Preparing for Trial
I woke up before I opened my eyes. A stiff plastic mattress cover rustled as I unconsciously shifted my weight. Even stiffer, my muscles ached as I rolled over, my hand grasping around the wooden bars that caged me. I was in a crib. Fuck. Slowly, my eyes opened as my stomach dropped.

Above me, fluorescent lights hummed and cheery anthropomorphic alphabet letters stared at me along the ceiling’s border, all rictus grins and dead shark eyes. Beneath me, diapered zoo animals paraded around on faded fitted sheets. I was in the Nap Room. Double Fuck.
Pulling myself up to a sitting position took most of my strength. That damn outdated bug zapper they’d stuffed me into had taken a lot out of me. My body was already trembling at the thought of standing up on an old overstuffed mattress.

I was still a little pink, but the lotion that I’d been lathered in before I lost consciousness had done its job. I wasn’t peeling, and the terrible burning sensation had been reduced to a light heat that only surfaced when I thought about it. It was very likely that within a day or so, my skin would be back to normal.

No. Not normal. Never normal. Never again. My hand brushing against my chin told me as much. I didn’t have a single trace of stubble. My arms, chest, legs; everything that that damn bathing cap and goggles hadn’t covered, basically; were all completely smooth.
Baby smooth.

I looked down between my legs. What had been crisp white plastic when I had been sealed into it bulged and sagged away from me, forming a tiny lump in the front. Experimentally, I squeezed my thighs together. My knees didn’t even come close to touching before the padding inside the diaper stopped them with a squish that I didn’t hear as much as felt.

Wet. I was wet. I’d wet my diaper in my sleep. Triple fuck.

Some combination of whatever poison had made me shit myself and the trauma of getting all of my skin cells burned off had weakened my bladder. And it was poison, I told myself. It had to be. Contrary to Amazonian belief, Little didn’t just poop their pants for no reason. Naively, I hoped that this wouldn’t be permanent. I wouldn’t want to have to diaper myself before bed every time I crawled in with Cassie.

Yes, even then, I was still planning on getting back to her. The first stage of grieving is always denial.

“Hey, hon.” I looked up from between my legs to find Mrs. Beouf standing over me. Two Amazon sized hands reached down, snaked under my armpits and lifted me out of the crib. No warning. No asking. No preamble. Just an “Up ya go,” while I was already being hoisted onto her hip, my diaper drooping slightly away from my own.

A brief transition and I was back in my mentor’s lap with a bottle being shoved in my face. “It’s just water. Drink up.” Just water. Just water? What had been in the coffee that morning?
I tried to object, but it just came out as a whine. “Mrs. Beoufphhhhhh.” My protest was cut off by the nipple.

“Drink up first,” she said. “That hair remover packs a wallop on Little Ones, and I can’t have you getting dehydrated.” Her hand reached down and squeezed my crotch. “Definitely dehydrated.” I was shocked enough that I bit down on the nipple, causing a bit of the cold refreshing water to squirt out onto my tongue. Damnit. I was thirsty. You know you’re thirsty when plain water from a rubber nipple tastes so good.

Reluctantly I began to sip, taking the bottle in my own hands as Mrs. Beouf slipped her fingers inside the front of my diaper and felt around inside. “Definitely dehydrated.” My penis would have retracted inside me if such a thing were physically possible.

I looked up at her, waiting for her to make eye contact with me as I suckled. When she did, I didn’t like what I saw. It was that same madness that I always saw in an Amazon’s eyes; the same madness that presented itself every time one of those giants looked at me, and instead of seeing “Mr. Gibson”, they saw “baby Clark”. “Mr. Gibson” if he’d ever been alive to Mrs. Beouf was now dead to her. Dead and buried.

Slowly, we began to sway back and forth in the rocking chair while Mrs. Beouf pushed off with her feet. “I know you must be confused,” she began, “so you just drink and listen.” Her tone reminded me of a nurse giving a terminal diagnosis to a patient.

“You had an accident.” We rocked a beat as she let that sink in. I stopped suckling long enough to bite down on my own tongue. I hadn’t had an accident. I had been poisoned. How and by who, I didn’t know, but it was the only logical explanation. “You got caught.” That much was true; but our definition of “caught” varied greatly.

“Mrs. Zoge and I figured it out,” she continued. “You didn’t want to buy your own diapers, so you started borrowing them from the other kids to cover up your accidents. That’s why you pretended to go to the big boy potty last week. I had a hunch but I didn’t want to say anything. But when the nurse called me during lunch…? Yeah. That did it.”

Pretended?! She thought I was stealing diapers?! How would that even work? The tapes on Amazonian diapers are so strong there’s no chance a Little would be able to peel them off! What, did she think I was stuffing them down my underwear.?

“Slipping diapers in your pants, doesn’t give you the same protection though,” she cooed. “That’s why you ran out of underwear. You kept leaking and had to throw your undies out. Or did you think I wouldn’t notice that while I was cleaning you up?” Beouf’s voice was so syrupy sweet that my pancreas was shutting down.

Helpless in her lap, it was all I could do to close my eyes and look at the inside of my own skull.

“I don’t know how long your Maturosis has been expressing itself,” Beouf told me, “or how long you’ve been sneaking diapers out of my room, but you got caught.” Her voice had evened out again. Even Amazons can’t baby talk forever. “I’m not mad at you, though. You were just doing your best to look like a big boy. I forgive you.”
Bubbles burst out, threatening to break the bottle and erupt out into the air as I exhaled, a growl rising in my throat Forgive me? Forgive me?! Not only was I being talked down to as if I was some kind of child, I was being accused of stealing diapers!

Why the hell would I do the one thing short of shitting myself that was a surefire way to attract attention and get caught? If Maturosis were real, why would I even think to cover it up? Even more infuriating, I couldn’t prove or disprove Beouf’s theory because the only evidence that was required was her connecting dots that weren’t there and a temporary loss of bowel control!