The Conduit

Chapter 7
The Conduit

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Chapter Description: at the end

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Chapter 7: The Conduit

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“...hope this works. Something here is happening and it’s sure as shit not right.”

They were supporting her again, with each of her arms over one of their shoulders. As her mind started to process what was happening, what had happened, and what she feared was going to happen, she heard Katie and Summer still talking to each other in hushed voices.

Alexis raised her head and looked around. In the darkness of the post sunset-hours she slowly recognized the parking lot of the shopping complex where the Halloween store was located. She could see the large banner hung across the storefront still illuminated with backlight and the inside lights below it.

“She has to be able to help. This is really freaky. I keep expecting myself to wake up.”

“Whmmphilllmmm--” Alexis started, but quickly stopped as she realized that something was stuck in her mouth. She quickly swung her hand from over Summer’s shoulder and pulled a pink pacifier from her mouth. “ARE YOU CRAZY?!” she screamed, “How could you give this thing back to me?!”

“Oh good, you’re back again,” Summer sighed and continued after her long drawn out breath of relief, “No we didn’t. About a minute after you... uh... left again you started to cry like a baby. So we gave you one of our pacifiers to shut you up. Thankfully it worked.”

“So, this isn’t my pacifier?” Alexis asked, pointing at the pink rubbery nub between her fingers.

“No,” said Katie, “I have that one here. You’re lucky. I don’t even want to be near that damn thing.”

Alexis grunted an “I don’t blame you” in a sort of, “this isn’t happening to YOU” sort of way. Her tone of voice did not go unmissed by Katie.

“Hey,” Katie snobbed, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re not doing a whole lot better over here. Look at what the fuck is happening to us! When you went out it got worse.” and she gestured to both herself and Summer. Alexis stopped and took in their appearances. For the first time, she noticed how different they looked.

They both looked a little bit shorter, and Alexis could only tell this now that both of their bonnets were somehow gone. Katie’s face was now so smooth and plastic-looking it was shining and reflecting the store-front lights in their vicinity. Her head looked even bigger and rounder than it was the last time Alexis was conscious. Her torso was thinner. Summer’s hair looked even more rigid and fake, falling on either side of her hear and swooping out to either shoulder. Her curved body looked less defined, almost as if she was fatter. Her arms and legs looked paler.

Alexis stumbled for words and finally asked in a quiet voice, “What the hell is going on? What is happening to us?”

Katie bowed her larger head and said softly, “I don’t know but whatever is happening isn’t good. We need to make this crazy old woman stop this”

Summer and Katie now began to walk to the store again, but they did not make it very far before Alexis called out to them.

“No!” she said loudly. Her mind was whirling so fast at this point that she couldn’t even feel the cold wet diaper still hanging against her body, the biting Halloween night air, or the glares of one or two people still scattered about the shopping complex. She was far too concentrated on the horror of what was happening. Katie and Summer both stopped and looked back at her.

“No?” Summer said confusedly.

Katie put her hands on her thinning hips. “You’re the one who told us that she was in there!”

“She is.”

“Then why the Hell aren’t we going in there!?”

Alexis gathered her breath and exhaled a short sigh. “Because I’m in there too”

The two girls looked at her. Summer stepped closer to Alexis and asked quizzically, “What do you mean, ?you’re in there too’?”

Alexis closed her eyes. She couldn’t look either of them in the face. She knew that they wouldn’t believe her. “That baby? The one that Mary was pushing in the stroller at the college? It was me”. As she had suspected, they looked blankly at her, so she continued on, hating the words as she forced them from her mouth, “When I went blank this last time, I was a baby again. I was THAT baby. She put me in a stroller and I saw the three of us. She picked me up and put me... she put me in my own arms. That little baby girl that was with her at the college was ME!” and she felt hot tears fall from her eyes, instantly turning cold as the air around her whipped her face again.

After a moment, Summer spoke again, “How...” she said slowly, “...how is that possible?”

“I don’t know. My mind wasn’t working right. I didn’t realize what was happening until after we had already started walking again. I tried to call out to us and tell myself to stop but for some reason I just couldn’t!”

Katie reached forward and grabbed Alexis’s hand. “Well then you know what?” she said angrily, “Enough waiting around. If she started this, then she can stop it!” and she dragged Alexis be the hand like an angry mother pulling a child behind her. Summer followed the two of them until Katie’s hand pressed onto the glass door and pushed it open, leading the other two girls inside.

...

“Hello!” Katie called angrily though the store. “We’ve come to return tainted merchandise!”

There were no sounds in the store. The usual Halloween themed music wasn’t playing, there were no last minute customers bustling about trying to find costumes. Everything was eerily quiet.

Alexis stepped forward and cleared her throat. “Madame... Madame Mary?!”

Suddenly the lights in the store went out, and once their eyes adjusted to the lack of light, the massive hanging figures on the ceiling, the face masks, the costumes, all looked creepy. Summer was the first for the front door, but as she pressed against it to shove it open, she jerked back quickly.

“AGHHH!!!!” she cried loudly and they all heard her voice echo through the massive store.

“You can’t get out,” said a disgustingly sweet voice. They all turned around and faced the checkout counter which was without a doubt empty and unoccupied a moment before. There stood Madame Mary, still old and bespectacled. “Not without my permission” she said sweetly.

They stared at her. The checkout counter was illuminated by one solitary bulb hanging from the ceiling above her and it cast a terrifying shadow over her eyes, its yellow light reflected on her glasses, obscuring her eyes even more from view.

Alexis moved forward towards her after a beat. “What is going on?” she asked, looking the woman dead in the face. AS she moved closer, she saw behind the counter, just below view, was a tiny baby girl tucked sweetly in a baby carrier. Her pudgy little arm was limp at her side as she absent-mindedly sucked on her free thumb. “Who is that?”

“Why my dear, I believe you know who that is.”

Alexis’s blood dropped a couple of degree in temperature. She didn’t want to admit it. But after she waited for the old woman to continue and realized that she wasn’t going to, Alexis gathered what was left of her voice and slowly said,

“That’s me?”

“Of course my dear!” said Madame Mary with a smile to sugary it was sickening. Her heart skipped a beat in fear. So she knew. She knew exactly what was happening. She caused all of this.

“But how?”

Madame Mary’s smile remained stretched almost painfully on her face as she explained like a teacher explaining math to a kindergartener. “The pacifier, my dear. It is quite special. As soon as I saw you snooping around back there I knew I wanted something special for you. So I gave the pacifier to you and look how sweet you are!” she gestured to the baby sitting cradled up in her carrier.

“Wait, that was you?” Alexis stammered out. “That was you in the back room with me?”

Then suddenly Madame Mary seemed to morph in front of them. Where a second before an old woman stood in front of them, there was now the same young woman who had helped her find the costume in the storage room. Alexis heard Summer give a little squeak of terror.

Alexis felt like she wanted to cry or suck her thumb or hold her teddy bear. How was this happening? “I don’t understand” she said out loud more to herself than to Madame Mary.

“The pacifier,” continued Madame Mary, “is a magical conduit that gives it’s the user the gift of becoming something else. In your case, you get to become a baby again. Witches and warlocks like myself have always used these sorts of things”

Katie spoke suddenly, but when she did, it was high-pitched and scared. “Wait... you’re a fucking witch?!”

Madame Mary’s eye twitched, “Yes, dear, I am. And I will not have that kind of language in my presence, do you understand me?” and Katie grew silent in fear at once.

Then Alexis asked, with tears starting to flow from her eyes again, “How do you stop it? Please stop this. I don’t want this.”

Madame Mary looked disappointed. “My dear are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Yes, please. I don’t wanna be a baby anymore.”

Madame Mary’s mouth twitched into another smirking smile. “Ok my dear,” she said motherly, “there is one way to stop the conduit. But you’ll need the pacifier to do so. Do you have it?”

Katie’s hand holding the pacifier shook. “I’m not giving you a damn thing!” she said loudly and frightened. “How do I know you’re not just going to do some other crazy shit to us?!”

“I TOLD you,” said Madame Mary with venom topping her candy-cane tone, “to NOT use that kind of language in my PRESENCE!” and she snapped her fingers which rang out like a bullwhip in the empty warehouse of a store.

Immediately Katie and Summer stood rooted to the spot, a soft glow of light shining out around each of them. Their clothes magically vanished. Their eyes whizzed in their sockets trying to look around. “What are you doing?!” Katie yelled out.

“Please!” Summer yelled too, “Don’t do this! We’re sorry!”

“I am afraid, ladies,” said Madame Mary, “That the only person who can choose to stop this is your friend Alexis.” She looked at Alexis, now terrified that her two friends stood frozen and nude like statues on either side of her.

“I’ll do it!” she screamed, “I’ll do it! I’ll do whatever it takes to stop this! I’m sorry!”

Madame Mary, unconcerned with the two girls standing and grunting in effort in front of her, looked calmly back at Alexis.

“Then, my dear,” she said softly, “just place the pacifier in your mouth and look into your eyes, your own baby’s eyes, and start to suckle”

Alexis pried the pacifier slowly from Katie’s clenched fist and looked at it intently. She looked at her two friends aside her and then at Madame Mary. She was nervous. But she slowly lifted the pacifier to her mouth and placed it inside.

She looked at the baby, nestled in her carrier and felt her gaze being drawn to the child. Everything else around her seemed to blur away. She started to suckle on the warm pink nub. It started to tingle in her mouth and suddenly she was back.

Back inside the body of the child. She was sucking on her thumb, and she was looking at her adult self staring back at her. She saw on her face a look of blankness and absence. Alexis reached out with her tiny baby arms and started to cry. She didn’t want this. She wanted it to stop!

“There we go, child,” said Madame Mary softly. “Just one more thing!”

And Alexis turned her baby head to see Mary walk out from around the counter and behind the giant mindless Alexis now standing in front of her. The Alexis gave a jerk and began to glow. The life faded from her eyes as she shrank, and shrank, until like a vacuum, her body was sucked into the outstretched palms of Madame Mary.

Then with a little pop, the tall adult Alexis was gone, sucked up and absorbed by Madame Mary, who now looked significantly younger. Mary looked like she was in her early twenties, but she had a sweet and motherly appearance. Her breasts were plump and voluptuous. Her hair was shining red even in the minimal light of the store. Mary opened her eyes, which were now a bright green mist color. She looked immensely satisfied and complete.

Alexis, however, felt more solid. She felt more present. She felt her baby body as though it were always there. And she started to cry when the astonishment of seeing her own self be sucked into the life force of this mad Witch had finally subsided.

“Ahhhhhh...” Mary sighed with a perfectly angelic voice over Alexis’s loud baby cries, “That’s better. Now as for you two.”

And as Mary moved back to behind the counter, Katie and Summer both looked at her and their eyes widened. They both screamed and tried to move, cursing her over and over.

“I think that your little readjustments need to be sped up!” she said as she snapped her fingers loudly again.

Immediately Alexis saw her two friends begin to change.

Summer’s torso slowly began to disfigure into a cylindrical mass. Her breasts receded. Her skin grew paler and more translucent. Her plastic hair melded with her head as it bent back and she screamed out loud. Her head, tilted almost at a right angle backwards, smoothed over, and her gaping mouth slid shut into a hole pointing straight up at the ceiling. Her arms and legs shrank back into her body and disappeared as Summer, now a massive transparent baby bottle, was floating there in midair.

Katie’s torso was now at thin as her neck. Her head swelled like a balloon and was almost the size of a beach ball and the golden blonde hair which had once draped her shoulders fell to the ground and evaporated. Each tooth fell out as her mouth sealed itself clothes, making her scream behind a wall of skin and teeth clanked around in the open pocket. Her knees started to bow outwards in a strange ballet pli?, and her legs looked like jelly as they curved outwards, making a large “O” ending in her feet, still pressed together. Her now lamp-post thing torso now started to suck her arms up, and her hands fanned out and became webbed. Before Alexis’s eyes Katie gave one last muffled scream as her face suddenly shined and smoothed over, and a huge baby’s rattle then floated there where she just was.

Alexis was so terrified that she stopped crying. Her two best friends had turned into a massive baby bottle and a giant baby’s rattle right in front of her eyes. Then they began to shrink until they were the perfect size for a baby.

For Alexis.

Madame Mary picked up the two girls who were now harmless baby’s objects and leaned her face in to Alexis. She smiled widely again and said to Alexis, “I told you that was the only way to stop it. I guess I neglected to tell you that the only way to stop it was to become your baby self. I figured why let you have all the fun? So now I helped your little friend Summer,” she waved the baby bottle in front of Alexis’s face, followed by the rattle, “and your naughty friend Katie stay with you forever and always. And thanks to you, this hot body of mine can now be permanent! All I needed was a sweet little girl’s energy! And you gave it to me! You don’t know how much I thank you!” And she slid her hands down her sexy youthful curves.

She placed Katie into Alexis’s free and pounding hand and it started to shake as Alexis’s fist hammered up and down in terror. She heard Katie’s teeth which were now small plastic balls clank against the inside of Katie’s orbed head, and as she shook it, she heard a soft ”Help!.... help!.... help!” echo from within the rattle with each shake.

But Alexis didn’t help. Shaking the rattle pleased her. She shook it harder and heard more soft cries for help from somewhere, but her infantile need for entertainment made her giggle with delight. Drool dribbled down her open mouth. “Gaa?” she said softly in a baby voice. It didn’t bother her. She was just a baby after all.

“What’s that?” Mary asked, leaning down to Alexis, her tantalizing breast cleavage popping out from the top of a small shirt. Alexis’s eyes were drawn to the two heavy breasts hanging there in front of her. Mary saw where Alexi’s eyes had landed and she chuckled as she clutched her new breasts. “Oh does baby want her milk?”

“Gaa!!” Alexis said again happily.

“Ok but first, baby has to try to say Madame Mary’s name. Can you say ?Mary’ baby? Maaaaaryyyyy!! You can do it!”

Alexis tried really hard. “MaaaaWaaa.....Maaaaa....Maamaa...maama... mama! Mama!”

Madame Mary smiled. “Very good baby! Such a big girl! Able to say ?mama’ already!”

Alexis giggled. She wanted her milk. Then Mary stood back and slid the front of her shirt down to reveal her bare breast. She took the rubber head of the baby bottle that was Summer and popped it off, put the open mouth of the bottle around her erect nipple, and pressed into herself. Immediately a jet of white milk squirted from her nipple like a sink faucet and Summer was almost filled to the brim. She places Summer’s top back onto the baby bottle and slid the nub into Alexis’s tiny mouth.

Alexis began to suck instinctivelty and felt the warm milk flow into her mouth. It tasted magical, and each time she sucked on the rubber nub, she thought she heard a small cry of “Help!... help!... help!” from somewhere. But she didn’t care. All she wanted was her milk. And her mama.

Very soon the bottle was empty. And Alexis heard a familiar voice from somewhere cry out another “Help!” as the bottle was popped from her mouth.

“There we are, baby,” said her mama tenderly. She loved her mama. She was so pretty and sweet. “Now the night is still young! Let’s get our little baby’s diaper changed and into a niiiice costume.”

Alexis then felt her body being un-snugged from the carrier and carried to something cold and hard. She was laid down on her bare back and the cold of the surface made her uncomfortable. She immediately began to cry, but Mama stuck a pacifier in her mouth and she calmed down.

The feeling of the diaper being removed from her

The feeling of something soft and light and sweet-smelling being sprinkled onto her hairless body

The feeling of a soft diaper being pulled up between her legs and tightened on her hips

It all felt normal. The soft diaper pressed against her body felt natural and comfortable

She giggled. Mama then picked her up and said, “BABY weeaagoo twiggrrrtweeeeting BABY frrrsstHalllweeeen” and lifted her into the air and nuzzled Alexis’s nose with hers. Alexis giggled happily and looked back, reaching for her beautiful mama’s face with her free hand.

And all the while, for the rest of the night, and for the rest of their lives, something in the back of Alexis’s mind was screaming, wanting to get back. Pleading to get back, wanting nothing more than to wake up in her own bed and for this to all be a terrible nightmare.

But she didn’t.

Too much of her loved being a baby.

Mama took her up and down the aisles of the Halloween shop asking her little baby what costume she wanted. Alexis picked a bumblebee and was quickly changed into it by her loving mama. Mama wore a pointed witch’s hat and cape.

And for the rest of the night and many, many times afterward, Alexis still shook her rattle and drank from her baby bottle, all to the rhythmic cries of ”Help... help... help...” from somewhere she couldn’t remember.

And she and her mama happily ever after.

The End

 

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