[another in a series about Rachel and Paul – first chapter is here – comments welcome]
Rachel Takes the Long Way Home
Chapter 1
It was a bring morning and the sun was pouring through Rachel’s window. Finally, it felt like spring was here. She could hear robins singing outside her window, mixed with the sound of her boyfriend Paul shaving in the bathroom. She was still in a daze, but as she rolled out of her bed, she noticed two things that surprised her. First, she not wearing her usual thick nighttime diaper, but a pair of crisp white French-cut cotton briefs. Second, and perhaps even more surprising, she was dry. How had this happened? What was responsible for this miracle? Was her long nightmarish struggle with incontinence over?
“Paul,” she called out to the en suite bathroom, “I’m dry! I literally can’t believe it.”
No response from the bathroom.
“Paul?”
Still nothing, just the sound of running water.
Rachel pushed open the door to see what he was up to, but to her astonishment, he wasn’t there. In fact, it wasn’t her bathroom at all. It was, instead, a glassed-in conference room at Data Solutions, the firm she worked for. In front of her was her team leader, Brian, and the rest of the members on her team: Cori, Diane, Steve, and Tony.
Rachel gasped. What? Here she was in front of all her co-workers, whom she had rarely if ever seen in person before, wearing nothing but her white panties and a skimpy pale yellow tank top.
“Rachel,” Brian said with an amused little chuckle, “so good of you to join us.” The rest of the group chuckled as well.
Rachel felt herself moving forward ever so slightly to the main conference table, conscious that the group could see her in all her barely-clothed vulnerability. But if they did notice, they didn’t say anything. Still, Cori and Diane seemed to be holding back laughter as they looked up expectantly at her.
“Well,” Brian continued. “Are you going to walk us through your code? Or are you just going to stand there? Come on Rachel, we don’t have all day.”
“Uh, s-sure,” Rachel stammered, though she wasn’t exactly sure what she was supposed to be walking them through. Before her was a computer screen with some numbers and letters on it, but she couldn’t quite make them out.
At this point, Cori interjected in a rude tone: “Can’t you find your code to pull up?”
“Pull up,” Rachel repeated the words as they echoed in her head. “Pull up.”
Then, without warning, though as if on an unseen cue, she felt a familiar feeling of warmth burst out into her panties. She looked down and saw to her horror that before she could get out a word about her code, she had begun to pee herself, right in front of her colleagues.
Brian chuckled again. “Pull up,” he said in condescending tone, “Yes maybe that’s exactly what you need. You probably need to be back in pull ups.” The rest of the group now started to laugh too.
Rachel stared down again, to see if it was over, since she could not sense one way or another if she had stopped peeing.
As she looked down at herself, she wasn’t just a tank top and panties anymore but a white and pink fuzzy sweater and pair of light khaki pants, across which a pee stain had begun to spread. “Huh?” she thought. As the laughter continued, she realized it wasn’t that of her colleagues anymore, but her classmates from what must have been 6th or 7th grade. The conference room had mutated into her old classroom at St. Andrew’s middle school. She now held in her hand what must of been a book report she had been giving. Looking up from it, she saw her old teacher, Mrs. Kelleher, glaring down at her.
“Rachel O’Malley, this is the third time you’ve peed your pants in class this month. Honestly, what are we going to do with you? Does someone need to be put back in pull-ups?” The class roared with laughter and she felt tears streaming down her face.
Before she knew what was happening, her mother had appeared at the front of the classroom and quickly walked over to grab Rachel’s hand.
“Come here, young lady.” her mother said sternly, as she walked Rachel to the classroom door.
Time appeared to speed up. Suddenly they were walking at what felt like a glacial pace down the hallway of her old school. It must have been between class periods, because the hallways was filling up with students, who began to stare at Rachel in a mixture of amusement and disgust. Laughter echoed down the hallways at a piercingly high decibel level. She thought they must have been looking at the giant stain on her pants. But when she glanced down at herself, she wasn’t wearing any. In place of her khakis, she was wearing a pair of pull-ups training pants with an especially childish Tinkerbell print on their front. Worse still, they were visibly yellowed and sopping wet. With each step she made, she could feel the heavy mass shift uncomfortably between her legs.
“Look, it’s tinkle bell,” she heard a voice call.
Rachel tried to run away to find some refuge from her predicament, but she was no match for her mother’s iron grip.
“Rachel, I am very disappointed with you,” her mother said, “I thought you were really making some progress this year. All those good marks in math and English. And no accidents. But it looks like I was wrong. It’s back to square one for you young lady. We’re going to have to start your potty training all over again aren’t we?”
“No!” Rachel cried out as she looked at her mother, who seemed so much taller than she remembered, even in her youth. “I’m a big girl! I don’t need diapers!”
Almost immediately after she said this, a voice she didn’t fully recognize, and which must have belonged to someone behind her, whispered out to her: “I’m not sure you have any evidence to support that.”
Rachel whirled around and at once recognized the diction and the voice as belonging to Laura Watson, her friend throughout her school years, but also — secretly — her arch-nemesis. Laura, the science whiz, Laura the track star, Laura the successful student-council president. Laura, the example Rachel’s parents always held out of everything she could be and wasn’t.
“Laura!” Rachel shrieked. “That’s not fair.”
“I mean Rachel, look at yourself. You can’t even keep your little training paints dry.”
As the sound of laughter rose again, Rachel sobbed. When the tears cleared somewhat from her eyes, she realized that the scene had changed again. She was in her childhood room, on her little-girl bed, still in her wet pull-ups. She looked up to see her mother hovering above her, fluffing out a thick white diaper.
“Here we go little Rachie — mommy will make it all better,” her mother chirped.
“Oh god no,” Rachel thought.
“Aw Rachie, Rachie, Rachie,” the words were still coming out of her mother’s mouth, but the voice was no longer hers. It was Paul’s.
She dimly became aware that she had been sleeping. Light streamed through the curtains again, and she felt her thick nighttime diaper, obviously wet, underneath her.
“Rachie,” Paul said. “It’s time to get up. I’ve got a plane to catch and you need to get on the road.”
She sat up a little in bed and bristled at the thought.
She did have to get on the road. She was going to see her parents and her hometown for the first time in a few years. And Paul, her loving boyfriend, her rock, was going to be in Paris on a business trip.
“I know you’re not looking forward to it very much,” as Paul said, pulling on his sport coat.
He was right. She hated her little backwards, nowheresville hometown, with its cornfields and megachurches and chain restaurants. And then there were her parents, who she often fought with but whose respect she secretly craved. They didn’t know that her incontinence had returned several years ago. They knew only what she told them: that she was a successful data scientist living in the big city and that she had a charming and handsome boyfriend named Paul.
Rachel groaned as she felt how wet she was. “How am I going to get through this?”
[to be continued]
