All of you split the pot!”

Now it was Ryan’s turn to shout “No fair!”

“It might not be fair,” the show’s host said, “but it’s what we’re going with! Now, it’s time tooooo…”

“PAY UP, BABY!”

The privacy curtain didn’t come out this time.  The quasi-medical crew rushed the stage again, tilting their giant high-chairs back.  Instead of an operating table, it was officially a changing table. He heard a muted click as the barrier between his legs was slid out, leaving him laying down spread eagle.

Drugged out of his mind and with a highchair’s feeding tray separating his chest from the rest of his body, Ryan felt almost completely divorced from the bottom of half of his waist.  He wasn’t quite numb enough to notice that his pants were being taken off for him.  The hoots and hollers from the audience didn’t help matters either.

“Now,” Molly Cawdle said, addressing the three women who’d been selected, “Here’s the question that we’ve been dying to find out.  What kind of diapers will your baby boys be wearing?”

Each of the women took their turn at the microphone, giving answers that could have doubled as commercials; their tone and tempo of speaking like something out of a beauty pageant.  (Which made sense enough; everyone in the audience seemed like they might have experience in such things)

“I want Huggies for my little Ry-Ry,” Mommy Rose could be heard saying.  “They’re very good on leaks and they’re perfume free.”

“One Huggies, Size nine!” Molly ordered with all the flare of a circus ringmaster.

Tony’s Mommy said, “I think Tony would look absolutely adorable in Pampers.  I especially like how they have a filter for keeping messies away from his skin so he doesn’t get a rash.”

“Get her a Pampers size eight!”

“You know what they say.  Live and learn.  Then get Luvs.  I think Sammy looks good in purple and Luvs holds everything in just fine.”

“You heard the new Mommy!” Molly called.  “Luvs, size ten.”

As this bit of pageantry was going on in the forefront, the real work was going on in the background.  Ryan saw his feet for the first time since he woke up when they were lifted up past the feeding tray.  A sense of fullness invaded him as a rod entered his behind, causing his toes to curl.

He felt, more than heard, the whoosh, like a pneumatic tube as something-some kind of pill maybe-was shot directly up his anus.  The slaps to his ass didn’t sting in a way he could feel, but they did cause his buttocks to clench and his asshole to pucker in.  Whatever they put in wasn’t coming out.

Ryan and company were given the mercy of not seeing the medical implements for the first part.  They weren’t lucky enough, for the second part.  Was that a roto rooter? For what?  His penis?  The claw at the end of the strange little contraption held a tiny little rock, no bigger than a kidney stone.  Only it’s translucent gel like surface told Ryan that it wasn’t a kidney stone.

“No-no-no-no!”  Tony screamed.  “STOP! STOP! I TAKE IT BACK!”

Sammy was no better.  “I CHANGED MY MIND!”

“Too late for that, boys! There’s only a few things that are going to be changed in your future, and your mind isn’t one of them.”  Everyone BUT the three men loved that line.  Ryan screamed.  Not because it hurt-it was a numb discomfort like at a dentist’s visit-but because his drug addled brain just realized what was happening to him.

“SOME OF YOU MAYBE WONDERING HOW WE’RE UNPOTTY TRAINING THESE THREE SO FAST.  THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE: BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY. ALMA MATER INTERNATIONAL’S UNIQUE BLEND OF PROPRIETARY CHEMICALS HAVE BEEN INSERTED INTO THEIR RECTUMS AND DOWN INTO THEIR BLADDERS, DISSOLVING, NUMBING, AND WEAKENING THEIR SPHINCTERS.  THESE FAST ACTING INGREDIENTS MAKE IT SO THAT THESE LITTLE DARLINGS WILL HAVE NO CONTROL OVER WHEN THEY MAKE PEE-PEE’S AND BOOMBOOMS! THEY WON’T EVEN KNOW THEY’RE GOING UNTIL IT COMES OUT OF THEM!

More music piped in over the speakers combined with Molly’s schpiel to cover up the sound of steel cables snaking into and down the victim’s genitals and their crying shrieks.

By the time everything had been inserted, each of the three women invited on stage had a very large looking baby diaper in their hands.  “Now ladies,” Molly said get those diapers on, stat!  You’ve got three tykes who are no where NEAR potty trained...anymore.”

“The heck?” Ryan gasped as the strange redhead came over and lifted his ankles back up to the ceiling.  “How awe you so stwong?!”

“Hold on, baby boy,” Rose said.  She was focusing intently on slipping the gigantic Huggies beneath him.  “Mommy’s new at this.  Don’t want any leaks.”  The feeling was just starting to return to Ryan’s backside as his rump came down on the soft padding.  “You’re doing so good.” she cooed.  

A stagehand offered a bottle of baby powder, which she accepted.  The feeling in his skin was returned enough that he felt the cold puff of scented cornstarch as it was added to his crotch.

“WHOOPS!” Ryan heard Molly exclaim over the microphone.  “LOOKS LIKE OUR FAST ACTING INGREDIENTS WORKED REALLY FAST WITH TONY! CAN WE GET ANOTHER PAMPERS OVER HERE? SIZE EIGHT? THANK YOU!”

Ryan felt the brittle crackling as the diaper shifted beneath him.  He followed Rose’s arms as she yanked up the front of the diaper over his waist.  Had those patches been on her arms beforehand?  Ryan didn’t think so.  He felt the diaper wrap around him and take shape as the tapes were fastened to the landing zone.   He’d been right.  He could definitely tell the difference between wearing shorts and a diaper.  

“Do I at least get my pants back?” Ryan pleaded when the deed was done.  

His new Mommy giggled.  “I don’t think they’ll fit over your diaper, baby.”  Then she leaned in and gave him a kiss.  “I’m so proud of you.”  The drugged bottle out of his system, neither the kiss nor the words had the same effect.

“That was exciting, wasn’t it folks?” Molly asked.  Everyone not confined to disposable underwear for the rest of their lives enthusiastically agreed. The three who were just sulked as their highchairs were tilted back up.

“I quit!”  Tony roared.  Barefeet thrashed and kicked. “I quit! I quit! I quit!  I’m not bidding! I’m not playing!  I don’t want the money!  I can’t even control when I go pee!”

“That’s what diapers are for, Tony.”

“I DON’T CARE!”  Bald and trapped in the highchair as he was, Tony didn’t look like he was having a meltdown to Ryan as much as he was throwing a temper tantrum.   “The rules say that if I quit, I lose all the money.  Fine.  I quit!  Get me out of this thing!”

“Someone sure is fussy!” Molly joked to knowing laughter and applause for the audience.

“STOP IT!”

“But Tony,” she replied with a wink towards the camera.  “If you give up now, you won’t be able to bid on our biggest prize so far.”  She motioned.  “Our last prize.  And our last prize...is priceless.”

She gestured over to the clue board.  All other monetary values were replaced.  Only one category remained.  

JACKPOT

“If you opt out now, Tony,” Molly said menacingly, “You go out on your cute little tushy.  If you manage to find your way back home, your Mom and Dad will a tastefully edited tape of this episode in their inbox.  Think they’ll take you back with no money?  They’re already considering evicting you….”

The front of Ryan’s giant sized Huggies became wet as his bladder released in time with the game show host’s sudden change in demeanor?  Coincidence?  Perhaps.  As promised he’d had no idea that the bottle had worked its way through his system until his bladder released it gushing and without hesitation into his crinkling baby pants.  

Right then another thought occurred to Ryan:  He couldn’t go home, either.  Not like this.  He was barely making rent and eating.  How would he manage to afford diapers for himself?  Long story short; without the money, he couldn’t.

Sammy bowed his head and just kept sucking on his pacifier.  Tony did the same.  It appeared as if they were all in the same sinking ship with nothing to do but try and tread water.

Another cart, this one with oversized jars of baby food was wheeled out.  “But before we go to our, final round.  I think it’s time for a little snack.  Don’t you?”  Nobody said anything.  All just kept quiet, sucking on their pacifiers, letting the numbness fill them again.  Ryan knew they’d need it.

Bibs found their way across all three’s chests.  And the three women who’d been picked out of the audience took the jars and placed them on their respective feeding trays.  “Be good boys and finish your num-nums. Whoever finishes first gets the first bid!  And you all know how important that can be!”

“You can do this,” Rose whispered to him.  “I know you can!”  Small comfort.

“On your mark! Get set! Goooooo!”

The audience set to clapping as spoonful after spoonful of reddish brown mush on plastic spoons made their way into the boys’ mouths.  It wasn’t tasteless either, Ryan discovered.  More like a burning jalapeno cinnamon.  

Each spoonful caused his mouth to burn in agony.  Still, he swallowed.  Ryan looked to his periphery to see that Tony and Sammy were reflexively spitting the stuff out, letting it dribble out of their mouths.  

It did them no good.  Their dribbles were caught by their Mommies’ spoons and reinserted back into their mouth.  Their pain was only slowing them down.  “You’re such a good eater!” Rose praised. It took everything he had not to roll his eyes and just keep muscling through the pain.

The pain didn’t last long, however.  Instead a kind of numbness, like anesthetic, spread all through Ryan’s mouth.  Flaming hot and spicy, replaced with a cold numbness.  The exact opposite of icy hot.  Something was definitely in this stuff.  “Careful,” Mommy Rose cooed. Ryan felt the spoon scoop up some of his own numb mouth dribbles.  “Make sure you swallow one bite before you open your mouth for the next.”  Damn it.

A dozen more spoonfuls and a new pain worked its way into Ryan’s system.  Whatever had been injected into him made it so that he wouldn’t be able to hold anything in; but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel the cramps.  The express train to the backseat of his diaper was pulling out of the station.

Ryan couldn’t stop.  He didn’t have time to stop.  He had to win.  He had to get this first bet...aim high enough on whatever they were doing so that he might actually be able to walk away!  Another wave of cramps hit Ryan and he leaned forward, right into the next spoonful.

“Good baby!” Mommy Rose said.  “Such a good eater.” 

Ryan didn’t feel his backside pushing out the mess, but he felt everything else: He felt the bottoms of his feet push against the foot rest a little more as his body automatically reacted to the discomfort and cramps. He felt the cramps and pressure in his gut subside.  He felt his cheeks spread and the hot mess push out into the back of his diaper; pushing and pushing until the Huggies had no more give, then spreading out.  He felt his knees buckle as he swallowed another spoonful of mush and his backside come all the way back down onto the seat, spreading around.

“Makin’ room?” Mommy Rosie asked.  “That’s fine!  I’ll change you later, baby!”

He wasn’t done either.  Again.  And again. And again.  Ryan leaned forward as far as he could just to get that spoonful of faux baby food into his mouth.  Time and again, he’d lose strength and be yanked back into his mushy diaper.  A few times, the cramps came again, and another load was added to the pile.

By the time he was done, Ryan had felt he was sitting an entire inch higher than he had been. He wasn’t alone, either.  Tony had let out a wailing “NOOOOOOOOOO!” and fortunately for him, big bad Sammy had maintained his ability to say “Shit”.  

Ryan had only opened his mouth to take in more of the numbing food.  Worth it.

“WE HAVE A WINNER!”  

Rose held her clean jar as proof.  Ryan leaned back in his chair and groaned.  The stuff he’d just eaten had all sunk to the bottom of his stomach, like a rock.  He let out a low groan that started to turn into a drone.  This stuff...it did more than numb his mouth it seemed.  The world was no longer looking so bright and happy.  More like dark...and quiet…

More than anything, shitty diaper or not, Ryan wanted to sleep.  Groans from the runners up, confirmed it.

“Uh-oh...looks like somebody’s ready for naptime.”  Molly Cawdle declared.  She sniffed loudly into her microphone. “And a change!”  It was the manic, cackling laughter from the audience- Romans watching slaves fed to the lions- that kept Ryan conscious.  He’d been experimented on...bottle and spoonfed...even shit himself in front of these strangers.  He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of passing out in front of them.

Molly gestured back to the faux refrigerator.  “So let’s see how we’re going to wrap this game up.  What do our baby boys have to bargain with to get their Jackpot to make this all worth wild?”  The “Jackpot” sign moved, and it’s place was a single word.

Teeth.

They were bidding on teeth.  Reflexively, Ryan ran his tongue along his mouth; or at least thought about it.  He couldn’t tell at all, he was so numb.  And no wonder.  They were made high to think that bargaining away their continence was a good idea.  “So here’s the game, baby boys.” The hostess said.  “You’re bidding on teeth.  BUT there’s a twist.  IF there’s a tie, everyone who ties, loses.”

The microphone made its way to him.  SHIT!  Now if he bid high out of the gate, he was at a disadvantage.  Then an idea came to him.  It might have been madness.  It might have been his drugged drowsiness, but Ryan thought he might have a way to win.  First to get everyone on the board.  “All but two teeth,” he said.  “Foh gwaham cwackuhs.”  Then he let out a long yawn.
“AWWWWWWWW!”  Perfect.   Rose was applauding loudest of all.  She was already imagining him as a buck toothed toddler.  They were buying it.  The rules didn’t matter.  The crazy people did.   Ryan hoped anyways.  Damn it was hard to keep his eyes open.

“All but one tooth,” Sammy said.  

A smirk came over Tony.  “All my teeth.  Take them.  I’ll get dentures.”

“Looks like we have a winner!  So get ready to-”

“WAAAAAAAAAAIT!” Ryan yelled.  “I wanna bid again!”  The words came out drunken and slurred.  It was taking everything he had to get the words out intelligibly.

Molly Cawdle arched an eyebrow.  “You want to tie?  If you tie you’ll lose everything.  You know that, right sweetie?”  

Ryan nodded.  “Uh-huh.” He said.  “I bid all my teeth too!”  

“So it’s a tie.”

Ryan shook his head.  “Nuh-uh.  I have extra teeth!”  He opened his mouth wide.  He never did have the money to get his wisdom teeth removed.  “All thirty two!”

“B-b-b-but!” Tony stuttered.  “That’s not fair!”  It wasn’t.  At no other time had how much lost counted; only what was left.

Molly seemed to consider.  “Hmmm….”

“And I’ll give up solids! Liquid diet!”

“WE HAVE A WINNER!”

Good.  Baby Ry-Ry lulled his head to the side, his eyes drooping even as his chair was laid back.  The sounds of Tony and Sammy screaming became so much white noise as he was swarmed by med-teams wielding pliers and power tools. He closed his eyes.  He was sure he didn’t want to be awake for this….

************************************************************************************************
“Good morning,  Ry-Ry!” Mommy cooed.

Ryan’s eyes fluttered up.  The side of the crib was already down.  “Mohnin’ Mommy…”

“Did you sleep, well?” she asked, unbuttoning his onesie for him and hiking it over his hips.  She didn’t wait for him to reply before lifting him up and plopping him on the adult sized changing table.  Mommy was strong now.  All the steroids and muscle enhancements they’d given her thanks to the prize winnings had made it so.  

Mommy undid the tapes of his Huggies, Size 9 and started wiping his bottom for him.  “You were mumbling something in your sleep.  Was it a nightmare?”

Yes.

“No.”  It was a memory.  An awful memory that plagued him everytime he could bother to remember his dreams.  He’d won everything alright.  Half a million dollars wasn’t THAT much compared to Gates and Bezos.  But it was enough to furnish the nursery he woke up in every day.  It paid for at least the first year of diapers, though the one being slid under his bum was far removed from that.  And it paid for the final few bits of surgery that he and Tony and Sammy hadn’t been greedy or desperate enough to get coaxed into. Bye bye inner ear balance.  Ry-Ry was a full time crawler now.  He really did need to sleep in his crib.

What Ryan never had noticed...what he should have noticed...that under the terms and services of signing up for the show, carefully couched in coded legalese, was the “understanding” that he had no right to spend.  His “chosen guardian who had complete power of attorney” over him had all the spending power.

As Mommy finished powdering and taping up the umpteenth million diaper, Ryan relived that horrible incident forever burned into his memory. He always wondered what happened to those guys.   He’d never seen them again.  Not at the adult baby daycare he’d been plopped into.  None of the playdates with Mommy’s friends or their “little boys”. Nowhere.  Part of him hoped they’d been let go...but he knew otherwise.

No one ever really won “Pay Up, Baby!”.  Not unless they were selected from the audience.

“Ready for your breakfast?” Mommy asked, picking Ry-Ry up and taking him over to the nursery’s rocking chair.  

No.

“Uh-huh.”  It wasn’t just the muscle enhancers, Ryan admitted.  He’d lost weight too.  A lot of weight.  It was hard to keep weight up on a liquid diet, no matter how caloric it otherwise was.  

“Say please.”

“Pweeeash.”  It was hard to say the “s” and the “l” sounds with no teeth.

Mommy was already opening up her nursing bra.  “Say pretty please.”
“Pwetty pweash.”

“Good baby.”  Mommy’s milky tit came straight for Ry-Ry’s face.  And Ry-Ry did what he’d always done.  He had no other choice. And besides, he was hungry. He suckled.  Suckled and criCed.

(The End)