Three Vignettes

Chapter 3
Pretty Eyes

Chapter Description: There's something wrong with little Eric's life, but what?

This is the only brand new story of the three. The other two I’ve revised from my earlier continuous story posts. In this story I try a slightly different format from my other stories.

Eric feels the gooey red substance squish nicely between his little fingers. The sensation brings a smile to his lips. It’s a big part of why he enjoys playing with the colourful liquids. He takes his hands out of the little tub of red paint and plants his hands on the paper beneath him spreading the finger paint this way and that.

After a moment he stops and looks down at his masterpiece. The bright colours splattered all over the paper enchant him and Eric feels very pleased with himself. Squatting there in the living room on a messy blanket mummy has put out to protect the carpet, Eric rests back on his haunches and looks over at the little Playskool easel in the corner of the room. Someday he’d have a big kid painting easel just like his big brother.

The sound of grown-ups voices reached Eric’s ears and he looked in the direction of the noise, rising to a standing position. A moment later mummy and her friend walked into the room. Eric lit up at the sight of mummy and ran to hug her legs. But mummy stopped him, reaching down to take a tight hold of his arm.

“Uh, uh, uh, hold on little guy. We don’t want to get mummy’s clothes all messy do we?” she reprimanded.

Eric pouted. He wanted snuggles with mummy! But she was shaking her head no. Eric looked down at his body and saw that he was quite dirty. His tummy and chest and even his soft little dangling pee-pee were splashed with various colours of paint. His arms and hands were covered in the stuff. On top of that he’d drawn all over himself with the purple marker he’d found under the couch that morning.

“We need to get you cleaned up before we have any snuggles honey,” mummy insisted.

She took his hand and led him into the kitchen. There Eric climbed up the step stool by the sink so the counter top was just at chest height for him. Then he extended out his arms and mummy turned on the water, washing the paint off with a sponge, cleaning between his fingers and right up to his elbows.

“Well you certainly got yourself covered in this stuff today sweetie,” she commented.

“Ewic messy,” he agreed.

The water stopped and then mummy had a big fluffy towel she was drying his hands and arms with. Eric fussed a bit, he wanted to do it himself like a big boy. But mummy was too strong and she finished drying him, ignoring his plaintive calls of “Me dwy me!”

Finally mummy let go and he climbed back off the stool, running ahead into the living room again. Mummy’s friend was sitting on the couch now. She smiled at Eric. He felt a little scared. She was a stranger and they made him feel uncomfortable. He wanted to run back to mummy, she’d make him safe.

“Well aren’t you a cute little rugrat,” the friend gushed, beaming at Eric.

Eric paused where he was, enjoying her praise, but still nervous. Mummy walked in and chuckled. “C’mon sweetie, don’t be shy. She won’t bite.”

Eric wanted to be a good boy for mummy so he walked closer to the lady. She smiled down at him and he found himself drawn to her pretty green eyes.

“He is a real cutie-pie,” the woman gushed.

Mummy and the lady kept talking but Eric didn’t pay attention to the grown-up talk. Mummy let him climb up into her lap as she sat on the couch next to her friend. Eric cuddled into her arms. Mummy smelled just perfect and she was so soft and cuddly. He loved snuggling. Her long blonde hair brushed across his face and Eric automatically stuffed a few strands in his mouth to chew. He would look over at the friend lady sitting so close now, chewing mummy’s hair and staring into her pretty eyes.

“I just think it’s so sweet that he struts about in his birthday suit like that,” the friend was saying.

“Yes it really is just preciously innocent isn’t it,” Mummy was replying.

The words went right over his head. Eric was focused on more important things, like the sudden urgency he felt. “Mummy, gotta pee-pee!” he blurted out.

“Okay honey,” she replied, lifting him under the arms and swinging him up onto her hip as she stood.

Mummy carried him up to the bathroom. There his little red potty chair was sitting next to the big person toilet. There was a bright yellow seat on top of the big toilet. Big brother used that now because he was a big boy. He wore big boy undies with cool pictures of dinosaurs and truckies too.

Mummy put Eric down on his potty and he began to make pee-pee right away. The sound of tinkling filled the bathroom and mummy nodded in approval. Eric felt a real swelling of pride at his big boy accomplishment. Mummy asked if he wanted to show her friend and he nodded happily in response. Everyone should know what a big boy he was.

The friend came into the bathroom a moment later and Eric hopped up and down, his feet slapping on the tile floor as he pointed to the red plastic potty and announced “Ewic tinkle in da potty!”

The friend nodded and praised him for his good job, opening her arms and crouching down to his level. Eric leapt into her arms to accept the cuddle. It was warm and friendly and he liked the feel of her warm hand patting his bum-bum.

When the cuddle was done they all headed back down to the living room. Mummy was suggesting they all go outside and let Eric play in his swing. But something funny was happening to Eric. Every once in a while he got these funny feelings, like something was very wrong. Right now he was having one of those feelings and it was accompanied by flashes of memories, strange ones that didn’t seem to belong to him.

They were memories of working in a bank and driving a car and doing all kinds of big grown-up things he certainly couldn’t do yet. Things even big brother couldn’t do, any he could tie his own shoes and everything! So how could he have these memories?

And yet he did remember being an adult. He recalled watching news bulletins about the arrival of an alien race on Earth. He had watched reports of negotiations with the governments. He remembered the terrifying fear induced by a demonstration of the alien’s power and the decision human kind had to make between extermination and subjugation. He couldn’t remember all of what happened, only little snippets. He could see the detention centre where he was taken, visualising the machine that looked like and MRI which they took him to. The final memory that flashed through his mind was of meeting the aliens themselves, and seeing that they were truly giant humanoids, before being strapped to a gurney and put into the machine. After that it was all so fuzzy.

Mummy was gathering some snacks to eat outside on the deck while Eric played. Eric blinked with horror as he felt increasingly strange being in this place. It didn’t feel like home anymore, it felt foreign and weird. With each second he became more aware, his mind started to work so much faster, connecting the dots. The sun reflected in the floor to ceiling windows along the side of the living room and Eric saw his reflection.

He saw himself as he truly was, a slightly chubby twenty-something, hairless but for his head, face messy with spillage from his Spaghetti-O’s lunch, paint and marker still marring his tummy and chest, standing naked in the living room. Eric felt shame and revulsion for a moment, then confusion. He wasn’t sure what was real anymore! Eric wanted to cry, but something told him big boys didn’t do that.

Mummy was ready to go outside and prodded him, “C’mon buddy, let’s go swingies!”

Eric frowned and covered his pathetically hairless weenie with his hand, his body red with shame and he shook his head. “No, wanna get cwothes on mummy,” he insisted, hoping she would help.

Mummy gave him a funny look then seemed to understand. “Just a sec hon’ I need to help Eric,” she told her friend.

“What’s wrong? The little tyke okay?”

“He’ll be good as gold in a moment. Sometimes they have these little episodes,” she explained vaguely.

Eric felt more naked by the moment but he stayed where he was, hoping mummy could make this all better, like she did when she kissed his boo-boos away. Mummy went into the kitchen a moment then returned and headed over to him. She knelt down to his level and looked him in the eye. “It’s okay honey, mummy will make it all okay,” she assured him.

Eric wanted to believe that so badly. He looked her in the eye and noticed that they weren’t their normal shade of deep brown. Instead they were an incredible shade of amber, almost gold in fact. He couldn’t look away. And Eric found he felt so much calmer now, so safe with mummy here to protect him. She’d fix everything, she always did. Eric felt his mind was like a TV playing nothing but snow, all fuzzy and confusing. For a moment the volume had turned down and the silence had let a few tricky thoughts get through. Now the volume was going back up, the white noise drowning out all those important thoughts and memories.

**

Mummy and her friend watched the little man’s eyes glaze over and his hand fall away from his penis. A smile crept up across his face and he looked quite content. “You see, they always enjoy this part,” Mummy explained to her friend.

“Really?”

“Oh yes, they pretend to want to grow up and act like big strong people, but really all they want is for someone else to take care of everything. Total freedom from worry, total innocence. He doesn’t even worry about clothes. If I don’t give him any, he toddles around naked without a second thought.”

“How long does it take?” the friend asked, checking her watch.

“Not long. The contacts shut down the parts of his brain that the procedure should have already blanked. We don’t need that big machine because there’s only a little bit of his big boy thoughts left. The contacts get rid of those in just a couple minutes.”

**

Eric felt all better now. Mummy made it all better. He just looked in her pretty eyes and all those scary thoughts went bye-bye. Now he was free to play in his swing with no fears. Mummy pushed him and he loved the back and forth motion. Sometimes the pretty friend caught him by his feet and wiggled his piggies or tickled his soles before releasing him to swing back to mummy. He giggled and blew raspberries at her in response.

It didn’t matter that the Earth now belonged to an alien race of giants. It didn’t matter that all of humanity had been reduced to mindless little playthings for their masters. Neither Eric, nor anyone else had the brainpower to understand or care. For once the whole world was at peace.