Loving Care: The Stories of Lola Trechlyn

Chapter 12
IX - Lifelong Customers

Chapter Description: F on M, Physical AR, M-to-F TG. / Originally published on March 3rd, 2010. All new!

“?Shoes Your Destiny.’” Stan chuckles and shuffles through the short stack of papers on his desk. “Are you serious?”

“Almost always,” I reply, hanging my purse on the backroom’s coat rack. “I was once called the worst audience participant--”

“Yeah, yeah. With all due respect, I still don’t think you could’ve possibly picked a lamer name for this store.”

“Had to pick something,” I shrug. “I’m a thirtysomething woman named Lynne and Grampa Cobbler’s Footwear Emporium just didn’t seem to fit my vision for the store. Your name is Stan and you’re my accountant and I’m not explaining myself to you.” It comes out a little harsher than I intend, but Stan just smiles. He knows how I can be pre-coffee.

Stan’s a good kid. Bright and good with numbers, he’s probably doing better at 23 than most college grads in our little burg. He’d grown up in poverty but managed to rise above it through intelligence and motivation. I pay Stan according to the store’s performance -- and Destiny’s reputation has quickly become legend.

Until this past summer, it had been owned by an old man who was pulling in around $2,000 a day. When word of his impending retirement circulated around town, I gathered up some of the capital I’d amassed during my dozens of successful business ventures and made it worth “Grampa Cobbler”’s while to sell to me lock, stock, and barrel. Now, three months later, he’s sunning on the deck of a massive condo in Miami, and I’m bringing $2 million a day into these walls.

Half of it is my business acumen. I’ve expanded my clientele beyond the city limits and, literally, I get customers from as far away as New York, Cincinnati, and Tulsa. Lines form along the block. I allow only one customer or party into the store at a time (it is a corner hole-in-the-wall, after all), and this lends Destiny an air of exclusivity. It makes them want it even more. I charge MSRP for the standard, run-of-the-mill shoes-- but nobody ever comes here for those. That’s not where the money is. Not where the magic is.

The magic-- that’s the other half. I spent my spring in India and met, by fate or happenstance, a most curious merchant, one who was only too willing to explain the unique qualities of his homemade footwear after I loosened his tongue with the right price. Today, I have his pairs shipped overseas to my little store for $500 a pair. I mark them up ten thousand percent. And people do pay it.

Of course, their mechanism of action is a trade secret. I’m not even sure I understand it myself. Even more incredible is the fact that this guy manages to make most of them look like exact replicas of the most popular, trendy, and fashionable shoes of contemporary America. But what does it matter when you’re making millions a week selling what you know, providing quality product, and loving every minute of it?

“When the taxman comes,” Stan says, even though he knows I hate that saying, “he’s probably going to want to know how you increased this joint’s profits by a factor of a thousand.”

“American Dream,” I reply. I check my lipstick in my mirror and look at my watch-- 7:59. “And that’s not my problem.”

“No, it’s my problem, Miss Kresge,” says Stan, a bit of a nervous crack in his voice. “What’s the official line? That you’re a businesswoman and a damn good one?”

A bell from the front of the store signals the entrance of the day’s first customer. I turn to Stan, smile, and nod. “Honesty is the best policy.” I close the backroom door behind me and begin my business day.

() () ()

My first pair of customers comprises a woman in her late 30s and her apparent son, who looks not a day over 15. Not in several months had I seen an adolescent boy dressed so preposterously. He’s clothed all in black and peals out a metallic clatter with each step, wallet chains colliding with arbitrary black-jean chains, black combat boots pulled up to his shins. His belt is studded with at least a hundred silver pyramidal adornments, and jewelry-wise... forget about it. Spiked leather bracelets, spiked leather collar, two solid-silver nose rings (each sharing a nostril, at least), and a filthy, greased-up, black-dyed fauxhawk peaking a few inches above eyelids caked in mascara.

I know kids like these... I’d seen them in the neighborhood. They’re not the most pleasant of people out of doors. I can’t imagine what they put their parents through, day in and day out.

“Let’s just get the shoes and get the fuck out outta here,” he barks at his typically-dressed suburban mother. “I’m meeting up with some guys in 20 minutes. Don’t see why we gotta get some faggotty-ass ?tennis shoes’ in the first place.”

“Because, Brandon--”

“SPIKE.”

“Because, Spike,” his mother tries to explain, a slight shaking in her voice, “your high school is tired of sending you home for wearing those ridiculous, filthy winter boots.”

“They’re combat boots, moron,” Spike spits.

Mrs. “Spike” brushes off the disrespect, almost as if she long ago warmed up in the ice-cold pool. “You go sit on that seat, Spike. Your mother’s gonna talk to this saleslady here and we’ll find something you do like.”

“Pfft,” he spits. “Just hurry it the hell up.”

“Hi,” I say, smiling at the atrocity’s mother from behind the sales counter. “How may we fulfill your Destiny today?”

The woman leans closely over the counter, conspiratorially, indicating a wish to whisper to me. I lean in to meet her.

“I hear you’ve got some... special shoes here,” says the mother.

“You heard right, ma’am,” I reply. “We never run out.”

“Tennis shoes, please,” she whispers. “A pair of ?M-2 Specials.’ And make them black, if you’ve got ?em. Keep the little brat happy.”

I smile, nod, and head to the back room to locate a pair of black M-2 Special tennis shoes. Even behind the door I can hear the petulant teenager bitch and moan about how everything’s moving too slow and how everyone’s wasting his time. His mother ignores him. When I return to the front of the store, I see the explanation for her silence; she’s already filled out, dated, and endorsed a check for $54,287.50.

I bring the box of shoes over to the little misanthrope and kneel between his legs.

“Hey, while you’re down there,” he chuckles, comically bucking his hips. I undo the belts on Spike’s combat boots... two on each one. “Watch the shine, sugartits.”

Without replying, without even looking up at him, I slide the boots off his feet and set them aside. I bring the shoebox closer and open the lid, revealing a pair of very small, black tennis shoes.

“No wonder you work in a fuckin shoe store, Einstein,” Spike spits. “Do you see the size of my feet? Do you?”

“Now, now,” I say, pulling the stuffing out of the tiny shoes. “You haven’t even tried them on yet.” I take his sock-covered, size-12 feet in my hands, sliding each foot into the M-2 Specials, one by one.

Each one is a perfect fit. By the time they’re tied, it’s hard to imagine anybody else fitting into them quite so well.

I admire the perfection of the fit and gradually raise my line of sight to take inventory of the shoes’ power. Spike’s stinking black socks had shrunk down to a pair of little white tube-socks with dual-red stripes on each one. His clinking, clanging, chain-draped black jeans? Gone. In their place I can see only small, hairless legs, pudgy with baby fat, joining at a crotch covered by something no 15-year-old would proudly wear. The disposable diaper is conspicuously thick, puffing outward at least an inch, pure virgin white except for a colorful adhesive waistband of “Sesame Street” characters. His shirt is gone, and so is all of his jewelry, from bracelets to collar to nose rings. A tiny roll of baby fat sinks into his belly and spills over a little onto his diaper. The only hair on Spike’s -- now, most definitely, Brandon’s -- head is the wispy matting of impossibly fine blond hair. And beneath that? The most confused, horrified, and humiliated expression I’ve ever seen on a human being.

Spike walked in a hellish teenager. Brandon will toddle out a helpless 2-year-old.

Quick as a flash, the terrified, red-faced child leaps from his chair, landing unsteadily on his wobbly, weak legs. He toddles over to the nearest shoe mirror, his diaper crinkling loudly all the way, its sheer thickness threatening at every step to send the little boy down to his hands and knees. When Brandon at last arrives at the two-foot tall mirror and sizes up his predicament, the sobbing comes loudly, the tears freely.

“Waaaaahhhhh!!” the baby wails, salty sorrow coursing down his round cheeks. “I don’t wanna be a baby agiiinnn!” He grabs the mirror by either side and shakes it in frustration. “I be good! I be good! Make me big boy again! WAAAHHH!!” But none of these machinations prevents his weakened bladder muscles from flooding his diaper top to bottom, a steady flow of hot pee streaming from his one-inch penis. He screams at this. He screams at the sensation of warm wetness covering his once proud genitals, sucking up the fabric between his legs, saturating his smooth, hairless butt. He pounds his tiny fists against the glass at the knowledge that he couldn’t feel it coming, and wouldn’t be able to feel it coming for quite some time.

Brandon’s Mommy and I, fearing injury to the poor lil guy, rush to pull the tantrum-throwing rugrat from the glass mirror. His mother takes the spasming, wailing toddler in her arms and brings him over to the sales counter.

“He’s just being a little pee-pot today!” she says, smiling at me. “Do you mind?”

“Be my guest.”

Baby Brandon’s mother spreads the 2-year-old in the soaked diaper across the sales counter, pushing a blue pacifier between his lips to silence him. He sucks on it but still sobs audibly as the mother he had disrespected for years once again goes through the motions of untaping the little boy’s diaper, cleaning his penis and butt with a cold wipe, and sliding a fresh disposable beneath the weakly-kicking toddler. Brandon is already losing his strength, already resigning himself to his fate. His humiliation redoubles when his mother gives me the honor of puffing powder all over his crotch and massaging it into his soft skin.

Minutes later, as Brandon’s mother holds him over her shoulder, patting his freshly-diapered butt, I give her my customary complimentary gift... identical shoes for Brandon to wear in his day-to-day life, but without the whole instant-regression element. I inform the grateful woman that her son will grow up perfectly healthily all over again, maybe even having gained a modicum of discipline due to the events of the morning.

“And, if not,” I smile at the relieved lady, “you’ve always got the M-2 Specials up in your closet. They keep their potency forever.”

I wipe down the sales counter with disinfectant as the woman -- shopping bag in one hand, Brandon’s tiny hand in her other -- leaves the store, trying to slow down to keep pace with her son’s crinkly toddling.

() () ()

I make hundreds of thousands of dollars a day -- the majority of my profits, in fact -- from the patronage of middle-aged and elderly men, women, and couples looking to reclaim the “spark.” F-18 Specials are, by far, the most popular model for women of advanced age; before they leave the store, they’ve shed dozens of years and reclaimed bodies they’d long forgotten. Middle-aged men are quite fond of the M-21s... young enough to line up the ladies, old enough to ply them with drinks.

I’m thrilled to make all my patrons happy... but I only have real fun telling the stories of people like Brandon. And Stacy, Holly, and their boyfriends.

The party of four enters Shoes Your Destiny about an hour after my lunch break. They seem like a fairly traditional, clean-cut quartet of suburbanite high school seniors, no doubt making an otherwise insipid affair a little more interesting by building a group shopping date of it. Stacy introduces her boyfriend as Dan; Holly introduces Ashton.

“And who’s looking for what, today?” I ask with a smile.

“Just Dan and Ashton,” replies Stacy. “Neither of ?em have had a new pair of shoes for a year. Seems they need their girlfriends to drag their lazy asses out shopping.”

Dan chuckles. “I’m here, aren’t I, babe?”

“And we know what we want,” adds Ashton, “so this’ll be a quick sale.”

“Okay, shoot,” I say.

“Size 11 ? sneakers,” Dan says, “New Balance. Grey with black trim if you got ?em.”

Ashton follows. “Nike sneakers, size 12. White with plenty of blue in there.”

“Alright,” I say, “if you’ll just have a seat right over there in the fitting chairs, I’ll head into the backroom see what I can scrounge up for you two.” With the boys’ backs turned to the sales counter, I turn to enter the back room, and Stacy and Holly both grab my wrist, practically simultaneously.

“Please do get Dan what he asked for,” Stacy says, her visage turning a mite serious. “But make it a Special.”

I lean in to whisper. “What kind?”

“F-6.”

“You... are aware, the F-series is for--”

“I’m aware,” Stacy interrupts, one corner of her mouth rising up a little.

I turn to face Holly. “Special request for you, ma’am?”

Holly develops a wry smile. “F-3s for Ashton. And can we make those trims -- Dan’s black and Ashton’s blue -- a nice hot pink instead?”

I smile back and nod. It’s not my job to ask why my customers choose what they choose, or what their motives might be. Often, I savor the mystery and dream up possible scenarios of my own. It is my job, however, to make sure they can afford the premiums.

“Alright, ladies,” I say, punching some numbers into a large desk calculator, “it looks like, after tax, the total will come to $108,575 even. Those, of course, come with complimentary identical shoes without the ?Special’ touch, for everyday wear. How will you be payi--”

Two American Express Centurion cards snap onto the counter top, each bearing the surnames of two of the town’s most successful defense attorneys.

“Alrighty then!” I say, before retreating to the backroom to fill the order.

Upon my return, I begin by setting the box of F-6 Specials at Dan’s feet. They’re New Balances, at least ostensibly -- but they’re certainly not size 11 ?, and the black trim requested to accent the grey has been substituted by the prettiest, most garish hot pink ever dreamed up by a shoemaker.

“I-- think you may’ve grabbed the wrong box,” Dan says in confusion. “Last I checked, I wasn’t a 6-year-old girl.”

Ten seconds later, Dan is a 6-year-old girl. His tiny pink-and-grey sneakers covering up a pair of short-rising pink socks, his polo shirt shrunken down into a glittery Miley Cyrus tee, his boot-cut jeans metamorphosed into a frilly pink skirt. From my vantage point between the ex-teenage boy’s shins, I can see that his boxers or jockeys or whatever he had been wearing are now nothing more boyish or provocative than a pair of plain white cotton panties.

“No...” she whines softly, girlishly. “No...”

Danielle stands up from the chair, looks up at the world from four feet off the floor, and feels tears welling up in her eyes. She clutches furiously for the chest and ab muscles she’d spent four solid years in the high school gym building up-- gone. Her sexy, well-coiffed masculine haircut has grown out of control, spewing hundreds of perfect blonde curls to her shoulders. And she knows the worst realization is yet to come: The mind of Dan, suffering inside the body of Danielle, thrusts both hands beneath the frilly skirt, desperately searching for the cock with which he’d had years of fun and conquest. The penis, along with any indication Danielle had ever been an 18-year-old boy, is history.

The ear-piercing wail of a 6-year-old girl, augmented by the anguish of an 18-year-old male mind, is epic.

And it’s enough to make Ashton, mouth agape in horror, try to launch himself up from his chair in a race for the front door. The effort proves entirely futile. With Holly managing to restrain him in the shoe-fitting chair by his t-shirt-clad shoulders, and with me holding his shins and feet firmly to the ground, I have but a brief few seconds to rip off the teenager’s sneakers and replace them with pink-and-white Nike imitation sneakers... F-3 Specials. It’s all the time I need.

Resigned to a fate he’d have never contemplated in a million years, the freed Ashton stands up and stares at himself, aghast at the ensuing transformation. The sheer power of the shoes enable them to fulfill their intended purpose in a matter of a single second, but, from the viewpoint of the victim, time slows to a practical crawl.

All Ashton senses is humiliation and horror as his True Religion jeans and Aeropostale shirt disintegrate into their molecular components and swirl around his body, nude except for a pair of red jockey shorts, in a glittering cloud. He looks down and watches the red fade completely out of his underwear into the purest, most virgin white. Then, his jockeys thicken, and thicken, and thicken, bowing his legs as his body continually shrinks to the size of a toddler. When the tiny teen’s jockeys are thick enough to accommodate a few bladderfulls and a full load, a thick covering of plastic instantly wraps around the infantile prison with an audible crinkle. A pure pink Care Bears adhesive waistband tightens the disposable diaper around Ashton’s waist. Further down his body, his men’s white crew socks turn pink and develop delicate lace frills around their tops. Finally, as Ashton’s penis collapses inside his diaper to form his new little girl’s genitalia, the molecules swirling around him reassemble around his body in the form of a white t-shirt covered by pink overalls with snaps in the crotch. The whole affair takes just shy of one second. A cute yellow duck appears on the front pocket of the toddler’s overalls and, with that, Ashton is Ashley, and she has to pee.

The release is instant, and it’s the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Hot tears stream down Ashley’s cheeks at the exact same time hot pee (in far greater quantities) spreads throughout her new diaper. She tries to cut off the flow, but to no avail; the former 18-year-old boy pounds her tiny feet petulantly against the shoe store’s carpeting, sobbing, wailing, lines of drool dripping from her gaping mouth. She isn’t even able to catch a decent breath until the final few squirts of toddler pee settle into the fabric of Ashley’s disposable.

Holly hoists the squishy, bawling Ashley up into her arms, and Stacy takes Danielle’s tiny hand in hers as they walk toward the door. Both ladies look forward to seeing how their boyfriends play with each other and cuddle as adorable little girls.

Before the foursome leave, the young ladies declare to me loudly an assertion that’s just as much for Danielle’s and Ashley’s benefits as it is for mine: “If they behave, we’ll be back next week for two pairs of M-18s.”

I smile and wave back. “I appreciate your business. I’ll see you then.”

Holly kisses Ashley on the forehead and turns to me with a wry smile. “If they behave.”

() () ()

At 7:55 PM, the setting sun casts a gorgeous red glow through the plate-glass windows of Destiny’s storefront. It illuminates Stan and me as we go through the close-of-business motions. I lock the front door, turn the “OPEN” sign over to “CLOSED,” and begin the process of tidying up the store... straightening shoebox displays, picking up shoe-filler littering the floor, tying up the garbage bag of dirty diapers (cleverly hidden from Stan, whose ignorance of my store’s modus operandi forms the cornerstone of his loyalty to me) before hoisting it out to the Dumpster out back.

When I return, Stan has already finished closing the register, sealing wads of petty cash and a novel-thick pile of personal checks and credit card receipts in a bank deposit bag. He scrawls a few figures on the outside of the bag and smiles up at me.

“$2.4 million today,” the young, babyfaced accountant announces to me, beaming. “I don’t know how the hell you do it.”

“Some people have very... particular tastes in shoes.” I smile back. “Guess that means $240,000 and change for you, Stanley the Manly. From rags to riches in a brief three months, yeah?”

“Three months?” Stan asks. “Man, I didn’t even realize. I guess this is my three-month anniversary.”

I walk into the back room, Stan in tow, where he deposits the massive bank bag into a three-inch-thick titanium safe for his Monday morning visit to Midwest Federal. He deals exclusively with Bill Diehl-- nicest guy in town. I think he used to work at Norstar.

“So what are you doing with your cuts, anyway?” I ask Stan as he spins the combination lock. “If you don’t mind my asking, I mean.”

“Nothing, really,” he shrugs. “Grew up poor, still live modestly. I’m more or less socking it away for a rainy day. A really, really rainy day. Might hire a broker, do some investing. Wild and crazy stuff like that, Miss Kresge.”

I don’t like what Stan’s telling me. He’s 23 years old, fit, handsome, polite, brilliant, and deserves all the fun and debauchery he wants. But he doesn’t want any of it, because he grew up learning to live without it.

“Listen, Stan,” I say to him, removing my purse from the otherwise-empty coat rack. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of your three-month anniversary here, what with your shyness and all, but I couldn’t help but get you something.”

“Aww, you didn’t have to do that.”

“But I did, Stan,” I say, smiling, guiding him to sit at his desk and spin his chair around. “I did have to do that.”

Stan sits in his chair, bopping his right knee up and down in nervous energy, completely without ideas as to what his boss has prepared for him. Sixty seconds later, I return from the racks, carrying a shoebox underneath my arm.

“Wow, thank you so much!” Stan calls out as I approach. “I haven’t bought new shoes in forever. I really, really need ?em.”

“You don’t know the half of it, sweetheart.” I smile at the young man. I remove Stan’s tattered dress shoes and replace them with a flawless, crisp-smelling pair of M-1 Specials.

() () ()

My weekend has been going well. As a perpetually-single woman whose insatiable business fetish precludes her from enjoying any sort of social life, it’s wonderful having a baby around the house. And little Stanley seems to be taking it a lot better than the vast majority of unpleasantly-surprised customers sent back to infancy against their will. In fact, since wearers of the Specials maintain their adult minds, Stanley is having a particularly good time with his second babyhood.

I know why, and it’s exactly the reason I gave him his gift in the first place. He grew up a child without a childhood, a teenager without any money with which to have fun and explore life. By age 23, he had seen and done nothing, and he had no motivation to do so. How can one pursue a lifestyle he or she isn’t even aware exists?

But now, that’s all going to change. He giggles loudly when I tickle him, he eats his mushy carrots like a perfect little bundle of joy, he claps his tiny hands and kicks his little legs when I change his diapers. He knows what’s in store for him: 17 years of all the love, opportunity, and life experience of which he had been deprived.

I won’t spoil him. Too much.

Thanks to the sordid state of the economy, I manage to hire a new accountant over the weekend; he starts on Monday. Naturally, I’ll be toting Stanley to work each and every day-- I can’t get enough of the giggly little rascal. I don’t think I’ve heard him cry once all weekend (except for the customary requests for feedings and changes). One might call it Destiny. (...Sorry.)

Baby Stanley’s favorite days at work are the ones during which teenage boys and young adult men find themselves dropped unceremoniously back into the world of diapers and pacifiers, blankies and bears. It takes some coaxing to turn these humiliated customers into angelic little playmates for my son, but their babyish interplays seem to help ease the shock.

By Christmastime, I’ve amassed greater financial assets than any one person should have at any one time, and I know it. I anonymously donate 90% of it to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital... and use the rest to give my sweet little baby boy the toddlerhood he’d always deserved.

About This Story

Technically speaking, this is the first 100% original, non-commission, non-remake lolatrec story published since "Little Champion II" in June 2007. Like "Leisurely Competition," I wrote it specially to add just a little something fresh to my six-day anthology project. Unlike "Competition," it’s purely F-on-M, as one’s come to expect from a classic Lola tale.

This wasn’t the easiest story to write, simply because there were so many places I wanted to go with it. So many situations and combinations available given the premise. Ultimately, though, I had to pick my three favorite ideas in the interest of keeping the word count down to lolatrec levels (1,500-5,000). Leave the 13,000-word novellas to that little trip perv, that’s my feeling. So over-the-top.

That’s about it for me right now. I hope to see you all again in a little while with a brand-new effort!

Thanks for reading. -lt