Story #199: All That Remains

Story #199: All That Remains (Content Tags: Regression, messing, diapers, humiliation, light sci-fi) His hands were on his knees, his bottom was jutted outward, and his cheeks had begun to turn red. The denim onesie he'd been dressed in was making it a little more difficult than he'd like to take care of business; the material was taut against the bulky padding, and it was rigid in a way that made it difficult to let his undergarment expand. It hadn't been his idea to dress in such a way, but it also wasn't something he had much choice in these days. The white of the diaper was visible, as the onesie didn't completely obscure the garment from view; that was typically the case with onesies that snapped at the crotch, that their coverage was limited, especially whenever the backside of the diaper was prominent enough. The backpack on his back, which was shaped like a colorful stuffed animal, didn't hang low enough to cover anything he wanted to cover either; the teddy bear, which thematically matched the cap on his head, was partly his own diaper bag, but it was also the harness of the leash that kept him from straying too far away on his own. Also on a leash of its own was the binky that was clipped to the bib of his onesie, a juvenile accoutrement that he usually kept hidden in the front pocket, but which now was having its drooly nipple clenched between his teeth. His toes curled as he lowered himself further, his feet planted firmly; the velcro shoes he wore, which lit up with the smallest movement, were a further testament to the new role that he had been given to play. Laces were a long forgotten memory for him, not that he'd ever treated the more mature shoes as anything but slip-ons. Laces had been just another thing he'd taken for granted, another tiny detail that had seemed so insignificant before. "Mom! I think Liam's going potty again!" "Yes, honey, I know. That's okay; that's what his diaper is for." There was a certain disconnect in hearing his actions being narrated, which primarily came from what he was doing being called going 'potty', whenever a real potty was far from being involved. He didn't grace the porcelain throne with his bottom these days, nor even the plastic ones that a toddler was to train on; no, all his business was conducted in the padded confines of the glorified turdsack that was always taped around his waist. An involuntary grunt softly passed his lips as his gut was hit by a spasm, and the bubbling in his tummy found a modicum of relief in the wet fart that followed. The gas rippled, sputtering long and hard against the bulky bulwark of the diaper, and Liam squinted his eyes while biting down harder on the pacifier in his mouth. Drool seeped from his lips and slicked his chin with a shiny trail. "Eww! That was a big toot!" Came the giggling taunt of the juvenile spectator behind him. It'd come to feel disturbingly natural, but there was still a shame in what he was doing. No matter the depths to which he'd fallen, he still had a keen awareness of the mockery that he had become. Vestiges of maturity that had long been excised from him still left behind an imprint, and it was from those imprints that he was reminded of how wrong this all was. It'd become easier to accept over time, but that was really only a defense mechanism against the despair that otherwise would have gripped him; becoming unrefined, undignified, unable, untrained, it'd been a steep ravine to slip down. It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd lost his sense of self completely, because then he would have no longer had anything to hold onto. But he still held onto far too much from a life that was no longer his. Memories still cruelly lingered and flashed in his mind, and it was their twinkling beckoning that drove him to madness; he'd come to lose more than he could have ever hoped to gain from this endeavor, and those losses were now irretrievable to him. The most painful of which, though it was broad, had been 'status'. There had been a time before this, where his name would have meant something. There had been a time where he could look down from his ivory tower, and at the bottom would be the masses that spoke his praises. Where was that praise now? Where were the awards and accolades? The commendations and stroking of his ego? Nothing he did now was really worthy of that, at least not relative to the waves he'd been making before. His body was continuing to go through their motions, not that knowing that would mean being able to stop anything; the physical feelings, when broken down to their core components, were like steps to an elaborate dance. It'd first begun with that gurgling from within, a rumble which couldn't be ignored; the cramping was quick to follow. The sort of muscle definition that bodily maturity brought, where enough strength was built up to effectively hold back the contents of his bowels, no longer existed for him. The same could be said for the part of him that could cogently exchange nerve signals throughout his body. These were things that he hadn't given any thought to before, because they had always been an automatic and reliable component to his everyday life. Without them, there was no point in trying to clench or attempting to send signals to hold things back, because he quite simply didn't have the right hardware anymore. Well, that wasn't necessarily true. The hardware had changed dramatically, but it still technically contained the capability he was looking for; the larger problem was that his software hadn't changed to adapt to the new workings he had. If Liam had to guess, then he'd say that he was probably close to five these days, if not already, which would have been more than good enough to retain the control he sought. It was just the incompatibility between his body and mind. So maybe it wasn't even really a software issue, so much as it was a matter of settings that couldn't be changed. His body was younger, his brain was younger, and even his mind was at least partly younger, but those 'settings' were still set to what his adult self had spent a lifetime configuring. That'd accounted for his lackluster motor skills whenever he'd first regressed, and while those had been easier to adapt, his toileting skills had remained unmoved. In a sense, it was like his mind still held onto the physical limitations of being an adult, rather than a child. An adult could wait significantly longer before reaching the point of a potty emergency, and even when they became aware, their muscles were strong enough to hold it for an impressive amount of time. His mind, for whatever reason, still thought unconsciously in those terms. Instead of giving him an ample warning, it was like his body still thought that he had hours of time to work with. Thus, he got no warning, with the accident's start being his only clue that he needed to go. Half the time he didn't even realize that he'd pissed himself, and there were times when he didn't realize that he'd messed himself until he sat down. In the case of this current accident, he'd had only enough time to feel the impending embarrassment. His body already knew what to do, and that's why his knees had bent and his bottom had pushed outward. The gurgling, cramping 'alert' hadn't been a warning that his time was almost up, it'd been more like the starter pistol for the bowel movement to begin. The sensation of his buttcheeks parting, seemingly on their own, was perhaps the strangest part of this dirty dance. It was the feeling of a solid emerging, of it squeezing past the threshold, but without any intent being pressed upon his tummy muscles. It was almost a dissociative feeling, like his body wasn't his own, and that he was just a spectator to events unraveling. It'd become a little too commonplace to give much consideration now, and he hardly gave it more than a second thought these days, but it'd been a humbling experience at the start, to feel that lack of control over himself. It must be what an infant felt, except that an infant likely didn't have the wherewithal to acknowledge it. An infant also wouldn't have painted their face pink with shame from the experience; perhaps from strain, but never from a sense of embarrassment. Liam could now feel the hot mass pressing against the padded backside of the diaper he was wearing; it was mushy, and a bit sticky too, and it felt as though it was a bulb blooming into a broad array of petals. That was something else that he'd come to observe from these new experiences, that the mess felt so much bigger than it ever had in the toilet. It wasn't any larger to do it in his pants, but the perception was so much different. That was the work of the cortical homunculus, if he had to guess. The way that the brain map worked, it gave a warped sense of perspective. Perhaps that was a stretch, but it was what logically made the most sense to an 'intellectual' like Liam. Could he still really call himself that? An intellectual? It felt like he was diminishing the word by assigning it to himself, especially whenever he was currently in the middle of shitting his pants in the middle of the supermarket. The doctorate he'd worked so hard to achieve, and all the brilliance he'd exuded throughout his career, seemed to be nil in light of events. If a genius suffered a stroke and was rendered into a drooling, babbling pants-shitter, then would one still call them a genius? Or would that genius be dead, with a retard taking their place? Liam obviously didn't think of himself in that drastic of terms, but the same concept remained. He wasn't the same brilliant academic that he'd once been, and his intellect had been seriously hindered by the physical regression of his brain's structures, so could he claim to still be what he once was? Dr. Liam K. Strauss, natural philosopher and bioengineer to the stars! No, the doctor was dead and it had been the stars themselves that had been left holding the bloody dagger. Snuffed out by his own ambition, by his own insufferable ego, and what had been the product? Little Liam West, preschool pantspooper and playground punching bag. With a gassy puff, the first log landed into his diaper, and Liam let out an exhale of exertion. It was a temporary relief, but he knew that his diaper hadn't nearly finished receiving cargo just yet, and that his efforts would have to be doubled going forward, since the denim onesie would cause a good deal of resistance. "Mmmphh! Hmmph!" He groaned, the former baritone of his voice having been transformed into a youthful falsetto. Liam could still feel the judging eyes on him, watching him with either amusement or pity as he gave this public, one-man show for anyone with the morbid curiosity to watch. He was bigger than a toddler, even if not by much, so the act wasn't something totally typical to view. The old him surfaced just enough to ponder if his narcissistic needs could be satisfied by the attention, but rationally it was the opposite, as this was a degradation of the highest caliber. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he started to push much harder, and his freckled cheeks became much hotter from the physical exertion of the act. Already another log was pushing out, but it was meeting an obnoxious amount of resistance from the loaf already occupying the cargo hold of the bulky babypants. The logical answer would have been to reach beneath himself and to force open the snaps of the onesie, so that the taut material didn't give him so much trouble, but that would also result in his diaper being even more visible than it already was, and his fragile pride took issue with that. It was silly, since his diaper was already plainly obvious as it was, but he couldn't shake the irrational thought. So he instead doubled down on pushing, which ironically would only draw more attention to himself, and make it more noticeable what he was doing in the middle of the aisle. Another toot slipped out and rumbled roughly against the warm log already deposited. "Eww! Hehe, he's really gotta go!" Again came the childish voice of his most cruel critic. "Yes, honey. Now, Zach, why don't you pick out some cereal while your brother does his business?" Brother? That was laughable. Almost as laughable as the woman calling herself his mom. The three of them weren't a family in any real sense, at least not biologically or by choice. It was by cruel conspiracy that he and the other boy had found themselves under the woman's care, and it was a personal misery that only Liam could recognize that. It was tough to decide who had gotten it worse: Liam or Zachary. Zachary Bennett had once been an adult too, and not some snot-nosed little boy that stupidly giggled at the crude acts of his 'baby brother'. Zachary had been a fellow researcher, Liam's immediate partner in the field, but now he was some obnoxious third-grader who had no memories of the man he'd once been. The lab 'accident' that had enveloped the pair had regressed Liam to an earlier physical state, but it had been Zachary that had been mentally regressed on a much deeper level. It was hard to say why their effects had ended up so different, or why Zachary's memories had been so irrevocably altered; a part of Liam sometimes wondered if he was faking it, and instead biding his time, but he'd never known Zach to be an effective liar. As far as he could tell, Zach truly thought of himself as a kid; he had no semblance of adulthood remaining, no inkling of his former life. Liam envied that on some level. And why not? That meant that the man no longer was tormented by the knowledge of who he once was, or what he had now become. He didn't have to resent the fate that had befallen him! Better yet, he didn't have nearly the same troubles that Liam did. Zachary still had occasional accidents, and his bedtime routine still involved those silly little bedwetting pull-ups, but he at least wasn't basically incontinent like Liam had become. Was that an even trade? To have traded his adult mind for a less infantile body? At least his shame was minimized, even if that meant exacerbating the shame of the man he'd once deeply admired. And then there was Mia, or as she preferred to be called, 'mommy'. She was the one holding his leash, both figuratively and literally. As far as Liam was concerned, it was Mia who had instigated this nightmare, and all for her own selfish gain. The woman had been a researcher in the same lab, but her role had always been minimized in comparison to him or Zachary. There had been so much chaos on the day of the accident, but Mia had been so composed, so prepared. She hadn't been caught off-guard, and she'd been quick to assert herself as the new head researcher, while taking the two victimized superiors of hers as trophies, under the guise of caring for them. Neither man had been in much of a position to stop her. Zachary having legitimately lost his sense of self, and with Liam too shell-shocked to properly articulate that his intelligence was relatively untouched. Befouling and wetting himself hadn't helped. There had been more to it than that, with Liam's final days at the facility being speckled with humiliation, but his reminiscing would have to wait until later, because the cry out from his bowels was stronger than his capacity to focus. Liam's squat had deepened, his puffy rump sinking alongside his knees closer to the floor. The first steamer pressed tautly against his pale backside, bringing with it the intense, insulated heat of his own excrement. His face burned more brightly with the efforts that he'd had to double to keep the evacuation going, and saliva coated his chin more fully. "That must be a big present that you're making for mommy." Mia cooed from behind the shopping cart, her towering form an imposing presence. She loved to see him debase himself like this. Zachary returned with a colorful box of sugary cereal, just in time to see the grand finale for himself. He too loved to see it, though for far more innocently immature reasons. Another rasping thunderclap of gas blasted through his padded backside, and the avalanche could finally be triggered; it was by fortune, or more realistically by the infantilization of his diet, that the second round of his soiling turned softer as soon as the more difficult part had passed. A deluge of boiling mush came surging out, and the sloppy sounds of the flood were impossible to ignore. That hot flood filled out the back and even oozed toward the front, like a tidal wave crashing down upon an unsuspecting shore, and Liam found himself sucking harder on the pacifier as he felt his diaper fill all the way up underneath his onesie. The ripe odor became more pronounced, as did the swollen way the back of the diaper pressed against the denim material. There'd be no doubting the state of his pants for anyone who saw him, as if the waddling or sloshing wouldn't be enough of a clue. Salvation on the changing pad, or table, wouldn't come until the grocery shopping was finished either. Just another way that Mia liked to break his spirit with, to acclimate him more completely into the pathetic little imp that he'd been transformed into. It was a reminder of his new status, of his new role in this world. In time, whatever shine remained from his brilliance, would surely dull, and then all that would remain would be a docile brat with a fuming pair of Huggies.