The New Narnia- Chapter 34: Bottom (Patreon)

Chapter 34: Bottom.

Step out, step out of the sun

If you keep getting burned

Step out, step out of the sun

Because you've learned, because you've learned

Tommy and his mother sat on the plush carpet of a living room that hadn’t existed a few days ago. The young man dressed in nothing more than a t-shirt and a (for now) dry Pull-Up, he sat with his legs splayed out in front of him, leaning back on his hands for balance.  His mother sat cross legged in front of him, a deck of pre-kindergarten flashcards in her lap.

“What’s this one, Tommy?”  Mommy held up a flashcard of a bright yellow square.  “What shape is this?”

His eyes half closed, Tommy said, “Triangle.”

“Oh!” Mommy winced.  “Close.  It’s a Square. Squaaaaaare.  Can you say square?”

Tommy yawned.  “Square.”

She shuffled the flashcard back into the deck.  Now that Mommy was some kind of big shot antique dealer, she spent most days working from home.  Tommy didn’t go to school anymore and as far as he could tell no one remembered him ever having gone to begin with.  He’d found an old  picture of him and Katie back in Kindergarten hanging on the kitchen wall.  The class picture had been just as he remembered it, save for the puffiness of in his kindergarten self’s pants.

So apparently, he’d at least gone to Kindergarten.  Based on how Mommy and everyone else treated him he’d failed it big time.  These days he was being “homeschooled”.

Mommy showed him another flashcard.  This one of a rectangle.  “What about this one?”

“Triangle.”

“No,” Mommy said in an encouraging tone.  “Try again.”

“Square.”

“So close.  It’s a rectangle.”  Mommy drew the shape’s name out, pronouncing each syllable as separate from the others.  “Rec.Tang. Ul.  Reeeeeeeectaaaaaaaangle.”

Like a sheep,  (a very bored one) Tommy mindlessly echoed his mother.  Of course it was a rectangle.  Last one was a square, too, he’d known.  He just didn’t care.  Just like the transformation previous, Tommy was thought of a dumb kid no matter how he might prove otherwise.  He’d flawlessly gotten these flashcards right dozens of times previously, but the content never got any more challenging.

Yesterday, he’d recited the alphabet forwards and backwards and proclaimed to Mommy that he was the very model of a modern major general, and got a head pat and his pants checked for his trouble.  Then he was offered a snack.  Nothing was changing (save for his Pull-Ups).  Everytime he said something more complex than a three-year-old, whoever was listening would just smile as something overwrote him and scrambled the meaning in people’s brains to a childish babble.

Nothing was changing. It was like that one Bill Murray movie, but worse, because time seemed to go forward for everyone BUT Tommy.  

That’s why he was getting everything wrong today.  Getting the simplest answers wrong, at the very least, would be something new.  Not that Mommy and Katie could tell.  He let out a weary sigh and looked back over his shoulder at the door.  Tommy was just so incredibly bored.

Bored and heartbroken.  He still hadn’t gotten over the disastrous babysitting incident with Amanda.  He was still kicking himself for that.  Amanda didn’t love him.  Didn’t even like him.  She never had and never would.  

Sure, she was nice enough when she thought he was a simpleton at highschool; but that was coming from a place of pity and condescension.  Superiority.  She hadn’t been a TERRIBLE babysitter, per se…though good sitters didn’t have make out sessions at the kid’s house)...but it hadn’t been hardly anything like his fantasies.  If anything he’d been hoping for the makeout session.

Wow! How stupid that was in hindsight?

She’d been disgusted by him as his peer
She’d pitied him as his superior

She’d done the bare minimum as his caregiver.  

Just like her Malacus counterpart, Amanda Monroe was neither a great person, nor a good fit with Tommy Dean.  

Malacus.

Tommy shuddered as he shifted and rolled over to all fours.

That horrible place.  It’d done something to his sister, too, even though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it for whatever reason. The world inside the (now, not so old) clock was magical, alright.  But “magic” wasn’t the same as good.

“Tommy?  What are you doing?”

Tommy let out a sigh and shook his head. It made sense, in an odd way.  The magic, when he came back from the clock, changed what people remembered of him and how they saw him.  It could shrink him and change his body, too.  It just couldn’t change who people were. Not deep down. Not on the inside.

“Tommy?”  Mommy called again.  “Tommy do you need to go potty, big boy?”

The magic inside Malacus wasn’t much different.  The things that lived there had familiar faces, but he’d heard enough of the centaur’s confession to know that they hadn’t been truthful to him.  Super strength.  Flying.  It was a fantasy meant to distract him and distance himself from the world around him.  Keep him so distracted that he wouldn’t know or care about how his life was being warped at home.

“Oh yikes, you are!” Mommy scooped Tommy up by the armpits and on hurried feet carried the little man to the bathroom.  Tommy was plopped down on a training potty, while Mommy looked at the inside of his Paw-Patrol Pull-Ups.  “Almost…” she sighed.  

The sound of the sides ripping open made Tommy blink. “Huh?”  He’d been so deep in thought he hadn’t realized he’d been pooping.  The brown skidmarks in the back and the fresh yellow stains in the front told a different story.

“Finish up, baby,” Mommy said balling up the not-quite diaper.  “I’ll help you wipe when you’re done.”  And she left to give him the illusion of privacy (as well as to fetch a fresh Pull-Up).

Tomy grunted and looked into the middle distance.  Katy was acting oddly, too, come to think of it; even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  She definitely wasn’t the kind of person that would normally let someone who was functionally three poop their pants so they could flirt with a boy.  But if the magic of the clock didn’t change who you were on the inside…?

A hollow plop echoed in the pot as Tommy finished pooping.  Mommy came in and had him bend over so that she could wipe him.  Truth be told, he’d rather be laying down for this; but there was still a part of Mommy that expected him to be a “big boy”; at least wanted him to try.

As he stepped into a fresh pair of pull-on-diapers (because really, that’s how he preferred to use them) Tommy’s face melted into a fatigued frown. Emotionally he’d hit bottom.  And it hurt, but it was more of a dull, draining ache than a sharp stabbing pain.

He had a really cool toddler bed with rails in case he rolled, but Mommy still had him make it; (she still did most of the work).  He had a diaper pail, but he was being pressured to make it obsolete with this plastic chamber pot.  He’d “failed” school but was still being pressured to learn, but it didn’t matter if he did or not.   He had plenty of attention from his Mommy, but no friends.  Come to think of it, it had been a while since he had friends; but now he didn’t even have peers.  

It wasn’t a broadway play, but a quote from the Karate Kid came to mind:

“Walk right side. Safe.  Walk left side. Safe.  Walk Middle. Sooner or later, squish like grape.”  Tommy had looked for escape in childish fantasies, but at present he was neither ‘little boy yes’ or ‘little boy no’.  He was ‘little boy guess so’.  That was probably why he felt like a squished grape.  

THUD-THUD-THUD.

There was a loud knocking at the door.  “I’ll get it!” Katy called from upstairs.  (So freaking weird that they had an upstairs, now!)  

“Oh boy,” Mommy rolled her eyes.  “Another one of Katie’s dates.”  She leaned in close to Tommy and whispered to him, “I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about you growing up and going on dates.”  If Tommy hadn’t been feeling so down he would have been elated at such praise.  Instead, he just felt more caught.  He wasn’t big enough or small enough for his needs.

Middle of the road.

Squish like grape.

Katie’s footsteps came in before her, smoother, slower perhaps disappointed.  “Hey, Mom,” Katie poked her head into the bathroom.  “Someone wants to see you.”

Mommy took Tommy’s hand and led him to the front door.  “Hello, can I help you?

Tommy’s mouth hung open with the front door.  Standing on the stoop was a woman; a girl really, in Tommy’s mind, just a few years older than Tommy should have been.  Not in her thirties, but still wearing the same white t-shirt and jeans when he’d seen her on the playground.  Her brunette hair no longer flowed down her shoulders but was trimmed shorter into a cute pixie cut.

What gave it away, however, were those alluring, mismatched eyes:  One blue and one green.

“Hello, Ma’am,”  The Nanny said.  “Do you have a moment to talk?”