Unfair-Chapter 129: Immersion (Patreon)

Chapter 129: Immersion

Janet opened the frosted glass door and ushered me forward. “After you.”

I bit down on my tongue and muscled through every instinct telling me to be difficult.  “Thanks,” I mumbled and crinkled through. The ice blue walls of the ticket area stopped at the door and made way for inoffensive eggshell white. Bars of trashy pop riffs greeted my ears, and I exhaled in unconscious relief.  

No nursery rhymes, or diaper changing songs, or stupid little ditties that made the pleasure centers of my brain light up. Just a plain catchy four chord song that would be popular for a few months, replaced, and forgotten by the next. A bout of paranoia made me slow blink and examine the state of my pants. Still dry. My face muscles relaxed; I could still frown if I forced it. There really was nothing hinky about the music.

“Oh yeah!
Bay-Bay!
You know you’re just making me cray-cray!”

My ears pricked up and I corrected myself: The music wasn’t hypnotic or disorienting in any way. Most Top 40 hits weren’t sung by what sounded like a chorus of autotuned kids. I dug a pinky into my ear and twisted it. It wasn’t the worst thing that I’d heard, but it certainly wasn’t ‘adult’ music.

Janet tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you wanna look around the gift shop first or check out the exhibits?”  

I inhaled sharply through my nose.  Bless her, she was trying to give me a choice. “Let’s browse,” I said. The inside of my skull still felt like it was filled with fire ants.

“Sure,” Janet agreed. “Maybe we can find something you like.” Her eyes darted left. “Or, maybe we can just see what there is to see and if something catches our eye, we can get it on the way out.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a sense of dread mounting.  “Sure.”

When one thinks of gift shops, one normally pictures small rinky-dink segments at the end of an attraction or park, usually big enough to comfortably accommodate anywhere from half a dozen to twenty Amazons.  The gift shop at the ol’ Triple-P was big enough that it could have been its own department store. If someone had knocked down the walls between my classroom, Beouf’s class, her nap room, and the OT/PT room, there still wouldn’t have been nearly enough space to fit this place in.  

At the other end from where we stood, a large opening bigger than Janet’s garage beckoned us deeper into the Pretend Play Preserve Proper.  For reasons I couldn’t yet articulate, just looking out into it my stomach churn like it was filled with training chocolate. I did not like this place but damnit, Janet was genuinely trying and it served no purpose for me not to play along.  I could at least meet her halfway.

I reached up and took Janet’s hand.  “Follow me,” I said, and plunge into forests of shelves filled with knick-knacks, do-dads and other useless theme park garbage.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what the gift shop was all about.  Bins low enough for Littles to dig around in and cubbies with helpful step stools and ladders dotted the carpet.  In them were rings, necklaces, bracelets, and various other bits of costume jewelry that looked just real enough until you squinted at them. Stacks of police officer caps, firefighter helmets, crowns, and cowboy hats took up a corner shelf.   This was essentially a costume shop specializing in dress up accessories because of course it was.  What else would a ‘Pretend Play Preserve’ sell?

“What do you think of this?” Janet grabbed a cell phone that looked almost real until she bent over and handed it to me.  “Pretty cool, huh?”

I looked down at the black brick in my palm and felt my face sag. No way was this a real phone.  It fit in my hand too perfectly.  “Yeah…”

Janet took another one and looked at it through the vacuum sealed plastic wrapping.. “I think these take batteries. Maybe it makes sounds? Or the screen lights up?”

I picked up a gold wrist watch from one of the lower bins. The faintest jingle rippled into my ears and the corners of my mouth shot upward and a surge of adrenaline rocketed through me. If I hadn’t just been changed I may have wet myself.  I put the fancy looking wrist rattle down as carefully as I could and I stepped away.  “Could you put this back for me?” I asked Janet, indicating the toy phone. If this device made any sounds, I was sure I didn’t want to hear them.

“Sure,” Janet leaned down and took the mind fucking toy back from me. Suddenly, she thought better of it.  “Are you sure you don’t want to do it yourself?”  She gestured to one of available built-in step ladders.  It was wooden and painted to match the rest of the display with rough sandpapery grips to prevent slipping and an outer rail to aid in climbing, but no inner one to prevent me from reaching into a cubby.

They littered the place, too. If I had wanted to, I could have climbed up a far wall and gotten as high as Janet’s shoulder so that I could reach a silvery gray knit cap meant to resemble a knight’s helm.  I looked over my shoulder and spotted a tiny makeup counter where a Tweener

If only I’d had some of these in my classroom. Looking over my shoulder revealed a kind of mini-salon. A Little girl was being attended to by a uniformed Tweener, brushing her hair and spraying it stiff.  The chair didn’t dwarf the girl, and sat on a pole designed to raise and lower itself; no phone books or booster seats required.  She leaned forward towards a vanity mirror and tried on eyeshadow for what might have been the first time in a very long while. All by herself.

My entire face felt numb, even while my insides itched.  “No thanks,” I said to Janet “You can put it away for me.”

Janet put the terrible toy away for me and looked down at her diaper bag. “Any clothes or outfits you want to look at?” she asked.  I couldn’t tell if that was hope or dread riding along on her voice.  Did she want me to become invested in this trip, or was she worried I might get too ‘into character’ as it were?

The hangers on the wall closest to the register along with several nearby racks were decked out with Little sized outfits; actual, non-childish ensembles that a self-respecting adult might dress themselves in. The kind and style that I used to wear and that I saw other Littles wearing, too. I wandered slowly over, not even blanching at the signs hanging from the ceiling: “Build a Big Girl” to the left and “Build a Big Boy” to the right.

Unlike with the rest of the displays, there were no ladders to get up high or low bins to rummage around freely in.  Cynically, I suspected these were the most popular item; the ones most likely to be shoplifted or destroyed by desperate and grasping Little hands.

A  rack of charming gray polos with yellow trim on the shoulders caught my attention. I pointed up.  “Mommy, can I see that?” I threw in the M-word just in case.

Janet took it down for me and checked the tag. “This looks to be about your…” she stopped mid sentence.  “Well will you look at that?!” she said. She lifted its hem and shook out an extra bit of white cloth like a pouch.  She kneeled and hiked the bottom up some more so that I could see.

“It’s got a onesie sewn inside,” I said. My lip curled up in revulsion.  “Why?”

Janet touched the tip of her bottom lip, thoughtfully.  “Hmmm. If you’ve got a onesie sewn into the shirt, then your diaper won’t be able to peek out. Helps with sagging, too.”

I didn’t even try to conceal my disappointment at this. “How is that any different than the dress shirt onesie you got me?”

Janet paused and thought for a second, running her fingers over the monstrosity. “All the shirt buttons are real,” she finally said.  “And you can keep the shirt part untucked so nobody will know you’re wearing a onesie.”

From a pragmatic standpoint that was true. Onesies always had a certain snugness due to the crotch snaps. I pictured myself in my ‘feast friend’ getup. There was ‘tucked in’ and there was ‘you’re wearing pants over a baby shirt’.  It was a small detail, but one that was near impossible to overlook once you noticed.  “Yeah,” I sighed.

Janet put the polo back and took a pair of navy blue pants off a hanger. “Oh look!” she giggled. “These pants have some extra support mesh in them like a bathing suit.” She pinched her fingers and ran them along the waist band. “And there’s an extra flat layer here on the outside to disguise the elastic. And the snap buttons look like regular buttons.  Oh, and the zipper’s real! That’s kind of neat.”

A terrible lightbulb went off in my brain. These were likely the same kind of clothes the Littles coming in here had been wearing. Baby clothes modified to look like real ones and provide some minor bits of camouflage, but nothing else. That girl from the crosswalk’s blouse probably snapped on in between her thighs, too. A glance at the Build a Big Girl section confirmed it.  

The Littles I’d seen and felt such anxiety and confusion weren’t actually dressed like their adult selves; they were just being allowed to cosplay in public.  The difference between a tuxedo and a tuxedo t-shirt.

“So this is just…” I struggled with the words, “A costume? A better version of…of…” I pointed at my diaper bag, indicating the mock adult costume inside it.

“I guess so,” Janet admitted. She put the clothes she’d pulled back and picked up a t-shirt and jeans combo that was hung up as a full ensemble “Huh. Look. This entire outfit is really just a romper. Clever!”  She looked at the price tag and her mood dropped. “Do you want one of these?”

Polo onesies that prevented peeks. Slacks that hit diaper bulges and sagging. Rompers that looked like two piece outfits. Clothes that allowed me to masquerade as my old life but I couldn’t take off by myself. The barest hint of a fantasy where I broke off and camouflaged my way to freedom through an unsuspecting crowd flickered in my mind and shut itself down at the realization that I couldn’t get the disguise off by myself.

“Not really.”

Janet puffed her cheeks. She looked just as unsure as me. Was she blanching at the price or the thought of me looking like something other than her baby? Was she sighing in relief or worried that her special treat for today wasn’t getting me as excited as she’d hoped?

One thing yet gnawed at me.  “Can I see the special diapers they talked about? The ones that look like underwear?”  I was not calling it ‘Fun-derwear.’

She bit her bottom lip and looked around.  “Yeah. Sure.”  Her head scanned around. “But I don’t see them.”

“Checkout counter?” I suggested.

“Yeah,” she said. She scooped me up and walked us to the register.  “Excuse me,” she asked a Tweener woman in uniform.  “Can we take a look at the…” she paused and bit her lip again,  “…Fun-derwear?”  I could practically feel Janet’s skin threaten to break out into a cold and clammy sweat.

“Of course,” the Tweener said. “Boys or girls?”

“Boys.”

The Tweener bent over and grabbed a single puffy white rectangle from underneath the counter and placed it on top for Janet and I to inspect.  At a glance, it was thinner than what I was currently wearing beneath my shorts, but not by much. Its exterior was a soft, almost-cloth material that had more in common with the papery texture of a stack of tissues than proper cotton.

Its front had the drawing of the folded flap most pairs of tighty-whities had in order for the wearer to pee without pulling the underwear down. At its bottom was a slightly curved stencil around the leg gathers; fake leg holes as if the thing was thinner and less padded than it actually was. It was a poor pantomime; an obese person wearing a t-shirt with a skinny six pack drawn on the front.   The back and front waistbands were thicker and more elasticized so that they didn’t look like the top of a Monkeez or a Koddles, but that was it.

Catching and reflecting the light at the very top of the ‘Fun-derwear’ was a thin strip of plastic that acted as a landing zone. Janet peeled the fake undies open and found the clear Little-proof tapes tucked in the back.  This was literally just Pull-Up that had been converted into a diaper.

“This is our standard boys model,” the Tweener sales associate explained. “We sell them in packs of two for ten dollars, four for sixteen, and six for eighteen. We also have step-in versions where you have to pull the Fun-derwear up over their hips and then rip the sides so you can adjust the tape so you’ll get a good snug fit.  We’ve got a boxer version but that’s step-in only.”  

“Wow,” Janet remarked. “That’s kind of expensive for some diapers.”

The Tweener nodded. “Yes, ma’am. They’re not ideal as an everyday diaper, but it really helps with immersion.”

Immersion…I officially hated that word.

I felt Janet rub my back, trying to untense my body that I hadn’t even realized had clenched up. “They’re not required, are they?” she asked.

“No ma’am,” the Tweener smiled.  “All costuming is optional, just most of our costumes are two pieces and we noticed a lot of our Little guests becoming preoccupied with making sure their diapers weren’t showing.  So we’re trying this as something new.”
Janet turned her head to me.  “We’ve got the free coupon. Do you wanna try them?”

Just looking at the costume diaper made my ears burn. “No thank you.”

“Are you sure?” the Tweener broke in.  “Cops and firefighters don’t wear diapers.”

My face turned to stone. “I’m. Fine. Thank you.”

“We appreciate the information,” Janet said smoothly and carried me away.

“Thanks,” I whispered in her ear.

“Welcome, baby,” she whispered back, and I didn’t bristle.  We passed a display of diaper bags made to mimic briefcases and some pacifiers crossed with fake beards and mustaches, and went out the cave-like entrance and into the cavernous beyond of the Pretend Play Place Proper.

The gift shop was a full one stop costume shop store. The museum was an entire mall. A big one.  The perimeter of the bottom floor had equally cave sized entrances into as of yet unexplored territories as well as barriered rinks boasting open air play spaces.  Well above us, floors that could have doubled as four lane highways ringed the inside of the building with bridges connecting the two sides cast us in their shadow, with bits of sunlight from above streaming in and supplemental ceiling lights beneath the bridges picking up the slack.

All around us and above us, Littles and Amazons milled around from place to place, going excitedly from exhibit to exhibit. Manufactured families hopped on and off escalators and elevators, excited to see the next spectacle.  

Some held hands with the Little chomping at the bit to get to their next stop. Other Littles were carried, pointing and directing their giant on where to go next. One or two were in wheelchairs and scooters, being pushed along or motoring carefully through crowds as dense as an airport. Many Littles walked ahead of their assigned Grown-Ups, charging forward and stopping just long enough to make sure they were being followed by their beleaguered caregivers and wardens.

Plenty were dressed like me in loose fitting toddler shorts and shirts. Even more sported the camouflage costumes I’d fallen in and out of love with not two minutes before; their accompanying Amazons being the only indicator they weren’t free un-Adopted adults. I spotted one or two sulking in onesies and rompers, cheap hats and props the only accessories allowed them.  Footsteps, talking, shrieks, and giggles all converged and mixed to envelop us in a kind of white noise. One could whisper directly in their neighbor’s ear or raise their voice to just below screaming volume to be heard with practically no middle ground.

Janet looked up and around in awe of it all; a rarity for an Amazon. I recoiled back into her, feeling that terrible buzzing sensation well up in me a thousand times more than it did back in Beouf’s playground.  I loathed being here. It made my skin crawl. I was afraid of it. And I didn’t have the words to explain why.

“What do you want to do first?” Janet asked.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to retreat. To scream and curse and bite. To be honest and just ask to leave because I was so suddenly overwhelmed. A thousand justifications and one question- ‘why?’- made me go against myself.  

There were no children to passively indoctrinate with my existence. No Amazons without their own Little to focus and vent their madness upon.   I was a stranger here, my identity consumed by the crowd. No eyes boring in on me as a class-traitor turned classmate or a newcomer to a Mommy-baby lap bounce cult. No co-workers showing their true colors or stripping me of my adulthood. No ersatz in-laws telling me uncomfortable truths about myself.

This?  This was just a playground.  I’d already endured so much worse. Grinning and bearing it would only make things easier on me in the long run.  Besides…Janet wanted this.  I could endure.

“Let’s look around, first,” I told her. “See what’s available.”

“Good idea.”  

With me in her arms she waded out into the sea of people, examining the harmless looking grotesqueries this circus offered.  The floor and walls were painted in the same scheme as the building’s exterior. The walls and columns were a light cardboard brown with swathes, stripes, spirals, and splashes of color breaking up the dull monotony.

Peeking into different entrance ways and window displays on the ground floor, we found dozens of elaborate but unconvincing prop displays. Littles played on a mock construction site and swung on girders made of sturdy plastic. A kiosk handed out tiny hard hats and shiny orange vests for them to wear. Blunted plastic drills whirred when pressed against beams and people my age were taking turns bouncing on a pogo stick made to resemble a jackhammer. If none of them were wearing pants, it could have been a Monkeez commercial.

Pretend: This was all pretend and the designers of this space didn’t want anyone to forget that.  From the electric hum of the play cars zooming around in a center rink, to the ears of fake corn being gathered up in wicker baskets by farmers, to the fan flapped cloth flames being doused with buckets of blue confetti, to the banking and vault playset where plastic coins were exchanged, everything was an incredibly detailed yet insincere and sanitized reproduction of the real thing it replicated.  No one would look at any of these sets and think that it was anything but an adorable satire.  The exterior itself had been painted to look like a cardboard box that had been drawn on with crayons and finger paints.

“I want to see more,” I lied to Janet. “I can’t make up my mind.”

A dark entrance ominously flashed red and blue lights. Wooden walls painted to look like stone and a barred gate prevented us from looking deeper in. Canned recordings of cell doors slamming, guns firing, and metal doors slamming played on a loop.  The sign above read, “Crime and Punishment”  

Janet walked up to an Amazon teenager, leaning casually against the wall with his arms crossed. He wore the dapper red vest and black tie that signaled him as an employee.  “What’s in here?” she asked.

The guy thumbed over his shoulder. “Lots of competitive games. Hide and seek. Cops and robbers. Laser tag.  Prison break.”  He pointed to a small booth a few feet across to a standing booth and a row of stalls with curtains in lieu of doors. “You can get police uniforms and striped jumpsuits over there.  If either of you are in a hurry, you can just get a hat or a robber mask.”

Play: This was all just a game. A whimsical romp through fantasy. None of it was real. None of it mattered.  This was a hobby, at best. A money sink.  I bit down on my tongue and ground my teeth, feeling it much, much crueler.  Amazons had created an entire society based around convincing themselves people my size were as incompetent as children and in response manufactured an industry so that they could watch us play at being adults.

The barred door slid open. A lady with a sulking Little boy slung over her shoulder exited.  “Mamaaaaaa!” I heard him whine. “I wasn’t done yet! I wanted to put my buddy in the ‘lectric chaaaaair!”  He was dressed in a navy blue parody of a police officer’s uniform. His pants had slid down a few inches and the thick waistband of his mock underwear was exposed.

Ignoring her prisoner, the woman addressed the museum employee.  “Excuse me, I can’t remember: do I need to take the costume off before I change him or can I get his bottom sorted out first?” Roses blossomed on the phony cop’s cheeks.

“As long as you don’t leave a dirty diaper in the dressing room, don’t go into another play area with it on, and give it back before you leave we don’t really care, ma’am.”

“Awesome,” she said.  She patted the Little’s bottom, causing him to squirm, his own mess likely being further pressed with him.

“Mama!” the poor bastard begged. “Can we get more Fun-derwear? Pleeeeeease?”

“No sweetie. That’s too expensive.”

“But I wanna be a big boy!” He sniffled, his lip quivering and his eyes tearing up.  This idiot had really bought into the concept.

She pulled the cop-player away from her and dangled him by his armpits. “How about after we change, we go upstairs and you can be a knight? Get a big shiny suit of armor. They didn’t wear underwear back then, either.”

All embarrassment went away from the schmuck. “Okay!”

I made eye contact with Janet and quietly shook my head, begging her not to go in there.  “Yeah,” she mouthed. “Me too.’

Walking around, the sound of giddy giggles caused me to turn my head around.  Not quite ten feet away, Littles sat giggling on tall wooden stools at a carnival style face painting stall. Their Mommies and Daddies leaned in and showed the painters pictures on their cell phones, likely specific designs and patterns to replicate. No paint went on the Littles’ faces; only clear shiny lacquer and only on their lips, cheeks and chins.  Janet was still walking when I caught sight of one of the employees opening a drawer and then pasting fake beard hair on a Little boy’s face.

Facial hair! Fake facial hair put on top of some kind of spirit gum or skin glue!  Littles already had to lose their hair once.  Now it was just a costume! I had neither the words nor the vomit to express myself.

“What if we started here?”  Janet grabbed my attention.  

I followed her outstretched index finger all the way to another large open storefront turned exhibit playground. Plaster Ivy columns flanking either side were covered with artificial ivy. The sign above in royal blue lettering read  “Little’s University: Home of the Fighting Naked Mole Rats.”  The only saving grace was that the cardboard cutout mascot right by the entrance didn’t have a diaper on.

Out of the dressing stalls came Littles wearing letterman sports jackets and cheerleader costumes. Another burst through the curtain in a graduation cap and gown. Yet another strolled in with comically thick rimmed glasses and dorky plaid bowtie; a prop bundle of books under his arm.  What might have been the girl I’d seen at the crosswalk took an apple in with her. Whether it was a gift for the teacher or an indicator that she was a teacher herself I still do not know.

Preserve: This place was a museum, but we were its exhibits. It was a zoo and we were the animals; too stupid to realize that we were in a poor facsimile of our old lives or too starved of stimulation to care. See real Littles in recreations of their native habitats! View how they lived before we took them into captivity for their own safety!

The buzzing in my head went away and replaced itself with an awful, painful focus.  Nothing was safe or sacred here. Everything was a bastardized fun-house mirror version of the real thing.  Even my old passion that I’d poured so much of my time and identity into.

“Maybe we could find a classroom?” Janet said, innocently. “You could be a teacher again for a while.” A beat. “I could be your aide.”

“No thank you,” I said curtly. Avoiding eye contact.

“You don’t have to,” Janet said. “It was just a suggestion.” She didn’t move. A longer, awkward beat. “I know I’m not as good an assistant as Tracy, but-”

“I SAID NO!” My roar was drowned out among the cheers and chaos, but Janet more than heard it.

Her face struggled as she wrestled with what to do.  “Okay. You choose where.”

“What?”

“Up? Second floor? Third? Tip top? Somewhere we’ve already walked past?”

“I don’t know!” I practically shrieked. “How should I know? I’m just a-!”

“Pick one place to play in,” Janet promised, “and then we’ll go home.”

My head cleared. The buzzing came back, but not nearly as bad as it had been a moment ago.  “Just one?”

“For fifteen minutes. Then we can leave.”

I twisted around in her grasp and practically climbed over her shoulder. I wanted to get as far away as possible from anything resembling a school. Nearest the gift shop, opposite of the construction site, a big red cross glowed.  “Okay,” I grumbled. “Let’s play doctor.”

We circled around and went to the hospital section. A model ambulance was parked right outside.  Littles dressed up like EMTs took turns pushing each other through the entrance way on a gurney whose wheels were fixed to track that only went as a few feet past the entrance.  The Ambulance had a ramp coming out the back, making it look more like a moving van than a proper emergency vehicle, but would this place be accurate here?

“MAKE WAY! COMING THROUGH! CARDIAC ARREST VICTIM!”  

“SHUDDUP! YOU’RE DYING REMEMBER?”

The girl on the Little sized gurney was wearing the same kind of costume as the others. Her playmates gave her a push and rushed her all the way to the end of the track.  Then she rolled off of it like she was rolling out of bed (likely a forgotten sensation by now) and helped them push the rolling bed back up the track into play ambulance’s cab.

“Can I just do that for fifteen minutes?” I asked Janet, still on her hip.

“Depends,” she smirked  “Can you stand the constant repetition and glaring inaccuracies for that long?” I stammered and stuttered, not believing what I’d just heard.  How did she know me this damn well?  “Yeah, I couldn’t either.”

The hospital play place’s costume booth was nearby the ambulance without it being directly in the way.  “Doctor, nurse, or patient?” The employee manning the booth asked.

“Doctor, please,” I said as politely as I could.

“I figured,” they smiled, and handed me a set of blue scrubs, a stethoscope, and a white doctor’s coat.  “Sorry we just had a run on surgical scrubs.”

“Got anything in my size?” Janet asked.

The clerk snorted, then stopped when he realized she was being serious.  “Sorry ma’am. We don’t carry adult sizes.  You could be  one of those hot-shot doctors that doesn’t need a white coat like on T.V. if you wanted.”

Janet nuzzled my forehead and replied. “I was thinking of being a patient.”

The employee smacked their forehead. “Oh yeah! Duh!  People do that all the time. Just be a walk-in.”  They reached under their counter and handed Janet a wooden clipboard with a blank piece of paper. “Here’s a prop.”

“Deal.”  Janet took it without thinking and frowned, slightly confused.

“It’s your chart,” I guessed.

“Somebody definitely graduated med pre-school,” the clerk said. They shot finger guns at me and flashed a toothy smile.

My sour expression suddenly became impossible to maintain.  “Dang,” I swore. “That’s actually kind of funny.”   Five minutes later, my real clothes were crumpled up inside my diaper bag and I was decked out like the Fall Festival version of an E.R. doctor, prop stethoscope and chart at the ready.  I’d say that I looked and felt ridiculous but that would be a lie. I’d already worn so many more embarrassing outfits, and it’s hard to look silly when everyone is doing what you are.

“Just to be clear,” Janet said, taking my hand and leading me out to the medical play area,  “costume changes don’t count towards that fifteen minute

“Just to be clear,” I retorted, “you’re the patient, so I should be leading you there.” My pace doubled like I was running late for bus duty and Raine Forrest was stalking behind me ready to catch me sprinting as an excuse to Adopt. Janet had to stoop over awkwardly just to stop from trampling me.

“Right this way ma’am,” I bantered on. “Right this way, we’ll have you all set and ready to go in no time flat.” I raised my voice. “MAKE WAY! MAKE WAY! COMING THROUGH! I’VE GOT A VERY SICK WOMAN HERE!”

The group turning the gurney into a very short roller coaster paused for us to enter and dragged Janet  past a tiny waiting room filled with Amazons looking at their phones while their so-called children yelled “CLEAR” and placed vibrating paddles on each other’s chest.

“Oh dear!” Janet feigned distress like a B-movie starlet, “what’s the prognosis, Doctor?”

“How should I know?” I playfully snapped back, “I haven’t even had time to examine you, yet.”

Janet tittered. “Got me there, Doctor. Got me there.”

“Worst case scenario is you’ll die,” I quipped, “but at least you won’t be sick anymore.”

“Clark!”  Janet wasn’t mad. I’d heard her mad. This was just politely appalled.

“Clark?” I said. “Who’s Clark? My name is Doctor Schadenfreude. Doctor Hans P. Schadenfreude.”   I nudged her on the kneecaps and she sat down on a padded examination table that would have made a better ottoman.  “Now please remove your clothes so that I can examine you. Don’t worry, you don’t have anything I haven’t seen before. I’m a doctor.”

Janet’s expression flattened. “No.”

Damn. Worth a shot.  “Very well, but I’ll have you know you’re making my job difficult and this is going on your chart.”  

“Doctor Schadenfreude…” she warned me.  She was playing along with the bit. I was going to get away with everything.

I caught sight of a plastic cup filled with black crayons. I snatched one up and then scribbled pure chicken scratch onto the clipboard.  “Patient…refuses…basic…examination…” I said in a stage whisper.  New idea! I flipped the clipboard around and showed her my swervy lines. “Ma’am could you please read what I just wrote on your chart?”

“Patient refuses basic examination,” she parroted back.  “You’ve really got the doctor’s handwriting thing going on.”

“That’s not what I wrote, just what I said, Ms. Grange.” I said back to her. “It seems you’re having difficulty reading.”

Janet snorted and fell back into character. “Oh dear, Doctor Schadenfreude! Am I going blind?”

“Worse,” I said. “You’ve lost your ability to read.”  Lickety quick I grabbed my diaper bag, unzipped it and started digging around.

“What are you-?”  

“Ma’am! Please! I’m a doctor!” I dug and grabbed hold of something slick and crinkly.  “Care to explain these?”

My Mommy cocked an eyebrow. “Explain what? It’s a diaper.”

“Why are you walking around with a diaper bag and no baby?  Remember,” I cut her off,, “I’m Doctor Schadenfreude! Don’t ruin my immersion!”

“My baby is with a sitter,” Janet said, confidently. “Playing silly games with his teacher. Melony Beouf.” She thought she had me. Thought I couldn’t contradict her without breaking character. But I had the power here. I was the Grown-Up.  I was the Amazon.  

Black crayon darted wildly across the paper. “Patient…suffers delusions…has…imaginary baby.”  I flipped the mostly black paper around to her.  “Now what does this say?”

Lashes fluttered coyly. “I’m sure I don’t know, Doctor.”

“Why? I just said it out loud.”  

Giant shoulders slumped cartoonishly. “I can’t win this, can I?”

“Nope!”

Nevertheless, she persisted.  “My baby boy is very real, Doctor.  I expect to be giving him a call in less than fifteen minutes.”

Ha! Now who was clock watching?

“Oh,” I said. “So you agree?”  

Lips puckered. “Agree about what?”  

“You’re here. At the Pretend Play Preserve. By yourself. Without any Little to supervise or care for.  And you’re hiding diapers that don’t even fit you.”
Brows knitted suspiciously.  “Yeah…? And…?”

I let out a dramatic sigh and placed my hand on her thigh.  “Ma’am. There’s no easy way to tell you this.  But you have Maturosis.”  

My eye twitched. My lips retreated inside of me. Must. Not. Smile. Must. Not. Laugh. Can’t break. Can’t break. Can’t break.

We stared at each other, unblinking. Our faces were intense masks incapable of scrutinization. Finally, Janet threw back her head and laughed a full on belly laugh. “Okay!” she cackled. “You got me, Doc! I have Maturosis!”  She looked back down at me and her smile became devilishly malevolent.  “So does that mean you’re gonna take care of me?”

A bead of sweat on my forehead. “I didn’t say that.”

“But Doctuh Schadenfweude!” Her voice turned into a near squeaking falsetto. Her words took on an exaggerated lisp. “You said I have Matuhwosis.  Awen’t you gonna change my poopy diapuh, and take me home and feed me and cuddle me and give me wuvs?”  Wow, that gave me feelings I did not expect to feel.

“I DO NOT SOUND LIKE THAT!” My foot stomped down in a fit of mock rage. I wasn’t that mad, truth be told. Turnabout was fair play as far as I was concerned.  .

“No,” she spoke. “But my Little boy sometimes does…”

“I do not, Mommy!”

“Mommy?” Janet joked. “Sounds like I’m not the one with Maturosis.”  She scooped me up onto her lap and wrapped her arms around me.  “Good thing I’ve got a diaper bag on me.”

I pouted half-heartedly. “I hope you’re happy.”

“I am,” She chirped. “You?”

A voice from behind an examination curtain interrupted my attempt to verbally evade her.  “Nurse, nurse,” a deep masculine voice boomed. “I fell down and I think I broke my femur. What do I do?”  Another Amazon-Little pair had taken up play next to us, their scene separated from mine and Janet’s by a thin green curtain.  

“Don’t worry, Mister Ellis,” a strangely familiar voice answered. “We’ll just need to get some X-rays and then put you in a cast.”

Mister Ellis? Why did that sound familiar?

“Please hurry, nurse!” The man moaned.  “It hurts so bad? Ooooooh.”

“No, Daddy,” the familiar voice said back. “You have to moan better than that. Like this…” A low, breathy whimper squeaked out and turned into a moan and then meandered its way into a muffled sob.  Why did that moan sound so damn at home in my ears?  It was a Little girl behind that curtain.

Cassie?

“Like this.”  The Daddy Amazon tried and failed miserably to replicate her sounds of pain. That wasn’t that surprising, honestly.

“No, no, no, Daddy,” the pretend-nurse said. “You gotta be like you’re hurting but you’re trying to be brave so you start out quiet, and then get loud because it’s getting worse, but then you quiet down because it hurts so bad and you’re scared to scream.”

Where did I know her from? I was almost too afraid to guess. “Clark?”

“Shh,” I hissed. “I’m listening.”  My arms went rigid, tensing up in case we’d been heard.

“I’ll get you some morphine to help the pain, Mister Ellis.  Go ahead and put that I.V. on while I run and get it.”

“Okaaaaaay…”  The man’s moaning improved considerably.

I’d definitely heard that moan before. Just not in this context. If I closed my eyes I could almost place it.  I tended to hear it in my crib. Except not my crib at home. My usual crib at Beouf’s. Normally the moan wasn’t that loud. Muffled. Like somebody was having a wet dream, or trying to quietly masturbate.

“Annie?”

Silence.

The curtain ripped back. “Clark?!”

Annie the would-be slut. Billy’s padded prison girlfriend and much better half. Arguably the best bullshit detector of my crew and my sole ally amongst Oakshire’s more feminine persuasion.   Her nurse’s outfit was a stark white dress with a red circle and white cross on both the round cap and the apron. The hem of the dress would have been too short if not for the matching tights to make up the difference. Let’s just say I could tell she wasn’t wearing Fun-derwear.  As soon as we locked eyes, her entire body started to flush and tremble.

“Annie,” an Amazon man with graying hair and a widow’s peak said. “Is this a friend of yours from school?”

Janet unwrapped her arms and stuck one out.  “Hi, Janet Grange. I’m Clark’s Mommy.”

“Victor Ellis,” the man said. His smile broadened and his eyes sparkled. “Did you say Clark?!” He looked at me. “This is Clark?  Oh wow, have I heard some things about you.”

“Good things, I hope…” Janet said.

If only I could have been a fake surgeon and been given a face mask. I pushed off and slid off Janet’s knee.  “Nurse, I require a uh…status update on your patient. In private.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Annie said. “Right away.”

We stepped away to a corner, my brain overloading with every footfall. One of my gang had been mere feet away from me while I’d been playing a stupid kids’ game with my Mommy, and I wasn’t exactly making her life hell for it as prescribed.  If Annie told Billy and the others my ears would need Ivy as a bodyguard.

“Annie,” I said. “Listen…”

“Please don’t tell the others!” She blurted out first. Her voice was shaky. Her eyes were tearing up. “Please don’t tell them. Nobody has to know! Okay? Please?”

I leaned back, shocked. “Okay. Yeah. What are you even doing here?”

“My Mommy and Daddy take me here every other weekend. It’s the one place I can have some fun and not worry about anybody making fun of me. It’s the one place I can sort of be myself.  Please don’t tell anybody.”

Holy cow. This was unexpected. “Annie. Chill. I already said I wouldn’t.”

She shook a little less. “Yeah?”  Her hands unknotted themselves.

“Yeah.”  I took in the sight of her. “I’m here too. I can’t tell on you without you telling on me.”

Nervous hands unbunched and wiped themselves off on a skirt.  “Oh. Oh yeah. I hadn’t thought of that.”  She brushed some hair off of her forehead.  “What are you doing here?”

“I was good for my first Unification Day, so my Mommy brought me here thinking it’d be a treat.”

“Cool. Cool.” she said, her breath slowing back down.  “Did I hear you diagnose her with Maturosis?”

Air puffed out of my nose and my chest swelled up with pride. “Yup.”

“Same old Clark. Always gotta find a twist.”  

It sounded like a compliment so I took it as one. “Thanks. Nice costume.”

“Thanks,” she blushed. “It’s mine. From home. My costume, not my uniform. It um…it makes me feel pretty.”

A random factoid from my earliest days in Beouf’s burrowed out of my brain.  “Weren’t you a nurse or in nursing school or something?”

Annie bowed her head. Her foot started tracing circles on the floor. “Yeah…”

My voice lowered back down, afraid someone would hear my next question. “Then why is this place fun to you? Doesn’t it piss you off? Insult you and everything you worked for?”

Her shoulders bobbed up and down noncommittally. “Not really.”

“Why not?” I demanded.

Again, she shrugged and avoided eye contact. “I don’t know. I just like it. It’s just a game. It’s fun. It’s good to pretend. Less stressful.”

I had no words, but my incredulous expression said enough.

“Sometimes it’s fun for me to pretend that I never lost anything.”

“NURSE!” her Daddy called out. “IT HURTS! SO BAD!”

Annie straightened her posture and cupped her hand to her mouth. “COMING, MISTER ELLIS!”  More softly, she said, “I gotta go. See you tomorrow?”

I looked around for my own patient and found Janet standing up and waving me down near the play place’s entrance. “Okay,” she said.  “Deal’s a deal. We’ll get your regular clothes back on and hit the road.”

My arms raised above my head. Janet picked me up again. “Thank you.”

“You liked it, though, right?”

“Kind of.”

Just before we were out of earshot, I heard a nauseating,  “Do you still want to be a nurse someday?”

“Yes, Daddy. When I’m a Grown-Up.”

A few minutes later, I was dressed like a toddler again instead of a toddler pretending to be a doctor.  “That was quick,” the attendant at the costume booth said.

“Yeah,” Janet said wistfully. “I think he just burned himself out early.”

“It can be a lot,” the attendant agreed.  “That’s okay though. I hope he had fun.”

A question danced on my lips and tickled my brain enough that I asked it. “Why’d you say you figured I wanted to be a doctor?”

From the looks of them, I had at least a decade on this person, but the way their lips curled back into a toothy grin. “Most boys wanna be doctors. Girls like playing nurse.  Almost none of the kids want to be patients.”

A dissatisfied frown flashed on my face for half a second. Of course Littles wouldn’t want to be patients. We’ve lost enough autonomy as it is. “Oh.”  My nose wrinkled at the thought of something so obvious and predictable. “Thanks.”

Janet took a sharp U-turn away from the gift shop and exit.  “I need to go potty before we hit the road.”

The public restroom was clean and relatively quiet when we went in. No lingering smell of used diapers in the trash cans or evidence that we weren’t the first occupants of the day.  The stall we went into- all the stalls I’d guess-had small foldout seats on the inside of the doors.  Janet closed the door, unfolded one and strapped me.  

Now I had an involuntary front row seat to an Amazon going to the toilet. “Can’t I sit in your lap?” I complained.

She pulled her skirt and panties all the way down to her ankles. “Trust me, bubba, I don’t think you’re going to want to be at ground zero. She took a deep breath and air echoed out the other end of her.

“EWW!” I pinched my nose and scrunched my face up.

“What? Grown-Ups poop, too, baby.  If you don’t like it, close your eyes and think of something else.”

My internal blinds shut immediately. “Fine. Just try to go quietly.”

I could hear her roll her eyes. “Yes, master.”

Sitting in the bathroom, trying to tune out bowl muffled farts, recent words mingled with the persistent buzzing in my skull.

Why pretend to be a kiddie corral version of the real thing? It just didn’t sit right with me. Annie wasn’t stupid.  Her last words continued to resonate uncomfortably: ‘Yes Daddy, when I’m a Grown-Up.’

My eyes opened in more ways than one.  I’d had the Pretend Play Preserve all wrong. So had the Amazons. On the surface, playing dress up was a reminder of things I’d never be allowed to be again. It was Pop-Pop’s sentimental present on a macro level.  

We were in a vacuum, though. There weren’t any actual children or free Littles to serve as reminders of what we really were and what we’d really lost. Whether they consciously knew it or not everybody was in on the act and engaged in a complex web of collective group play.

These weren’t Littles pretending that they’d never been captured and had a second infancy forced upon them. They were pretending that they were still in their first childhood and were playfully practicing for the real world.  Pretending could be fun if you were actually a kid.  So why not pretend to be a baby playing dress up?

That’s why Annie was so embarrassed and terrified. She wasn’t worried that I’d caught her pretending to be a nurse. She didn’t want me to tell the guys at school that she was pretending to be a baby!

The buzzing in my head stopped, the toilet flushed and circuits sparked in my brain in the best way.  I was starting to see possibilities.  Maybe I really could have some fun here.

“Mommy,” I piped up while Janet washed her hands.  “Do we have to leave right away?”

Janet dried off with rough brown paper towels. Her posture subtly changed from holding back disappointment to cautiously hopeful. She wanted her gift to be appreciated and enjoyed. She wanted me to play.  “Of course not, sweetie. Do you want to be a doctor again?”

I’d play alright. Just on my terms. “No. I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go to the construction site.”

Back on the precipice of the construction play area, Littles in hardhats and orange vests played at building something that would never get done.  In actuality, the place was closer to a jungle gym.

“Do you want to go get a costume?”

I had a better idea.  “No thank you, Mommy.”

“No costume?” Janet asked.

I didn’t say that. “Can you help me take my shorts off, please?”