Hi all and happy almost New Year!
This is Chapter 1 of a new story I just started on my Patreon. I’m super excited for it - squeeeeeee!
I’ve done a lot of diaper-and-spanking stories, but this is my first true diaper punishment story (all characters 18+, like always for me).
I’ll be posting it regularly to my Patreon and sharing it here at intervals. I hope you like it!
Isabel couldn’t completely hide the smirk on her face. She felt bad about it, but that didn’t make it not funny. She tried hiding that smirk, but she just couldn’t, not with the face her stepbrother was making, that melodramatic scowl of his. Not even the look her stepmom was giving her, her you’ve-really-done-it-now look: her mouth tight, her eyebrows angled downward, the matching body language. Isabel, home for Christmas break after her first semester at college, was feeling cocky. Her friends were in the family room, looking straight across the open-floor plan into the kitchen where the domestic drama was playing out, making her conscious of saving face while making her feel safe from the worst of her stepmom’s histrionics. Not that Mrs. Klein was shy about making a scene, but Isabel was almost always a witness to the scene, not a player in it.
Mrs. Klein, standing with one hand planted on the granite island, the other on her hip, asked a question she knew the answer to. “Did you take the diapers out of your bothers diaper bag before he went out today?” She was sure of the answer, but she wanted a confession.
Billy, standing behind his mom, said, “You know she did!”
“Billy, sweetie, I’m handling this.” She turned back to Isabel. “Well?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mom. Did he need a change and not have a new diaper with him?” Like her stepmom, she was going through the motions; her expression, her o-golly-o-gosh-o-gee-whiz tone. It was out of character for her; so was the prank. She loved her brother, liked her brother, and while she teased him the way siblings sometimes to and fought with him the siblings sometimes do, she wasn’t mean to him. Later, she’d wonder what had come over her. It wasn’t like to try to impress her friends this way; they weren’t even the type of friends impressed by this sort of thing.
“Yes,” Billy said in a raised voice.
“Billy,” Mrs. Klein said again, “not another word. Let Mommy take care of this.”
Isabel snickered at the word ‘Mommy,’ so out of place in a conversation between a woman and her twenty-two-year-old stepson. “I’m so sorry that happened, Billy. You must’ve forgotten to restock your diaper bag. That’s understandable, though, for someone like you.” She hesitated for a moment. The B-word was a BFD in their house. Mrs. Klein used it; sometimes other people used it; but they used it differently than Isabel did. That made the taboo around it even more incongruous and the word itself even more powerful. Feeling like she’d gone too far to back down without losing face in front of her friends, Isabel gave into the temptation. Like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, she said it like she was trying to reassure Billy, as though she were explaining it to, well, to someone much too young to understand these things. “You know, like a baby? Cuz they wear diapers too and are always forgetting things. That’s why they’re babies.”
“I’m NOT a BABY!” Billy’s voice broke as he shouted, finishing the last syllable just ahead of tears.
Mrs. Klein took in an aggravated breath, rolling her eyes in frustration directed not at Billy but at Isabel. “I JUST got him to stop crying.” She turned to receive Billy into her arms as he stumbled forward and buried his face in his stepmother’s shoulder. “Shhh,” she cooed to the young man who stood five inches taller than her, “it’s okay, baby.”
Isabel could roll her eyes in frustration way better than her stepmom, the way only a teenage girl who’s caught a grown-up in a contradiction can, and she did. “See!?”
Mrs. Klein craned her neck to peer around Billy’s shoulder to shoot death rays at her stepdaughter. She didn’t need to say anything.
“O, come on,” Isabel shot back. “It’s his fault he’s in diapers anyway. That’s why whatever happened at the mall happened; and if he was embarrassed, well, good. He’s 22 and wears diapers and acts like a baby. Maybe if were actually embarrassed about it, he’d grow up already!”
“Cara,” Mrs. Klein called out to Isabel’s friend who was watching from the living room.
“Yeah, Mrs. Klein?”
“Could you please come take care of Billy for a moment while I deal with my daughter who doesn’t seem to even realize how much trouble she’s in?”
Isabel’s head bobbed back as though startled, her cheeks blushing for the first time as it crossed her mind that maybe – just maybe – she’d miscalculated the consequences of her prank and the potential for embarrassment in front of her friends.
Cara hopped off the sofa, stepping across the room in her Christmas pajamas. She was excited for the sleepover, all four of her best friends together again for a sleepover just like before college had started the past fall. She and Emma were commuter students; Lily, Harper, and Isabel went to the state university, and Harper and Isabel were roommates. Cara had seen more of Mrs. Klein and Billy for the past four months than of her friends, even of Emma, coming over to ‘hang out’ with Billy sometimes, the euphemism they all agreed by implied consent to call it instead of babysitting. She had a soft spot for Billy, and Billy had a crush on her he hid badly, when he remembered to try and hide it at all.
“You and he have had your differences,” Mrs. Klein said to Isabel, “but this was just mean. Just mean.” She kissed Billy on his temple and said more gently, “Go to Cara, baby.”
She handed him over to Cara, who held her arms out for him guided him toward the stairs. No one else heard what he said or what she whispered back, but she nodded and took him instead to the kitchen table. He pulled his chair close enough to hers to put his head on her shoulder. She bent forward to reach for a tissue on the table and dabbed at his eyes for him, letting him blow his nose himself.
Isabel watched this. She didn’t know what to think of her friend’s relationship with her brother. He had other babysitters, and nothing was really different about the way Cara treated him than any of the others. It just hit different because it was her friend. Distracted, she didn’t hear her stepmom scolding her.
“Are you even listening?”
“What? Sorry. I mean, I’m sorry,” Isabel replied.
“Sorry isn’t good enough. You’re getting a consequence for this.”
“What? Come on; I’m only home for four weeks.“ She assumed her stepmom meant grounding her, and she skipped over refusal straight to bargaining. Isabel and her friends were good girls. They went through all the usual teenage mischief, but they never got into any serious trouble. She’d never told an authority figure no, and it didn’t occur to her she could do that. It wasn’t a matter of living under her parents’ roof or them paying for school; she just didn’t think of herself as an adult yet, not in relationship to her stepmom, an adult just like she was equal and therefore not subject to her parents’ rules. Neither did it occur to Mrs. Klein that she couldn’t discipline the girl she’d raised from the age of two just because she’d turned eighteen and gone away to college for a semester.
“You haven’t even asked what happened that made your brother so upset,” Mrs. Klein pointed out.
“He needed a diaper and didn’t have one. I said I’m sorry.”
“He had a poopy diaper at the mall.”
Isabel hesitated for a moment before saying, “So he had to wait a little while for a change. Not the first time; what’s the big deal?” Isabel’s callousness was an affectation; she wasn’t a mean girl. She thought everything about her brother and stepmom was weird, but she cared very much for them both. To her, Mrs. Klein was her mom. And Billy, well, sometimes her frustration got the better of her when it came to his differences; when she was embarrassed by proxy, when his peculiarities interrupted her life, when she was held to a normal standard and he wasn’t. She’d say something mean or pointedly ignore him for a while, but it never lasted. She always felt bad about it after she’d had some time to calm down, then she’d make it up to him. Isabel began regretting her prank almost as soon as she did it. If she weren’t trying to get out of trouble and trying to cover her embarrassment, she wouldn’t have still been trying to downplay it.
Her friends were familiar with all of it, having grown up around it. As it was for Isabel, the way Billy was had long ago been normalized, so they mostly treated it as normal. They didn’t have to live with him, so they didn’t get frustrated by it as often as Isabel did, but sometimes it bothered them too. Sometimes they teased. More often, though, they were the ones to tell Isabel to be nice when she was at the end of her rope with him. A couple of her friends even liked Billy enough that they looked forward to playing with him when they came over, even long after ‘playing’ was something they’d grown out of.
“The big deal,” Mrs. Klein strained to explain without raising her voice, “is he was out Christmas shopping with Aunt Sally and your cousins. Your aunt checked him when she noticed him waddling and went to a couple more stores to make sure he was done before changing him, and then she gets him on the changing table and finds everything she needs to change a dirty diaper except a new diaper. They had to cut their trip short.”
Isabel didn’t understand why Billy was so upset about that. He whined whenever he went shopping, and while he got a little embarrassed when he had a poopy diaper in public, it didn’t really upset him, much less upset him enough to get him to give up diapers. She would’ve thought he would be glad to leave the mall early. Isabel had already decided to apologize to her aunt and her cousins.
“Billy was really looking forward to that trip. You know how much he loves Aunt Sally.”
“Yeah …” Isabel replied, the uncertainty audible in the waver of her voice. She felt guilty, but she still wasn’t sure why he was so upset. For that matter, why he was home. Aunt Sally could’ve stopped at a drug store to buy some emergency diapers and carried on with their evening.
“And he wasn’t done, Isabel. Aunt Sally got his pants back on, and he had a blowout in the parking lot.”
O crap , Isabel silently cursed. Blowouts upset Billy, badly. A loaded diaper didn’t bother him until he felt itchy, but once that diaper failed – a rarity, but it just happens sometimes when a person wears diapers – Billy would have a meltdown. Every. Single. Time.
“All over the inside of his plastic panties, which leaked. People saw, his cousins couldn’t help making him feel bad because he had such bad stinky pants, and Billy was so upset he didn’t want to sleep over at his aunts. I was giving him a bath when you guys were at dinner.”
Isabel’s face had fallen completely. She was looking at her shoes, unable to meet her stepmom’s eyes or Billy’s or even Cara’s. Mrs. Klein folded her arms and leaned back, satisfied Isabel now understood what her mean, thoughtless prank had caused.
“Sorry,” Isabel said so quietly her stepmom could only just make it out.
“What were you thinking?”
“It was just a prank. I didn’t think anything this bad would happen.”
“You didn’t think. I don’t even understand why you would do this.”
“I just …”
“It’s been a long time since you teased Billy this way. I thought we were past it. And then you called him a baby!”
“He …” Isabel cut herself off and audibly exhaled.
“O, just say it if you want to say it. You’re in trouble as it is.”
“He kinda is though. He doesn’t … Well … Like I even need to explain it!”
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what? I don’t know what there is to get.”
“Get what it’s like being Billy.”
“Billy chooses to be Billy.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Isabel wanted very badly to dispute that point. Where should she start? How about hygiene? Or dignity? Or taking responsibility for anything? Or supporting himself? Unless there was something she didn’t know, there were no plans for Billy to ever go to college or a get a job or learn to use a toilet or live on his own. He was living as though he had a developmental disability, except he didn’t. He just … skipped major development milestones for no apparent reason other than his stepmom and him decided to. Or one of them decided and the other went along with it; Isabel was never really sure. She knew, though, that nothing was wrong with Billy because one or both of them was obviously cherry-picking the developmental milestones he did achieve.
Isabel knew better than to dive down that rabbit hole. It never produced any answers or changed anybody’s mind; all it ever did was make Mrs. Klein and Billy defense, and Isabel had gotten in trouble before for pushing on it. She stopped a long time ago. She had nothing to say to her stepmom in response, at least not anything she could say without turning an argument into a fight.
“Maybe,” Mrs. Klein said and drifted off. Isabel saw her stepmom’s eyes track up to the right and grew nervous. Her stepmom could be inventive with consequences; it wasn’t a good sign to see her brainstorming.
“No,” Isabel said in a rushed attempt at conciliation. “I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, and I’ll apologize to Aunt Sally and my cousins. If you want to ground me for all of break, I’ll understand.”
Now it was Mrs. Klein wearing a queer sort of smirk, pleased with her decision. It would show Isabel being away at school for a semester didn’t mean she could get away with being unkind to her brother, and maybe it would help her understand just what it was like being Billy. Maybe if she had real empathy for him, it would put a stop once and for all to Isabel’s habit of being mean to him whenever she lost her patience with him. Not that he’d done anything to make her lose her patience with him lately, not that she knew of. She didn’t know what had made Isabel do what she’d done.
“You’re not grounded, but I’m sure you’ll wish you were. You’re going to learn what it’s like to be Billy.”
“What does that mean?”
“What’s the thing that makes Billy the most different from other people his age?”
Isabel did a double take, instantly knowing the answer to the question yet rejecting as impossible that that could be the answer.
Mrs. Klein’s expression confirmed it. She knew Isabel knew the answer, and Isabel knew that she knew. Mrs. Klein didn’t even need to say it. But she said it anyway: “That’s right – Diapers.”