Forty Miles to Redemption

Chapter 3
Ned's Story- Part 2

Chapter Description: Ned finds himself alone and in a vulnerable position with a stranger

Gasping, Ned tried to coordinate the muscles of his mouth in order to swallow the tasteless pap quickly so he could again try to communicate. Half of the pablum gushed out of his mouth as he brought up his jaw as soon as the spoon retreated. As he cleared the most of the remaining mass from his mouth, the spoon was again inserted into his mouth depositing another unwelcome glop. He pushed at the slick dripping mush with his tongue while he ineffectually wrested his head away from the persistent spoon.

After walking into the kitchen that morning, Marva had set him in a old wooden highchair next to a faded formica table in the middle of a kitchen that looked right out of the fifties. She pressed him to the back of the chair as she flipped the tray over his head. The chair only allowed him so much room as his body fell forward, leaning over to one side against the tray. Marva pulled up his arms so that they lay across the tray like stunned fish. It kept him at a perfect angle to be unwilling recipient of this meal. Ned’s head wobbled as he looked down at the tray in front of him.

“How about a little cereal this morning, Little One?” Marva asked musically as she looked down at the small occupant of the chair

Ned had been so preoccupied with the piece of furniture and the kitchen that he found himself in that he had not quite comprehended what Marva had just said. He looked up blinking in confusion at her statement. A small smile pulling at her mouth, Marva patted his arm and turned to go to the counter where a small bowl of baby cereal sat waiting. After she moved away, Ned’s eyes shifted as he took in the kitchen around him.

The next thing Ned knew, Marva was back in front of him and was wrapping a sizeable terry cloth bib around his neck. The brush of Marva’s forearms against the sides of his face unnerved him as well as the loud pop of snaps enclosing him in this circle of cloth. Suddenly, a small spoon appeared hovering in front of him and, before he knew it, had entered his mouth. Soon a rhythm of spoonfuls of soft gruel being stuck into his mouth soon developed as he sat trapped in the chair. The spoon deftly moved from his mouth to his face where it flicked up the excess cereal accumulating at the edges of his mouth and reinserted them back into his mouth. The fine cereal had been thinned down till it resembled loose slurry. Ned consciously tried to reject the slushy gruel but his body seemed to want to consume the cereal as he inadvertently swallowed. As his mouth flexed, a portion of the aqueous cereal swelled out of his mouth and flowed down his chin onto a terry cloth bib surrounded his upper body. Only an occasional jerky movement of his head away from the spoon signified his displeasure with the situation. He longed for better control of his arms, he would have pushed the spoon away. He tried to pull his arm up to block the spoon but was only able to flex his arm to bring up his hand, but saw the motion flop over to land in a puddle of extruded cereal on the tray in front of him. He flexed his hand in the puddle feeling the room temperature mush squeeze in his hand. In reaction to the failure, he tried to kick his legs in displeasure but only a little movement was discernible from the outside of the gown. The whole experience was made worse by the running commentary coming from the person holding the spoon.

“That’s a sweet boy. Oh, you’re being so good! What a good eater! Yes, you are! Ah ah, here’s some more. You’re doing so well. Is that good, Pumpkin? Oh, let’s catch that. We don’t want that cereal to get away! There we go! Make all gone!” Marva’s cloying comments swum in the air over Ned’s head.

Ned burned with embarrassment at the commentary, but could do nothing to stem the outpouring of maternal devotion. The endless process of coaxing, consuming and smearing this bland meal seemed to go on and on to Ned.

Finally, to his relief, he heard the clink of the spoon handle as it settled in the dish. Exhaling a huge sigh, he looked intently into the large face beaming down at him, now that this humiliating process was finished. Marva gently picked up his forearm and thoroughly wiped the cereal from his hand before placing it down on the tray away from the mess. Ned felt the terry cloth bib being brought up to remove the evidence of his meal from his face. He felt the pressure of her hand with the bib pull his chin down with each downward movement. He had no power to resist the motion, his head slowly mimicked the momentum of the hand as it wiped up the mess on his face. Then without a warning, a burp accompanied by some of the almost liquid cereal that he had just swallowed reappeared in his mouth as if in payment to the motion. Before he could stop it, he felt it flowing out of his mouth, over his chin and down onto the bib. A large hand with the bib cradled his chin as the mouthful of partially digested cereal issued out of his mouth.

“Ooh! Spit up!. That’s okay, Sugar.” The woman’s mouth formed a sympathetic pouted as she wiped his mouth with a clean edge of the terry cloth towel.

Ned felt his face flush red as he scowled at the maternal gesture. Next, he felt a her other hand reach around and undo the snaps of the bib. Marva cupped the bib to capture the cereal debris on the inside. Marva carefully bundled the bib in her hand and took it over to the sink

“What a sweet baby boy!” Marva announced as she returned with a moistened washcloth to remove the coating left by the cereal from his face and hand.

The washcloth was cool against his skin as it wiped away the crust left by the cereal. As he watched Marva manipulate his hand to remove the leftover gunk of the cereal from it, Ned concentrated as he tried to get his mouth the form words. To his disappointment, only a soft sound escaped from around his seemingly oversized and awkward tongue. The sound was greeted with a satisfied maternal smile.

“Okay, Let’s let you sit there while I do some dishes.” Marva spouted with enthusiasm as she pulled the high chair over next to the countertop.

Once he was situated, Marva turned back to the sink, keeping an eye on the baby in the high chair. Ned stared at Marva as she stood there in front of the sink, her hands dipping in dishes into light grey sudsy water as she dragged a washrag across the surface of a plate.

Ned’s eyes went from the woman to the sink to out the window as he wondered where exactly he was. He jerkily moved his head around looking for something familiar. How did he get here? The last thing he remembered was the car chase and Bart crazily spinning the wheel and then the car…He remembered the car flying over and over…What had happened? Now he was stuck in this small body of an infant being cared for by a woman he did not recognize. He didn’t understand. Had he been killed in the car crash? Was this the afterlife? Had he already been reincarnated? Was she his new mother? But, he still had his adult mind! If this was a new life, how did he still know his name or even to think logically? No, it couldn’t be. Think! What happened in the car! He and Bart had been trying to escape that maniac with the gun. Bart had told him to open the briefcase to see what that creep was willing to kill them for. He pulled out that test tube. Then it came over him like a flash. The test tube…it had broken all over his hands. It must have done something to him. He looked down at his body there between the tray and the back of the chair. The chemical must have made him a baby. Now he was in a body that did little in response to his desires. He couldn’t do anything he thought dispiritedly as he glanced at Marva who was singing an old tune as her eyes continued to watch the babe.

“No place is so dear to childhood, as the little brown church in the vale” the woman softly sang as she placed a freshly rinsed plate in the rack on the opposite side of the sink.

Further down the counter, Ned could see a folded dishtowel with several sizes of baby bottles and nipples laying upon it to dry. There looked to be a large pot sitting on the stove next to them with steam coming out. Obviously, the bottles and nipples had been removed from them and placed on the towel to dry recently. How long had he been here he wondered as he looked at the number of bottles and nipples. At the far end of the counter on the wall, Ned could see an old yellow wall phone with the cord hanging down. He knew that with the lack of control he was currently experiencing, there would be no way he could operate or grasp the phone to use it. Besides who would he call? He didn’t even know if Bart made it out of that car wreck. His story was impossible…who would believe him? But, but…he had to do something. He just couldn’t sit here in diapers and a high chair…What if this was permanent? He had to do something to get himself out of this predicament. That chemical, maybe there was an antidote! In desperation, he looked over at Marva. She seemed like a nice lady, maybe she would help him. He just had to convince her that he was a man, not a baby.

He squirmed in the seat as he moved his mouth around, trying to control his awkward tongue and mouth muscles. He made several attempts to say a word, but only an unintelligible guttural sounds issued from him. He peered over at Marva’s face, hoping that one of the sounds was at least discernible enough to be construed as a word. Marva continued to sing as she rinsed a dish and smiled at what she thought was the baby’s response to her singing.

If only he could get her attention. He knew that she hadn’t understood him in the other room. He had to concentrate. He concentrated on his lips as he tried to form the words. He looked up with hopeful intent as he strained to make one discernible word. He tried again, this time louder and with more force. He repeated it in frustration when Marva did not respond.

The woman continued to rinse the dish in her hands as she looked over at Ned with a besotted smile. At the intimacy of the expression, Ned began to squirm uncomfortably in the chair that held him so securely. Marva shook her hands as she reached for a towel by the sink to dry them. She walked over to the refrigerator and picked a small object from inside of the refrigerator door. Ned stared at the woman as she began to walk toward him. Ned began to feel uneasy as he saw her approach. He began to feebly struggle against the tray and the back of the seat. As he did, the effort began to create an odd sensation of pressure in his lower abdomen. As Marva came nearer, he felt urgency in his gut as she slid her hands underneath his armpits and pressed him back against the back of the chair. He made a sound of alarm as he felt her pull him upward, out of the chair. As she lifted him up to her shoulder, she shifted him to cradle him in her arms with a soothing noise. At the motion, Ned realized his lower half was beyond his control. The next instant, he felt the diaper liner began to cling to him under his gown. He realized that he was wet his diaper as he felt the side of his face come into contact with the soft fuzzed cotton of Marva’s blouse. The humiliation, confusion, fear and powerlessness combined into an overwhelming force within Ned which poured forth as a strained garbled litany of sounds from his lips as his eyes began to water in shame.

With a smooth action, Marva angled the small bottle with the cool clear liquid at Ned’s open mouth. Unthinkingly, Ned closed his lips around the soft rubbery nub and began to pull at it. The liquid swirled around the back of his mouth. The relief was intense which made Ned furiously work at the bottle. Marva began to hum as she slowly rocked her back from side to side as she held the fussy infant in her arms. Still not quite a hundred percent from his illness, Ned relaxed against Marva’s embrace and closed his eyes, his hand coming up to rest against the bottle. Marva sighed as she watched the baby in her arms work on drinking the bottle. She was pleased that after the last few days of being ill, the child had taken a full bottle of formula, some cereal and now was drinking some Pedialyte.

Although initially reticent, Ned became completely relaxed in Marva’s arms. His body still felt so weak and the stress about his situation was enervating. He lay back and concentrated on pulling the fluid from the bottle as he kicked his legs in response to another odd feeling in his abdomen. He was too intent on the cooling fluid he was drinking and the comfort that was surrounding him to notice that mass that was being pushed out of his behind.

Marva patted the underside of his diaper as she continued to rock him. A few seconds, later her nose tells her that another issue needed to be taken care of. As the noises of slurping cut through the air as Ned finished his bottle, Marva took the bottle away and set it on the kitchen table. Grabbing a towel from the kitchen, she draped it over her shoulder and readjusted Ned to rest against it. A few gentle raps, a burp was heard from the small body held against her. Then patting his back, she walked back to the bedroom with the baby resting bonelessly upon her shoulder.

Ned wasn’t sure what was happening. He had been trying to communicate and now found himself lying on a table back in the bedroom. He smacked his lips as he looks lazily up at Marva standing next to the table. She is opening up a white square package in between in hands. Once it is flat, she laid it to the side and began fiddling with the string at the base of the gown. Ned ungracefully pulled his legs up in reaction as he watched her. It wasn’t until the air hit his legs that he realized that the gown was being pushed up. In the next moment, Marva’s hand captured his ankles and pulled them up, so his bottom was in the air. The gown was pushed up to the middle of his back before his legs were lowered again. The next thing Ned felt were hands at his waist and suddenly it dawned on him what was happening.

“No! No! No way in hell!” Ned shouted in his mind as he began to struggle on the changing table.

Ned threw all his effort to escape as best as he could as he called out curses which came out as only incomprehensible sounds. He clumsily kicked his fat legs and wriggled his body to get away from the impudent oversized hands. As he moved, Ned became aware of the odd feeling beneath him. An alien soft mass was pressing up against the cheeks of his rear. It warmly squished and spread indiscriminately along his backside as he moved. Closing his eyes in defeat, Ned realized what he was feeling. To his own internal despair, it dawned on him that he had crapped in his pants. No, not his pants, his diaper he corrected himself. He needed a diaper change! He was going to have to submit to a diaper change, since he was stuck in this infant’s body and certainly couldn’t help himself. Ceasing his writhing, he pulled his mouth in a closed mouth grimace as he lay back to submit to the process.

“Okay, okay, Mr. Wiggles. Let’s get you cleaned up!” Marva said as she began to pull at the tape on one side of the diaper as the baby ceased to twist on the table.

Ned lay resolute as he felt her hand travel to the opposite side of the diaper and hear the plastic rip away from the diaper. The next instant, the diaper was being pulled away and down between his legs.

“Oh. You made a big poopy! What a good job! You are my widdle Poopy Pie! Yes, you are!” Marva praised the infant in front of her. Unaware of the blush coming to the infant’s face in response to her comments. Hearing such outrageous praise for an ordinary body function, Ned cringed inside.

“Let’s get all that nasty gunk off your cute little hiney!” Marva announced as she reached for the infants ankles.

As the diaper change progressed, Ned felt his ankles once again grasped as his knees were pressed into his chest. His bottom was exposed as he felt the surface of the diaper being peeled away from his rear and being used to scrap more of the crap or maybe what Marva would call ‘poopy’ off his cheeks of his bottom. He was mortified to feel a finger pressing the diaper up into the crack to remove the majority of ‘poopy’ that had settled there.

“What a mess you made! Such a messy wessy!” Marva announced enthusiastically, to Ned’s embarrassment and disgruntlement. He made a sound of complaint to her comment which made Marva lean over him and say.

“Ohh! You’re my little stinky bear, Snookems.” Marva crooned at his face.

Ned turned his head away, his face wrinkled in chagrin at the baby talk. He really did not want the dialog along with the diaper change, but he really didn’t know how to make it stop. He urgently peered around the room, looking for anything to take his attention away from what was going on below his waist.

As he turned his head, Ned’s eye happened to fall upon Marva’s hand as it moved to pick up a wipe from the open container sitting there on the table. He closed his eyes as he saw her hand with the wipe begin to move toward his lower half. Subsequently, he felt the cool moist wipe moving down across the surface of his cheeks as the pressure of his knees on his chest was reasserted. It was the most disconcerting sensation of having someone else wipe your ass. It was so personal. As a result, goosebumps rose up on the skin of his bottom as he tried to squirm away from the wipe. Once his cheeks were deemed reasonably clean by Marva, a new wipe is picked up and firmly inserted by a finger into his crack. The motion of the cool wipe and the firmness of the gesture gives Ned a feeling of further vulnerability. As he made a small gasp as he looked down at Marva’s face in this moment. Her mouth is puckered as she industriously works at cleaning the small bottom thoroughly and efficiently, her mouth forming a silent ‘ooh’ sound as commentary.

As she placed the second wipe in the dirty diaper, Marva does not reach for another one. Ned felt his ankles being pulled straight up, lifting his backside away from the table as Marva pulled the dirty diaper away and placed it to the side. Unable to stop himself, Ned glanced over at it and was mortified to see the mass of brown and yellow stains desecrating the interior of the diaper. Unable to withstand the sight of the result of his body’s functions in front of him, Ned looked up.

As he looked up, Ned sees both of his feet suspended above him by Marva’s hand. His eyes examine his feet are small and delicate next to the giant hand encircling his ankles. Just for a moment, his mind is preoccupied with the sight of his feet, they seem to be fascinating. The line of five perfect toes on the end of each foot was fascinating in a way they never had been before. They seemed entrancing, even tantalizing to his senses. He wondered what it would be like to put those toes in his mouth. Abruptly, the adult mind in Ned shook off that idea in the next moment as a bizarre errant thought.

Ned ‘s ankles were lowered back down to the table as he felt a new cool dry pad has been placed under him. Thinking that the diaper change is almost over, Ned was surprised to see Marva’s hand go back to the baby wipe box again. Just as he thought the horrible process was over, he feels his thighs being spread to his disappointment. The new wipe traveled up his perineum, into the creases of his legs and over his tiny penis and balls. Marva wrapped the wipe around his penis as she stroked it down to remove any remaining urine from it. The wipe then moved on to encircle his ball sack as Marva gently gave as much attention to them as she did the counterpart. Finally, satisfied with the status of Ned’s lower half, she tossed the wipe into the dirty diaper. Wrapping the used diaper up into a tight package, she threw it into the diaper pail below the table.

Sniffing, Ned looked down to see a dust storm of baby powder being sprinkled over his crotch. He was surprised to feel finger rubbing it into every conceivable crevice he possessed down there. He felt Marva’s hands pull away and thought the end was mercifully near. He closed his eyes again when his ankles were once again pulled up and his bottom received a dose of baby powder. Once he legs were again lying on the table, Ned felt the front of the diaper being blissfully pulled up. He allowed a hint of smile hit his lips as he felt the tapes being pulled across his abdomen sealing him within the disposable garment. He opened his eyes to watch Marva pull the gown down over his legs and tie it again.

“There you go, Butter Noodle. All sweet and clean!” Marva said as she pulled Ned up into a sitting position and placing a kiss on the top of his head.

Looking up at Marva at the end of this intensely personal and private procedure, Ned felt her care for him at deep intense level. He knew that she would protect him while he was in such a vulnerable state. He swallowed as she bent down as she placed her hands under his armpits to pick him up. Ned looked intently at Marva’s face as he concentrated on forming the words slowly and clearly.

“H..h.heh…helpu mee.”