College or Cribs

Chapter 12
Business As Usual

Chapter Description: With last nights crisis averted (or at least stalls), Chris needs to get back into the routine of being seen and treated as a full fledged baby.

Chapter 12: Rude Awakenings.

Christopher Cole IV was flying through the air on a magical carousel, going around and around on the high peaks of Gumdrop Mountain. Up and down he bobbed as he passed piles of candy canes, lollipops and of course, gum drops. (It was Gumdrop Mountain after all.) His merry-go-round horse, which he promptly decided was named Buckingham, had a lavender eye and gave a flirtatious wink to the beautiful women of gumdrop mountain- all who looked strikingly similar to a certain girl Chris knew back home- causing them to giggle and blush.

Chris looked down at Buckingham and gave the horse his own conspiratorial wink, as if to say “Good horsey-wingman, very good horsey-wingman.” But no words were exchanged between them; they didn’t need them, so close was the bond between man and horse. Suddenly, the carousel started speeding up. The wind whipped through Chris’s hair and Buckingham’s mane as the calliope music sped up to a ridiculous and quite-frankly hideous tempo.

The safety-belt that kept Chris tethered to his noble, lavender-eyed, porcelain steed began to rip apart. So great was the tempestuous pace that Chris’s very clothes were torn from his body as the merry-go-round broke down.

“Oooooooh nooooooo!” Chris yelled in slow motion as he lost his grip on the golden pole that went through Buckingham’s midsection. He was hurled through the air with the greatest of ease, (naked no less) into the abyss. SPLAT!

Chris opened his eyes to inspect his new surroundings. Fortunately for him he had landed in one of Gum Drop Mountains famous pudding pools. Whew…lucky break indeed, Chris, lucky break indeed. Chris’s ears pricked as he heard the scritch-scratch of what could only be the chirping of the local Kit-Kat crickets. Wait a minute?! Kit-Kat crickets didn’t live anywhere near the pudding pools! Something was very wrong here, but Chris couldn’t figure out what. Then the realization hit him that. This wasn’t pudding he was in…it was quick-caramel! (Dun-dun-dun! Dramatic Reverbs!)

That could only mean that he had ACTUALLY landed in somewhere in the Snickers Swamp, at the base of the south face of Gumdrop Mountain. Chris knew it was pointless, but he struggled to get out. The caramel was too thick, however, and his struggling only stirred the thick gooey stuff, causing him to sink faster. Just then, a licorice snake slithered its way through the gooey morass. It coiled itself round Chris’s legs, binding them tightly with a well-muscled squeeze. Chris’s legs were lifted into the air as the apex predator of the Snicker’s Swamp opted to drag Chris out of the muck, likely so that it could safely and easily consume its next meal.

What a predicament: Drown in caramel or be eaten by licorice. Chris hated licorice. It was just then that-

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” Chris shrieked in startled surprise and confusion as an ice-cold cloth was dragged across his most sensitive of body parts.

“Good morning, Chris,” Roxanne’s soothing mommy voice danced in his ears, a slight giggle in her voice.

Chris’s eyes opened, for real this time, and he took in his surroundings. He was staring up at the ceiling, his feet held in the air by Roxanne as she gently wiped his groin area and bottom with baby wipes. As opposed to the last time he saw her, she was now fully dressed, with her hair tied back in a pony-tail while wearing a plain teal t-shirt and what could only be described as “mom-jeans”.

“Sorry, honey,” Roxanne said to Chris, still in the middle of changing his diaper. “With the late night you had, I didn’t want to wake you, but whew, did you need a diaper change!” Chris grimaced as wipe after wipe touched every crevice and fold of skin on Chris’s back and front side. A dream. It had all been a dream. But what was this then?

“I suppose if I had wanted you to sleep through a change,” Roxanne commented, more to herself than the person who she was cleaning, “I should have bought a wipe warmer. Oh well,” she shrugged as she finished wiping Chris down and threw away a very soiled Pampers.

“It wouldn’t have been too good of you to sleep in, anyways,” Roxanne concluded as she slid a fresh diaper under her step-son. “If you had slept in too long, you’d just be up late again tonight anyways.” Her eyes squinted like she was focusing on a specific point on Chris’s body. Then she froze, still holding that same pose.

Chris’s heart skipped a beat. Any minute now, he knew, the world was going to revert back to as it had before his breakdown just before midnight. Worse yet, he imagined, some part of this illusion was going to break and Roxanne was milliseconds from realizing she had just been wiping her fully grown step-son’s ass.

Chris glanced around the nursery for a clock, or some other type of time keeping device. His eyes darted around the room and he noticed a ticking cat clock above the rocking chair across from the changing table where he lay. It was the kind whose eyes and tail bobbed from left to right with each tick of the second.

He tried to read it, but couldn’t make out a thing. Both because Roxanne was partially blocking his view and because the numbers looked like gibberish to him. Damn! Chris forgot that he couldn’t read while he was in this body or state of being or world or dimension or alternate reality or whatever you’d call it. What he could tell was that the clock was ticking though. How long would it be before something happened? A full minute like it had the last time? Longer? Shorter?

“Hmmm…” Roxanne said, breaking her silence. “Looks like we might have a developing case of diaper rash here.” She reached for a tube of cream from the changing table and began spreading the butt paste over Chris’s cheeks. “This is what happens when you sit in a poopy or wet diaper too long, Chris,” she lectured in motherese.

Chris let out an exasperated, (and slightly relieved) sigh. Roxanne had merely taken the briefest of pauses to examine his posterior and Chris’s panicked mind had made that pause stretch out into an eternity.

Maybe he was becoming paranoid, but the one thing Chris had gotten used to over the last several days was his status as an infant or an adult being reversed at the least possible convenient time. And changing back to an adult while being changed would have been inconvenient to say the least. As Roxanne lowered his rump back onto the soft padding of the awaiting Pampers, Chris caught a glimpse of Wubby, his old Teddy bear- the thing that he was sure was the center of all of this- sitting in his crib. The thing was sitting in the corner of his crib, smiling a stitch covered smirk, beady black eyes shining back at him as the morning light caught it at just the right angle.

Chris wasn’t sure, but for some reason, when he was a “baby”, Wubby’s eyes had gone back to the black beads of his childhood memories instead of the red and blue glittering stones that had taken their place upon Chris’s return from college.

“Allllll done,” Roxanne proclaimed as she finished fastening the fresh diaper on. Chris looked down at his diaper to examine the decorations. On the landing strip on the waist was a picture of a very annoyed Bert in the middle with Ernie pointing and smiling at him from off center. The crotch area had pastel stenciled decorations of rubber duckies, bathtubs, striped shirts, and saxophones. All things associated with Ernie. How fitting.

Wubby his childhood friend, much like Ernie, had become a terrible (and sometimes terrifying) nuisance. Both Ernie and Wubby seemed to take a kind of amusement in the consternation and frustration of their friends. The biggest difference in this analogy would be that the worst thing Ernie did was eat cookies in bed. Wubby did so much more.

If Chris thought it would work, he would have gutted the thing and burned the cotton insides before flushing the skin down the potty …errr toilet, and tossing the eye stones into a lake; if only so Chris could pick a scenario, (baby or adult) and stick with it. The problem was, Chris didn’t think he’d be successful. He’d just as likely walk back to his room and find the glittering eyed-thing waiting for him on his bed.

Maybe he’d be more successful if he did the deed here and now, when he was seen as an infant and Wubby’s eyes were plain black and he behaved like an ordinary stuffed animal. But getting a knife to gut the thing would be hard for a baby, and the “Just Dance” experience he had had with his sisters told him that his fine motor skills weren’t up to snuff in this form. Plus how would he get to a lake?

“How messed up is this?” Chris face-palmed as Roxanne fastened the tummy strap on the changing table and turned to the closet. “I’m plotting vengeance against a friggin’ bear.” New low Chris, new low.

“I know Chris, I know,” Roxanne cooed as she shuffled gigantic baby clothes around in the closet. “I’ll get you dressed soon. Just be patient. Mommy needs to decide what outfit she’s gonna dress you up in.”

No she didn’t know, and Chris was beginning to get more than a little annoyed with this phrase. He wondered if this is how actual babies sometimes felt: As if they were communicating their thoughts perfectly clearly, to super-strong idiots who interpreted their words to mean what they wanted it to mean- who heard only what they wanted to hear. Chris knew very well that he was going to be dressed soon enough. He had more important things, like bear beating, on his mind.

“Here we are,” Roxanne chimed in as she spun around to face Chris. She held a large red onesie with some kind of scribbled writing on it. “It’s-warm-out-to-day-so-I-figured-just-a-onesie-will-work.” Roxanne explained in a sing-song rhythm. “Don’t you?!” she added cooingly, “Don’t you?”

Chris just rolled his eyes as he lay on the changing table. “Just get it done, mommy!” Roxanne growled in a playful grumpy voice that could only mean she was doing an impression of her “baby”. “I just want to get off this thing and get some num-nums in my tum-tums!” Huh, maybe Roxanne deserved more credit for “listening” than she was being given.

She quickly and efficiently dressed Chris in the adult sized infant’s garment, with Chris making every effort to help speed the process along. He helped his arms and head be threaded through the correct holes. He didn’t wiggle or struggle while the crotch snaps were being done up. Finally, some baby baby clothes; no more of this shirt and shorts nonsense. If he was stuck like this, he might as well be able to enjoy it to the fullest extent.

“Time for your first course,” Roxanne announced as she carried Chris over to the rocking chair. Chris licked his lips in anticipation as Roxanne lifted her shirt up to reveal a nursing bra. Soon Chris was staring at her teat, ready to be suckled on. She brushed it against his cheek and gave a quiet but encouraging “Come on”. Chris didn’t even need that much encouragement as he greedily began to nurse and once again experience the ecstasy of flavor with the soft, tender intimacy of the moment.

“Mooooooom?! Mooooom?! Mommy?! Mommy?!” a funny little voice called out that rang through the quiet house. “Ma-ma?! Ma-ma?! Mum?! Mum?! Mummy?! Mummy?!”

Chris stopped suckling, “Goddamnit! Every time! Every time! If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.” he lamented.

“I’m in here, Brianna!” Roxanne called out.

“Roxanne, don’t…just don’t.” Chris pleaded into his step-mother’s eyes. “Trust me, this isn’t going to go anywhere except a giant waste yours and my time.”

“I don’t know what your sissy wants, Chris, that’s why I gotta ask her.” Roxanne told him in what would have been a very condescending tone had it not been for the situation.

“Man it sucks that I can’t talk, yet.” Chris murmured to himself. “Oh wait…no…don’t! Not yet!” he whimpered as Roxanne refastened her nursing bra and pulled her shirt back down to a more decent and far less enticing level.

“Brianna, what is it?” Roxanne called out. Bri opened the door with a mischievous grin on her face, her eyes wild with delight.

“Mom, mummy, momma, mummy…” Brianna said by wrote as she took a half step in.

“Yes, dear,” Roxanne said, her voice full with patience and expectation.

“Hi!” Bri chirped out before giggling like an idiot and running away. Roxanne just shook her head in bewilderment.

“Kids these days,” Roxanne remarked. Then she held Chris upright, and told him, “I hope you don’t ever end up so silly like your sissy! No-I-don’t! No-I-don’t.”

Nonplussed didn’t even begin to describe the level of annoyance Chris was feeling. “Family Guy,” he said. “Your third grader is watching Family Guy.” No response from Roxanne other than a solemn nod as if she understood what he was saying. “You know, the one with the fat guy and the alcoholic dog, and the talking baby that no one really underst….” Chris stopped himself before turning his head and calling out… “I hate you, Bri! I really hate you! You know that?! I do!” He turned to his crib and faced Wubby. “And that goes double and more sincerely for you!”

“You’re right, Chris,” Roxanne agreed to absolutely nothing that Chris was talking about, “we should go see what Sissy’s up to.”

Chris didn’t bother protesting as he was scooped up and carried into the kitchen proper and strapped into his highchair for more solid….and by definition less stimulation…baby food. It was just going to be another one of those days….