Chapter Fourteen
Ten-year-old Erin Anderson was overcome with a sudden fear as the contents of her bowels began to spread through her swimsuit.
She desperately tried to hold it back, but it was no use; her body seemed to be mad at her for allowing it to be cold for so long, and thus, it refused to heed her pleas. Not that she had much of a choice in the temperature; she didn’t dare get out of the plastic swimming pool she was dutifully sitting in. Mary would be very upset with her if she was caught out of the pool.
Erin figured her stepmother did this simply so she didn’t have to deal with Erin. At the beginning of the summer, Mary had placed the plastic pool in the back yard, just behind the half wall that the back of the carport provided. At first, Erin had been surprised that Mary would be nice enough to get her a pool, but her opinion changed as Mary began to make her sit outside in the pool for the better part of many days of her summer vacation, generally only allowing her to come inside for meals. All things considered, it wasn’t really too bad of a situation for her to be in, although the hard plastic of the pool wasn’t particularly comfortable to sit on for hours on end. Erin rarely bothered to try to point out that she’d rather not sit in the pool all day, but any time that her body language managed to hint at such an opinion, she would recieve a lecture about how ungrateful she was after Mary had spent all that money to buy her a pool.
School starting had brought some relief; she would only be sent to the pool on weekends, and then only if she didn’t have homework. Unfortunately, as fall began to approach, the weather became less and less appropriate for sitting in water all day, and being forced to sit in the pool led her to shiver more and more frequently.
Such a shiver shook Erin back to reality; she reached a hand down and felt her swimsuit bottom to determine the size of the mass under it. She was going to be in serious trouble when Mary let her back inside. She hadn’t wanted to have an accident!
She’d learned long ago that it was pointless to ask if she could come inside and use the toilet; Mary would always tell her she should have gone before she got back in the pool. For the most part, Erin could make it through the stretch between her meal breaks without needing to urinate, but occasionally, she wouldn’t be able to hold it that long. At first, she simply peed in the pool, but she quickly realized that it was probably a bad idea to do that in water that wasn’t going anywhere until she emptied it out at the end of the day.
Mary had made it known that she would periodically check on Erin from the few house windows that overlooked the pool, and that Erin had better not be out of the pool when Mary checked. Erin realized, though, that she could sit on the grass just outside the pool, urinate through her swimsuit, and get back in the pool in well under a minute; the risk of getting caught was minimal, and she had, in fact, never been caught doing it.
That hadn’t been an option for her today, though; defecation had completely different rules. A bowel movement would take much longer, and would require her to actually pull down the bottoms of her swimsuit, something she was loath to do as her backyard wasn’t private and she could be seen from many of her neighbors’ windows. Anyhow, even if she could do that, she’d leave plenty of evidence of what she did for Mary to see. Feces didn’t just seep into the ground the same way urine did.
As her urge had gotten increasingly desperate, she’d even tried to be let back inside. Mary had never let her in before, but maybe she’d be lenient this time.
“Get your ass back in the pool” had been Mary’s response to the banging on the door, and she’d refused to listen to any further pleading. Erin had realized the futility in her attempt, and she’d climbed back into the cold water, praying that she’d be able to contain herself until she was allowed back in the house for the evening.
The mess currently in her swimsuit was proof of her failure. It did not feel comfortable at all, and she desperately wanted to be able to clean up, but she knew that would be impossible until Mary decided she’d been outside long enough. It can’t be too much longer, she hoped, as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon.
Her time in the pool was becoming a horrible mix of anticipation and dread. She wanted to get back inside as soon as possible, but she was absolutely not looking forward to how Mary would react to her very obvious accident.
She shivered again. This cold water didn’t make the situation any better. She was smart enough to keep as much of her body out of the water as possible, but everything below her belly was still being chilled. Even worse, it had started to rain lightly; this was the kind of rain that wouldn’t even bother her if she was fully dressed, but with only her two-piece swimsuit on, it only served to make the unsubmerged part of her body colder.
She finally heard the click of the door opening, and her stomach sunk as Mary approached.
“Come inside,” commanded Mary.
Erin stood up, knowing fully that Mary would see exactly what she’d done.
“Oh my god, girl, did you shit yourself?”
Erin couldn’t do anything but nod.
Mary reached down and violently pulled open the valve on the bottom edge of the pool to allow it to drain. On her way back up, she grabbed Erin by the upper arm.
“Come with me,” she snarled.
Erin timidly followed her to the ground floor bathroom; not that she had much choice in the matter. This bathroom was a simple affair, consisting only of a toilet to the left of the door, and a sink with mirror above it to the right of the door. Erin caught a glance of herself in the mirror; she noticed that her lips had the beginnings of a blue tint to them.
Mary grabbed a towel from the rack and tossed it on the ground, just inside the doorway. She then guided Erin so that she was standing on the towel, staring straight at the empty wall opposite the door. “Now take off that dirty swimsuit bottom, and don’t you dare get any shit on my floor.”
Erin carefully pulled down her pale blue swimsuit bottom, trying to get as much of her mess off of her and into it as she could. Still, she could tell that her body was nowhere near clean. She stepped out of the bottom and held it in front of her, not daring to do anything else with it until given further instructions.
Mary reached from behind her and positioned her arms so that she was holding the dirty swimsuit bottom at chest level about foot in front of her. She had a very good view of what she’d done, if she could ever consider such a view “good.”
Mary spoke up. “Now, you hold that there, and think about what you did. Don’t you dare move until I tell you to.”
Mary left the room and Erin heard the television turn on. She didn’t dare turn around to look, but she knew that given the layout of the house, Mary could probably at least partially see her if she sat in the right place in the living room.
The smell of what she was holding soon became overpowering in such close proximity to her face; she felt like she wanted to gag at first. She desperately hoped she wouldn’t have to stay here too long, but she doubted she’d be so lucky. It was Saturday, so she didn’t have school the next day, leaving Mary free to punish her for as long as Mary saw fit.
Not five minutes after Mary had left the room, she felt cold air begin to come out of the vent near her feet. That bitch turned on the air conditioning, Erin realized. She was ashamed of herself for using such a word to describe someone, even in her thoughts; but even she could be pushed too far. She was still wet from the pool and the rain, and the only clothing she wore was her swimsuit top, so the vent only served to make her unbearably cold. Mary knows exactly what she’s doing.
Erin didn’t have any clock, but she had been paying attention to the television she could overhear, and she believed that she’d been standing there for about two and a half hours. Her legs and arms ached from standing still too long, and she was periodically shivering. Thankfully, the water had dried off her for the most part, but the vent was still very cold to stand in front of with almost nothing on to keep her warm. Her posterior was feeling remarkably uncomfortable as well; it was beginning to become itchy from being dirty so long.
She heard a door open. Her father was home! Maybe he would convince Mary to end the punishment early. She rarely started a punishment when he was home, but once it had already started, she was likely to continue it unless he said something about it.
She heard him come up behind her. He had to see the sorry condition she was in; half naked, messy, and holding the remainder of her mess in the swimsuit bottom in front of her.
“You need to behave for your mother when I’m not home,” he said, and headed upstairs.
Erin was crushed. At that point, she knew in her heart that her father loved her stepmother more than his daughter. Here she was, miserable and exhausted, and he wouldn’t even stand up to Mary on her behalf.
He’d even called Mary her mother! Mary wasn’t her mother! Her real mother would never treat her like this!
Erin didn’t cry, but she came as close as possible without letting any tears slip. Suddenly her physical condition didn’t seem so important anymore, and she ignored her aches, shivering, and uncleanliness. She’d known her father was drifting away from her ever since he married Mary, but the extent of the gap hadn’t struck her until now. Her situation was hopeless; Mary certainly wasn’t likely to lose her obvious antipathy to “the girl,” and her father wasn’t going to stand up to Mary.
And yet, she knew that she still loved her father; she was disappointed in him, but he was still her father, the only biological parent she had left. But Mary was not her mother, either by definition or behavior, and Erin was free to hate her. It was all Mary’s fault that Erin’s father was becoming distant from her; and thus, Mary deserved to be at the receiving end of Erin’s hatred, even if her hatred rarely manifested itself outside Erin’s thoughts.
And yet, as much as she disliked Mary, Erin needed Mary’s attention at the moment. Her body had finally managed to interrupt her thoughts again, telling her not only of her discomfort, but of her need to urinate. Mary hadn’t told her she could move, but she also doubted Mary wanted a yellow stain on her towel.
“Mary, I have to pee,” she pleaded.
Mary made an obvious effort to sigh loudly, utterly failing to convince Erin that Mary was really that inconvenienced by her. “Wait there, and don’t move,” she ordered.
Erin heard Mary open the door to the basement stairs behind her, she came back up a moment later, and reaching around Erin’s legs, placed a mop bucket on the floor in front of Erin.
“I don’t want you getting shit all over my toilet seat. Turn around, and you can squat over that bucket.”
If you’d let me clean up earlier, you wouldn’t have to be concerned about me getting the toilet seat dirty, thought Erin. But she said nothing. This treatment was humiliating, but she didn’t dare refuse it, as Mary probably wouldn’t give her a second opportunity to pee anytime soon. She squatted over the bucket, being careful to maintain her balance as she continued to hold her messy swimsuit bottom in front of her. She finished as quickly as she could and stood back up.
“Now empty out your dirty swimsuit and that bucket into the toilet,” said Mary. Erin complied, lifting the seat and dumping as much of her mess out of her swimsuit as she could, following up shortly with the bucket.
Mary produced a sponge from behind her back. “Now fill up that bucket and use this sponge, and clean that dirty ass and swimsuit of yours off.”
Erin gave Mary an incredulous look. “But… I just peed in that bucket!”
“Then you’d better rinse it out well,” retorted Mary. “And don’t let me catch you pouring dirty water down the sink; it goes in the toilet only. Fill at the sink, dump in the toilet.”
Mercifully, Mary went back to watching television, and left Erin to clean up in as much privacy as the open bathroom door allowed. The bucket only fit in the sink basin at an angle, so Erin could never get much water in it, but eventually she had it cleaned out well enough and filled with what had to be reasonably fresh water.
Cleaning herself proved difficult; it felt more like she was smearing around her mess rather than getting it off her. She persisted, though, and after several sponge rinses and bucket refills, she felt like she was as clean as she would get short of a proper shower. Her swimsuit progressed in a similar fashion, although it still had a noticeable stain on it by the time she was done with it.
Mary came back in to check on her progress. She said nothing, but took the bucket, sponge, and dirty swimsuit from Erin, bringing them all downstairs.
Erin still doubted she was allowed to leave the bathroom, so she waited until Mary ascended from the basement again. Sure enough, Mary had further instructions for Erin.
“I obviously can’t trust you to use the bathroom when you need to, so put down the seat and sit on the toilet. You can stay there until you’ve gone to the bathroom again. Tell me before you flush so I can make sure you’re not lying to me about going.”
Erin frowned after Mary left. This wasn’t quite as bad as standing, and at least she was clean now, but she’d just emptied her bladder, so it would be a while before she had to pee enough to stand a chance of changing the color of the toilet water significantly. She still didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it had to be pretty late by now, and she was getting tired. As she was only wearing her swimsuit top, she was still rather cold, but she noted with a bitter happiness that Mary had at least shut off the air conditioning. She must be getting bored, realized Erin.
Trying to make the best of the situation, she folded her arms on her knees and rested her head on them. It wasn’t the most comfortable of positions, but she was exhausted from the hours of standing and shivering she’d been doing, and the time probably didn’t help. All in all, she could be doing worse, and consciousness soon escaped her as she slipped into a dreamless slumber.
“Erin? Erin!”