AgeArts 3D Comics

Here’s chapter 3 (continuing from chapter 2) of a new commissioned story for an anonymous fan. There’s a variety of changes here in addition to some AR. Thank you again, anonymous, for the commission! (For info on my commissions follow this link.)

It was an odd feeling to be carried. It was comforting, maybe the most comforting feeling of all, even if it did make a person feel small and powerless. Stephen had plenty of reasons to be worried at that moment. He was trapped in the body of an infant with no clear way to grow back to his normal age again. His younger sister had apparently just become his mother, and now she was carrying him out of the basement, cradled gently in her loving arms against her soft chest. He knew he should be worried, but he was too comforted to worry.

In a backwards way, this was a dream come true. He had wanted to be a baby again more than anything. Now, here he was, living out that dream, about to be pampered and cared for. Still, he could not help feeling like he had just locked himself out of the house without any clothes on. He had gotten what he wanted, but he had no way of going back if he changed his mind.

As Niki carried him up the stairs, he took one last look at the wishing machine that had transformed him. He saw the touchpad for a moment, the one place he had to reach to turn back to normal, but then he was carried up above the ceiling of the basement. He lost sight of it, and he doubted he would see it again without making an incredible effort to reach it. And, even then, after somehow climbing down the stairs to it, the whole trip might be ultimately futile. He doubted he would be able to stand up and reach the pad by himself.

What then? What could he do? He wondered if it was all over now. He had known that playing with the machine might be dangerous, and now he had trapped himself in a new life just as he had feared he might do. He was a baby, and there seemed to be no clear way to use the machine again. Was it time to just give up and accept what he had become?

“Mom?” Niki’s voice boomed from above him as she opened the basement door and entered the kitchen. “Mom?” She sounded irritated.

Stephen heard footsteps on the stairs, and their mother yelled back, “I’m coming. Just a moment.”

His mother, who he assumed was now his grandmother, approached them. He was unsurprised to see that she was now just as much of a giantess as Niki was. Still, it was a bit disturbing to be reminded again of just how small he had become.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“Did you bring Stephen down to the basement?” Niki asked.

His mother/grandmother looked confused. “I… I don’t think so,” she said.

“Well,” Niki said, “that’s where I found him, just lying on the cold concrete in tears.” She did not sound pleased.

“What?”

“You didn’t happen to leave him there while you were distracted?”

Stephen felt bad for his mother/grandmother. She seemed really confused and embarrassed, and the whole situation was really his fault after all. “I don’t remember doing that,” she said. “I would never… I mean, I am careful with him. He’s my grandson.”

“Then, how did he get down there?”

“Maybe… he went down there by himself.”

“Right,” Niki said, incredulously. “Your infant grandson just escaped his crib, crawled down a flight of stairs, opened the basement door, crawled down another flight of stairs, and settled down on the floor to cry. That’s what happened?”

“It’s… possible.”

Niki sighed. “Please try to be more careful,” she said. “I know your mind is all over the place with new ideas, but you need to stay focused when you’re around Stephen. I need you to help me with him, and I need to know I can trust you with him.”

“Well,” grandma said, indignantly. “I did manage to raise you well enough.”

“You had dad around to help.”

“Yes,” grandma replied with a sad look on her face. “I did.”

Stephen thought that Niki had been unnecessarily cruel, but he realized that she was just trying to protect him, her son. He appreciated her dedication to him even as he felt sorry for his grandma.

“Now, it’s just you and me,” Niki said, indicating that Stephen’s new dad was not around either. “I know that’s not easy, but that’s how it is. I can’t do this alone. Can I trust you with him?”

“Of course you can.”

“Good,” Niki said. “You’ll be more careful then?”

“I will guard him with my life.”

“Good,” Niki said. “You can start by putting him in his high chair while I make breakfast.”

There was a handover then, passing him from one pair of giant arms to another pair. Niki walked off to the refrigerator while grandma carried him over to a high chair at the kitchen table. Stephen had the distinct impression that he was more cargo than person at that moment. He was precious cargo, sure, but that was about all. He did not rate as enough of a person yet to be a part of the conversation. Grandma set him in the seat of the high chair and strapped him securely into place before attaching a tray to the chair to hold his food and tying a bib around his neck.

He looked over at Niki as she prepared his food. She was as pretty as ever, but her clothes were pretty utilitarian. She wore only a pair of plaid pajama pants and a stained white T-shirt. Her blonde hair was done up in a tight bun. She had no makeup on, and Stephen could see dark circles under her eyes that indicated she had not had a good night’s sleep in a long time. Still, there was a glow to her, a liveliness in her motions. She had a purpose, a mission, and that made her beautiful in a plain, everyday way.

Niki finished preparing his meal and approached him with a plate of mashed-up green vegetables and some cheerios. She spooned up the green muck and delivered it to his mouth. He dutifully opened his mouth and let her feed him. It tasted bland, but he ate it. No one had asked him if he wanted to eat it, so there was no sense that he had any choice in the matter. This was his food. He was going to eat it. He thought of himself, then, as a food processing machine. They set him up, put food in, and it would come out later from the other end. Rinse and repeat.

After being fed a few more spoonfuls of the green stuff, which mostly ended up inside his mouth, he was allowed to pick up individual cheerios with his thumb and forefinger. Finally, he had a part to play, but even in that simple task, he struggled. Only about half of the cheerios made it to his mouth, leaving him frustrated. His one moment of participation in the meal had ended mostly in failure. It was embarrassing and a bit scary to realize that even feeding himself would be a struggle now.

Still, he was not alone. Niki was there to clean up his mess and help him finish eating. She was there to wipe his face clean and smile at him and say, “Good job, Stephen!” Even his most clumsy effort to be fed earned him congratulations. Just managing to eat food was his great achievement of the day so far. Although it felt like a huge step down from the life of an adult, he did feel a strange sense of accomplishment when Niki praised him. He had made her proud. She leaned in and kissed his head and said, “I love you, Sweetie.”

He felt something as he looked up at Niki. It was like love, but more powerful, somehow. Adoration, maybe. He was so small and useless, but there she was, this powerful giant woman, ready to do anything for him. Loving him. Caring for him. Existing just for him. He was her world, he realized, and it was becoming clear that the same was true for him. His needs would only be met by her or someone helping her. She was his guardian, and, as she freed him from his chair and lifted him into the air, he felt protected. She was as powerful as a goddess. It was not a power to be feared, though. Instead it was a power to comfort and defend. Her immense size and strength existed to protect and care for him. He felt safer in her arms than he could ever remember feeling anywhere else, and from that safety came the sense of comfort he had first noticed in the basement. As small and weak and helpless as he was, he had a goddess protecting him with infinite power. In her arms, there was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing could possibly harm him. He was invulnerable.

He smiled. This was the wish he had yearned to come true for so long, and it was everything he had hoped it would be.

He decided, as he settled blissfully into her arms again, that if there was no going back, then being a baby again might not be such a bad thing after all. There were worse fates than this.

*** 

It did not take long, though, for him to have second thoughts. Sure, life in Niki’s arms was heaven, but it was a temporary heaven. Soon enough, she had set him down on a mat on the floor in the living room and surrounded him with some colorful plastic baby toys. He tried them all out in turn. He piled up rings on a pole and pushed square pegs through square holes. He pressed buttons to summon various noises and cheery music. He built towers and toppled them. Then, he ran out of new toys. He had played with them all in a few minutes and now he was feeling bored.

Niki put the TV on, and he sat on the floor and tried to watch the cartoon on it. Again, he found it incredibly dull. There was nothing happening. Just colorful shapes and animals interacting with each other with frequent pauses for the narrator to ask the audience questions. “Do you see where Fluffy hid the apples?”

Stephen felt like leaving the room after a short while. He tried standing up, and promptly fell back on his padded butt. He tried again and discovered that he could stand, but not for long, and walking more than a few steps was still too difficult. It seemed that he was stuck with crawling, which was an achingly slow way to get around. He rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

The reality of being a baby was much less exciting than the fantasy had been. In the fantasy, it was all breastfeeding and diapers and mother/son interaction. In reality, being a baby was not very interesting. There was not much he could do. All of his forms of entertainment were so simple that they were barely worth his attention. Again, he realized that the problem was the mismatch between who he was inside and who he was outside. His mind craved a lot more complex and interesting things to do, but his body was incapable of doing those things.

Stephen began to cry. He was not sure exactly why he was crying. Was he mourning the loss of his adulthood? Was he just frustrated with his lack of stimulation? Was he getting angry about being stuck in such a boring mess? It might have been a combination of all of those things. Whatever the reason, his baby body seemed primed to react to any negative emotions with a shower of tears. And, once the tears began to flow, they seemed to accelerate all by themselves. There was no soft weeping for babies it seemed. Either he was dry-eyed, or he was wailing in inconsolable misery. Soon his head was foggy with hyperventilation again, making it even harder to control his emotions.

“What’s the matter, Stephen?” he heard Niki ask from above him. Once more, his eyes were too full of tears to clearly see anything, but he could make out the bleary form of Niki reaching down to lift him up again.

Once he was back in her soothing embrace again, he felt the energy drain from his tears. His moans and whines grew softer. As he calmed down, he became aware of a new sensation. Something warm and squishy was pressing against his butt. The inside of his diaper was wet, which surprised him, not so much by the fact that he had used his diaper but by how unintentional it had been. It had just happened, and he had not realized it was happening until it was done.

“Looks like you need a new diaper,” she said.

As tears ran down his cheeks and mixed with snot leaking from his nose and drool from his mouth, he began to smell the mess in his diaper when he snorted the snot back into his nose. He felt gross. He was leaking substances out of every hole, like a defective water toy with cracks and bad seals. And, he felt helpless to do anything about it. He was stuck in a poop-filled diaper, and he would remain in that diaper until someone removed it and cleaned him.

As he calmed down and tried to get a sense of how he felt about the situation, he realized that the helplessness was actually part of the fantasy. He was dependent. He needed to be cared for. He had surrendered himself to the power of his “mother.” Still, in the fantasy, there was a level of distance that made it feel more tolerable. He got to choose when he felt helpless. He could walk away mentally when he felt like it. Now, that choice was gone. There was only the helplessness. Whether he liked it or not, he would just have to endure it all.

When Niki set him down on what he realized was a changing table, he forgot his discomfort with the situation and began to feel excited. This was it! This was the moment he had been waiting for. A real diaper change!

Niki prepared her gear like a surgeon preparing for a messy operation. A new diaper was set within reach along with wet wipes and other tools of the trade. She then proceeded to remove his clothes. At last, when he was down to only his diaper, she unfastened it and pulled it open slowly, carefully. Then, the smell that had been hinted at was let loose. Stephen was surprised that his little body could produce an odor so large.

“Looks like someone’s been eating and digesting well,” Niki said, appraising his baby shit.

Stephen felt oddly proud to have impressed her through the natural talent of his asshole. Besides crying, his bodily functions seemed to be the only way to interact with her. She shoveled the food in him, and he returned it to her as a stinky mess in his diaper. Once more, he found himself in a transactional relationship with Niki. Only now, he seemed to be getting the better deal. He received hand-fed meals, while she had to wipe his ass. What a nice change of pace!

She lifted him by his ankles, holding his bottom half up with only one hand, and began wiping him clean with a cool wet wipe. Again, he felt that deep sense of comfort. Everything was being taken care of. He had nothing to do but lie there and let it all happen. He did not even have to ask. She did it all without prompting. It was her duty. He was her duty. All of her size and strength was employed in the service of his needs. He had a sense that she was the light of his universe with him resting comfortably in the center of it all, just absorbing her affection and care.

Naturally, the whole experience made him awfully horny.

“Oh my,” she said, noticing his arousal. “Someone is enjoying himself.”

A fresh wet wipe chilled his immature little stiffy as she wiped around it. Oh, if only she had some lotion to rub on it… He tried to reach down to start fondling himself, but his arms were not cooperating very well with his intentions. When he got close, Niki effortlessly nudged his hands away from his messy bottom half so that she could continue cleaning. Feeling frustrated, Stephen thought back to his earlier failure to feed himself and realized that, even if she had let him play with himself, he would have struggled to successfully stimulate himself.

As it had been when he was a young boy yesterday, there was that horrible mismatch between his mind and body. The man he was inside was living out his most desired fantasy right now, and mentally he was as deeply aroused as he had ever been. At the same time, he was trapped in a useless little baby body, not able physically to act on his arousal. Stuck between an inescapable feeling of excitement and a complete importance to act upon it, he began to feel overwhelmed. Being a baby left him with only one way to respond to that intense feeling of frustration.

He began to cry.

He wailed and kicked and thrashed around as she finished cleaning him. She cooed in her most soothing tone to try to calm him, but he was beyond calming. Only for a moment, as she fastened a new diaper on him, did he feel any stimulation at all. Then, it was over. He was still horny as ever, but his dick was sealed away beneath layers of plastic and padding, leaving it totally inaccessible to his fumbling baby hands.

Niki lifted him into her arms again and carried him away. Through his tear-filled eyes, he glared at her. Being the only other person in his world at that moment, his frustrations naturally fell on her. He felt as though she had betrayed him. She had given him the experience of a lifetime, the diaper change of his dreams. Then, she had prevented him from fully enjoying it. Her love and pampering felt like one long tease. He wondered if she somehow knew who he really was inside and was only trying to tantalize him with the experience of infancy just to leave him wanting and desperate for release in the end.

It was the type of torment he might expect from her.

Though, as he calmed down, that type of conspiratorial thinking dried up with his tears. The reality he was faced with was almost worse in a way. There was nothing malicious about her actions. She was just caring for him as any good mother would care for her baby. She had no idea of the kind of torture she was putting him through.

She set him back down on the carpet by his toys and left him there, still horny, still hard, still begging for a release. He tried to worm his little fingers down the front of his diaper, but his pants and his diaper were too tight for him to get inside, especially not with his lack of motor control. He tried rubbing his hand against the crotch of his diaper. That did nothing. There was too much padding to feel anything from his weak hand. Then, he rolled over on his belly and began grinding his crotch into the carpet. That did something. Finally, he was feeling some stimulation. However, it was very weak. His baby body was too underdeveloped and had virtually no sensitivity down there. It did not take long for his baby limbs to start to tire out from the grinding. At last, he gave up as it had become clear that he no longer had any way to stimulate himself.

His only hope was to just will away his erection. He rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling, trying not to think about being a baby or wearing a diaper or having his diaper changed. He pictured himself in his regular, boring adult body. He tried to think of unsexy things. He mentally recited things he had learned in school: the alphabet, multiplication tables, the number of days in each month… anything to distract himself.

After a while, it started to work. He forgot about the diaper change. He stopped thinking about Niki mothering him. He calmed down. He yawned. Before he knew it, his eyes were drooping, and he drifted off to sleep.

***

When the dream began, Stephen was his old self again, standing in front of the wishing machine. He checked that it was turned on and then placed his hand on the touchpad. He pictured himself as a young boy again but with a grown up dick, the perfect combo! The machine powered up as it had done before, but there was a strange grinding, groaning sound. Something had gone wrong. Then suddenly, the machine shut down and went silent.

He checked his body. Nothing had changed. It seemed that something had broken in the machine before it had been able to work. Disappointed, he left the basement.

Niki was standing in the kitchen waiting for him when he reached the top of the basement steps. She was wearing the bikini she had on before for suntanning. Her hands on her hips, making her look as if she were prepared to scold him.

“What were you doing down there?” she inquired.

He shut the door behind himself, trying to hide what he had done as if he were stuffing wet sheets behind his bed. “N-nothing,” he said. “I was just…”

“You were using Mom’s machine,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t.”

“I saw you,” she said. “You can’t deny it.”  Although she was standing already, she seemed to rise up even higher. ”You’re in big trouble, Mister.”

Stephen looked at her feet and back up at her face. She had not moved her body, but it was getting taller. She was growing. Soon, she was over 7 feet tall, and the ceiling was getting dangerously close to her head. Her bikini gave up trying to contain her growing flesh, and snapped off of her body, leaving her naked. When her head finally bumped into the ceiling, she said, “Ow!” and rubbed the top of it. “What happened?”

At that point, the growing seemed to have stopped. She looked down at her giant body and back at him, outraged. “Look what you’ve done to me!” she said. “I’m a monster!”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t wish for this.”

She grabbed his arm with her giant hand and pulled him to her. At her size, she was too strong for him to resist.

“You need to be punished,” she said as she dragged him to a chair and took a seat on it. She lay him over her lap with his butt up, and he realized what she was about to do.

“No,” he said. “Stop! I’m sorry.”

She held him down and began spanking his ass again and again. Even with his jeans on, it still hurt. Her body was just so powerful.

“No!” he wailed and squirmed helplessly as tears filled his eyes. “Please! Stop!” Then, although the spanking was painful, he found himself getting turned on by the humiliation. He was getting hard.

“Are you enjoying this?” she asked after apparently feeling his stiffy poking her in the leg. “You sicko! Is this what you wanted?”

Almost as if in response, he felt his hardon start to shrink. It was not getting softer, though, only smaller. Soon, his dick was down to half its normal size, and he realized what was happening as it began to feel less sensitive. It was getting younger.

“No!” he wailed again, as his dick shrunk down to a baby dick at last. It was still hard, but incredibly small and numb compared to his normal penis. “Please, no!”

This was his worst nightmare. He still had an adult body, but now he had a useless baby dick. The worst of both worlds!

Niki laughed. “Oh, poor poor Stephen,” she said, taunting him. “Did your wee wee get all widdle.”

He began crying again, this time in despair. Everything had gone wrong.

“Stephen,” she said as he cried. “Oh, Stephen. Wake up, sweetie.”

He kept crying.

“Stephen,” Niki called to him. “Stephen?”

***

He opened his eyes to see his giant sister kneeling above him resting her big hand on his baby chest. There were tears dripping from his eyes.

“Did my little man have a nightmare?” she asked him, and lifted him into her arms again.

He sniffled and got his bearings again. He was a baby. His sister was his mother. The machine was downstairs and still functioning, but it was out of his reach now. Also, he was hard again. Apparently, he had woken up with the nap version of morning wood. Basically, he was right back to where he was the last time he was in her arms.

“You look thirsty,” she said as she took a seat. “How about a drink?”

She set him down next to her and removed her shirt. Then, she took off her bra, revealing her milk-swollen breasts.

Again, Stephen felt that exhilaration of living out a fantasy. He was about to be breastfed. And, not by just any breasts, but by his sister’s amazing breasts. That same sister that had ridiculed his age regression fantasies was about to be the star of just such a fantasy. She was about to unwittingly stick her tit in her own brother’s face. If he had been hard before, his tiny stiffy felt almost painfully solid now, like it might break from the pressure.

She draped a towel over her shoulder and picked him up. Cradling him against her flesh, she positioned his mouth in front of her giant breast and angled her nipple down to his waiting lips.

After a moment of hesitation from feeling as though it was all too good to be true, he locked his lips around her nipple and began sucking. Immediately, his mouth was filled with her warm milk. It was richer than any milk he could remember, as delicious as the best cream he had ever tasted. Greedily, he drank it down and kept sucking out more and more to fill his mouth. It was perfect. The most perfect thing he had ever consumed in his whole life. He felt its warmth go down his throat and into his waiting belly, filling him with the warmth of his mother’s love.

Niki held him. Niki fed him. He was connected to her, mouth to nipple. She was filling him up with herself. Her love in liquid form, the most delicious of meals, was on his tongue and flowing deeper into him. His baby arms gripped her enormous breast and tried to hug it closer to him, trying to return some of that love to the source of his meal and maybe squeeze a little more milk out faster.

“Easy,” Niki said. “Take it easy. You’d better slow down, or you’ll get gassy.”

Stephen ignored her. He wanted what was inside of her to be inside of him as quickly as possible. That was his milk. It was meant for him. He needed to put it where it belonged right now.

As time went on, amazingly, the milk seemed to get even richer, thicker, more flavorful. Then, after enjoying that rich milk for a little while. He felt himself pulled away from her nipple. He moaned. He still wanted more. What was she doing? Why did she stop?

She swung his body around and repositioned him under her other breast.

“Round two,” she said.

Stephen smiled as her other nipple approached his mouth. He opened his lips in anticipation of the delicious milk that was about to flow into him.

“Hi, Mom,” Niki said and paused Stephen with his mouth only inches from her nipple, so tantalizingly close but still out of reach. He whimpered.

“Hi,” said Niki’s mom, Stephen’s grandma. “I see you’re feeding him. I can come back.”

“No, it’s fine,” Niki said. She moved Stephen to her breast, and he immediately latched on and began sucking again.

“I wanted to say something,” Mom/Grandma said.

Stephen just kept drinking and listening to their conversation.

“What is it?”

“I’m sorry about before. You were right. I’ve let my work distract me from my family.”

“That’s not what I meant, really,” Niki said. “I just wanted you to be a little more careful when-”

“Please let me finish.”

“Fine, then,” Niki said. “Go ahead.”

“I’ve been using my work on the machine as a way to escape from dealing with a lot of things. I’ve become a lousy mother and grandmother lately.”

“No,” Niki said. “You’re doing fine.”

“I’m going to dismantle the machine.”

Stephen stopped drinking and looked over at his mother/grandmother.

“I’ve made progress with it, but I’m having serious power problems. It keeps losing its charge for some mysterious reason. It works, but it seems it will take a lot more time for me to get it working consistently. I’ve decided that it is not worth the time or the effort. You two deserve that time and effort more.”

“You don’t have to,” Niki said. “You just need to manage your time and effort better is all.”

Stephen’s mother/grandmother shook her head. “As long as the machine exists, it’s going to occupy my thoughts. I need it to be gone, so that I can keep my mind occupied on this family more. That’s what has to be done.”

“Well,” Niki said. “All right. If that’s what you need, then I understand. I just hope you’re sure about it.”

“I am.”

“Good, then,” Niki said.

Stephen began to sweat. He was starting to feel ill.

“I’m going to make some final notes today and run another test or two, but then I’ll shut it down for good tomorrow. After that, you’ll be seeing a lot more of me around, and I should be able to watch Stephen more so that you can get out and live a little bit more again.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let me know if you need any help with the machine,” Niki said and noticed that Stephen had stopped drinking. “Are you done?” she asked him.

Stephen could not believe what he was hearing. He felt like he would be sick, then he really was sick. His body vomited up a sticky stream of milk and saliva onto his chin and chest and Niki’s breast.

“Oh, Stephen,” Niki said. “I warned you, didn’t I?”

As she wiped his face and chest, Stephen felt too worried to care that he was covered in baby puke. He had bigger problems. His one chance of turning back to normal again was about to be dismantled. Time was running out.

***

Stephen waited.

He waited trying to keep his mind occupied with his toys.

He waited through another feeding.

He waited hours for the sun to go down.

Then, after Niki had carried him upstairs into his old room and laid him in the crib that had replaced his bed, he waited for everyone else to go to sleep.

It was so tempting to go to sleep himself. In fact, it was a struggle to keep awake. However, the sight of the wooden bars surrounding him acted as a strong reminder of how trapped he was just then. He was a prisoner in this life, trapped in his cell, and trapped in this body as well. He would need to break out if he wanted to be free again.

He imagined how he might make his escape. He could lower the side of the crib if he could find the latch to it. Then, he would have to climb down somehow. After that, it was as simple as crawling to the stairs, crawling down the stairs, crawling to the basement door, and opening it, somehow, crawling down the basement stairs, and, finally, finding someway to reach the touchpad. Simple, right? Of course, the whole plan was dependent on the machine being turned on still, the basement door being left open, and the crib being something he could actually get out of in the first place.

Thinking about it all was wearing him out. His eyes began to droop shut. He shook his head. Then, he tried slapping his cheeks to stay alert and missed. It was clear that he could not wait any longer.

He rolled over on his side, climbed up the bars hand-over-hand, and sidled over to a corner of his crib, searching for a way to let himself out. He was banking on the idea that cribs were designed to thwart escape attempts planned by baby minds. Thankfully, he had an adult mind in his baby body. He hoped that would be enough.

He felt around the rim of the crib with his fat fingers until he found an old fashioned latch. After fumbling with it for a minute, he managed to pull it loose. Suddenly, the wall of the crib he had been leaning against dropped down next to him, and he tumbled out of the crib into the darkness.

Instead of a painful thump on the floor, he landed softly on something fluffy. When he regained his bearings, he realized that he had fallen onto a giant teddy bear that had cushioned his landing.

He let out a sigh of relief and then rolled over onto his belly to begin his long crawl. Thankfully, his bedroom door was open. On the wooden floor of the hallway, his little baby hands made a worrying amount of noise as they slapped down one after the other, moving him forward. He tried being gentle, being soft, but that was too slow. And, anytime he slowed down for a moment, he could feel sleep starting to catch up with him again. He had to keep moving to keep awake. He just had to hope that everyone else was sleeping deeply at that point, or else they would definitely hear him.

He reached the stairs at last and paused to peer down at them. He had been up and down these steps countless times. As an adult he would sometimes even race up them two-at-a-time to get upstairs in seconds. Now, from his place on the floor, the staircase looked like the side of a mountain. Every step was a perilous cliff to drop down. One false move could send him sliding and tumbling all the way down to the bottom. He doubted he would survive that fall. He thought about his own lack of coordination and his weak limbs and wondered if this was really just an elaborate suicide attempt instead of an escape.

He shook his head. He could do this. He knew he could. He just had to be smart about it. A baby would die trying to crawl down these stairs, but he was not a baby. Not in his mind, at least. He would be careful. He would make it.

First, he turned around to lower his legs down, thinking that sending his heavier lower half down first would reduce his chances of starting to roll over. His baby feet touched the step below. He dropped to his knees and eased his body down to the step. Then, he repeated the motions: legs first, feet down, knees down, then ease the rest of his body down. It was slow going at first, but after a few steps, he felt more confident and started to speed up. About halfway down the staircase, he finally made a mistake. His feet slipped off the stair below before he could get a solid footing, and he started to slide on his belly downwards. His little chin bumped up against a couple of steps before his arms caught the edge of a step.

Tears filled his eyes. The pain was so shocking, so sudden that he was immediately ready to begin wailing, but he held back the wails. He moaned through his nostrils, but kept his mouth tightly shut, trying to keep as quiet as possible. Focus, he mentally told himself, You are an adult. You can handle the pain. Focus. Calm down. After a few stifled moans, he began to regain control of himself. He touched his chin. It was wet, but that may just have been from tears. Even if he was bleeding, he realized that there was nothing he could do about it. He would just have to continue his descent.

Working a little more slowly and carefully, he finally made it down the remaining steps. He took a moment to sit down and catch his breath. Looking back up the stairs in disbelief, he felt a sense of accomplishment. He had no idea how he had survived that mountain, but he had done it.

Now, he turned his attention to his next obstacle. He crawled as quickly as he could to the kitchen. All he had to do was go down one more flight of stairs, and he would be at his destination. But, his heart fell when he made it to the kitchen and the stairs to the basement.

The door was shut.

He put his baby hand against the door and looked up at the doorknob high above himself. He stood himself up, steadying his wobbly legs with his hands against the door. He reached up for the doorknob. It was tantalizingly only inches out of his reach. If he could only get a little higher up… He half jumped and felt his fingers graze against the knob, and then he tripped over himself and landed face first against the tile floor.

The tears were instantaneous this time. The wailing was unstoppable. He began to cry inconsolably, not only at the pain—that was bad—but also at the humiliation and failure he was feeling. He was one door knob away from reaching his goal, but his useless little baby body was too small, too weak, and too uncoordinated to open it. He felt pathetic. Hopeless.

He wanted his mommy.

He barely heard the footsteps coming down the stairs over the deafening sound of his own wailing. His name was spoken, and he felt hands lift him into the air again. Warm arms cradled him, comforted him, soothed him. His tears kept going, though. There was no consoling him from the failure he felt. It was all over now. His last chance at escape was over.

Niki was his mommy now. This would be his reality from now on. He was stuck having to grow up all over again. Only now, he had to do it as a bored, sexually frustrated man in a baby’s body. Could he survive it without losing his mind? He started thinking back to his climb down the stairs and wondered if it would have been better to have just fallen and died.

As he cried, he was dimly aware of being carried around. There was a conversation between two women, some shouting. Eventually, he began to run out of energy to keep wailing. He kept on crying, though, and moaning woefully between sniffles. Even those tears grew weaker until he felt his total exhaustion overcome him at last, and he fell asleep.

***

In this dream he was an adult again, waking up in his old bed.

“Stephen,” Niki called to him from downstairs.

He got out of bed, feeling drowsy still, and said, “I’m awake.”

“It’s breakfast time,” she said. “Come on down.”

“Coming.” He yawned and headed downstairs, his eyes only half open.

He entered the kitchen and was surprised to find it empty. “Where are you?” he called to Niki.

“I’m in the front room,” she replied. “Come have your breakfast.”

He did not smell any food in the kitchen and could not see any signs that any had been cooked recently. Still, he walked to the front room to get his meal.

He stopped when he saw Niki sitting on the couch with her top off. Each of her bare breasts were swollen up bigger than her head and her nipples were thicker than his thumbs. A single white dot of milk could be seen on each nipple, hanging there waiting for a pair of lips to suck it away.

“Come to mommy,” she said, waving him to her. “Come drink your breakfast.”

It was then that he felt a warmth spread around his crotch. He looked down and discovered that he was wearing an adult-sized diaper. In fact, besides a simple T-shirt, that was all he was wearing. He touched the crinkly plastic and felt it’s damp padded interior press against his crotch. He had just pissed himself, it seemed.

“I’m wet,” he said.

“Oh,” Niki said. “Don’t worry, I can change you when you’re done. Come here and drink.”

“But…” he said.

“I said come here, Stephen.” It was an order.

“Yes, mommy,” he said, feeling as though he had to obey. He walked over to her, positioned himself awkwardly across her lap, and began sucking on her huge nipple. As her warm milk filled his mouth, he felt her hand gently caress his head.

“My darling boy,” she said, as her milk slowly filled his belly. “Mommy loves you. Mommy will always love you, forever and ever and ever and ever…”

***

His eyes opened in the morning sunlight. The shadows of bars were cast across his baby body, making it look as though he were wearing black striped prisoner clothes. He felt like a convict from some old movie.

He was aware of his morning wood. The dream had been frightening and more than a little bit erotic as well. He desperately wished he could masturbate, but he realized that he would have to wait years before that would be possible.

Instead, he lay there, waiting for his hardon to calm down, waiting for his mommy to come fetch him to breakfast.

More than anything else, he wished he could just stop thinking. If he were just there, not as a person but as an object to be moved around and cared for, it would be so much easier to take. He had no way of doing just about anything for himself. He was powerless. If only he could forget what it was like to be a free and capable adult, then he could stomach the life of a baby.

He tried meditating. He had tried it before as an adult, as part of his attempts at hypnotizing himself. Hypnosis had been one avenue he had explored to realistically “experience” his fantasies. Unfortunately, it had been a dead end for him. He had never been able to go fully under. Still, he remembered how to calm his mind, and that was what he was doing. He was breathing, focusing on his breaths, letting himself relax. It was actually easier as a baby than as an adult, he realized. Adults had a lot of muscles that needed to soften up first before they could be physically relaxed. Babies did not have that problem. Soft was their native state.

Just when he felt totally relaxed and comfortable, a surprise appeared in his diaper between his legs, warm and squishy. He needed to be changed. He started moaning and babbling, calling for assistance from his mother/sister.

She showed up soon enough, and once more he was on the changing table, living out his fantasy again. This time, he tried to remain aloof and disinterested. He focused on meditating.

Then, she tickled him, and he giggled uncontrollably. She smiled at him, and he smiled back up at her, as she cleaned and replaced his diaper. For a moment, he felt good. Maybe this would be a good life after all. He thought. There would be good moments like this one. He would get to experience that kind of love and attention again. He would also get to try growing up again. He could avoid some of the mistakes he made before. He could do a better job of it all, and, having experienced it before, he would appreciate it all so much more this time around. For a little while, he felt hopeful.

Then, she set him down in his playpen, and that hope drained away. By himself, surrounded by baby toys, he was immediately bored again. He tried to think back to something interesting: his favorite movies, his favorite games, his friends from school, anything to keep his mind occupied. Unfortunately, all that did was make him miss his adulthood even more. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling and tried to meditate again. It started to work. The worry drifted off, still there, but not central to his mind anymore. Thoughts drifted in, and he did his best to let them drift away again. It seemed to be working surprisingly well. At least, he was tolerating existing as a baby for a little while.

He heard a conversation start but did not give it his full attention, letting it happen in the background.

“I still don’t know how it happened,” Niki said.

“It was an accident,” her mother said.

“I just can’t believe that I left his crib unlatched like that. What was going on in my head last night?”

“We all make mistakes.”

“He could have died. I don’t even know how he made it down the stairs alive.”

“Kids are pretty resilient. You’d be surprised at some of the things you survived as a little girl if you could remember them.”

Niki sighed. “I’m tired,” she admitted. “I’m trying really hard, but I’m starting to feel really worn out. It’s been months now. Isn’t this supposed to get easier after a while?”

“You get better at it all, but it’s always a lot of effort to be a good parent.”

Niki sighed even more deeply.

“When was the last time you even left the house?” her mother asked.

“It’s been days… a week maybe?”

“Why don’t you take the day off from mom stuff?” her mother suggested. “Like I said before, I should be watching Stephen more for you. How about I take care of him while you go out and have a fun day? Stop by the spa. Get a massage. See a movie. Hang out with your old friends.”

“You sure about that?” Niki said.

“You deserve it. I can handle things here. I was just going to tinker with the machine, but I can do that with Stephen around. I doubt he’d mind much.”

“You’ll be careful with him?”

“Of course.”

There was a pause. “Okay,” Niki said. “I’m going to send out a mass text, see if any of my old friends remember me after all this time.”

“They will. You’re too cool to forget.”

“Thanks,” Niki said. “I mean it. Thank you.”

Stephen heard her walk away, and then his mother… his grandmother walked into his view and looked down at him. “You get to spend a day with grandma. Won’t that be fun?”

Stephen smiled.

***

After a quick breakfast for them all, Niki rushed around getting ready to leave the house as her mother tried to figure out what to do with Stephen while she worked. She pulled out a small playpen, but even that seemed as though it would be too big to fit into the basement. After a discussion with Niki, they decided that keeping Stephen in a stroller in the basement would be the safest option. Since he had proven himself to be a bit more adventurous lately, they felt it would be best to keep him nearby and safely secured.

So, Stephen found himself carried down to the basement and strapped into a stroller. He could not believe his luck. He was only feet away from the touchpad of the machine. Once more, he dared to hope that he might have a way out of this situation.

Niki left after giving him a final kiss goodbye on his forehead, and there he was in the basement alone with his mother/grandmother.

“Well,” she said, sounding a bit awkward. “I supposed I had better get to work.” She turned on the computer and the machine. “One-hundred percent? Looks like the charge held last night. Strange…”

Stephen just sat there, wishing he had a way to communicate with her besides his babbles and cries. He would even be willing to confess having used the machine before if she would be willing to turn him back to normal. Still, he was helpless to do anything but watch her work. He did start to fiddle with the buckle that held him into the stroller.

“I just don’t get it,” she said to him. “For a few days it was draining randomly as if it were being used, but I never touched it. What do you make of that?”

Stephen felt guilty, but he did not reply.

“Maybe it was some fault in the quantum manipulator. If it is malfunctioning, then it could be draining the energy. It’s not the capacitor banks, I checked them. It has to be the machine itself, and if that is true, then it would be dangerous to leave it running.”

Stephen whimpered.

“You don’t agree?” she asked him. “Hmm… I suppose I should go over the data one last time before I take it all apart. Maybe I missed something.”

As she worked on the computer, he sat and waited, staring at the touchpad. It was so close. If only she would leave him alone for a little while…

Suddenly, she sighed and stood up. “Still nothing in the data,” she said. “I think I need a coffee break. You want me to bring you anything?”

Stephen did not reply.

“I’ll get you a sippy cup with some water. Sound good?”

Stephen smiled.

“Good,” she said. “Now, don’t go wandering off while I’m away.” Then, she chuckled and left.

Once Stephen heard her on the stairs, he started to press on the buckle that held him strapped to the chair. It would not budge at first, but eventually he was able to open it using both hands. He untangled himself from the straps and leaned forward to get a better view of the lab around him.

First, he thought about getting out of the chair and walking over to the touchpad, but then he remembered that it was too high up for him to reach from the floor. He would need the height that the stroller gave him to reach the pad.

Next, he looked for a way to move the stroller closer to the pad. He found a bundle of wires that were strung from one bank of capacitors to the machine itself, They were almost close enough for him to reach. He leaned his arm far out from the stroller and managed to grab the wires, pulling with all his might, he rolled the stroller even closer to the wires. Then, he grabbed the wires with both hands and began to drag the stroller closer and closer to the machine.

The front of the stroller became tangled up in wires below before he reached the touchpad, but it was only just a foot or two away now. He stood up on the stroller, which shifted under his weight slightly, causing him to fall back down onto his seat. He moaned and carefully stood up again.

Feeling as though he could fall at any moment, he focused his mind quickly on being bigger again, leaned forward, and reached out for the pad. He fell forward and his baby fingers scraped against the surface of the pad for just a moment.

As he tumbled onto the tangled mess of wires below, he heard the machine rev up again, and he smiled. He sat up as just as the machine blasted him with energy once more, starting that familiar tingle that meant a transformation had begun.

He clapped his baby hands happily as he felt himself begin to grow. His clothes became too tight and started to tear at the seams. Thankfully, they were cheap baby clothes and did not put up too much resistance against his growing body. The diaper he had been wearing came loose and lay beneath him with his shredded baby clothes.

He tried to stand up, but immediately fell back down again. Confused, he looked down at his body to find that he still looked like a baby. He still had his baby belly and pudgy baby limbs, even as he was growing larger. Already his expanding body had pushed the comparatively smaller stroller away from him. However, as large as he was getting, he did not appear to be any older than he had been. It was then that he realized his mistake. He had wished to be bigger, not older. The machine was turning him into a giant baby instead of an adult!

The change stopped when he was back to his old height again, leaving him a 6-foot-tall baby, sitting naked on the basement floor. Then, there was a disturbing sound from the machine, like an electronic grinding. The hum that had been harmonic before turned discordant. The world felt uncomfortable, like an itchy sweater. When he had changed before, this would have been the point that Stephen’s clothes would have reshaped to fit his new body. This time, the tattered remains of his outfit did not change at all. Something had gone very wrong, he realized.

He reached behind himself up at the touchpad, pictured himself in his normal adult body again, and put his giant baby hand back on the pad.

The discordant sound became harmonic again, and, once more, the machine revved up and blasted him with energy. His body rapidly reshaped itself from giant baby to adult man, growing slimmer but more solid all at once. Then, the torn scraps of his clothes drifted up to his body and reformed themselves into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that fit him perfectly. Finally, the machine gave out a grinding groan, followed by a sudden silence.

Stephen held up his hands. They were a grown man’s hands again. He touched his face with them and felt the stubble there.

“I did it,” he said and laughed happily to hear his deep voice again. “I did it!”

He stood up and was momentarily dizzy as he looked far down at his feet below. He felt so tall, so strong. He started hopping up and down, enjoying the power in his legs.

“Yes!” he cried. “I’m back.”

“What is going on down there?” his mother called down to him. “Why are you yelling?”

“Uh,” he said. “I was just…” He tried to think of some excuse. “I noticed something happen with the machine.”

She came down the basement stairs holding a mug of coffee in one hand and a water bottle in the other. “What happened?” she asked as she handed him the water bottle and set her coffee down on the desk.

“It just shut down all of a sudden,” he said. “The power went out.”

She checked the monitor and sighed. “The power is at 2% now, and it seems that the quantum manipulator is completely off-line.”

“So,” Stephen said. “It’s broken.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s broken.” She sat down in her chair and sighed as she flipped switches turning off the rest of the equipment. “Damn,” she said when it was all off. “Well, that’s that.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought I understood what I was doing with this thing, but it seems that I don’t. I should probably just stop messing with it altogether.”

“Really? But, it was working.”

“That worries me even more, now that I think about it. What if it had gone off on its own? It could have twisted the fabric of reality in some horrifying way.” She shook her head. “No. This is getting to be too dangerous. I need to stop messing with the universe like this. I’ve gone too far.”

Stephen looked at the machine. As much trouble as it had caused him, it had made his wildest dreams come true. To think that it would be dismantled now because he had messed with it too much made him upset. He felt as though it would be terribly ungrateful of him to let it be destroyed for his actions. Then, there was his mother. He did not want her to feel like a failure, either, after having been so successful with her invention.

“No,” he said. “You just haven’t gone far enough.”

She shook her head. “It’s over.”

“Don’t give up,” he said. “You’re on your way to understanding the secrets of the universe here with this thing. Of course things might go wrong sometimes. You’re trying to do something that shouldn’t be possible. Still, you’re smart enough to fix the things that go wrong. You can figure this out. I know you can.”

“You think so?”

He nodded. “I know that you can make it work even better. You’re always telling Niki and me not to give up. Well, isn’t that true for yourself as well.”

“Yeah,” she said and stood up again, looking determined once more. “You’re right. I can’t give up on it now. Not when we’re so close.”

“Good,” he said, feeling relieved.

“Thank you again for your help,” she said. “I’m glad I brought you down to help me dismantle all of this. To think, I would have just thrown it all away if you had not been here.”

“So,” he said. “What now?”

“Well,” she said. “First, we’re going to take all of this apart. We’ll sell most of it for scrap. Then, I’ll start over again on the quantum manipulator. I think I have enough data now to build an improved version of it that should be more efficient.”

“Good.”

“And,” she said. “I’m going to increase the amount of power we can store in the capacitors. That way a little drainage shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”

“You mean it’s going to be more powerful when you rebuild it?”

“Many times more powerful,” she said, smiling.

Stephen smiled back and looked at the machine. “That’s amazing.”

“It should only take a few weeks to get the parts delivered and to fabricate the quantum manipulator. With your help moving things around, I imagine we can have the new machine up and running again in no time after everything arrives.”

“You’re going to let me help you work on it?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s nice to have a lab partner to lend a hand.”

He smiled even wider. It was almost too good to be true. Not only was the machine going be even stronger, but also he would have permission to be around it even more. He quickly forgot about the troubles of being trapped as a baby and started to imagine the possibilities of what he could do when the new machine was built. Already, he had discovered that he could change the world in strange ways, such as when he had become a giant baby. If he could change his size like that, then there might be an unlimited number of ways he could transform himself and the world around him.

“Well,” his mother said. “Let’s get started taking this thing apart.” She directed him to start unplugging cables.

As they both worked, he mentally reminded himself to be careful. Already, he had accidentally messed up transforming himself more than once. He would need to focus better. Up until now, he had just left it up to chance how the machine would interpret his unspoken wish. Clearly, that was just a recipe for disaster.

He thought back to how he had meditated as a baby. If he could just practice focusing his mind like that, if he could visualize in his mind exactly what he wanted, then there was no way that the machine could mess up again. He nodded as he worked, having made up his mind to control his mind better. He would practice meditating while his mother redesigned the machine. That way, when it was ready to be used again, he would be ready to use it. And, this time, he would make sure that it gave him exactly what he wanted.

To be continued…