Brothers and Babysitters

Chapter 1
Brothers and Babysitters

Jeremy arrived home to an empty house. This sounds like a little thing, but it was the result of a year of begging, pleading, and negotiating. Finally, his mother had agreed that, since he was half way though his first year of middle school, he was old enough to walk home alone. Actually, the primary motivation had been that she would be able to work full time again.

And so Jeremy was allowed to come home alone and have the house alone for a few hours before a baby sitter picked up Ryan from fourth grade and made dinner. Jeremy hadn’t wanted a babysitter at all, but his ever-protective mother had decided that, even if he was old enough to be home alone, he wasn’t old enough to watch over Ryan.

His promise to do homework before video games lasted for a full ten minutes after he got in. His favorite wrestling game lasted the rest of the time. Jeremy wasn’t happy to hear the door opening, with Ryan babbling to the babysitter about his day. Jeremy was much happier, however, when he actually saw her. Vanessa was a very attractive high school student, and he was old enough to decide that spending time with her was even more interesting than a video game, and the next two hours were spent finding every excuse possible to hand around her, despite her polite attempts to ignore him.

Jeremy’s mother returned, thanked Vanessa, and called Jeremy and Ryan down for dinner.

"So, Jeremy, you finished your homework, right?"

"Oh. Yeah."

"Good. And Ryan?"

"I started it. But it’s tough."

"Jeremy, since you’re done, could you help Ryan a little?"

That put him in a tough spot, since he needed that time to do his own work. But of course, he couldn’t admit that. And so Jeremy didn’t turn in his homework the next day.

He knew he’d be in a lot of trouble if he fell behind on his work, so he resolved to do it before anything else the next day. Of course, when it came time to put that into practice, it didn’t work out so well. Particularly when Vanessa showed up with Ryan, and Jeremy found himself once again distracted by her presence.

This went on for several days, until one day, after dinner, his mother came to his room to talk to him.

"Jeremy, I got a call from your teacher today. She told me that you haven’t been doing your homework."

"Um. Well, I..."

"We had a deal, and you broke it, and then you lied to me about it. You’re aren’t going to be allowed to be home alone any more. I’ve spoken to Vanessa, and she’s going to be here in the afternoon, before she picks up Ryan from now on, to make sure you do your work."

Jeremy tried to conceal his excitement.

The next day, he could barely keep his mind on his classes, he was so excited to have hours alone with Vanessa. He ran home, threw open the door, and saw Vanessa waiting for him, reading some magazine.

"Hi Jeremy. You know that I’m supposed to watch you, and make sure you do your work, right?"

Jeremy nodded.

"Now, you realize you’re a little old for me to be babysitting you, right?"

Jeremy nodded again, trying to keep from grinning.

"But you’re going to be a good little boy for me, right?"

Jeremy nodded.

"Good. Up to your room, and do your homework. Here." She handed him a CD. "I listen to this when I study. I think it’ll help you focus. If you get it done, maybe we can find some more...pleasant...way to spend the time. After all...you ARE too old for a babysitter."

Jeremy lit up a bit at that. He grabbed the CD and headed upstairs to his room to work. After popping the CD into his (too loud) stereo, he was pleased to find it was some upbeat synth/techno music, not some dumb classical stuff.

He got through his math homework and went downstairs for a break. Vanessa looked up from her magazine and smiled.

"Is my good little boy all done?"

Jeremy shook his head. "I finished my math and wanted to get something to drink."

She nodded. "You do that. I’ll be up in a minute to check it for you.

Jeremy grabbed a Coke from the fridge and went back upstairs, followed soon by Vanessa. She sat down on his bed and smiled, and then looked straight at Jeremy and said, "tabula rasa"

Jeremy blinks and started to ask what she meant, but his mouth wouldn’t work. He sat there, staring at his babysitter, unable to do anything.

Vanessa smiled at her latest project, the new induction seemed to be working perfectly

"Jeremy. You are now under my control. You will do whatever I say. Do you understand?"

A dumb nod from the lanky teen.

"Good. You are a thirteen year old boy." Another nod. "You will act like a 9 year old boy until you wake up tomorrow morning" A slightly hesitant nod. "You will want to watch cartoons and play video games. You will not be interested in a relationship with me. You only want to make me happy" A firmer nod. Vanessa smiled and turned the music back on, standing in the doorway as though she had just come up.

"Hi Jeremy. You ready for me to check your homework?"

Jeremy looked around, slightly dazed. "Um, yeah. My homework." He handed it over to her, then got out of his chair and dashed to the other side of the room.

"Not so fast. Where do you think you’re going?"

"To watch TV..."

"Nice try. You can watch TV after I’m done checking over your homework." She patted the bed, and Jeremy reluctantly sat next to her on it.

Jeremy sat impatiently as she went over each problem. He wasn’t sure why he was so distracted, but even sitting still for so long seemed difficult. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Vanessa certified his math homework as complete, and informed him that he was allowed one half hour of television.

He practically flew into the living room and turned on the TV, still set to the MTV he’d watched the night before after Ryan had gone to bed. Without thinking, he flipped over the Cartoon Network.

A few minutes later, Vanessa poked her head in and glanced at the television. "You like this show?"

"Yeah, it’s my favorite!" Jeremy answered. A moment later, a puzzled look crossed his face. He’d never even seen this show before...

The show was almost over when Ryan got home and ran up to the television room. He walked in expecting to have to fight with his brother and eventually settle for some boring show. Instead, to his surprise, Jeremy was already watching cartoons.

"Hey!" Ryan greeted his brother excitedly. "Why’re you watching this?"

"I love this show," Jeremy answered.

Ryan decided to enjoy his good fortune and not press the point.

After the show, Vanessa made Jeremy go back and finish his homework, and Ryan didn’t see him again until Vanessa had left and dinner was almost ready. Ryan suggested that they play a video game, Jeremy agreed, initiating the time honored practice of haggling. As practiced by merchants since time immemorial, Ryan opened with an absurd option, intended not in the hopes it would be taken, but only to frame the deal so that the inevitable compromise might be more favorable to him.

"Shreck", he offered.

"Yeah!" Jeremy responded.

Ryan’s jaw dropped, but Jeremy was to busy putting the game in to notice. "But you hate..." Ryan almost bit his tongue to prevent himself from ruining the rare opportunity to play his favorite game with his older brother. The moment was made even sweeter by the fact that his greater familiarity with the game meant he actually beat Jeremy for once.

Sometime during dinner, it crossed Jeremy’s mind that his little brother seemed to be growing up. For once, the jokes Ryan tried to tell at dinner were actually funny, and Jeremy laughed uproariously along with him. And unlike the usual, forced, polite laughter he noticed from their parents, their laughter this time seemed completely genuine. Jeremy told a few of his own, until Ryan pointed out that he’d told one that Ryan had given at dinner only last week.

By the time Ryan went to bed, the two had been having so much fun together that Ryan extracted from Jeremy a promise to use the half hour gap between their bedtimes to watch a cartoon Ryan loved (mostly because it was the one he got to watch on special occasions when his bed time was extended) and report back to Ryan on the plot the next day.

Jeremy watched the show excitedly. He didn’t know the backstory, though Ryan had helped him with some of that. Even so, the flying robots and magicians and such WERE a lot of fun. He wrote some notes down to show Ryan in the morning, then went upstairs, dug around and pull out some pajamas he’d stopped wearing when he was 10, got them on, brushed his teeth and went to bed.

The next morning, Jeremy crawled out of bed to shower, feeling oddly sweaty. He sneered at the pajamas, unable to recall why he’d worn them, and shucked them unceremoniously into a corner. He showered as Ryan got ready for school. They met at the breakfast table, Ryan grinning in expectation of good times with his newly ’cool’ brother. Those expectations were dashed as Jeremy tossed him a notebook with an inaudible mutter and fled back to the safety of his room with a pop-tart.

Ryan went off to school, glad to be caught up, but upset that the old Jeremy was already back. Jeremy got to the high school, with a note that said Vanessa would be picking him up that afternoon, and both of their days passed uneventfully.

Vanessa pulled up in a sports car befitting her attractive body, and the other guys watched Jeremy jealously and he got into the black Firebird and drove off with such a hot girl. Matters were different inside the car, though. The same synth music was on, and Jeremy was already entirely suggestible.

Jeremy nodded and Vanessa handed him a package as they pulled up. "You made a good nine year old boy yesterday, Jeremy. Until your parents get home, you are five years old. You want to dress like a little boy as well. These should help."

Jeremy took the package and went upstairs, and dumped the box out on his bed. He saw a bunch of brightly colored clothes. He felt very odd as he looked at them, too. None of his clothes felt right, especially his undies. They were too loose. He dropped his pants and giggled out loud. Why was he wearing shorts? Why were his favorite Spongebob underoos on the bed? He quickly stripped down and pulled on the snug, brightly colored underoos. Then came a bright blue t-shirt with Spiderman, which he carefully tucked in (to his underwear) and loose black sweatpants.

Jeremy squirmed a bit and kicked his school clothes into a corner in the closet. He didn’t want to get in trouble for playing dress up with his big brothers clothes. He ran downstairs to the kitchen at breakneck speed. "Canna have my snack now ’nessa?"

The babysitter smiled. Jeremy had picked a slightly more mature set of clothes then she’d expected, but he was clearly a 5 year old in spirit. "How do we ask, Jeremy?"

The young teen hung his head and scuffed his socks on the floor. "Canna have a snack, please?"

Vanessa smile and giggles as she pulled out some peanut butter crackers. Jeremy joined in when he heard. Soon the two giggling voices were joined by a third. Ryan was home and couldn’t stop himself when he saw his big brother in the kitchen munching on peanut butter crackers and wear a spiderman t-shirt tucked into kiddy underpants.

"Jeremy, what are you doing?" he coughed out between giggles.

"Eatin’" Jeremy answered, as if nothing were amiss.

It took Ryan a few more moments to realize that Jeremy seemed to be serious. Less amused, and now mystified, he looked at Vanessa. "What’s going on?"

Vanessa grinned. "Your little brother is having his snack." She flashed him a conspiratorial wink.

"What are you talking about? Jeremy is my older brother!"

A sudden luck of confusion passed Jeremy’s face, as the illogic of the situation briefly dawned on him; Vanessa moved quickly to cut it off. "Your older brother, Ryan? That’s just silly. Jeremy’s only five, and you’re a big nine year old. He’s your little brother, right Jeremy?" Swept away by the force of Vanessa’s logic, Jeremy nodded forcefully. Vanessa winked at Ryan again, trying to drive home the point.

Ryan did get the point--namely, that Vanessa had done something to his brother. And, while Ryan wasn’t that sorry to see Jeremy embarrassed, there was family loyalty to be considered, too. "Vanessa, what did you do to him? He’s thirteen, and you know it. Fix him, now?"

Unexpectedly, Vanessa stood up, grabbed Ryan’s collar, and dragged him out of the room, practically shouting, "How dare you tell lies like that in front of your little brother?"

Once out of Jeremy’s earshot, she pushed Ryan into a chair. "Yes, I made Jeremy believe he’s a five year old. All you have to do is go along and you can do everything he did to you--pick all the tv shows and video games, beat him up, whatever you want."

Ryan struggled with the temptation, but loyalty--and the memories of the good times the day before--won out. "No! You’d better leave him alone, or I’ll tell mom!"

Vanessa shrugged. "Okay." For a moment, Ryan thought he’d won. "If you don’t want to be the older brother, I guess you can be the younger one." And then she said something else, which Ryan couldn’t remember, and suddenly Ryan was in the room alone, and Vanessa had disappeared. He was pretty sure she’d kept talking to him for a while, but he couldn’t remember anything except her comment about him being the younger brother.

He stood up and headed up the stairs to his room, surprised at how off balance he felt, having to work not to fall at each step. Instead of bounding up the stairs, he found himself needing to hold on to the railing and even lean over and grab onto the stairs to help pull himself along.

When he got to his room, he was horrified to see that Vanessa had somehow transformed it. Everything was bright colors and Barney, and, most horrifying of all, a crib in the center of the room. At that moment, he suddenly realized that he needed to go to the bathroom, so much that he could hardly hold it.

He ran across the hall, pulled down his pants, and discovered that he was wearing a diaper. He struggled desperately at the tape on the sides, but found himself unable to get a grip on it. As he stood there, the door opened, and Vanessa walked in. Distracted, his grip on his bladder loosened, and he wet the diaper.

This was the last strike against Ryan’s weakening resolve, and he caved. Even his attempt to concede was marred--instead of a coherent sentence agreeing to treat Jeremy like a five year old, he heard himself stammer out "I’m sowry, ’nessa. I be good now."

"Why thank you, Ryan. I’m sure you’ll be a well-behaved big boy from now on."

And with that, suddenly Ryan’s perception changed. He remembered standing in his room, looking perfectly normal, and somehow imagining a crib and childish decorations. He remembered clawing at the edges of his ordinary white briefs trying to lift off tape that didn’t exist. And, worst of all, he remembered wetting those briefs, leaving him in the soaked, dripping underwear he was now in.

"You’d better go get changed. I could put out clothes for you, but I don’t think you want that." She grinned evilly. "Then, I want you to go play with your brother like the little boy he now is."

Grateful to avoid further humiliation, Ryan dashed off to his room, changed into dry clothes, and hid the embarrassing evidence of his moments as a toddler.

He found Jeremy in the tv room, watching PBS. "Hey, Jeremy, I’m gonna watch my show." Jeremy, of course, disagreed. "I wanna watch Big Bird!"

Ryan was momentarily reluctant to press the issue, until he heard Vanessa’s footsteps in the hallway. "No, I’m the big brother, we watch my show."

A brief wrestling match ensued, and Ryan was surprised at how easy it was to pin his brother. He was pretty sure Jeremy was strong enough to just push him off, but Jeremy seemed to believe that he was stuck.

Over the next few hours, Ryan came to enjoy his new dominance, even if he felt a little bit bad for his brother. They watched nothing but the tv Ryan wanted--he discovered that, even easy than beating Jeremy up was telling him that Jeremy would pick the next show, and then when the next show came, confusing Jeremy enough that Jeremy believed that he’d been promised the show after that--and then played Ryan’s favorite video games. Jeremy had apparently lost motor coordination along with strength, and Ryan won handily every time.

And then, in the middle of a game, they heard the door open downstairs. Suddenly, Jeremy shook his head to clear it. "What the hell?" He looked at Ryan like he was about to ask a question--or exact punishment for Ryan’s participation--but then realized what he was wearing and ran to his room.

Jeremy threw off the clothes and pulled on the ones he’d worn that morning, thrust the rest of the clothes on the bed into a corner where they wouldn’t be seen, and then sat at his desk and pretended to be doing homework.

Once greetings with his parents were done, Jeremy cornered his little brother. "I’ll get you for treating me like that," he warned.

Ryan, more confident than usual at dealing with his brother, responded sharply. "No you won’t." Suddenly, a memory of something Vanessa had said in that conversation before his humiliation popped into his mind. "Or I’ll tell everyone that you’re wearing Spongebob undies."

"No I’m not." Jeremy’s retort started as strongly as it could given that he’d been wearing them only half an hour earlier, and then died out as he recalled changing back into his clothes but couldn’t quite remember actually changing his underwear. In the moment of hesitation, Ryan grabbed Jeremy’s pants and pulled them down a few inches, enough to confirm that Jeremy had indeed left the underwear on.

Jeremy gave up on his threats and fled, leaving Ryan to be relieved that Vanessa had told him how to avoid retaliation--but increasingly worried about what was happening to his brother.

Jeremy did his best to avoid Ryan for the rest of the evening, avoiding eye contact with his brother at dinner. Their parents observed that Ryan was in an unusually good mood, while Jeremy was being quiet and sullen, but decided not to say anything about it.

Despite his best intentions, Jeremy never quite managed to change underwear. Somehow, every time he thought he had enough time to change without any risk of his parents checking on him, he seemed to get distracted and forget about it, so that by the time he changed for bed, he was still wearing them.

Even while thinking about how frustrating it was that Vanessa and Ryan had somehow made him wear Spongebob underwear all night, it didn’t strike him as odd when he replaced them with Spongebob training pants and dug his old pajamas out of the pile of (increasingly interesting looking) clothes in the corner of the room to wear over them.

Just as he was getting into bed, Ryan walked into the room nervously, wearing much less exciting striped pajamas. "Jeremy?"

"Yeah, Ryan?" Jeremy responded in the childish, excited voice he’d used earlier the day.

Ryan took in the pajamas Jeremy was unself-consciously wearing, swallowed, and decided to go ahead and ask the question on his mind. "Are you...are you wearing a diaper?"

"No." Jeremy sounded exasperated. "I’m a big boy, I wear big boy underpants." Jeremy pulled off enough of the pajamas for Ryan to see that Jeremy’s "big boy" underwear was still fly-less and waterproof.

Ryan went back to his room and read the note he’d found under his pillow again. In it, Vanessa had informed him that the diapers he was wearing (when he’d first read that, his hand had raced to check, and he’d discovered that he had, seemingly, put on a diaper along with his pajamas) were to remind him not to cause any trouble for her, and suggesting that if he didn’t behave, he’d end up like Jeremy.

Ryan made one last attempt to pull off the diaper, but again found himself unable to get a handle on it, leaving him to wonder, with no way of knowing, if he was really wearing a diaper or if she’d just made him think he was again. It made little difference, though--either way, he apparently couldn’t get it off until Vanessa let him.

Jeremy awoke to a wet thumb and an odd clamminess around his waist. He wiped the thumb off on his sheets and climbs out of bed. The acrid scent of urine and an unfamiliar heaviness at the crotch greeted him. He went to the bathroom and stripped, only to find himself wearing WET spongebob training pants. The events of yesterday rushed to his mind, but he couldn’t do anything while in a wet diaper. He pulled it off and tossed it then climbed into the shower.

Once clean, he headed back to his room. He passed Ryan in the hall silently...though he DID notice that Ryan also seemed to smell of urine, and had a large crinkly bulge around his crotch as well. He almost felt bad for his little brother. What was going on? How had she made both he and Ryan into bedwetters in one day?

He dug through his drawers and pulled out clothes for the day, clean boxers, baggy leans, so it was clear to everyone that he was wearing boxers today, and not those stupid briefs he’d worn when Vanessa had tricked him. He resolved, to himself, that he would not be tricked today. He’d stay a big boy. Yeah, that was the ticket. Just focus real hard on being grown up. Like the boxer shorts. Those were grown up.

He pulled them on over the DragonTales briefs he’d picked out. Yeah, he felt more like a big boy already. He fought with the jean for a couple minutes. they were hard to zip and button! He almost went to ask Ryan for help. But big boys didn’t need help getting dressed. Then he pulled on a big boy shirt with stripes down the sleeves. He kinda wished it was Big Bird, but he wasn’t gonna be little today! He was a big boy!

Ryan tossed out the wet diaper with a smoosh. He was pretty sure, now, that it was a real diaper, and he’d used it just like a baby. The diaper can in the bathroom kind of clinched it. No more arguing with Vanessa, and hopefully he could get out of them soon. He quickly showered and went back to his room, pulling on briefs, he double checked to be sure, and his normal school clothes. He headed off for school, noting that Jeremy was dressed pretty maturely for a 7th...er...WAS he in 7th grade? Ryan wasn’t sure.

Vanessa had very kindly provided both the boy’s parents with relaxation CD’s, knowing how hard it was to watch two rambunctious and bedwetting boys. Both had gratefully accepted and listened to them at work, constantly reinforcing memories of Jeremy as a rambunctious 5 year old who wasn’t quite ready for Kindergarten.

It wasn’t until he well into the school day, when he went to the bathroom, that Jeremy noticed he was wearing two pairs of underwear, and that the one underneath was embarrassingly childish. Checking to make sure no one was around, he snuck into a stall and pulled them off as quickly as he could and shoved them behind the toilet in the hopes that no one would notice.

Later, at lunch, one of his friends told him how he’d discovered childish briefs, complete with a wet stain in the center, hidden in the boy’s bathroom. Another friend immediately suggested that it was some kid who’d wet himself (perhaps not enough to show through to his pants) and hidden the briefs, and was now "going commando" rather than wear the wet briefs all day. The first friend, who had clearly expected this answer, revealed the punchline--they were huge. The size of DragonTales briefs a seventh grader might wear.

And, for some reason, Jeremy wasn’t able to bite back the first thing that came to mind--an indignant protestation "They weren’t wet!"

Jeremy’s friends laughed and laughed, and Jeremy fled.

The rest of the day was miserable--every moment the teacher wasn’t looking, someone in the class was winking at him or mouthing a comment about his underwear.

By the time he got home, he was close to tears, and wanted to just relax and recover from his awful day. To his relief, Vanessa wasn’t there, which meant no more of her tricks. To his surprise, his mother got home only half an hour later, and walked in on him playing a video game.

"Hi, Jeremy." She looked at him carefully. "Jeremy, did you wet your pants at school today?"

Jeremy looked down and noticed the damp spot on his pants for the first time. "Um..."

"You know the rules, buddy." His mother dragged him to his bedroom. Part of Jeremy thought this was all wrong, but it was getting harder and harder to remember why. By the time the Barney training pants were on him, he was babbling happily about the show, having forgotten that anything at all was wrong.

Ryan’s day at school, at least, was normal. No one had to know that he’d worn a diaper to bed the day before, and no one did.

When he came home, he found Jeremy acting like a little kid again, and, under Vanessa’s watchful eye, he pretended that Jeremy was his little brother. He really did want to help Jeremy, but the knowledge that if he did, Vanessa would find some way to completely humiliate him was too much to overcome.

After Vanessa left and his parents arrived, though, Ryan learned that the situation had gotten even worse. Jeremy continued to act like a little kid, and his parents seemed to think it was perfectly normal. When Ryan’s mother referred to Ryan’s "little brother," it was the last straw--Ryan had to save Jeremy (and perhaps himself) from whatever Vanessa was doing.

He could feel the fear in the pit of his stomach, not knowing what retaliation Vanessa might extract for this transgression the next day, and desperately hoping that his mother would believe him and not let Vanessa get near enough to do anything.

"Mommy, I wet myself," Ryan heard himself say. Worse, he could immediately feel that it was true.

His mother shook her head. "Come on, Ry-Ry." She took his hand in hers, and Ryan found himself following her to his room, walking unsteadily and even using her for support on occasion.

He opened his mouth again to try to explain that this was wrong, and found his thumb in the way. When they got to his room, Ryan recognized the nursery he’d seen the day before. He knew this wasn’t real, but it certainly looked real. His mother helped him up onto a changing table (hadn’t his desk been here before?), and Ryan found himself contentedly sucking his thumb while his mother pulled off his pants and briefs and put a diaper on him.

To Ryan’s further embarrassment, she didn’t even put new pants on him, just helped him off wearing nothing but a diaper and socks below his waist. Ryan tried to point this out, and, with a bit of effort, pulled his thumb out of his mouth and managed to squeak out, "Pants!"

"That’s right, Ry-Ry. Your pants are all wet so I put them over there." His mother helpfully pointed to where she’d put his wet pants.

Ryan decided to drop the issue and get back to the main point--that he wasn’t a toddler, and Vanessa was somehow doing this to all of them--until a wave of dizziness came over him and he fell on diapered bottom and suddenly started crying.

Ryan wasn’t sure how much time passed before he regained his senses. He vaguely remembered his mother comforting, and playing with some blocks for a while (actually just clumsily banging them into each other), and then being escorted to the television room to watch Teletubbies. It was sometime in the middle of the show that he remembered that he was really a nine year old, albeit one sitting in a diaper with a bottle in his mouth.

He stood up, not feeling dizzy and more. "I’m Ryan. Ryan. I can talk," he announced to the room, glad to determine that he’d apparently returned to normal. He ran to his room (thankfully returned to normal, except for the ominous box of diapers in the corner) and shut the door, hoping no one would see him in the diaper, and tried to take it off. To his frustration, he still didn’t seem to be able to take off the diaper. Worse, when he tried to pull pants over it, he couldn’t even remember how to put them on. He heard his mother calling him for dinner, and hurried, trying to get them on so he could go to dinner, but he couldn’t figure it out.

He threw them on the bed and was glaring at them in frustration when his mother opened the door. Without reacting to the way he was dressed, she informed him that he was to come down for dinner right away. Not sure what else to do, Ryan sat through dinner with no pants and a diaper, privately debating whether it was better or worse that no one in the family seemed to think this was odd.

One thing that was certain, though, was that Vanessa had made her point--Ryan wasn’t going to press the issue any further.

When Jeremy woke up the next morning, thumb in mouth and pants wet, he remembered the events of the day before all too clearly. There was no way he could go back to school, not after the humiliation of the day before, and especially not with the likelihood that something else, perhaps even worse, would happen today.

Jeremy changed out of the wet diaper, showered, and then went downstairs wearing only a towel around his waist, afraid that taking the time to get dressed would shake his resolve. He dug through his mother’s address book until he found Vanessa’s number and called it up.

A woman picked up.

"Vanessa?"

"Who is this?"

"It’s...it’s Jeremy. I need to talk to Vanessa."

"You need to talk to her? Well, we’ll see." In the background, he heard the woman say, "Vanessa, it’s for you. It’s a boy. He says his name is Jeremy, but I don’t recognize that name." The woman didn’t sound happy.

It took Jeremy a moment to realize that Vanessa’s mother thought he might be her boyfriend. It was a funny thought--it had only been a few days ago when Jeremy had hoped something like that might happen, yet now it seemed absurd.

In the background, a voice, presumably Vanessa, said, "He’s one of the boys I babysit. I don’t know why he’s calling." Then, directly into the phone, "Hi, Jeremy. Why are you calling?"

"Vanessa, I can’t go to school today. I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but this is awful. If you’re going to make me act like a kid, just let me be one. Don’t keep making me go around like I normally am and then humiliate me. They’ll just spend all day laughing at me again, and I’m sure you’ll do something else to me today, and it’s just awful, and I can’t..."

She cut him off. "Okay, okay. You’d really rather just be a kid?"

"No, I’d rather just be me." Jeremy said sharply. There was a pause, as he remembered that he was begging for a favor. "But the worst is to keep going back and forth."

"Okay, Jeremy, that’s fair. Here’s my offer: wet yourself on purpose, and you’ll get it."

Jeremy almost screamed, "What?"

"Go change out of those clothes into ordinary clothes. Then, in front of your family, wet your pants on purpose. And then you’ll forget that you’re a big boy."

Jeremy was about to argue when she hung up. He wondered what clothes she thought he’d put on that morning--what clothes he would have put on, if he’d gotten dressed.

He grimaced, set his jaw, and marched upstairs. He pulled on clothes--ordinary clothes, boxers, jeans, and a t-shirt. He checked, twice, that he was wearing just boxers, but she must have done something to let him get dressed normally.

Then he marched to the kitchen, where the rest of his family was eating breakfast. He hated himself for what he was about to do, but he didn’t see a way out of it. And he let his bladder go.

As it happened, he had the vague sense of his maturity flowing away. For a moment, he was horribly embarrassed, and then he felt the little kid in him wake up. It gently offering to take away the embarrassment, and Jeremy accepted, letting himself believe that wearing diapers and watching Barney was normal. And, after a moment, it was, and he suddenly smiled and looked happily at his family.

And then his mommy took him upstairs and helped him into Barney training pants and his favorite Big Bird shirt, which he put on with only a little bit of help, and then he happily ran downstairs to breakfast.

Ryan kept up the same routine ever day after that. Go to bed at night and end up diapered, no matter how hard he tried to wear underoos or boxers, when he got older. On the rare occasion he managed, by sheer strength of will, to wear regular undies to bed, his mom double checked him and wouldn’t leave the room until he changed. ’Just in case", she said. Ryan knew it was more then ’in case’ though. He woke up damp as often as Jeremy, or "Germie" as Ryan had taken to calling him.

Ryan hated it. After a few months, he was able to change himself out of them, in the mornings. Some nights his mother even let him wear training pants, much to his pleasure, and chagrin when he woke up with them just as soaked as the diapers. Ryan began to get used to the condition though. It was a hassle, but no longer an embarrassment, after a year or so. He didn’t intend to let Vanessa know that, though.

 

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