Under New Management

Chapter 2
Part 2

Chapter Description: Part 2

When he woke, Jimmy was keenly aware of a stabbing sensation in the gut.  He’d been having a dream about getting into a fight.  He’d been losing and the phantom that had been beating him and been decking him right in the ol’ breadbasket.  It took him a solid thirty seconds of semi-wakefulness to realize that he wasn’t asleep and that the painful pangs in his intestines had less to do than some big galoot socking him in the stomach and more to do with something he’d eaten.

Those hastily chugged martinis were having more lingering side effects than just nausea, headaches and fatigue. “Gotta shit,” he mumbled to himself, before rolling out onto his bedroom floor.  Or rather he would have rolled over had the toddler bed’s railing not prevented him.

This afternoon’s events cascaded into Jimmy’s conscious memory.  Toddler bed. His secretary.  This bizarre friggin’ room belonging to another ‘Jimmy’. He sat up and scooted down to the foot of the bed; an action that not so subtly reminded him of what he’d gone to sleep in.  Pull-Ups. Giant friggin’ training pants. Just the act of sitting up caused them to lightly crinkle like a grocery bag.  His guts didn’t much care for the act of sitting up either.

“Uh oh,” Jimmy winced, in pain. His body had really been knocked for a loop.  Warily he lifted up the sleep shirt and stared down between his own legs.  Pinocchio’s nose was still it’s normal, truth telling size.  All dry.  No accidents.  He shouldn’t have, but Jimmy felt a certain level of pride in that ‘accomplishment’.

Another, even more intense wave of post digestive pain and a feeling in his bottom akin to a loaded bullet in the chamber, gave Jimmy his last warning.  It wasn’t a matter of ‘needing to poop’.  Within less than a minute, maybe less, he was going to poop. It was just a matter of where.

Bare feet flapping on the floor, (the Pull-up had thrown his gait off just a tad), Jimmy sprinted out of the strange bedroom and barreled into the strange bathroom. “No time,” he said to himself as he didn’t bother to close the door.  He only had seconds to go.  

Pivot, bottom clothes down, sit and release: It was a dance he had done for many many years, though rarely quite as fast.  That’s the problem with dancing; when you up the tempo you’re likely to lose a step.

KER-SPLOOSH!

Jimmy let out a cry of surprise and pain when he splashed into the bowl.  The poor boy had forgotten to see if the seat was down, and found himself ass deep in toilet water. His cries of surprise turned into garbled screams of panic.  His body no longer cared that it was inconvenient to release pressure.  Not even the shock of cold commode water could stop his bowels from evacuating themselves, nor his bladder from leaking out.

The loose stool raced out of him and spread around in the bowl, while his penis sprayed wildly, not unlike an unmanned firehose.  Some of the liquid waste made it into the toilet to mix in with the foul cauldron alongside Jimmy.  Most didn’t.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

On pounding feet, Miss Kirsten came running.  “Jimmy?” she called out. “Jimmy, what’s wro-?”  She froze, and slapped her hand over her mouth.  That didn’t hide the delighted twinkle in the older woman’s eyes.  “Awwwwww!”

“Awww?!” Jimmy yelled, his body shaking with indignity “What do you mean ‘awwww’?’”

Miss Kirsten had changed her clothes too.  No longer in stiff corporate attire, the woman had changed into a pair navy blue slacks and a light matching sweater, the kind that soccer moms tended to tie around their waists.

Kirsten rushed in and helped him up.  “Jimmy, hun, what happened?”  She didn’t wait for him to respond to start tearing off pieces of toilet paper and gingerly wipe at his thighs.

Overwhelmed as he was, Jimmy couldn’t make eye contact.  A knot had made itself at home in his throat and it was getting harder to speak by the second.  Staring down at his smooth, hairless thighs, Jimmy tried several times to explain exactly what happened, but after a few mumbled misfires he settled for, “I hadda accident.”  The tears started to flow down.

Instantly, Miss Kirsten melted. “Oh, it’s okay Jimmy,” she told him.  Patting him on the shoulder.  “At least you tried.”  She took him by the hand and patted the top of it gently.  This time it didn’t feel so bad.  “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up, big boy.”

Jimmy didn’t feel like a big boy.  He was dripping with pee water and the back of his legs were caked with his own excrement.  Worst. First Day of Work.  Ever.

But it was about to get worse.  Jimmy didn’t feel like a ‘big boy’ when Miss Kirsten led him back into the guest room.  He felt like he was going mad!  

In the space of two minutes the room had been entirely redone. It no longer looked like the room of a little boy, but of someone much, much younger.  The low to the ground toddler bed was now an elevated crib, with sliding wooden bars that reached to just an inch or so below the ceiling.

The dresser with drawers containing childish underpants and t-shirts was gone, a changing table in its place.  One just as big and sturdy though; sturdy enough that a thirty year old man could lay on it and stretch his legs out with no fear.  Jimmy didn’t need to ask what the folded stacks of rectangles on the second shelf were..  They weren’t Pull-Ups.

“Up you go!” Miss Kirsten chirped.   

“Up I...gooooo?!”  His secretary scooped him up under the knees and caught him by the back, cradling him with ease and plopping him on the padded elevated surface.  “Miss Kirsten!”

The older woman didn’t seem to hear him.  She grabbed a wipe and pushed his ankle back to the ceiling, so she could start wiping wet muck from the back of his legs.  Where the cardboard box containing the adult Pull-Ups  had been a diaper pail now stood.  In went the soiled baby wipes.

“I’m very proud of you for trying to use the potty,” she cooed at him.  “But I think it’s still a liiiiittle early for you to start wearing Pull-Ups.  Maybe in a couple years or so.”

A giant question mark might as well have popped up.  He craned his baffled neck and looked at his legs and pubic area get wiped down for him.  “Start?!  Early?!”  Jimmy had so many questions.  Last among them was ‘where did my public hair go?’. “Miss Kirsten, what are you talking about?”

His secretary didn’t even break her stride.  She reached underneath the table and drew out an adult diaper.  “Mommy,” she told him.  “My name is Mommy, remember? Maaaaaahmy.  Or Mama.  Or Mum.  Or Mummy.  Any of those.”

Jimmy made a break for it, rolling off the table and sprinting.  That’s what he would have done if Mommy Kirsten hadn’t blocked him and forced him back down with a single hand.   “Wiggly this afternoon?”  A chest strap with the release just beyond Jimmy’s reach solved that.

“Kirsten?!” Jimmy cried out.  “What are you doing?!  I’m not some kind of baby!”

“Of course you’re not ‘some kind of baby’, Mommy Kirsten replied condescendingly. This did not stop her from raising Jimmy’s hips and sliding a diaper underneath him, and dusting his privates with baby powder. “You’re my kind of baby.”

“I’m your manager!” Jimmy insisted.

This did not dissuade the woman.  She didn’t even look at him. She was too busy tucking in the front of the diaper so that the tapes went on tight..  “Uh-huh…”

“I’m not one! I’m thirty!”

Mommy Kirsten undid the chest strap and pulled him up into a sitting position. “I know, baby.  See?”  She picked up an unopened package of diapers and showed it to him.

Jimmy had been expecting a rather large pack of Pampers or Huggies.  A normal baby diaper made comically  large to fit him.  That’s not what he got, though.

The plastic wrapped package read: “Millennialz- Ages 25 to 40.  Now with Fairy Tale designs.”  The model on the cover, sitting in the diaper and smiling looked to be around Jimmy’s age. No baby there. Looked very babyish there, though.  

Jimmy looked down between his legs. It had a soft clothlike backing, and velcro tapes. Just like a baby diaper did these days.  Pastel decorations on the front showed three pigs staring back from the waist. and at random intervals going down to the crotch, there were little straw, stick, and brick cottages.  He was wearing the Three Little Pigs on his bottom!

At the same time, his diaper wasn’t an ‘adult’ diaper like a Depends or what old people wear, that weird frilly granny panties look and cheap material meant to hold occasional bladder leaks.  This was a heavy duty diaper.

It wasn’t a proper ‘baby diaper’ either.  Real babies didn’t need nearly as much padding on their bums, likely because child bladders were demonstrably smaller than adult bladders.  Real baby diapers didn’t have two tapes on each side, but Jimmy’s new undergarment clearly had a top and bottom row of velcro holding the thing together; likely from a need to hold the additional weight in place.

It wasn’t like the kind of diapers he wore when he was actually a baby, either  He’d seen enough baby pictures of himself to remember that when he actually needed them they tended to have a soft plastic sheen.  Diapers hadn’t gone to velcro and cloth backed long after he’d been properly potty trained.

It wasn’t a scaled up version of a real baby diaper.

It wasn’t an adult diaper.

It wasn’t a recreation of the diapers he wore when he was actually a child.  

Something clicked: He was wearing the kind of diaper someone his age might wear if they were still considered children!

“See?  Mommy knows you’re not one!  These diapers would be much too big for a one year old!”

“I’m your manager!”

“I know sweetie,” Mommy Kirsten said.  She yanked a red t-shirt over Jimmy’s head. Baffled, Jimmy let his arms be guided through the sleeves.  “It’s why I take you everywhere I go!”  She gently pushed him back down on the table.  “Mommy wouldn’t be happy without her little manager nearby.” Her hands grabbed the ends of his shirt and snapped them together between his legs.  “That and daycares won’t take babies...I mean ‘managers’ your age.”  

Jimmy sat up.  “A onesie?!” he said. Oh the indignation!  “Why am I wearing a onesie?”

The woman who was supposed to be his secretary smirked.  “Oh? Do you mean you want people looking at your diaper?”

“No?!” Jimmy blustered.  “Yes?!” Then he found the right words.  “I mean I  shouldn’t even be wearing these!”

He got his lightly honked in response.  “I know you like to think that, but you’re not ready to be a big boy, yet, baby.” Mommy Kirsten lifted Jimmy onto her hip, as easily as if he were toddler.  Instinctively, his legs wrapped around her waist.   “You’re just not.  Why do you think you’re wearing a diaper?”

“Because you put me in one!”  

Mommy Kirsten carried him out of his room...of the baby’s room...of baby Jimmy’s room?...and into the living room. “And why would I do that?”

“Because I fell into the potty and got all poopy.”  Jimmy gasped at what he’d just said.  He hadn’t meant to say that. The words, like the contents of his bowels, had just come flowing out.

Jimmy found himself shifted off just long enough for his secretary to sit down and place him in her lap.  “That doesn’t sound very grown-up?” Mommy Kirsten asked.

No.  No it didn’t. “But I had a Pull-Up on and everything!”

She sighed dramatically. “Yes, I said you could try a Pull-Up on.  It’s pretty much a diaper without the tabs anyways.  That was a mistake.”
The babied man balked.  “What? No! You made me wear it!  You said it belonged to Jimmy, your son.”

Mommy Kirsten smiled.  “Nooooo!  You’re my only Jimmy!  I said it was your Pull-Up! Remember?”  No.  That’s not how Jimmy remembered it at all.  But the way she said it.  Such certainty!  Such conviction!  Things Jimmy wasn’t feeling those things at all.  

The scent of baby powder wafted up from his diaper and entered his nose, muddling his thoughts. His bum hadn’t been diapered and powdered since he was at least three years old; probably longer.  He certainly didn’t have any clear memories pre-potty training.  Yet here he was at thirty, and it didn’t smell, feel, or sound all that foreign to him.

“You’re not my mommy!” Jimmy insisted.  “I mean, ‘mother’!  You’re not my mother!”  This couldn’t be true.  Twenty something years of adulthood.

The lady that he swore he’d just met today sighed.  “Don’t you think it’s time to stop pretending?”  She reached over the coffee table and picked up a baby bottle.  From the color of the contents and the way it sloshed, he guessed it was orange juice.

Jimmy eyed the bottle warily.  It was big alright; over a liter by the looks of it.  “Stop pretending?  But I am a grown-up.  I mean a big kid...adult! I’m an adult!”

“You must still be feeling icky.  Probably dehydrated.”  Mommy Kirsten held the bottle up.  “Drink your juice-juice, and Mommy will tell you what happened that day.”

The babied man would have had some kind of reply, but the moment hte rubber nipple brushed under his nose, something inside him took over.  As reflexively as a leg kicking out when the knee is hammered, he felt the nipple brush his upper lip and latched onto it.  Jimmy drank. Jimmy listened.

“I took you to work today, because I missed you,” Mommy Kirsten said.  “I didn’t have a playpen, so I put you in my office and worked at a desk outside.  Mommies and Daddies still need some quiet time to do their work, and babies can be very noisy, even if we love them.”

Jimmy gulped down the orange juice.  Jimmy drank it all in.  He tried not to, but his mouth wouldn’t spit the bottle out.  Best he could do was to inhale the juice as fast as he could.  Then his lips might disengage from the nipple and he might find the strength to wriggle off of Mommy’s lap.

Jimmy drank.  And Jimmy listened.

“Mommy turned on her computer and worked on her laptop, while you played pretend and looked at her computer.  You were fussy because there weren’t any computer games to play, so Mommy let some friends her age take you out to lunch for some fresh air.”

 He felt a little trickle-nothing more than a spurt- enter the front of his diaper.  It still embarrassed the lad.  He hadn’t managed to stay dry for six minutes.

If Mommy noticed it, she didn’t say anything.  Instead, she said.  “But those friends weren’t very good babysitters.  They gave you some yucky grown-up stuff that made your tummy feel funny inside. So Mommy took you home and put you down for a nap.  To make you feel better, more like a big boy, she left the crib railing down and put you in that left over Pull-Up from last summer when we tried potty training again.”

Jimmy finished the bottle. “But don’t normally wear Pull-Ups!”

“That’s right.  You normally wear diapers.”  She gave the space between his legs a quick poke and frowned.  “Wet already?  I just changed you.”  Jimmy stopped breathing for the two seconds it took for her to slip her fingers in past the leg gathers and feel around.  “Okay.  Just a little.”

“This isn’t right!” Jimmy repeated for himself. “I don’t need diapers!”

“Evidence says otherwise.”

“I’m supposed to be wearing underwear!”

“That sounds silly.” Mommy replied.  “Babies don’t wear big kid undies.”

He was beside himself. “I’m thirty!”

“For you, there’s not much difference.  You still need a real grown-up to hold your hand and take care of you and walk you through every little thing, don’t you?”

“But...but…!” Jimmy felt another trickle leak out of him.

Mommy shifted him over to the couch and grabbed a laptop.  She opened the device and turned it on.  “Okay. I’ll humor you. You’re a manager at Mommy’s big fancy company she works at, and Mommy is your secretary.”  She placed the laptop in front of him.  “What’s this?”

Jimmy leaned forward and read, ignoring the crinkle.   “Credibly myocardinate B2B mindshare to conveniently cultivate clicks-and-mortar partnerships and progressively reintermediate worldwide deliverables.”  The same!  It was the same memos he’d been reading earlier today!  And they still made no sense.

“Very good,” Mommy praised him.  “Now what does that mean?”

Jimmy opened his mouth, but no sounds came out.  He had no idea.  It was like cockney.  Or Spanish.  Or Dr. Seuss.  He could sound everything out but he had no idea what it meant.
“Okay,” Mommy said. She opened up another email.  “What about this one?”

“Collaboratively transform cooperative methods of empowerment and authoritatively customize frictionless ideas so that we may assertively disseminate compelling networks…?”  

“You’re a manager, right?  So what does that mean.”

Jimmy hunched over.  “I don’t know…”

“What is it that the company you manage for does.”

He felt his lips itching.  “I don’t know….”

“What’s the name of the company you work for?”

“I...don’t...know…?”  Jimmy started shivering.  There was so much he didn’t know, and it was only being pointed out to him. He didn’t know what his car looked like, he didn’t know his Mommy...his real Mommy’s name...he didn’t know where he lived.  He didn’t even know his own birthday!  He just knew how old he was.  Had he made it all up, like Mommy said?

Then Mommy ‘helped’ him along.  “What jobs did do you do before you were a manager?”

The front of his diaper warmed again.  The orange juice was going right through him.  Jimmy tried to ignore the increasingly squishy sensation in his pants.  He was a grown-up! He knew it!  He just knew it!  “I worked at a couple of restaurants as a waiter...and I worked at a fast food place doing drive through...and I think I worked behind the counter at a paint store.”

“Those don’t sound like grown-up jobs, do they?”

Jimmy racked his brain.  All his life while he’d been growing up, he’d always pictured people who worked those kinds of jobs as either highschoolers or college students, the people who weren’t quite grown-up and just needed some extra money. Yeah, there were old people there too, but they were usually just supplementing their retirement or keeping busy in their autumn years.  It’s literally what he’d been taught by his Boomer parents and Gen-X supervisors....by Mommy.

“Not...really…” Jimmy admitted.

“And why would they hire you as a manager at Mommy’s company if you had no work experience there?”

Heat rose again to little Jimmy’s cheeks.  “Because I spelled my name J-A-M-E-S on the job application.”

“That sounds like a silly reason to give a baby a job, doesn’t it?”

Jimmy had to admit it did sound that way when he spoke it out loud.  “But I’m not a baby! I’m thirty years old!”

Mommy patted his tummy and gave him a hug.  “Yes. You’re a thirty year old baby!”  She gave him a kiss on the cheek.  “Just like all the other twenty to thirty somethings.”

Jimmy felt a gurgle in his stomach.  He hadn’t completely cleared out his system when he pooped himself in the toilet.  “But...my life…”

“You’ll still get to see your friends, Greg and Shauna on the weekends.”  Images flashed across Jimmy’s brain.  Greg was thirty two, loved Elmo’s world, the closest thing to pants he wore were shortalls with snaps along the inseams.  He had a habit of saying ‘poopy’ everytime he did, but claimed to not notice it.

Shauna was twenty-nine and when not in public would just run around in her diaper with her breasts flopping out.  She’d scream and shout everytime so much as a t-shirt was yanked over her head.  Her Daddy had said that it was ‘just a phase’.  

They were Jimmy’s best friends, but he couldn’t remember them being grown-ups.  Had he even known them at the start of this day?  Or had he been pretending they didn’t exist.

This might be a fever dream.  This might be reality rewriting itself.  Or maybe people of Jimmy’s generation would just never be allowed to grow up. He leaned forward and concentrated. It felt familiar, but of course it felt familiar.  People his age pooped all the time.  But did they poop their pants?

All his life, he’d been told that it would get easier.  That he’d be a grown up and he’d see just how childish and entitled he’d been acting.  It never had gotten easier though.  Had it?  The leftover bit that hadn’t made it into the toilet started coming out of him.  That was normal.

He had been infantilized and condescended to.  Struggling in debt and a rigged system that just didn’t want him in it.  He’d needed an education to get a good job, but college had become the new highschool, the new bare minimum, and here he was still lacking in any practical experience he could put on his resume.  He pushed and felt the poop enter his diaper. This time, it wasn’t as sloppy.  Kind of like play-doh if he really thought about it.

 He’d read constant articles about how people his age were giant children.  So why not be a giant child?  It would certainly be easier than jumping through a thousand arbitrary hoops.  Filling his pants was certainly easier than filling out paperwork.  HIs pants filled even more, and the lump in the back of his onesie grew and grew as the last of his pretend adulthood exited the back of him.

Had to make room.  Room for fun things.  Like cute clothes.  Soft stuffies.  Silly games.  And a mommy who would take care of him and not begrudge him for it.  So what if he was a big baby?  He’d been told that more or less his whole life. Criticized for ‘participation trophies’, when it was the dumb adults’ idea in the first place to give it to him.  He might as well live the part.

Was he an adult who was turning into a baby?  Or was he a baby that was just done pretending to be an adult?   Either way, it was easier for Jimmy to just lift his seat, grunt, and accept defeat. Going in his pants felt so much better than the shit storm that had happened in the bathroom. So much safer. No worrying about aim or seats or turning around.  He never had to check where his diaper was.

And what about the other times?  Maybe he had been potty trained and grown up over the last three decades or so.  Maybe he’d just imagined what it might feel like based on the cold feeling of an empty bathtub and the few moments before his poopy hit the back of his diaper?  It didn’t matter. And that made him smile.

“Uh oh.” Mommy said. “I know that look.  Guess you didn’t get it all out the first time.” Her smile was teasing, her tone was delighted.  “Did you make boom booms for Mommy?”

Jimmy sat down and felt the mess mush up against him. It felt...right...it felt strangely right.  Let him make a mess.  He blushed. “Yeeeeah…”

“Let’s go get you changed.”

“Mommy?” Jimmy asked.  “Can I have the decoration with The Big Bad Wolf on it next?”

“Of course, sweetie.”

***********************************************************************************************

Jimmy sat in his office, watching Spongebob on Mommy’s laptop for what must have been the bazillionth time.  He yawned, and rolled over in his playpen, staring up at the ceiling. He raised his feet. The socks were woven to look like loafers!  His onesie had a picture of a tie on it.  He looked the part of a real grown-up.  A real businessman. A boss baby.

His secretary, a stuffed teddy bear with glasses on its head and a notepad in its lap said he looked very grown-up indeed!  Mommy had told him so, too.

The door open and Mommy came in.  “Hello, hello!” she practically sang.  

Jimmy rolled over to all fours.  He’d stopped walking weeks ago. Or maybe he never could walk.  It was hard to tell.  Something for the big people to figure out.  “MOMMY!”

On the bright side, using all four of his limbs provided critical support redundancy, which was a fancy big business type way of saying it was harder for him to fall down.   

“How’s my little manager doing?” she cooed, leaning over the.

“Goooood,” he gurgled.  “I was just going over some files,” he said, which was just fancy speak for watching reruns.

“Very good!”  She lifted him out of the playpen and took him over to the changing table.  It made more sense to have one of those than a big fancy business desk.  “I just had a spare moment doing my ‘secretary job’ so I thought I’d pop in and check in on you.”  She laid him down and handed him a bottle she kept in her mini fridge.  “Drink up.”

Jimmy took the ba-ba in both hands while Mommy unsnapped his onesie.  This, he’d learned, was called ‘multi-tasking’. Mommy was very good at that sort of stuff.

“We’ve only got a couple more hours to go, then we can get you home,” she said, as she wiped his poopy bottom and applied special rash cream on all the sensitive red spots.  A bit of powder would finish the job.

“Okay, Mommy.”  He looked up and sighed as she threw the Big Bad Wolf diaper into the pail.  The custodians were sure earning their keep.  Next on the stack was Little Red Riding Hood.  He’d taken inventory this morning and knew she was next. “Mommy?” he said.

“Yes dear?”  She started taping on the Red Riding Hood diaper.

“Can I wear another wolf diaper next?” he said. “They’re my favorite.”

“We’ll see dear.”  Mommy said. “But you’re going to have to wear all of them eventually.”

“I know.” He finished the bottle as she was buttoning his onesie back up.  “Hey Mommy?”

“Hmmm?”

“Can I be a wolf when I grow up?”

“I don’t think so, dear.” Mommy giggled.  “I don’t think you’re cut out for that.”

“Which part?” Jimmy wondered on his way back to the playpen.  “The wolf or the grown-up?”

“Either,” Mommy said.  “Both.”

(The End).

(This was written as an art trade for Jimmy Wuffster.  Check out what he wrote for me over on his patreon.  http://patreon.com/DaddyWuffster )