Bedtime

Chapter 7
Quality Time

Chapter Description: Jessica finds herself adapting to her new situation.

Poor, little Andrew lay on a chair while Jessica ran out to get supplies for him. She had felt bad about leaving him, but taking a naked baby in public would raise too many questions. Had he not been transformed, things would have definitely turned out differently. Now his former girlfriend was playing mom for him at the moment. He cried out. He felt lonely. Having lost his intellect and reasoning, all he could do anymore was feel raw emotion.

As if to answer his cries, a red puff of smoke preceded a devilish-looking creature’s materialization. “Why, hello, little one,” it greeted the child, “I see you evaded my curse.”

Andrew sobbed. The creature was scary. It looked hungry.

“Relax, little guy. I can’t even touch you. Humans have to offer their souls to me before I can lay so much as a finger on them,” it snarled miserably. It obviously hadn’t counted on Andrew making it through the night as he had.

Devils need human souls to defy the natural laws of the universe, and it just so happened that this particular devil was very low on mystical energy from lack of food. In spite of them having the upper hand in this regard, devils could not affect humans without their consent. There were ways around this unbreakable rule, but those ways required lots of energy which simply wasn’t available in this day and time.

The devil stared hungrily at Andrew until he heard Jessica approaching from outside. Its lips curled into an evil grin before it vanished in a puff of red smoke.

***

Andrew was happy when he heard Jessica’s voice at the door. She was talking with that... thing. After about a minute or so Jessica slammed the door. She made her way back over to Andrew with the diapers she had left to get for him. Andrew smiled innocently as Jessica ripped open the plastic package.

“Sorry about that, little guy...” she began. She realized she had no idea whether she was still talking to Andrew or whether he was just a regular baby now. “God I should have just called the police and reported this,” she muttered under her breath. Now she felt as though she were in over her head and the police wouldn’t be any help at this point. She knew that devil was after Andrew and could just haunt him at his new family’s home if she put him up for adoption, so she didn’t know what to do. With that, she set her mind to doing what she could.

Andrew laughed as she made faces at him while fishing a diaper out of the package. After taping him into his new garment, she blew a raspberry on his tummy, which caused him to giggle uncontrollably. ’this isn’t so bad,’ she thought.

She spent the next hour cleaning up her apartment, the messes serving as a reminder as to why she was so agitated with Andrew. She tried to ignore him as he cried for attention, but since the place looked decent in comparison to how it did earlier, she decided to give in.

Jessica picked Andrew up and carried him across the room to her computer. She spent the early part of the afternoon looking up and reading stories to little Andrew. He was starting to grow on her in this way. The last month had been miserable between the two of them, but now... things seemed like they’d be a bit different, perhaps better. Jessica hadn’t planned on having kids, not just yet anyway, but she found herself not minding this new situation so much as she had that morning.

“Well, kid... I guess we’d better go shopping to get you some clothes.” With that, she and Andrew headed out for more shopping. Jessica was dipping into her savings account for this. She didn’t know what she’d do for extra money, but all she could do was tell herself that she’d figure something out.

Nobody found the sight of Jessica carrying Andrew around the store weird. In fact, she’d received many a congrats on the new addition, and condolences for what happened to his father. Jessica didn’t know what the latter part meant, but she wasn’t keen on finding that out.

It wasn’t as though Jessica wanted Andrew to be her son, but Jessica just lived in the moment as she bought clothes and books for the little one she was holding in her free arm. Jessica couldn’t figure out why she was doing all this for Andrew at first, but later she would say that it was because this Andrew was actually grateful and appreciative for what she did.

They arrived home late that night. Jessica set Andrew on the couch as she brought groceries in. As soon as she brought the bottles and formula in she started feeding him. It impressed her that he held out all day without having had anything.

After changing his diaper, Jessica went to go bring in the last of the supplies she’d bought that day, unaware of the fact that she’d left Andrew within arm’s reach of a black wooden box...