A Comedy of AR's

Chapter 92
Chapter 92: Little Voices: "The Talk"

Chapter Description: Clark goes to a Little Voices meeting with a "Very Special" Guest Speaker on a series of "Very Special" Topics.

Chapter 92: Little Voices: “The Talk”

I spent most of the day Thursday in a low key funk.  No, it wasn’t terrible, or traumatic. No great victories or defeats.  No extra signs that my students were hurting more than they already were. No shouts or crying leaking in from my old room.

Tracy wore a perfect poker face. The few times she was in eyesight or earshot I found myself trying to listen for a telltale crinkle or see a bit of thin white plastic peeking out of a waistband, but found nothing. The bus loop and the cafeteria were too loud to hear a diaper rustling and Tracy’s newly developed habit of wearing long flowing skirts and dresses hid any signs of puffy padding.

I was fixated on it because I was sure she had been diapered yesterday. I didn’t want her to be diapered the next. It was a punishment, obviously, but  was this an official punishment like when Raine had been tricked into crossing a line or a pretense to get rid of Tracy due to Maturosis? Had this Wednesday been a one time thing? A warning to remind her of her place? Or was it part of a larger attempt to drive her out of the school?

It was so hard to tell. Tweeners had neither the privilege of assumed maturity until proven beyond a reasonable doubt nor the presumed guilt of innocence until proven otherwise. To one side of the road, Amazons were safe because the flow of society went with them. To the other side, Littles could learn to be safe; traffic went against us but we learned to watch for oncoming cars and were encouraged to dive into a ditch as necessary.  Tweeners had to walk in the middle and as such could be squished like grapes if they didn’t learn to look behind and infront of them at all times.

Statistically, there was no way Tracy was getting Adopted. I’d never met the man, but she was married to an Amazon. If someone said she had Maturosis, she’d go into his custody and they could get a second opinion disproving the diagnosis, or just move far away enough.  She wouldn’t spend more than an afternoon sleeping in a crib depending on how long it took Mr…Tracy’s husband…to drive down to the school or wherever she was being kept.

Unless her husband got his own baby crazy activated and decided that he liked her better this way or that she needed his care.

Or he went mad with grief and burned down their house.

Or he just didn’t want her because he had better things to do.

Or there was some obscure Amazon law on the books that made him ineligible to adopt because he was clearly blind to not notice his own wife’s ‘immature tendencies’.

Or they hit her super hard with hypnosis or continence drugs or those messed up soundwaves that messed up coordination and focus while also stimulating pleasure before he rescued her.
Or if her husband didn’t really exist.  Maybe that wedding ring and the brief mentions of him and their weekend plans were tiny bits of protective lies she’d woven over the years to keep giants uninterested. I didn’t even know the man’s first name.

Come to think of it, I’d never properly memorized Tracy’s last name.  I’d asked, but it was hard to pronounce;  something long and Spanic sounding. Mayztepic, maybe?  When my mouth fumbled with the pronunciation, Tracy didn’t laugh. She’d just nodded and said, “Took me a while too, and I married into it. Just call me ‘Tracy’. ‘Miss Tracy’ around the kids.”

Even if everything went right for Tracy in regards to Maturosis; even if she noped out due to harassment, quit, and rode off into the sunset, that would leave no one around to mitigate the harm Ambrose was actively doing to our kids. They’d be even more alone than they were.

I’d be more alone…

The more time that passed between my old life and Adoption, the more I was learning how very little I really knew outside of my immediate struggle for survival and recognition. I didn’t actually know what risks versus protections Tracy had to balance and how likely any given outcome was to pass.

I actually told Janet about it that same Wednesday night, and to her credit she promised she’d look into it for me.  Ask Beouf if there were any Union complaints or safeguards or try to find out from Tracy in a way that wouldn’t embarrass her.

That opportunity didn’t come Thursday. Beouf had called in sick, citing her new granddaughter, and Tracy was impossible to pull aside during school hours and before and after school she made herself scarcer than usual.

The substitute in Beouf’s room was an old Amazon woman who could have been anywhere between seventy and ninety by looking at her, and not important enough to remember. She was just a warm body and Zoge ran the room in Beouf’s absence.

We were all angels that day, too.  No mischief attempted by anyone. I was so preoccupied worrying about Tracy that Billy asked if I was feeling alright.  When Billy asks if you’re okay, something’s wrong.

Chaz asked if we should stir the pot by doing another Why Day since it had been a while, but I spun some lie about how Beouf would likely punish us harsher for acting up in her absence- teachers hated and were deeply embarrassed by bad notes left by substitutes. I also spun it that if we were good for Zoge and the warm body, but terrible when Beouf returned, it would agitate her more and make her wonder what she was doing wrong.

It’s funny how one can tell a lie, hear it, and then realize that it’s actually quite true. So we were good.  All day.  Besides, the old woman was cantankerous enough to very clearly state that she did not change diapers. Take the win where you can find it.

The school day behind me, Janet drove me home and gave me dinner consisting of steamed broccoli and carrots,  as well as cut up peanut butter and natural strawberry jam sandwiches on whole wheat bread. All foods meant to relieve and prevent constipation.  Then she dressed me in a blue and white pinstripe long sleeve romper with the words ‘Little Slugger’ on the front and ‘01’ on the back, as well grippy socks that mimicked baseball cleats. Baby clothes that could double as jammies. This was going to be a long night.  A small bit of comfort was that she didn’t put me in a night time diaper, so I wasn’t completely locked in for the night as it were.

Dinner was early and dressing was fast because Janet was in a rush to get to the Community Center for the Little Voices meeting.  “Why are we going so early?” I asked from the carseat.

“I’m tired of getting there just a few minutes before it starts. I need to spend more time with other Mommies and Daddies. Make friends.  I don’t get playground time at school everyday like you do.  Everybody needs friends.”

That shut me up. I could have retorted or otherwise tried to dissuade her, but it would have served no purpose.  That and she was right.  Everybody did need friends to one degree or another.

Talking to the Amazons at Little Voices would only dunk Janet deeper into the crazy pool and give her more ideas, but talking to Littles more mindfucked than me and getting a feel for each different prison environment and how I could use it to my advantage was crucial on multiple levels. Talking to softer Mommies and Daddies might soften her up, too. Strategically, I needed Janet to keep going to the meetings.  I just hoped that my personal resources and preparations would outpace hers when the time came.

We were among the first there, with only one or two other Little-Amazon pairings. I refused to think of them as ‘families’ even ironically. There was one chubby Little girl who wore a dark blue dress that was almost black with white tights and a red headband over dark brown hair. I had a hunch that someone had just had their own Picture Day at their daycare. 
She sat on the floor, absorbed in play with stacking cups and figuring out.  Mindfucked or just bored?  Who could say without a conversation I didn’t want to have? 

The other girl had short blonde hair and lounged in her Mommy’s lap wearing just a Cherry the cartoon dog t-shirt and socks that went well past her knees in lieu of pants. She chewed on her pacifier rather like a cow on a piece of cud, with bits of red juice dribbling out of the corner of her lips.  She took the pacifier out of her mouth and examined it. It wasn’t a pacifier in the purest sense, but instead had a plastic mesh netting loaded to the brim with sweet looking red berries. Clever.

Janet took a seat next to them in the circle of chairs and unholstered her diaper bag.  She never forgot that damn bag when we went to these meetings.  More social pressure and expectations, I suspected.  Bring your status symbols and cult’s iconography where they mattered most. 

“Do you want to play on the floor?” Janet whispered quietly to me. She was still cautious. Still holding back.  I hadn’t gone out of my way to hurt her this week, but I’d still hurt her and she was smart enough to keep unrealistic expectations in check.

I bit my tongue and shook my head.

“Okay,”  she said. I wanted to smile at the disappointment. I resisted.

The two makeshift mothers prattled on over us. “So I’ve heard there’s this new subscription box that I’ve been wanting to try.” The Amazon with the Little blonde girl in her lap chattered to her seat neighbor. The age difference between the giant and her bogus baby was negligible.  They could have been work buddies or dating if not for the size difference. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one was just a year or two older than the other.

“Oh?” the Mommy of the cup stacker said. “I love my subscription to Hiya Crisp.”  Like her manufactured daughter, the Amazon had dark hair, but also had few hints of wrinkles around the eyes and a few parts that just weren’t as perky anymore.  Were I to guess, I would have estimated that they were technically old enough to be mother and child, though the girl on the floor should still be moved out of the house.  Kind of like me and Beouf or more appropriately Zoge and Ivy.

Both wore mom jeans and light sweaters. The Helena Madra look.

“Oh me too,” said the brunette with her Little in her lap.  “It’s so easy for meals for me, Delilah, and Juni.” She gave the Little in her lap a light bob. I guessed that was Juni.  “Anyway, this new one is apparently some sort of toy subscription box. They’ve got a section aimed entirely at Maturosis, you can choose how often you receive new boxes, and they even vary depending on what developmental stage your Little one is at.”

“Brittany loves toys! Don’t you Brittany?”

The plump Little girl on the floor did not look up from her cups. “Mmm-hmmm.”

“She gets so engrossed, sometimes. New toys would be great, yeah. Save us a shopping trip.” She smirked. “And a tantrum.”  The joke didn’t land. “Anyway, you were saying?”

“The service looks really good.  I did some checking around on different Mommy blogs. They’ve even been endorsed by Dr. Wolf.” Eyebrows were raised. “The Dr. Wolf! The one spreading awareness over there in Albienne.” She hugged the Little in her lap the way I hugged Lion and I worried for the smaller woman.  She didn’t seem bothered, at least.

“Oh wow, that sounds amazing,” the older of the Mommies agreed.  
“Yeah,” her younger compatriot nodded. “I’ll send you the link, I think we’re gonna try it next month for Juni. She’s so picky with toys, and this’ll help keep her mind interested.”

“Mhmmm.  Always important.  Kiddos need stimulation to keep them healthy.”

A few of the regulars I recognized walked hand in hand or were carried in with their fake parents. Mary, the Little with the pink hair came in with both jailors. Neither one had as wild hair as her or her younger-big-sister.  The Middle-Aged Daddy couple, Donald and Carl came in with not only their Little girl but their Tweener daughter, too; Kylie and Joanie respectively (or was it Joanie and Kylie?).  The Tweener was a good ten years older than me if she was a day and looked annoyed and put out to be there. Her black leggings with tie-dye polka dots did a less than serviceable job hiding the slight bulge from her disposable training pants and her hiking down her t-shirt was pointless at preserving modesty. Like a good prisoner she sat down in the chair next to her Papa and her Adopted sister stole her Daddy’s lap.

Pockets of conversation and small talk were forming around the circle, slowly gaining momentum as more and more groups trickled in. Amazons conversed and their Littles quietly busied themselves This could have been another reason why Amazons Adopted people smaller than them. Small children get only the hobbies their parents select for them. Parents with similar hobbies get to meet and make friends with each other and force their children to be friends by proximity.  An Amazon with a Little to coddle and cosset would never be short of playgroups and new friends.  We were their socialization tool.

Janet started gently bobbing her knee like she did when she had nothing else to do. The not quite subtle reminder broke me out of my own reverie. I looked up at her from her lap.  “S-s-s-t-o-o-o-p.” I quietly snapped.

“Sorry.” Janet whispered. “Sorry.”

I ducked my head down. “Gods, I hate you.”  The words came out as just a breath.

“Hm?” Janet asked.

“I hhh–” My breath caught in my throat. Damny monitor. “Nothing.”

Janet wrapped an arm around me and leaned “Would Lion make you feel better?”

He might. “No.”

“Thirsty? Want some milk?”

“No.”

“Giving you some milk would help me. It’d give me a reason to keep my legs still.”
Phrasing a request as a favor. A nice touch. “Still no.”

“Just so we’re clear: Would you like Lion or milk or neither?” I grumbled to myself. “Both.” Both wasn’t an option.

“Both?” Janet put Lion in my arms and sat back up straight.  “Okay,” she sighed heavily as if I’d outsmarted her. “Okay Clark. You win. Both it is.”

She turned me on my seat and laid me back against her arm so that she was cradling me and placed the bottle between my lips. I’d just been played and I knew it.  I crushed Lion’s soft cotton reinforced sternum for what was likely the one-thousand three hundred ninety-seventh time since he’d come into my life.  Thank goodness no one school was there to see me.  Billy would never let me live this slip down.

Slowly, very slowly, I pulled on the nipple with my lips, and sucked down the milk. No chugging this time. Chugging would lead to burping and cooing and stupid gooey praises, and talks about what kind of formula or milk was best. Right now I just needed something to do to dissociate and people watch without anyone talking to me.  Being Janet’s prop for a few minutes seemed like a good choice.

“You know,” Janet spoke up so that the first two giantesses could hear her. “My Clark loves his Lion, but so far not many other toys have really clicked with his developmental plateau.”

I bit the nipple hard and got milk squirted in my mouth for the trouble. My Clark. My Clark!  No. Don’t worry about it. Poor Lion got his neck wrung. I just kept sucking, focusing on the fatty milk and how it contrasted with the sterile rubber teat.  I practiced breathing and swallowing in a slow and steady rhythm so that I wouldn’t have to stop one to do the other.  It was almost like meditation. 

Damn I missed yoga. My tummy had come back in full force. I kept sucking.

“Oh sure, Janet,” the woman who’d started the sales pitch said. “Janet! I’ll be happy to share the link with you too.”

“Thanks.”

“What does he like to do with his lion?” The girl in tights’s Mommy asked. “Is he a cuddler? Or does his lion make funny noises when he squeezes it?”  My right eye twitched. Dumb giant wasn’t saying Lion’s name right. I could hear the lowercase ‘l’ when she said it. I just could. “What does he use his lion for?”

Janet lowered her head. “Do you wanna talk?” she asked. 

I did not. I considered saying something awful or nasty- a zinger about me not so dry humping Lion puffed into the forefront of my brain- but my self-induced meditation was having a calming effect.  Breathe deep. Focus on the task at hand. Get through this moment, Clark. Let it pass onto the next and the next until the one you want arrives.

“He’s busy,” Janet reported after a decidedly awkward silence.  I could feel her entire body heat up in embarrassment and I let myself untense, melting into her social awkwardness like a snake coiling up on top of a nice warm rock.

The two giants chuckled politely. “How bout you tell us?”

I kept sucking on the nipple. This will pass. This will pass.

“Well,” Janet breathed. “I think he likes to play pretend. I sometimes see him whisper to himself and setting up different toys around his room just so.  Last weekend I think he was setting up his classroom’s Circle Time.”

That earned her (us?) a chorus “Awwwwww!” from the two giants, plus a third who was listening in. “That’s adorable!”

“It…made me happy.” Janet’s body heat turned up a notch. “Kind of.”

I just kept suckling.

The girl who’d been messing with the stacking cups raised her head.  “He’s pretty good at pretending. He was good at playing the heavy feather light feather game and he taught us all about Death Tag.”

Battle tag, you loon! Battle tag!  I suckled and kept breathing and I swear I felt Janet cool down slightly, just laying there in her lap. The other giants exchanged worried looks.

“It’s like freeze tag but we scream and play dead like in the cartoons,” the girl on the floor said. “It’s fun.”

The Mommies, Janet included, untensed. “Clark is very clever and creative,” Janet said. “He’s really good with kids and impresses me with how he can approach things from a different angle.”

Damn. Just. Just Damn. No past tense statements like ‘always has been’ or qualifiers like ‘other kids’. For a second there I let myself pretend that she was talking about me-the real me- and not some imaginary baby she’d dolled up.

“Okay,” the Mommy who could have been dating the Little in her lap brightened. “So he’s going to want stuff from the Imagination Vacation line. Stuff that’s a little more freeform that he can decide how he plays with it.”
“Yes!  Exactly!” Janet was so excited she accidentally bobbed me and some milk gurgled down my throat. My lips released the nipple and I started coughing.  Poor Lion was caught in a sleeper hold.  “Oops! Sorry!”  She adjusted me so that I was sitting back upright instead of reclining in a  cradle.

I could tell she was doing her best to restrain herself from calling me any stupid pet names like ‘honey’ or ‘baby’.  This was the best of a bad situation at the moment.  I caught my breath and leaned back to take the nipple into my mouth again.

Janet’s body immediately heated up again. “But yes,” she said to the Mommies. “Something like that sounds great.  I think he gets bored easily, so being able to explore at his own pace and have some more control would be really good for him.”

“I’ll hook you up with the link.”

Great. Janet made a new Mommy friend.  I rolled my eyes and kept sipping and watching the door to the meeting space. More and more semi-familiar faces trickled into the room and started chatting with each other.  The Amazon and Tweener couple with their Adopted Little walked in. The Tweener wife didn’t seem at all disturbed that someone her size was in a Pull-Up and had reverted to playing dumb peekaboo games with her Little ‘sister’ so that she could feel big. The balding man who led the group and his shy Little took their usual spot near the top of the circle.

“Hi Clark!”

For once, Amy Madra didn’t get the jump on me. She screamed it out right when her Mommy carried her through the door. She was also in a long-sleeved romper; a lavender one with a hoodie. I suspected that if she pulled it up over her head she’d look like a teddy bear. 

The pair took a seat on the other side of Janet and Amy wasted no time catching me up. “Hiya Clark how are you I’m good you weren’t here last week you missed the animal parade it was so much fun I got to be the elephant I used a kazoo as the trumpetey noise elephants do I tried to stick it up my nose for biologitical authenticity but it wouldn’t stay and so I had to use my mouth like a fake elephant the kazoo was pretty dusty it hadn’t been used in like forever which was pretty bad but it did also kinda taste like peanut butter which was really interesting so it wasn’t all bad and then in the hallway you wouldn’t believe who was out there- ”

“Amy, baby,” Helena Madra interrupted. “Your friend Clark is drinking his ba-ba right now. Let him enjoy it.”

“Mommy!” Amy scoffed. “Rude!”

“Yes,” Amy’s Mommy redirected, “it is rude to talk to your friend while they're busy eating.”

“No,” Amy said, “I mean that Clark doesn’t like it when people…” Amy stopped. It looked like she caught herself. Then she covered her mouth and burpsed.  “I would like some milk, too, please.”

The pair were right next to Janet but were effectively behind me due to how I was positioned on her lap. I could still make out movements and tones. I heard a velcro flap open, and inferred it was Helena digging out a similar bottle to Janet’s. “Here you go.”

I let go of the bottle and leaned my head all the way back so that I could at least have an upside down view of the exchange.

“No,” Amy whined. “Not from there,” she pointed to the massive bottle in Helena’s hand. “I want it from there.” She reached up and grabbed the Amazon’s breast.  I could feel Janet’s entire body temperature go up at least two degrees. I did not like the ideas that must have been going through her baby crazy head.

“Amy,” Helena clucked, “this milk is the same.”

“Nuh-uh,” Amy replied. “It’s different. It’s a texture and temperature thing.”

“It’s not that different,” Helena said. “You still get Mommy’s milk.”

Amy huffed and puffed. “Have you ever breastfed, Mommy?”

“Yes,” Helena said calmly.

“How recently? Hm? Did you take notes and surveys? Double-blind random sample?”

“When I was very small. Like you.”

“So what you’re saying is that you have no recent experience in this field, Mommy.”

Helena tried to pivot. “I didn’t bring a blanket or anything to cover you up while you nurse,” Helena said.

“I’m okay with that.”

“I’m not. I have to consider everyone else’s comfort”

“Mommy!” Amy gasped overdramatically. “Are you ashamed of me?!”

“Baby girl. Drink.”

“Yes, Mommy.”  She sounded oddly happy, settling for the teat over the tit.  Without further ado, she leaned back in Helena’s arms like I was with Janet, took the bottle and began to nurse from the bottle.

Witnessing the exchange, I felt this weird tonal disconnect. So many of the words sounded like an argument Janet and I might have. Me trying to manipulate her and push her buttons to frustrate her, and her calmly trying to dismantle my argument before giving up trying to argue in anything resembling good faith and just asserting her authority.  So familiar from the outside, yet strange and alien at the same time.  The Mommy-Baby duo’s tone was relaxed throughout; playful even. Not an inch of frustration on either side of the exchange.  Same lyrics but different notes; like a cover song that takes on a completely different meaning just by altering the arrangement and instrumentation.

I tried not to think about it; or how there had been a time that Amy had been the terror of Oakshire Elementary’s Maturosis and Developmental Plateau Unit. She’d been enough of an obstacle that Beouf had flashbacks and even the therapists remembered her years later. I kept drinking from my bottle and focusing my attention elsewhere.

Week by week the faces were getting more and more familiar. I honed in on the odd Amazon Tweener couple and focused on the wife. Unlike her peers who tended to put on airs of young, hip, with- it types, this woman dressed closer to the stay at home moms of a bygone era; one that maybe only existed on television. She wore a pearl necklace and earrings with her light brown hair up in a bouffant hairdo, but wore very little makeup otherwise.  She had a floral print dress on that didn’t compliment her shape at all, making her look slightly dumpy, with stockings and heels on her feet.

Mature and motherly, it was close to what Ambrose tried but failed to imitate, but not what most would consider flirtatious or sexy.  Excellent camouflage for a Tweener; enough to broadcast herself as an adult, but nothing that would make an Amazon Mommy jealous and want to Adopt her out of spite.

“We’ve had to have Caleb sleeping in our bed for the past three nights,” the Tweener woman who’d maintained her adulthood said to the dark skinned woman who’d wrangled a pair of ‘twins’. 
“That’s nice,” the dark skinned woman said. “Sometimes on the weekends we do one big family cuddle puddle. I get up. Change them but keep them in their jammies, and we all go back to my bed and nap before breakfast.”

“Oh no,” the Tweener woman shook her head. Her pearl earrings jangled and her bouffant styled hair bobbed. “You don’t understand, Charlie. We took Caleb over to the Malkoviches for a playdate. Caleb gets to play with Riannon, Howard and I get some time to ourselves.” She thumbed back to her massive husband and I had a disturbing visualization involving the mechanics of marriage bed when one person is so petite as to be dwarfed by middle schoolers.

The Amazon nodded. “Sure, sure.”

“And it went well enough at first,” the Tweener continued. “But when John went off to cook dinner Alex also went to go work in their sustainable garden. And neither told each other… I think you see where I’m going.”

“Oh dear,” the Amazon looked to her twins protectively.  “Is he okay?”

“John thought Alex was watching the babies. Alex thought John was watching the kiddos. And since it’s Spooky Month on G.U.T.V, John decided to watch a scary movie on his phone.”  The other Mommy sucked in her teeth, already connected the dots.  “However he didn’t realize he pressed the wrong button so that it was automatically being simulcast to the TV in the living room.”

“Didn’t he hear the screams?”

“Headphones,” the Tweener answered. “So the entirety of dinner preparation time, we’re not sure how long, but probably an hour and a half, they watched an entire scary movie instead of Cherry the dog. They’ve already apologized so much, and I feel even worse for their Little one. I hear they’re taking Riannon to see someone because she won’t go near the bathtub anymore without crying.”

“Bathtub?”

“Ghosthaunters Two.  The scene with the Mommy getting her Little ready for a bath and…”

“Ooooooh.”

Caleb sat quivering in his Daddy’s lap, fighting sleep and startling himself awake while the big man tried to tenderly nudge him.

“We wanted to stay home,” the Tweener Mommy said. “But Caleb begged us to come. He says it’s safe here.”

“What happens when you try to put him in his crib?”

“If he’s awake he starts screaming about a ‘Ghost Nanny’ coming to get him. And he starts bawling and saying things like ‘Not again’ and ‘I can’t go through it again’.”

“Poor dear.  He must be thinking of that scene in the movie.”

The Tweener nodded. “Little kids have such a hard time separating fact from fiction.”

Idiots or delusional maniacs. I knew that movie.  I’d bet good money that Caleb got snatched up by some grabby Amazon with a carriage.  It’d be the same as me freaking out inside a glass elevator. Poor guy was having flashbacks.  If only I still had money…
“Okay everybody,” the balding man said. “I think it’s about that time. Let’s begin.”

They sang that stupid  ‘We’re All Together Again’ song. Two dozen voices give or take and not one of them could harmonize with any of the others.  I still had about half of my bottle so Janet didn’t bob me up and down.  She just held it to my lips and sang the opening hymn, getting that rush of belonging.

The leader looked around the circle.  “Alright then,” he chuckled. “Welcome everyone. It looks like we have nothing but familiar faces.  Am I wrong?”  No one corrected him.  “Just in case, does anyone want to re-introduce themselves or their Little kiddos?” 

I resisted the temptation to make an ass out of myself. I just had to get through the first half so that the real work of the second half could begin.  I’d use the bottle and Lion to shield myself from tummy tickles and lap bounces and just be a blob in Janet’s lap for however long it took. Simple as that.

“Okay then,” the leader nodded. “We’re going to break with our usual format today.” I stopped suckling.  A break in the usual format was bad. I needed the usual format. Around the circle, Littles on laps or couched between ankles exchanged worried looks.  “Don’t worry, kids, you’ll still get your playtime.  It’s just the first half of tonight is going to be different.”  I relaxed with the rest of my otherwise mindfucked peers. 

“We’ve got a guest speaker tonight. Depending on when you came in you may have seen her waiting in the hallway.”  It was then I noticed that the door was slightly cracked open. “Some of you might remember her from past meetings, she comes two or three times a year to share with us.” I had the worst possible feeling. I kept suckling and pulling the milk into me.  Maybe I could chug it and throw up.  “Some of you kids might remember her because she used to be your teacher.”  That confirmed it. I didn’t need to know that he was looking at me when he said, “Some of you might have her as your teacher right now.  Please welcome, from Oakshire Elementary, Mrs. Melony Beouf.”

The applause of nearly thirty giant hands and their idiot Littles copying them and cheering for Beouf opening the door and speed walking to the front of the room sounded to my ears like shotgun and machine gun rounds being fired into the air and the bleatings of sheep happy to go to the slaughter.

On any given day, Melony Beouf chose function over form.  If she couldn’t bend over, crawl around, get on the floor with or chase a Little while potentially covered in any number of stains, she didn’t wear it.  The only exceptions to this rule were when she had a scheduled teacher observation or if it was the annual Staff Photo (not to be confused for Picture Day). 

Beouf was dressed in teacher formal attire, with makeup and perfume on. Her white blouse with frills up the front went up the front, complemented the lipstick red blazer and skirt as well as the matching flats. Over her shoulder was a tan colored tote bag that I couldn’t see what was inside it.  Sick grandbaby my ass, Melony was here to put on a show.

The bottle was still between my lips. I plugged the tiny hole in the nipple with my tongue and glared up at Janet. This was the reason why she got us here so early; she didn’t want me seeing Beouf in the hallway.  Janet didn’t smile down at me like a happy idiot who just sprung a pleasant surprise. Nor did she threaten me with talks of ‘good choices’.  She shifted me up off her lap and brought me close to her shoulder like she was about to burp me.  “I made her promise not to make a scene,” she whispered. “Don’t worry.” Also, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Back down into her lap I went, and I crushed Lion all the harder while slowly very slowly, I accepted the bottle and started to drink. Much slower this time. The full feeling in my stomach and the practice I’d given myself still left me relatively calm.  I was angry on an intellectual level more than an emotional or physiological one.  Still, I would spit all over her and then cry my eyes out like it was spit up if Beouf gave me half an excuse.

Beouf took center stage, near the beginning head of the circle. “Before I begin,” she said, “let me please introduce myself.  My name is Melony Beouf and I teach The Maturosis and Developmental Plateau Unit at Oakshire Elementary, otherwise known as ‘The Littles Class’.” A slight and polite chuckle followed.

“Oakshire Elementary’s unit is one of only two publicly funded programs in the entire county, and based on the number of plaques I have at my home from various county, state, and national Maturosis teaching and research organizations, I am very, very good at my job.”  That earned her some appreciative nods and murmurs. I knew what the other school was and why she didn’t say it.

“I have a Master’s in Early Childhood Education,” she went on. “and a Bachelor’s in Child Psychology with a minor in Maturosis and Developmental Plateaus.” That minor was as valid as the cold stickers that got sent home with my schoolwork. “I’ve been doing this for many many years; I’m not gonna say how long because that’ll just make me feel old.” More polite laughter.  “Let’s just say that looking around the room, when I first started teaching, some of your Little one’s were probably still in diapers the first time around.” 

That got a round of genuine laughter. I looked around and scanned the faces of the other Littles.  A few slight blushes, and hiding behind hands, but those same rosey faces all had bashful grins.  Most seemed completely unphased by the reminder that there was a time when they were adults.  We were in the cult of Little Voices and tonight’s sermon was being given by the Right Good Reverend Melony Beouf.

I knew right then that any attempt I might make would be instantly thwarted and turned back on me.  A small classroom with Littles who hadn’t been completely broken in with two familiar Amazons and a decade worth of quirks, shared experiences, and procedures to exploit was doable.  A meeting of close to fifty or sixty people and the Little to Amazon ratio being close to one to one and no one having a problem with this madness but me?  No chance.

“To put it simply, my job is to help Littles who have experienced full-blown Maturosis come to grips and learn to embrace who they are, as well as to educate their Adoptive parents on what the most up to date research tells us about the condition and the people living with it so that we can meet their needs the best way possible.” 

The Tweener Mommy started clapping…and was the only one. She stopped.  Someone was trying too hard.

Beouf wasn’t thrown. “So in a way, if I’ve worked with your kids, I’ve always worked with you.  And I’m not their teacher, but also your colleague.  As Mr. Clemmons,” she gestured to the balding man who ran the meeting, “already said I am a big supporter of Little Voices and I love their message very much. So I do my part every now and then I come to talk to both Littles and their Mommies and Daddies.  And to be clear, some of the things I’m going to tell you are things that for various different reasons, the school board would rather me not talk about in a classroom setting.  So I am a teacher, but I am here in my capacity as an advocate and someone who participates in research.  Is that clear?”

Silently, everyone that mattered to Beouf nodded their heads.

“I’ll talk to the Grown-Ups more in depth later, but for now, if it’s okay and they feel comfortable, can I have all the Little boys and girls come and sit up front with me?”

My cult narrative took on a more direct comparison. Littles came up in one’s and two's while Beouf coaxed them forward.  “That’s right,” she said in her higher birdlike teacher voice. ”Come on. Don’t be shy.”  It was just like the ‘Children’s Moment’ at so many churches. The Littles started to clump together and crowd into a tight knot.   “Okay, okay. Maybe be a bit shier. Too close, sweety. Okay. That’s right. Yes. Better. Spread out a tiny bit. Give each other some room. Muuuuuch better.”  In the meantime, someone had taken a spare folding chair and passed it so that Beouf had a place to sit.  There was no way she was making it to the floor dressed as she was.  Janet made no attempt to ask or nudge me off her lap.

Beouf placed her tote bag down beside her, and took a seat. “Hello everyone!” 

“Hi Mrs. B!”

“Hello, Caleb!”

“Hi Mrs. Beouf!”

“Hi, Danny!”

“Hello!”

“Good to see you again, Cindy.”

The hi’s and hello’s bubbled up and overlapped each other until Beouf raised both hands.  “Okay okay okay. Hold on, boys and girls. Let me get this out of the way.  Raise your hand if you want me to say hello to you and when I do put your hand down.”  Tiny hands shot skyward.  Beouf took a massive, cartoonishly exaggerated breath.  “Hello, Kylie, Marie, Sammy, Caleb, Brittany, Elisa, Marissa…” she kept listing names off and hands dropped. Littles staying by their parents’ sides also raised their hands. “Hello, Cesily, Bea, Paul, Juni, Amy…”  She rattled off their names without fail.  By the time she was done, only five or six Littles kept their hands raised.  “Now you all I don’t think I’ve met.  Tell me your names and I promise to remember them next time.” 

They did and she greeted them, and reiterated her promise. I knew perfectly well that she’d keep that promise. I had a habit of letting past students fade into memory; most teachers did.  Beouf had such a mind for faces and names that she could have been a politician. Come to think of it, she kind of already was.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” Beouf said and got another knowing chuckle from the assembled cultists. “I can teach and remind you about some very important things to keep you safe and happy.  Is that okay?”

That received a resounding “Yeeeeeah!” From the assembled man and woman toddlers.  This was the kind of class Beouf wanted, and by the end of most years, it was close to the class that she got. That made me shudder and some extra milk flowed into my mouth with the spasm.

“First off,” Beouf said, “I’m going to ask what I hope is a silly question.  You know your Mommies and Daddies love you right?”

“Yeah!” Her point was punctuated with some giggles.

“Yes, of course they do,” Beouf agreed. “That’s why they Adopted you and take care of you the way that they do. But not all Grown-Ups want what’s best for you.  Some Grown-Ups think that just because you’re not a Grown-Up anymore, that means they should get to decide how you act and think and feel instead of letting you be yourselves.” 

I silently agreed with her, though obviously not the way she intended.

“That’s silly!” One of the brainwashed masses piped in.

“Yes it is silly,” Beouf replied, “but it can also be very dangerous. What these people will do is they will find things that Little boys and girls like, like cartoons and songs, and hide messages in them.”

“Like a secret?”

Beouf pointed at the Little suck up. “Yes, like a secret.  But it’s such a secret, that you don’t even remember hearing it, but your brain does.”  She tapped her forehead for emphasis.  “And your brain remembers things even if your ears and eyes forget.  And if your brain gets too many of these secrets for too long, it can change you.”  She waited to see if anyone would take the bait and ask how. This time no one did.  “These secret messages will change you so that you forget things, or make it harder to talk or make you can’t talk at all.  Or it might make you laugh when you really wanna cry.  Sometimes they make it so that you can’t say naughty words or think naughty thoughts.”

“Why is that bad?” A parent asked. The glares he got made him slink down a pariah.  “Hypothetically, I mean.”

“I’m glad you asked that, sir.” Beouf saved him. “The answer to that question has two parts. One is that Little, Tweener, and Amazon brains pre-Maturosis are nearly identical, but these hypnotic suggestions affect us all equally, giving rough simulations of Maturosis’s effects. Someone experiencing Maturosis may be falsely diagnosed and given care that they don’t need and that’s unethical.”

There was so much irony here it was beginning to cave Lion’s and my chest in.

My ex-mentor proved that she couldn’t read minds and kept talking. “The allowance of these materials also weakens the argument and research going into Maturosis by promoting a false narrative.  If there are some people who aren’t actually experiencing it but are being exposed to post-hypnotic conditioning, the argument can be made on the entire system, and we know that’s just not true and our Little ones need our help.  The second big reason is that even if a Little has been correctly diagnosed with Maturosis, hypnotic cartoons and songs do more harm than good by implementing knee-jerk uncontrollable behaviors in people as well as blocking what would be otherwise natural and normal responses.”

The message wasn’t quite landing, it seemed.  “Let’s just do words. Imagine having a word taken away from you. Not that you forgot about the word, you just can’t use it.  And every time you try to say the word, you accidentally say another word or you can’t say anything at all.  You can feel the word, you know the word, but there’s a magical wall stopping you from using the word.  Some hypnotic and subliminal programs do this.” She paused for effect. “Some do more and make it so that you can’t think about the word and every time you try it gets replaced with another word that you know is wrong but your brain won’t give you another word and even if someone tells you the right one you can’t use it.  Now imagine it’s more than just one word.  Imagine it’s several words.  Imagine it’s every word that someone else doesn’t think you should be allowed to say…”

The mood chilled with Grown-Ups and Littles alike throwing each other worried yet comprehending looks. The Amazons only conceptualized it and were disturbed.  Some of the Littles no doubt had experienced it first hand.  More amazing was that Beouf and Janet weren’t choking to death on their own blatant hypocrisy.

Ever the teacher, Beouf looked down at the assembled Littles. “In other words, hypnosis is like spanking your brain, and Little Voices does not support spanking of any kind.” Solemn nods all around the cluster of forever children.

“Fortunately,” her tone became more upbeat, “I always have several students in my class each and every year that let me know all of the words and I am positive their parents don’t use hypnosis or subliminal messaging!”  That got the crowd back. Amazons laughed behind their hands and a small amount of Littles quietly exchanged high fives and fist bumps.

She reached into the tote bag and put some old DVD’s in her lap. “Parents and Littles, the best way to protect yourself and your kids is to update and educate yourself on what does and does not contain subliminal messaging. There is a popular show making a comeback called Carpet Mice. Do not watch it. Ever. It has nothing but hypnotic suggestions in it and neither I nor anyone else have found a clean broadcast of it.  If you go to LittleVoices.com you’ll find an entire list of shows and sometimes even networks to avoid. With all of these streaming services, there’s a lot of bad actors out there.”

“What about Mint’s Hints?” A Little piped in. “Or Cherry?”  

Beouf smiled and nodded. “Good question.  For the most part, shows like Cherry, Mint’s Hints, Helga Hogg, The Muffet Show or Muffet Littles, are completely safe. They’re made with good intent and safe for children of literally all ages. But,” she added, “you should always be on the lookout if a show has a warning or a disclaimer in the beginning or any part that asks a Grown-Up to leave the room.  If there’s something on T.V. that the people making it don’t want your Mommies and Daddies to see, there’s something wrong with it.” 

“Another way to tell is if you overhear a lot of specific talk about diapers.  Real children’s cartoons don’t worry too much about potty training or diapers. They already assume the child needs them and doesn’t care, or is mature enough not to need them, and doesn’t care. Yes most Littles who experience Maturosis lose their potty training anyways but if there’s one hypnotic command, there’s at least ten more. Be. Aware.”

I’d forgotten what a good speaker Beouf could be. Watching her was hypnotic in its own right. My bottle was now down to the last quarter and I’d barely even noticed because I was so morbidly fascinated with the mix of helpful warnings that every Little parent taught their child and absolute contradictory bullshit.   

She cracked open a DVD case and took out a pair of ear plugs and what looked like flimsy 3-D glasses.  “Some programs even have special ear plugs or glasses that filter out the commands so that a Grown-Up can make a Little feel secure and trick them into watching. A lot of these things people can buy on the internet. A lot of this is still, sadly, legal in many places and where it isn’t people will often look the other way until someone makes a big enough stink about it.”

Beouf continued her presentation by holding up the two identical DVD cases, both Helga Hogg. “The safest thing to do is to get a DVD of your child’s favorite cartoons and just play that. A streaming service can be compromised or edited. A DVD will be the same every time. Just be sure of the distributor. I got both the ear plugs and the sample glasses from the DVD case in my left hand.”

She returned her attention to the so-called children. “So boys and girls, if a Grown-Up ever wants you to watch a cartoon or listen to a song with them and they put something in their ears or something over their eyes, you need to do everything you can to stop yourself from watching or listening.” 

The Littles, used to being well behaved dolls looked generally confused. “What do we do?”

“Cry. Scream. Yell.” Beouf kept ticking off on her fingers. “Cover your ears and close your eyes.  Throw up if you need to. Try and bop the Grown-Up on the nose.  Anything that makes it so you don’t watch or listen to what they want you to watch or listen to.”

An Amazon politely raised her hand and asked. “But what if it’s a mistake? A babysitter or someone who works at their daycare?”

“I would rather a Grown-Up get their feelings hurt, or get angry and call you to help sort it out than an innocent Little girl or boy have something taken away from them via hypnosis.” She crossed her arms over her chest, giving the statement a note of finality.  I wondered if she was really campaigning so hard against the stuff because more hypnotic suggestions would just put her out of a job.

Quickly, she took out a pair of headphones and held them aloft.  “‘Before we move on, I also just want to mention something called ‘Music Therapy’. This is literally just slapping a pair of headphones with hypnotic suggestions over someone’s head and then leaving them in a trance for a couple of hours.”

“DO IT CUZ MOMMY SAYS SO!”  Bradley screeched in terror on his Mommy’s lap.  “I LIKE TO PEE MY PANTS!”  He was hyperventilating and crying just at the sight of the prop. Beouf had the decency to put them out of sight and the poor ex-New Beginnings inmate calmed down.

“Now that we have that over with,” Beouf said, “that first part was for both the Littles and their parents. This next part is just for the Littles.  Don’t worry, Grown-Ups you can stay.” A few nervously got the joke.  “Who knows what Stranger Danger is?”

All the hands in the room shot up, save mine. I was not participating.

“Okay, Cindy,” Beouf pointed to the pink-haired woman who was probably almost as old as she was. “Tell us.”

“Stranger Danger is when someone who is not your Mommy or Daddy or teacher or family wants to take you away forever because they want to hurt you.”

“That’s right, honey. Good job.”  She leaned out and gave Cindy a high five.  Beouf had taken the day off and was now getting rewarded with her dream class.  “When you were younger, you were probably told that there were strangers who would claim to know your mother and father or get you to come with them by offering candy or asking you for help looking for a puppy and that they wanted to hurt you, right?”

A smattering of ‘yeah’ and ‘uh-uh’ and ‘yes’ came in reply while others mutely bobbed their heads. 

“That can still happen,” Beouf told them. “But other times, strangers will try to trick you by telling you things like you’re really a Grown-Up or that your Mommy and Daddy don’t really love you, and you should come with them to prove that you’re not a baby.” She paused and scanned the floor for signs of dissent or incomplete programming. She found none there and so went on. “Those people are also trying to trick you and take you away from your Mommies and Daddies and you’ll also end up hurting. You’ll hurt not only yourself in the long run but also your Mommies and Daddies.We don’t want to do that, do we?”

The chorus of affirmatives changed course and melted into ‘no’ and ‘nuh-uh’ and the quiet but obedient shaking of heads.  Typical mindfucked dolls.  Someone was curious enough or childish enough to ask “Why?”

“That’s a complicated question that I think has a lot of answers,” Beouf said with all sincerity. “Some of them are bad people, because there’s just bad people in the world.  I think a lot of them though are people who just don’t understand or have been lied to about Maturosis or think they’d be helping you if they kidnapped you and took you away from your family.”  And once again, the pot without a trace of self-awareness deemed the kettle black.

“So unless you know them or they can prove that they know your Mommy or Daddy, don’t go with them and do more of that screaming, and crying stuff.  It’s okay if you’re trying to protect yourself and it’s all you’re able to do. Nobody will be mad, I promise.  Okay?”

“Okay.” most said together.

Melony reached back into her tote bag and pulled out a stack of wooden blocks, no doubt borrowed from her own classroom.  “Don’t get too excited, kids.” She said, “I’m using these as a teaching tool. Not for playing.”

“Can we play with them after?” Amy called from her Mommy’s lap.

Beouf didn’t even have to look up. “Yes Amy, you can if you want.”

“What about Jess-?” The bottle went back into Amy’s mouth so she couldn’t finish and her Mommy quietly shushed her.  I finished draining mine and accidentally let out a tiny yawn. 

Beouf started stacking the blocks one at a time in a single column.  “This next part is both for parents and their Little ones. As with everything else tonight, I’ll talk more in depth with the Grown-Ups after you kids go play, but they deserve to hear part of this too.  It’s going to be a tad uncomfortable for some people hearing what I’m about to tell you, and that’s okay. However it is my professional and personal opinion that everyone needs to hear this talk at least once. More than anything else, this is the part that I’m not supposed to talk about.  I need everyone to be brave and as mature as they can be for what I’m about to discuss.  That goes for you Mommies and Daddies, too.”  The laughter had dialed back down to polite with a touch of nervousness.

I pushed the bottle out of the way and squirmed back up into a sitting position so that I wouldn’t accidentally fall asleep.  What could Beouf need so much warning to talk about? She’d already discussed the topics hypnosis and abduction (including reframing Stranger Danger as a way to prevent Littles from escaping).  What could be more controversial than that?

She pointed to the column of blocks she’d made. The blocks, I noticed, were numbered and in sequential order, bottom to top,  from zero to five. “This is how people grow up,” Beouf said pointing down to the bottom. “First we’re zero, then we’re one, then we’re two.”  Her finger traveled up the column.  “And every year we go up and up and up, and another block goes on the stack.  I’d stack them higher, but I’m not very good at stacking so you’ll have to use your imaginations.”  Her hand rose up to the sky tracking invisible blocks of much higher numbers.

“But the thing is, we never really stop being zero, or one, or two, or three.  It just gets added on to.  Everybody in this room is a one or two or three or four or five.  Their block tower is just a lot taller and they’re on the top.”

“And we’re on the bottom!” A suck up yelled a bit too happily

“Don’t interrupt, Cesily.” Beouf wagged her finger at the lady who I’d seen get dangled gleefully from her ankles at my first meeting.  “Everyone has a tower that they’re mind is on top of, but deep deep down, they’re still zero, and one, and two, and three, and four.  It’s just that when your tower gets really tall, it takes some reeeeeeeally big thoughts and feelings to reach all the way up from the top of the tower to all the way down to the bottom of the tower where the part of you that is zero and one and two and three are.  It’s hard.  But it can happen.  That’s why Grown-Ups can still cry. Or be silly.  Or make bad decisions that if their parents were still around they’d be put in timeout for.”

“Or pee and poop?”

Beouf ignored the comment and kept going.  “When you have Maturosis, it’s different.”

I puffed air out of my nose and readied for her to knock the tower to shambles. I think many of the audience guessed the same thing.  If that’s true, she surprised a lot of us.

Instead of knocking the block tower over, she carefully grabbed the top and bottom of her column, squeezed the tower and flipped it over so that the zero was at the top.  “When you have Maturosis, the tower flips over.” She took a final block, a six, and quickly picked up the tower to slip it under as the new base.  “And new blocks get added to the bottom.  You’re still twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or a hundred.  The tower of who you are still grows and grows and grows.  It’s just that the part of you that is zero and one and two and three is always at the tippy top with you.”

My tongue rolled out of its mouth, unbelieving what I was hearing.

“So when you have Maturosis, you’re always feeling and thinking those thoughts you did when you were a baby-when you were zero and one and two and maybe even three-but the part of you that is twenty and thirty and forty, is still there.  It just takes a looooot of work to get to that part of you.  And sometimes that work is so hard that you just can’t, and that’s okay too.  It starts feeling wrong, just like when it felt wrong to wear diapers before you needed them again.  That’s what we call your Developmental Plateau.”

This. This explained so much. It didn’t make it any better. It didn’t undo anything. But it explained so much about why Beouf acted the way she did. She’d succinctly summarized her own delusions.  She really was a great teacher.

She had more for me.  “The term plateau is misleading however. A plateau is usually a piece of high flat ground.  Your Developmental Plateau isn’t necessarily completely flat. Just like how some people can be very good with math and others are better at reading and writing, a plateau can vary from person to person. Some of you are more shy and need sensory play. Others need different levels of personal interaction.  Some can walk. Some just crawl or like rolling around on the floor.  Some feed yourselves.  Some like to be spoon fed. A lot of you still talk the same as you did before. We’re all different.”

It made perfect sense if you didn’t stop to think about it. The Amazons, clearly, weren’t thinking about it.  The other Littles had bought in or were completely numb to it by this point.  Why did this part get the warning, though?

“That’s why,” Beouf said, “We need to take a few minutes to talk about romantic feelings and sexual arousal.”

“EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!”  Faces scrunched up, mouths fell ajar, pacifiers popped into mouth to cover embarrassment and hands waved and heads shook as if.

“I told you it was gonna be icky,” Beouf laughed, “but this is something you should know about.”  She waved her hands in front to try and regain control.  “Stop. Stop. I’m not going to embarrass anyone or ask any questions.  No hand raising required! All you have to do is listen.”  It certainly didn’t win them over, it got everyone to quiet down.

“You might be living like zero or one or two or three year olds,” she said. “But your bodies and parts of your minds are still adult. So it is very possible, maybe even likely, that at some point since you got Adopted, you’ve looked at somebody or thought about them in your crib, and you started getting funny feelings like you did back when you were a big boy or girl.”

The pacifiers and thumbs were popping in at a record pace. People were doing their best not to die from embarrassment, just from the idea that they might have sexual feelings.

Beouf certainly noticed, but she kept talking anyway. “These feelings might make you want to kiss someone, or hold their hand, or touch their diaper or have them touch yours.”

“EWWWWWWWW!”

“Hold on! Hold on!” Beouf laughed again, her own ease being semi-contagious. “I’m not telling you what to do, I’m just stating aloud how some of you might be feeling sometimes, and to tell you…that it’s perfectly natural and okay.  Some of you sometimes might not even be thinking about anyone.  You might just feel a certain way, or like how your diaper feels, or be bored or something. Happens all the time!”  She quickly added, “And if you don’t ever feel that way, that’s okay too.  I’m not telling you how to feel.”

The silence grew as Beouf took in a deep, cleansing breath. “I’m just saying that if you do feel that way, it’s perfectly natural, and you should talk to your Mommies and Daddies about it.” She looked up and out to the assembled parents, shifting in their seats. I could tell who’d heard a version of this talk before and who hadn’t based on body postures.  Everyone was uncomfortable, but some were distinctly less so than others. 

I think my fellows were more uncomfortable, because it was them that were being talked about.  I suddenly realized how long it had been since I’d had sex, which of course made me think about Cassie, which of course made me feel a level of melancholy that even a full belly and calm breathing couldn’t starve off. Not completely.

“Parents,” Beouf said. “Mommies and Daddies: Believe me. If your Little boy or girl has these urges you need to talk to them about it.  Short of something unethical, there is nothing you can do to prevent it, and babies of any age like to explore their bodies. All these Little ones are doing is rediscovering themselves.  We’re okay with it when it comes to the cute stuff, we have to be okay with it when it comes to the things that aren’t so cute.”

My ears wanted to fall away from the sides of my head out of disbelief.  Beouf was openly encouraging masturbation among Adopted Littles.

“If you don’t talk to them about it and find a way for them to do it safely, they will find a way to do it in a way that will probably embarrass you and cause you problems you never considered when you Adopted. My rookie year of teaching I lost more stuffed animals to nap time humping than I dare admit.”

Every word was coming out almost like a chant with each one standing straight up and refusing to touch the other, much like the gaggle of Littles on the floor were slowly but steadily spreading out from each other. The collective blood was rushing to every Little’s head, mine included.  Just hearing all this said out loud was awful. 

Sex was normally a touchy enough subject for some of us; anybody really. Reminding us that Littles lost out sexual autonomy was insult enough. Telling everyone that those urges and feelings still continue no matter what was almost cruel.  The Amazons weren’t digging it either. Picturing their so-called babies adding something to their padded underpants that wasn’t urine or feces was distinctly unpleasant.

I think I wanted to talk about sex to Janet all of a sudden…

“You would rather them do something in their crib with the baby monitor off or in the bathtub right before you pull the plug than start rubbing themselves in public or rubbing up against each other at daycare.  I’m not going to name names, but I’ve got at least two students in my class with very strict parents, and if I didn’t pretend not to notice a few things, I’m pretty sure the Little darlings would just explode!”  She added sound effects for levity, and it worked, gaining a few good natured belly laughs from those assembled.

Billy and Annie were such exhibitionists they’d be proud to be called out like this.

One Little was brave enough to raise their hand and ask “How?”

“That I can’t tell you, darling. That’s something you’ve got to talk about with your Mommy or Daddy and figure out what works for all of you. I’ll go into more detail and options with them,” Beouf pulled a phone out of her bag. “But that’s almost my time.  Let’s split up so the kids can play, and I’ll get down to some more specifics and nitty gritty with the adults.” 

She stood up to a rousing round of applause, even greater than when she entered and the Littles all scampered back to their parents, some of them hugging them as if they’d been separated for years and not just a few awkward and tense topics.

Janet stood up and shifted me so that I could ride on her side and still look around.  “I appreciate you,” she said, and left it at that.  I’d been a good Little baby, apparently.

Fuck it.  Whatever. I had real work to do soon.

I was not meant to escape Beouf entirely.  “Hey Janet, hey Clark.” 

“Good talk,” Janet said, because of course she would say that.

“Thanks. We’re not done yet, sister.  You’d be surprised the kind of questions that come up in the second half.”

Janet laughed. “Great. Let me drop Clark off, and I’ll meet you back here.” She bounced me slightly as if I hadn’t been paying attention. “Do you want to say goodbye, Clark?”

I think all three of us knew the answer to that. Sometimes Janet and Beouf could be masochists.

“No,” some of Beouf’s shine left her. “That’s fine. He doesn’t have to.”

“He’s kind of droopy tonight.”

“Sick?” Beouf asked.

“I don’t think so. Just full”  She held the empty bottle that she hadn’t slipped back into the diaper bag.

More curiosity blossomed over Beouf’s brow. She pointed to the empty container. “Goat’s milk or…?”

“Goat’s milk.” Janet said.  “Goat’s milk.”

“Okay.  Drop him off and come back. We’ll have a chat.”

“Roger!”

Janet walked me to the playroom.  I started doing my best to wake up and get my blood pumping. It was fitting in a way that Beouf was here tonight.  She’d started her indoctrination routine in the first half of the meeting.  Next would come mine.