Loving Care: The Stories of Lola Trechlyn

Chapter 18
C7 - Disillusioned

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Chapter Description: F on M, Hypnosis, Mind Control, Bodily-Function Humiliation, Physical AR. / 1989. A young magician's assistant is humiliated and abused in this prequel to and final entry in the Baby 'Cotty tetralogy. / Originally published on July 5th, 2012; recovered from the server crash. / Warning: This story is an extremely challenging read and contains subject matter that some may find deeply troubling or even offensive.

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WARNING: This story is extremely challenging and contains subject matter that can be highly discomfiting to some readers. These sections are not meant to be erotic and are only included to illustrate the evil nature of the antagonist. Reading this story can be psychologically strenuous for some people so, if you’re not sure whether you want to read it, my friendly advice is that you move on.

==-- disillusioned.

lola trechlyn --==

/ SATURDAY 27 MAY \

“I.D., please.”

As he did each day, Trevor handed his security pass to the casino’s security guard. He had a habit of smiling as he did so, of appreciating that he was one of a handful of 13-year-olds who could not only gain ingress to the famed Circus Circus casino and hotel (albeit from the performers’ entrances), but also claim to be the treasured and well-treated assistant to one of the facility’s most reliable draws.

Circus Circus itself had a checkered past, and Vegas was lousy with them. Its sordid tale dated back 20 and a half years, to October 1968, when Jay Sarno, gambler and eventual mentor of casino magnate Steve Wynn, added a hotel to a big-top-shaped gambling floor in an effort to attract high rollers. Sarno obtained a loan from the Teamsters -- obviously, this is the termination shock of when things get hairy -- and made Anthony Spilotro, a Chicago Outfit enforcer, a concession for some of the take. Stories that feature a character whose profession is “enforcer” seldom end well and, after Sarno evaded one too many taxes, Circus Circus fell into the hands of a pair of investors with a bit more scruples. By Las Vegas standards, of course.

Trevor Michael knew none of this and wouldn’t have cared if he did. Since the age of 11, he had served as the assistant to “Madame Flutterby” Gwynett, a performance magician of such renown that child and adult alike flocked to her nightly engagements. Children were held in rapt attention by the fantastical wonders of prestidigitation, and their parents, often having purchased the tickets grudgingly, were presently surprised to hear the occasional R-rated innuendo peppered into Flutterby’s repartee. And Flutterby, always a woman of respect and principle irrespective of her bankroll (which numbered in the millions and, unbeknownst to its keeper, would be in for quite a wild ride during the George Bush era), declined to refer to Trevor as her “assistant.” He was her “apprentice.”

“And one day, all this will be yours,” she half-joked as she helped outfit Trevor in his dressing room an hour before Saturday’s show. “Have you thought of a stage name yet?”

“I was thinking ‘Trevor the Magical.’” The naïve and impressionable boy was beaming as Flutterby adjusted his tie for him. As Trevor had lost his mother half a decade prior at the hands of a drunk driver -- her -- Flutterby had become something of a maternal figure to him. And since Trevor’s father was about as available as any Vegas bartender could be, Flutterby had taken on the dual-role of guiding her young charge as he strove to make a clean transition into adulthood.

“Aww, sweetie,” Flutterby said with a chuckle, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better than that. Anyway, the show’s about to start, so let’s go make some people happy.”

Flutterby and Trevor gave a 2,000-strong theater of gleeful patrons an inspiration of a performance. As per tradition -- Flutterby wasn’t superstitious, but she knew better than to change up an act everybody already loved -- the spectacle began with something as innocuous as pulling a rabbit out of a hat. While the rabbit itself was what sent the audience’s children into paroxysms of wonderment, it was Flutterby’s off-color remark to follow (“If my boyfriend took a few lessons from Peter Cottontail over here, I might actually feel something”) that elicited laughter from the paying adults.

It was one such paying adult that Flutterby had called onto the stage to undergo a session of hypnosis. Every step of the way, a jacketed-and-tied Trevor provided and removed the props with consummate grace, replacing the top hat with a novelty couch smoothly and efficiently. The duo’s final illusion involved the then-classic routine of sawing Trevor in half. The boy wasn’t particularly fond of the position in which he had to lay within the box -- legs scrunched into a painful and invisible position while a second assistant kept all but his own legs out of view -- but he had done it hundreds of times before and, as always, it all went without a hitch. Another flawless show for Madame Flutterby.

Later, Flutterby met Trevor in his dressing room just as the young teenager was changing into street clothes for his return home. Though loving, the good Madame was by no means a paragon of virtue, and she would often enter Trevor’s private area hoping to get a glimpse of his own “private area” just before the blue jeans came up. There had been a time when this bothered Trevor, but, with his manhood beginning to bloom and nothing about which to be ashamed in the endowment department, he had transmuted his embarrassment to flattery and would occasionally give Flutterby a show-- “accidentally,” of course. The magician was 20 years old. Not in a million years could he see himself landing an acquisition like that.

Flutterby was less obvious about it this time, and took her leave almost immediately after congratulating Trevor on yet another fine performance, granting the budding 13-year-old a few minutes to contemplate the wonder of his burgeoning masculinity as he finished dressing. As with any boy first discovering girls and the fascinating biological and psychological changes that brought them into a new kind of personal relevance, Trevor rarely avoided an opportunity to admire his four-inch penis (erect, of course-- which, more often than not, it was) and the sparse patches of hair that had begun to sprout in areas of his body formerly characterized by smoothness and then purely-cosmetic peach fuzz. Trevor appreciated that his shoulders were broadening and his musculature had begun to develop into a visible idiom.

“I’m a man,” was his agonizingly clichéd thought as he took leave of Circus Circus and made his way home to exercise his newfound ability to orgasm.

// SUNDAY 28 MAY \\

The spring breeze, for how fickle it could in a Vegas May, gently rolled through a mercifully sedate suburb of the city, glancing off the marquis of the multiplex at which Trevor had chosen to spend his afternoon. When he walked out, the boy was all smiles.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he thought. You couldn’t ask for a better conclusion to the story. The literal Holy Grail-- what’s bigger than that? Aliens? He chuckled to himself and made a mental note to save up his allowance for the forthcoming Ghostbusters II, which was certain to light the comedy world on fire for years to come.

But when he got to Circus Circus to prepare for that evening’s show, Trevor was troubled. In truth, he had been for a while. As his body developed and his hormones hijacked every system of logical thinking the boy once boasted, as his need for sexual gratification reached levels of anguish he had only seen on the silver screen and regarded as mere exaggerations in the interest of comic effect, as his male drive told him to love, to fuck, to grow up--

--his doubts as to his “vocation,” such as it was, had come to their boiling point.

He performed his duties as normal. The rabbit out of the hat... as insipid as always, and Trevor was becoming increasingly disappointed that the children of the audience found such awe and wonder in it. When they became adults, as Trevor had, they would no doubt fall into the same morass of dispirit. As for the hypnosis? Trevor was almost ashamed that he had, for months, accepted the responsibility of training the audience plants. Then there was the sawing-in-half routine-- an illusion so shoddy and hastily-constructed that once, when the person who played the legs had been unscrupulously poached by a competing magician named Rollo, Trevor had to place some calls to find a replacement. In his haste, the boy had chosen, sight unseen, an actor whose legs were several shades darker in skin tone than Trevor’s upper body. The mature young man was beginning to see what a farce the whole thing had become.

“I’m beginning to see what a farce this whole thing has become,” Trevor said to Flutterby as they met in his dressing room after the show. “I don’t think I can grow here as a person, artistically or creatively, anymore.”

Flutterby was crestfallen. Was she really losing the best assistant she ever had?

“You don’t believe in magic?” the Madame replied. Her demeanor was tough for Trevor to gauge. Half of her mouth seemed to be tilted downwards, as if her profession, the magic in her life, had been summarily dismissed by a boy, seven years her junior, who was proud to have had the world figured out. The other half appeared upturned and amused.

“I didn’t know that I was supposed to,” said Trevor. “I think I’ve been a good protégé, and Lord knows you’ve been the most I could ever hope for out of a mentor. I just want to move on. Try new things.”

Flutterby sat next to Trevor on the couch. She put one arm around him.

“I don’t think you should give up on magic so easily.”

The woman had her hand on Trevor’s jeans-clad thigh. Her fingertips had taken to doing a little dance, one which, in no time at all, had elicited a fairly evident biological reaction from her young charge. Trevor’s erection strained against his jeans. The resistance was beginning to hurt.

“I... I suppose...” Trevor didn’t know what to say. His mind -- and his eyes -- were trained on Flutterby’s soft, ivory hand, which moved tantalizingly close to the boy’s crotch.

The Madame’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Why don’t I introduce you to a very special kind of magic... right now?”

Ten minutes later, while Trevor was zipping up and Flutterby was taking her leave, the woman turned around to call to him.

“So, next weekend... you’ll give me another three days to make you believe again?”

Trevor smiled weakly, his eyelids still twitching with pleasure and relief. “Of course. I’ll be there. Bring on the magic.”

/// FRIDAY 2 JUNE \\\

The late 80s had been rough on Lynn Gwynett. She married her high school sweetheart before their diplomas had even been printed and, intoxicated by the impetuousness of love-drenched youth, they had planned quite the life together. First a child, then a home. It was the classic rationale of “He’s the one, so why wait?” Rationality and teenagers, however, seldom comprise a palatable cocktail.

It would have come as no shock to a less green, more cosmopolitan young woman: Lynn’s husband of mere months had been having an affair, and the two-timer’s mistress had become pregnant with the child Lynn felt should have been hers. It was an emotional disaster. The divorce was relatively clean (After all, how many assets can a pair of teenagers amass?), but the damage had been done. Lynn’s heart was broken. She fled to Las Vegas, hoping to work in entertainment, vowing not to fall into the unseemly conflagration of prostitution.

After adopting the stage name “Madame Flutterby,” her career took off quickly. Though her plane flew on wings of physical beauty, it was powered by the fuel of genuine aptitude. In one year she had become a sensation of prestidigitation, selling out theaters and auditoria with her unremarkable sleight-of-hand couched in spectacular personality and innuendo. Ultimately, her success compelled her to bring on an unpaid assistant, and she and Trevor -- a fan of hers who had once approached her after a performance at his junior high school -- formed a team that was consistently courted by the more affordable casinos on the Strip. It was an empire the precocious performer had built, and Trevor was the solder that held it all together.

And now he wanted to leave her, too. Fat chance of that. She was going to convince Little Mr. Skeptic that magic does exist, and the project was to begin that night.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Flutterby announced to the audience of 2,000, “tonight, you’re in for a special treat. Instead of amusing you with the usual mainstays characteristic of my craft, I intend to show you a different kind of magic, one which involves my very own apprentice, Trevor Michael. Trevor, would you step forward, please?”

Flutterby had explained matters to Trevor prior to the show having begun. He knew that it was finally his turn to be in the spotlight. No mere assistant-- he had become a full-fledged participant, almost a co-performer, and he was only too happy to step forward into the stage’s illumination alongside his mentor and first sexual partner. And he was doubly glad to be able to dress down, sacrificing the formalwear that cooked him beneath the stage lights in favor of the t-shirts and blue jeans in which he felt most comfortable.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” repeated Flutterby, “children and grown-ups, believers and skeptics alike... I’m afraid this special treat comes with some bad news. For you see, last week, little Trevor here informed me that he no longer believes in magic. That he’s too old for it.”

Good-natured boos wafted from the audience to the stage, causing Trevor to blush and liberate a sheepish smile.

“He’s given me three performances to prove that real magic exists. And you’re the audience lucky enough to witness my first attempt.” Cheers and applause greeted this declaration of favor. “So, without further ado, let us begin by making something appear from nothing.”

Trevor rolled his eyes when he saw Flutterby extract a top hat and a black-and-white stick from her bag of tricks. As was his wont, he ran through his head trying to figure out the catch: Clearly the Madame wasn’t going to make a rabbit appear out of the hat yet again. A dove, perhaps? Dolph Lundgren from backstage? A viable Democrat for president? Only one of those would actually constitute “magic” in its truest sense.

“Order, Chaos, Panic, Fear,” Flutterby intoned, tapping the tip of her “wand” against the brim of the top hat. “Make the unforeseen appear!”

No rabbit emerged from the top hat. Nor did a dove. In fact, the hat was empty, crisp, and pristine, as if it had just come from the haberdasher.

When something did appear, it didn’t do so in the hat. It appeared in the seat of Trevor’s briefs. The young teenager was shitting his pants.

At first, the boy -- his attentions focused on the trick hat with nothing to offer -- felt as though he was passing gas, a harmless breach of stage decorum whose olfactory consequences would throw off neither his concentration nor that of Madame Flutterby. Performers get nervous. It happens.

But when the unmistakable hardness of a stool proceeded to breach Trevor’s anus and extrude to completion, when the weight of it dropped into the seat of the boy’s briefs and sagged his underwear in his jeans, Trevor went cold.

The young teenager’s face flushed a shade of crimson as he realized that he had been stripped of all bowel control. Another log of hard crap emerged from him and fell into his underwear, causing the elastic on his Fruit of the Looms to sag a half an inch. Trevor tried to stop, to lock up every muscle in his body from his jaw to his fists to his asshole, but the only thing he succeeded in doing was preventing his bladder from flooding his jeans. In form and function, all Trevor could do was stand there on stage, loosing pathetic little grunts, as he helplessly pooped his pants like a toddler.

By the time Trevor had finished, he had utterly moved the contents of his bowels into his briefs, a softball-sized quartet of leavings tugging downward on his tighty-whities that would have threatened to send them splattering to the floor were it not for the supportive outer shell of the boy’s blue jeans. The smell was outrageous, but the audience was seated too far away to react in any way other than in confusion at a magic trick that seemed to lack both the magic and the trick.

Madame Flutterby was smiling. She predicted accurately that Trevor would in no way think to connect her “magic” -- in which he didn’t believe, anyway -- to his humiliating accident. So she exercised the option of playing it cagey.

“My apologies, folks,” she announced to the audience. “It would appear as though this trick has worn itself out. You might say it’s old hat.”

Trevor was already waddling towards stage right, attempting to make a hasty exit that wouldn’t betray the infantile act he had so recently committed. He wanted to vomit. Not only did the oppressive scent of his accident offend his senses like only a fresh load of crap could, but the foreign and not-at-all welcome sensation of a heavy mass of sticky hardness swaying between his upper thighs and caking his rear end with every slight motion was a disgrace he hadn’t suffered since a similar incident befell him during a backyard baseball game eight years prior.

He certainly didn’t feel like a man as he stripped himself bare in his dressing room and spent an hour showering off the revolting by-product of his childish loss of control. Trevor left Circus Circus before Flutterby had a chance to confront him, obsessively lamenting his ignominious final performance.

//// SATURDAY 3 JUNE \\\\

“After all you’ve done for me, I thought it would be rude to quit without coming here to tell you personally that yesterday’s show was my last.”

Trevor Michael leaned against the doorway of Madame Flutterby’s dressing room, a morose yet resolute expression on his face, as he precociously tendered his resignation, like he had seen characters do on television and in the movies.

“You promised me you’d give me the whole weekend,” said Flutterby, smacking the lipstick she had just applied. “You can’t just leave me here with no experienced assistant and no backup plan. I’ll have to cancel both shows. That’s thousands of dollars-- and who’s gonna book me after that?”

Trevor was moved by the reality of Flutterby’s plight, but not enough to waver in his stance. “I’m sorry. The spotlight isn’t the place for me.”

Flutterby stood up from her vanity, approached Trevor, and took his hands in hers. “Does this have anything to do with what happened last night?”

“What-- what happened last night?”

“You know. Your little... accident.”

Trevor’s heart plunged into his stomach. He could have sworn he had heard the splash. How did she know? How could the Madame possibly have known?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he gulped.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Flutterby reassured him, touching the side of his face gently with two of her fingertips. “You know what happened to me, my very first time in the spotlight? I got a case of the hiccups. A bad one. I did my magic, sure-- as best as I could, spasming and squeaking the whole time. But the audience was more amused by my humiliation than the stuff I’d worked really hard on.”

The young lady guided a nervous yet sympathetic Trevor into her dressing room and sat him on the couch. She knelt at his feet, placed the palms of her hands on his knees, and looked up at him with the reassurance of someone who believed in him.

“See this weekend through, won’t you?” Flutterby reached up and unzipped Trevor’s fly, allowing his swelling manhood to spring free.

Trevor swallowed, nodded, and began to sweat even before the Madame took him into her mouth.

Thirty minutes into that night’s show, Trevor Michael was in precisely the position so many pre-coached audience members had found themselves in the past: sprawled across the length of an onstage three-paneled couch, pretending to be hypnotized by Madame Flutterby, who had, as a routine point of performance, made it quite clear to everybody in the auditorium that she was supernaturally gifted in such matters. The Madame had insisted, as part of Trevor’s agreement to allow her the chance to prove the reality of her magic, that he take the place of the hapless subject instead. And, since he had seen it done a hundred times before and even assisted in the coaching of dozens of plants, the young teenager was confident that he could play the part convincingly and entertainingly.

“With your eyes closed, I am going to count backwards from ten,” Flutterby announced, loudly enough for the audience of thousands to hear, “and when I reach ‘one,’ you will be fully within my power. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Madame Flutterby,” said Trevor as he desperately tried to hold back a smile. The whole spectacle was so ridiculous that he was almost ashamed not to have quit the game sooner. What kind of self-respecting 13-year-old would subscribe to such obvious wanton fakery?

“Ten... nine... eight... seven...six...”

Trevor quickly ran through his head all the tricks of the trade he could use to dupe the audience into thinking he was truly under the spell of the magician.

“...five... four... three... two...”

Certain that he remained in full control of his faculties (and bizarrely relieved for it), Trevor prepared to deliver the audition of a lifetime.

“...one.”

Trevor opened his eyes and blinked. For the first time, he realized he was nervous. Even in light of all his mental preparation, he could not deny the fact that this was his first time being the center of attention for thousands of people at once. The boy could only hope Madame Flutterby would go easy on him.

“What is your full name?” arose the distant, feminine voice of his mentor.

“Trevor Scott Michael.”

“And how old are you, Trevor?”

“Thirteen.”

Flutterby laughed theatrically, showmanlike. To the audience, the sound signaled the setup to an amusing sequence of hypnosis.

To Trevor, it chilled the blood.

“That’s adorable,” said the Madame, deliberately declining to mask the condescension in her voice. “You can count so high now, Trevor! For a one-year-old, you’re very smart. We’re all so proud of you! Aren’t we proud of our little tyke, here, ladies and gentlemen?”

The audience cheered.

“And now that we’ve established that you’re smart,” Flutterby continued, “let’s also establish that you’re honest. How old are you?”

Trevor gulped. Something wasn’t right. He knew what he had to say to act his part. But, when he finally said it, it didn’t feel as though he was acting. His words and actions seemed to come from a place of recognition.

“I’m... I’m...” the boy peeped. Slowly, as if fighting against a sudden, massive increase in gravity, he raised his right arm up above his body, his index finger extended towards the stage lighting. “Dis many old.”

Trevor heard mild laughter and a smattering of applause from the audience. He didn’t feel rewarded by it. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of this anymore.

“And you just recently learned how to walk, didn’t you, Trevor?” Flutterby intoned. “Why don’t you show everybody how good at that you’ve become?”

As he slowly rose from the couch and planted his sneakered feet upon the hardwood of the stage, Trevor realized that he no longer knew where his volition ended and his suggestibility began. He had no reservations, on basic principle, with rising to his feet while acting hypnotized. But, moments later, when he commanded every muscle in his lower body to help move those feet towards the stage door through which he could walk and end this charade once and for all, they simply would not obey.

In fact, those very same muscles seemed barely strong enough to support the teenager’s frame, let alone get it from point A to point B. They weren’t the toned, supportive legs of an athletic and outdoorsy 13-year-old. They were gummy worms holding up a brick. They were the legs of a toddler, weak and uncertain.

Trevor splayed his arms outwards to keep his balance in check. The audience had a good laugh at the boy’s impersonation of a baby making airplane wings to avoid a nasty tumble. Wobbling, and with all the ambulatory alacrity of the risen dead, Trevor toddled haphazardly around the stage, his arms ever outward, his legs ever bowed, his escape ever out of reach.

“Aww, you’re doing so well, sweety!” The sound of Flutterby’s cooing infuriated Trevor, who, in retaliation, stumbled around like an idiot. “But we all know you’ll walk so much more gracefully when you don’t have that thick diaper pushing your legs apart, won’t you?”

Trevor froze where he stood. That made sense. That’s why he was walking so awkwardly. The diaper he was wearing.

But I’m not wearing a diaper! I’m wearing... uh... big-boy pants!

“Go ahead and take off your big-boy pants, Trevor,” said the Madame, her gaze boring into the teen like a pair of lasers. “Show the audience your pretty, pretty diapers.”

Trevor was screaming in the prison of his mind as he kicked off his sneakers and removed his socks by stepping his heels on his toes and yanking his feet free as a little kid would. This was a crime. It had to be. Forcing an underage boy to strip for ticket revenue? He’d nail the Madame good for this one. Trevor undid his belt. He had over a thousand witnesses who could attest to the perversity of this display. He wouldn’t just show them his briefs-- he’d pull those off, too. Public indecency. Corruption of a minor. Madame Flutterby’s career was finished. Proud and emboldened by his drastic solution, Trevor let his jeans fall to his ankles, and he moved his fingertips into position for the coup de grace.

They slid against plastic.

The boy looked down to see that his jellylike legs were indeed being pried apart by an absurdly thick disposable diaper, purest white except for the cartoonish waistband trim one would expect from a pair of Pampers. It was no prop; it was the real deal, thick with padding that hugged his testicles and embraced his rear end like a pillow, emitting a characteristic crinkling sound with every minute motion the horrified boy made. The echoing of its plastic reverberated throughout the auditorium and caused claps and titters from a crowd of people genuinely impressed by the amazing sleight-of-hand Madame Flutterby had inflicted upon this fellow “audience member.”

“I bewieve in magic!” Trevor howled, having gained just enough personal strength to shout out his surrender. “Pwease make dis ‘top!”

“Trevor?” said Flutterby. Her voice had taken on a dreadfully admonishing tone. “Did I give you permission to speak out of turn?”

The 13-year-old shook his head. Instinctively, he pushed his thumb between his lips and began to suck on it. The audience laughed and laughed as Trevor’s cheeks inflated and deflated with exaggeratedly loud slobbering sounds.

“That’s right. You’d better keep sucking your thumb like a good little boy. Because if you throw another little tantrum like that, Mommy will spank.”

The idea scared Trevor. It scared him very much. The image of him sprawling out over Madame Flutterby’s knee in front of all these people, of the seat of his diaper being pulled down to expose his butt cheeks to the hot lights of the stage, of the strong woman’s open palm coming down upon his sensitive skin over and over and over until the teenager was nothing but a wailing, blubbering mess...

Relief came to Trevor at first through his tears, rivers of salty dampness shuttling stress hormones out of the lachrymose boy and down his undulating cheeks. He was sobbing now, bawling, long lines of crystalline saliva dangling from his thumb and bottom lip and breaking free to streak his t-shirt. Trevor sniffled and struggled to catch his breath. He hated himself for letting his fear get the best of him. He hated feeling like a tiny, puffy-eyed baby. Most of all, he hated that the 13 years and some months of his life had culminated in this lethally humiliating moment, during which thousands of strangers and friends alike looked upon Trevor Scott Michael, the teenaged boy who could be getting a blowjob one hour and showing his diapers off to the public the next.

The laughter and applause rattling away from the audience and impaling Trevor like twisted daggers doubled in intensity, and it took the despairing young man four or five solid seconds to realize why. In his rush to eject his sorrows through his tear ducts, or perhaps out of some sort of subconscious resignation to the fact that there’s nothing in the world so bad that it can’t get worse, Trevor had forgotten to hold his bladder.

The sensation felt entirely foreign to the teen, but there was no mistaking it for anything other than what it was: a constant, unabating jet of hot urine, rushing out of the head of his penis and rapidly saturating the polymers that girded his loins and identified him as an oversized infant. What didn’t soak up into the padding efficiently enough instead rinsed down his testicles, matting what little hair he had developed and ballooning the absorbent material protecting his perineum. The spreading stain, not so much a yellow as Trevor would have expected but rather a pale slate with the slightest tinge of sunflower, rapidly conquered the crotch of the diaper and wicked its way up the garment’s backside.

And, all the while, Trevor didn’t stop. He couldn’t even tell whether he was trying to stop. What was the point? What was done could not be undone. He had crossed the heliopause of dignity and there was no hope of return. Hypnosis or no, magic or no-- Trevor was the 13-year-old who was pissing himself for a crowd, and unless he were to grow up and topple the Soviet Union, that’s all for which he would ever be known by the people in the theater that night.

Trevor crumpled to the floor of the stage with an audible squish. Overcome by the emotional maelstrom and behaving at the whim of the magician’s craft, the teen proceeded to beat his bare heels against the stage, to slap his palms in abject frustration upon the hardwood to either side of him. Every contortion of Trevor’s thrashing body caused the waterlogged diaper to bob outward and inward against his genitals, seemingly mocking their fear-shriveled size in an unrelenting cycle that continually reminded the boy the image he had been driven to project, and how powerless he had been to resist.

Eventually, Trevor’s energy drained away. He curled up into the fetal position, his thumb returning to his quivering mouth, and bathed in the jeers of the audience and the wetness he had made for himself. It was the last devastating moment he could recall before being brought back to baseline by the woman who had ruined him simply to prove a point.

///// SUNDAY 4 JUNE \\\\\

What makes a villain? Does doing evil for evil ends define one, or can doing the wrong things for the right reasons qualify? Has any villain in history ever seen him or herself as one? Of course not... not outside of comic books and conquerors. Intentions are the sole dominion of the actor; the location upon which an action falls on the continuum of morality is left to the subjectivity of third parties -- victims, advocates, apologists, revisionists -- and is only up for debate when the full scope of the results reveals itself, a debate which can smolder in perpetuity.

There are no villains, but everybody is one.

Lynn Gwynett often pondered philosophical quandaries such as these. She had the time and the desire-- a desire for things that could only be actualized through the very magic Trevor fancied himself having outgrown.

Trevor’s cynicism had disappointed her. It almost depressed her. Sure, in most cases, prestidigitation is merely the art of fooling the eye... but she was genuinely magical. None of her contemporaries could have made her assistant’s briefs molecularly reconstitute themselves into a diaper at just the right moment. And, just as it’s always a saddening event when an innocent-eyed child comes to learn that Santa Claus is an abstract manifestation of the human spirit and not a benevolent corporeal being, Trevor’s seeming abandonment of his participation in Flutterby’s world indicated that an irretrievable part of him had died.

Irretrievable, that is, until magic comes along and changes the rules. Trevor needed that part of his childhood back, the Madame concluded, so that he could always find wonder and potential in the universe.

“Trevor?” Flutterby asked, tapping at the door frame leading to the boy’s dressing room. “There’s somebody here who wants to meet you.”

Madame Flutterby had implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion in Trevor’s subconscious -- with a little reinforcement from her magical adroitness -- that he would return for a pivotal performance on the third day of the weekend. The one after which he could decide whether the allure and power of magic had seeped its way into his soul, as well. The Madame recognized that this particular hypnotic flourish was seriously stretching the bounds of what she considered ethical in spellcasting, but she had found herself slipping rather definitively into the “whatever it takes” mindset when she saw her pitiable teenage charge wet his diaper.

“Who is it?” replied Trevor, detached, wishing he was anywhere but there. What had possessed him to return, anyway? None of the Madame’s sexual capital was going to erase the nightmare that had become his life.

Flutterby walked into the dressing room, holding the hand of a little girl in a ponytail and a pinafore. Trevor assessed his guest’s age at eight years old-- nine, at the most.

Trevor turned around in his chair to face the young girl and forced a smile. “And what is your name, little one?”

“Claire,” she said in a near-whisper. “Claire Danvers.”

“Well, aren’t you a pretty girl, Claire Danvers!” Trevor gave her a pat on the cheek. “What brings you here today?”

“Seems Claire’s a big fan of yours, Trevor,” said Flutterby. “Her family flew all the way from the East Coast and she wanted to meet you before they had to go back.”

“I think you’re cute,” came the girl’s gentle voice. She stood half-hidden behind Flutterby.

“Well, thank you very much for saying so! You’re an awfully kind little one. But how do you know me?”

“She was in the audience last night,” Flutterby announced.

Trevor flushed a deep crimson and again felt his heart splash into the acids of his stomach.

“My mommy and daddy took me to see the show and it was so funny and good. I begged and I begged and finally they said they’d take me back to see tonight’s, too.”

The boy, caught off-guard, tried to think of something to say, but words had completely failed him.

“I thought it was super cute when you were in diapers. It was so funny and cute when you cried and cried and it was especially cute when you peed in your diapers like a little-bitty baby. I thought Madame Flutterby was going to have to change your diaper right there on the stage!”

Trevor’s heart was beating at an unhealthy pace. His fury and his humiliation were about to get the best of him... but then, suddenly, he knew exactly how to reply.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said with a smile. “Madame Flutterby had me hypnotized pretty darn good that time, I’ll tell you that!”

“I promise not to tell anybody you weren’t picked out of the audience by chance.” Claire held out her hand. “Pinky swear.”

“Pinky swear.”

“Would you autograph this for me?” From behind her back, Claire produced a single baby’s diaper and a Sharpie marker.

Trevor glanced at the Madame, the whites of his eyes bloodied with contempt. The magician had her hand in front of her mouth, struggling not to burst into hysterics.

“Sure,” Trevor said through gritted teeth, his gaze never leaving Flutterby’s visage as he received the items from Claire’s outstretched hands.

“Make it out to Claire,” peeped the girl, “and can you say ‘goo goo gaa gaa’ for me just once?”

The young teen’s face still resembled a ripe tomato by the time Claire Danvers finally left.

“You see?” said Flutterby. “You see what a little bit of magic can do for you? That girl idolizes you. And yet you don’t believe.”

“I do believe,” spat Trevor. “I know I didn’t go onstage last night wearing that fucking diaper.”

“Then surely you’ll indulge me this final night of performing.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Don’t do it for me,” the Madame remarked. “Do it for Claire. Do it for all the little--”

“I said I’d do it!” Trevor glanced rather severely at Madame Flutterby. “But if you do anything to humiliate me tonight, so help me God, I am going to tell every man with a badge within a 300-mile radius the stuff you do to young boys to get free labor out of them.”

Flutterby blinked, unfazed. “Fair enough.”

////// THE PRESTIGE \\\\\\

Trevor lay in the box. He was crumpled into the contortion that made possible the fabled illusion of the saw.

Never in his life had he been more apprehensive.

The tenor of the relationship he shared with Madame Flutterby had shifted so dramatically and with such vigor over the course of a mere weekend that the boy was wracked to the core by the sheer power -- more psychological than sexual or even magical -- that his increasingly-brazen mentor exerted over him. And she did it with such unabashed glee that Trevor considered himself quite possibly at the whim of a true sociopath with abilities never before recorded in the natural world. The days of jerking bunnies out of hidden compartments in cheap top hats had been relegated to the annals of ancient history.

Trevor had become a prop. Trevor had become the rabbit in the hat.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Madame Flutterby announced to the packed house, “I present to you my finest and most spectacular illusion. One of such brilliant misdirection that none among you -- nor any of my esteemed colleagues -- will ever isolate its secrets. This is my magnum opus.

“As such, at the conclusion of this evening’s performance, I am retiring as Madame Flutterby.”

Disappointed grumbles and muted exchanges could be heard snaking their ways through the rows of the auditorium. No one among the audience had suspected that they had purchased tickets for the concluding performance of perhaps the most successful magician relative to age in the history of Las Vegas.

Trevor Scott Michael wasn’t interested in any of this. In fact, he had his mentor’s monologue more or less completely tuned out. All he could think about was that this was the end of the line-- that he would have at last earned his freedom at the cost of his pride. Never again would he doubt the fantastical. In that regard, Trevor had to admit, the Madame had accomplished what she had set out to do.

But it was the aura of the situation that sent Trevor’s heart into the occasional arrhythmia. During each evening performance, the 13-year-old had willfully surrendered more and more his autonomy. On Friday, he stood; on Saturday, he sprawled across a couch; and, on this night, he lay clasped into a box with only his head and arms (and another assistant’s legs) poking into the open air. He was entirely at the mercy of the Madame.

All for a couple lousy blowjobs. Perhaps Trevor wasn’t as mature as he fancied himself after all.

“Now, we begin.”

As Trevor gradually began to focus on the performance at hand, a number of idiosyncrasies bled into his attention and increasingly compelled him to reconsider the prudence of availing himself of this one final trick. First of all, there was no saw-- Flutterby was not brandishing one as she should have been, and there were no such tools on the stage, nor additional assistants with which to deliver them. Secondly, a very strange, scented vapor -- almost akin to a lavender and vanilla air freshener, though not nearly as oppressive and without the aerosolized droplets -- wafted over Trevor’s head and snuck into his nasal passages, comforting him in a paradoxically sinister mode.

And, perhaps most importantly, Trevor didn’t think the trick legs extruding from the other end of the box belonged to anybody. They hadn’t moved since he first laid eyes on them.

“Order, Chaos, Panic, Fear,” announced Flutterby, raising her arms on high. “Make him live a different year!”

Instantly, Trevor’s nervous system was alight with pins and needles. Of all the emotions with which the teenager had suddenly been wracked, confusion was not one of them; moments too late for intervention of any sort, he had finally deduced Flutterby’s endgame. He knew he had precious few seconds left to live as a teenager.

Then, Trevor was no longer a teenager. No longer pubescent. His skin tightened, wisps of hair obscured by the opaque design of the box reverted into purposeless peach fuzz, and the then-child’s shoulders slumped as he adopted the frame of an elementary school student. Within the box itself, he was clothed, though the passing seconds rendered this fact a moot point-- the cotton of his t-shirt and the denim of his jeans sagged around him, making the kindergarten-aged child feel as though he was playing dress-up with the wardrobe of the older brother he never had.

Trevor began to cry, but it was not the brand of reflexive tantrum into which he had collapsed during the previous performance. This was a quiet, subdued lamentation, a surrender, a recognition that his adulthood, the one for which he fought and struggled to build on foundations of integrity and social skillfulness, was being stripped from him. Stripped from him as he lay trapped in a box... a symbolic casket into which his adult identity would for years be entombed. Stripped from him as thousands of people stared in speechless awe at what they considered to be the most fascinating magic trick upon which they had ever laid eyes.

The process arrived at completion. Flutterby unlatched the lid of the box and removed from it her infant apprentice, now four months old, crying and denuded. She held him up to show the audience. They gave a standing ovation to the incredible spectacle of the Madame’s final performance-- and the naked little baby with which she had “exchanged” the 13-year-old Trevor was perfectly adorable. It was a slam-bang finish to a weekend of magic and mystery that would have Las Vegas talking for months.

Lynn “Madame Flutterby” Gwynett had one final surprise for her infantilized apprentice, who was too busy staring down at the little pink peanut poking out from between his pudgy legs to notice the arrival of his final indignity.

It was Claire. She had been brought onto the stage as an audience volunteer, tasked with the ceremonial diapering of the bouncing baby boy. The little girl had no idea she was powdering and taping her idol into the first of thousands of such garments he would be filling for the next few years.

He knew, though. And, as the nine-year-old girl secured the final tape on the 13-year-old boy’s diaper, Trevor had no more humiliation left to suffer.

He was, at last, young enough to believe in magic again.

/////// 18 YEARS LATER \\\\\\\

Dear Diary,

Today is Scotty’s last day of high school. Though I’ve spent nearly half my life raising him, it seems like only yesterday I was wiping and powdering his butt. It seems like only yesterday that I jumped Sin City for a town near the Big Apple, moved baby Trevor’s middle name to his first (I always liked “Scott” better, anyway), made him a Gwynett, and married a faithful and gentle man who proved to be the best father for whom anyone could ask. Scott and I changed our last names to his -- Weis -- so that we could be one big happy family. The speed of motherhood boggles the mind. As does all the paperwork.

Often I think back to my intentions during that spring weekend in 1989. I review whether they were entirely honorable and selfless. As I have matured, I’ve come to concede that they weren’t. It wasn’t Trevor’s disillusionment -- pardon the pun -- with magic that drove my actions, that led me astray. Not entirely, at least. I had never quite gotten over my fiancé’s infidelity and the stolen dream of a child of my own. I optioned Trevor. I deprived him of his choices out of a twisted sense of entitlement, and for that, I will never forgive myself.

Of course, Scott’s four-month-old brain rapidly forgot his former existence, and he enjoyed a perfectly normal childhood. Though he had been my lover in a past life, I never came to conflate those roles. The moral turpitude of such a campaign is beyond even my ethical threshold.

I have to hustle Scotty off to school now for the last time. I wonder whether he’ll finally confess to his teacher the crush on her he’s been nursing all year. I swear, the two of them have the most bizarre connection. I’d be jealous were it not for the old cliché... “stranger things have happened.”

Hearts,

Lynn Weis

//////// INTERLUDE \\\\\\\\

The summer sun poured through the classroom windows and illuminated Scott’s smiling face. The 18-year-old fidgeted at his desk, casting eager glances at the clock and expending nervous energy by tapping his foot and twirling a pencil between his fingers.

Two fifty-six, he thought to himself. Only four minutes ‘til it’s all over!

The transition was bittersweet for Scott. He had spent his entire life growing up in his town -- attending its schools, befriending his peers, learning from the town’s teachers and eating its homemade ice cream. He didn’t know anything else, and a part of him didn’t want to leave.

He knew, however, that it was time, and he took some solace in understanding that he would carry the town and its people in his heart forever. Scott saw himself walking across the stage and accepting his diploma. He saw himself saying goodbye to his friends, wishing his mentors well, and packing up the family car. College and the “real world” loomed before he boy, simultaneously inviting and intimidating him, beckoning Scott out of his childhood and into a brave new--

“Scott!”

“Y--Yes, Mrs. Danvers?”

The homeroom teacher tsk-tsked amidst the knowing chuckles of Scott’s classmates. All his life, he had been led around by the nose at the whim of a wandering, flight-prone mind; why would it be any different at 2:58 PM on the very last day of his high school career?

“Come up here and get your portfolio rubric.”

Scott stepped away from his desk and approached his teacher, taking the grade report of his senior project from Mrs. Danvers’s hand. He had to wait the longest, as usual; throughout school, Scott had resented his bad luck in having a last name which started with a letter so close to the end of the alphabet. Their eyes met and the twentysomething smiled. Scott, typically, became awestruck, his heart stopping for but a split second that seemed like hours. He had had his fair share of passing relationships throughout his high school career, but not anything, nor anybody, had made him feel quite as special or as cared for as the smile of his high school homeroom teacher.

About This Story / Retrospective

Though some would say age regression, infantilization, and humiliation are inherently disturbing in their own particular ways, "Disillusioned" is one of only a handful of my stories that could be considered blatantly dark. Only at the end does a glimmer of hope shine through, as this Baby ’Cotty prequel segues into "No Child Left Behind," published five years previously.

Upon its release, "Disillusioned" immediately incurred harsh criticism for its subject matter. "Ridiculously creepy" and "crossing the line" were mentioned. There was also a camp of people defending the story, recognizing it as a work of fiction in which everything was completely made up (thank god).

One fellow even accused me of "the forced political agenda you foolishly shove into your stories at any chance that you get," presumably referencing the digs against the Democratic and Republican parties of the late 80s. "The story takes place in 1989," I explain. "’A viable Democrat for president’" is a joke about Mondale and Dukakis. The George Bush line earlier was in reference to his administration’s impact on the national economy." Fascinating and highly edgy stuff, right?

In any case, to avoid future criticisms by goodhearted folks who conflate fiction and reality, I changed all of the ages in the story to the names of Eastern European cities. It completely ruined the story, of course, but I think it made my point about censorship: that it completely ruins everything.

I changed it back shortly before the server crash, having concluded that the only mind that gets to decide what comes out of my pen is my own. This is the ARchive’s first opportunity to revisit this story since then.

Thanks for reading. -lt

 

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