When his eyes adjusted from the flash nothing seemed to have changed. He was still in the tunnel, still at Gymboree and still dressed in the striped romper. Only the book itself seemed to be different. It had become plastic. It was now a rounded puffy plastic infant’s book with pictures of little yellow duckies on the cover. “Baahpoopthhh,” he mocked the book.

Brian blinked. What had he said? That didn’t sound right at all. He concentrated and declared, “Mmmaahpthhh…bababoo!”

No! This was all wrong, the book had robbed him of his ability to speak! How could he fix anything now? He couldn’t, that was the simple answer. He just couldn’t.

There was something wet dripping on his hands. Brian saw bubbly liquid on his fingers, then he felt the wetness on his chin as well. He was drooling, spittle coating his chin and hanging from it. Brian had to concentrate on keeping his mouth closed to keep the saliva from running over his lips. Feeling inside his mouth with his tongue revealed that his teeth were all completely gone now. Fighting the panic rising up inside him Brian began to crawl out of the enclosing space of the tunnel. His arms promptly gave out and he found himself flat on his tummy.

Brian scooted on his tummy, legs flailing behind him like a frog until he was free of the tunnel. Just holding his head upright seemed to take an effort now. His muscled had turned to jelly. Even when he wasn’t crawling his legs twitched and his feet wiggled. The motor control areas of his brain were back to complete infancy now. As he left the tube and looked about the room he discovered that his visual acuity had also decreased. He’d never needed glasses, but now everything in the distance was blurry.

However things nearby remained perfectly clear and he was able to see the woman lying on the floor facing him. For a second he didn’t recognise the adult sized infant, even though he could see her just fine. Then the face staring at him clicked into place and he gasped at Meggy. He hadn’t recognised her until now because she looked very different than a minute ago. Meggy was bald, her lovely hair completely missing from her head. She was gaping at him slack-jawed with drool pouring freely from her toothless mouth.

Despite the bald head and toothless mouth it was actually her eyes which showed Brian the most prominent and disturbing change. Before she’d been wide-eyed and innocent looking sure. But something had happened in this last transformation, some threshold had been crossed. Now her eyes were completely vacant, empty of all personality or even a flicker of intelligent thought. Whatever had been left of adult Megan, the little flicker of her old self he’d still seen even as she babbled and messed her diaper, it was completely gone now. Her mind had undeveloped to the point that she was nothing but an empty-headed little infant, albeit in a grown-up body.

Meggy blinked those big unthinking eyes, pursed her wet lips and blew a raspberry, saliva bubbles escaping the corners of her mouth. Brian just shook his head in disgust. Then he had a terrible thought, bringing his hand to the top of his head and sighing with relief as he felt hair. Granted it felt thinner than before and was probably so light it appeared blonde by now, but still it was hair.

“Well there you are!” a voice called from just behind him. Brian managed to twist his head enough to see ma-ma there, hands on her hips, grinning down at him. “How did you get all the way over here Bri-Bri?” she asked.

“Baadoo,” he babbled, forgetting he could no longer form proper words.