by Rowe, Brian
She got down on her knees and opened the box, even though I couldn’t see far enough over the crib to tell what it could be. I didn’t really want to know. Considering her malevolent ways, it couldn’t possibly be anything good.
“Ta da!” Hannah shouted as she got back up to her feet and revealed to me the special birthday gift.
“Oh God…” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said.
It was a diaper.
“I know you want to be a big boy,” she said, bringing the diaper toward the crib, “but you’re just too much of a baby to wear big boy’s underwear. I’m really very sorry.”
As soon as she grabbed my legs, I started tossing and turning, trying my best to scramble as much as possible without hurting my already pained wrists. She unhooked my legs from their chains in a matter of seconds, and I started flailing them around her face, managing to successfully kick the side of her right cheek, twice, before she could lock my legs back down against the crib.
“Keep still,” she said. “I need to change you.”
“This isn’t happening…”
“I can’t understand you. Move again and I’ll knock your teeth out.”
She pulled my pants down. I started kicking at her, and she slapped me in the face.
“Stop!” I yelled.
“Keep still!” she shouted louder.
She pulled down my underwear to reveal my prepubescent manhood, but it wasn’t exposed for long. She threw my embarrassingly loose briefs down to the hardwood floor and lifted my butt up in the air to put on the diaper.
I said, “This isn’t happening,” one more time. And then I just kept thinking it over and over.
This isn’t happening. Oh my God. Oh my God. This isn’t happening.
Hannah sealed the diaper to my bottom and brought her hands up in the air, all excited, as if she had done something God-like. “And… voila!”
I looked down to see the diaper. Never thought I’d be wearing one of these again. At least, not until I was ninety and incontinent.
Hannah glanced up at a ticking clock at the front of the room and made her way over to the other side of the crib. “All right, Cam. Are you ready?”
“For… for what…”
“For our little adventure!” She leaned down again, disappearing for a moment. And then she returned, with a small but terrifying needle in her right hand. “I was wrong before,” she said. “I’ve got one more gift for you.”
She stuck me with the needle in the side of my neck before I had a chance to stop her, and a whoosh of overwhelming fatigue struck my body. I blinked a few times, still awake but extremely woozy, as I brought my head down to see Hannah unlocking the chains around my wrists. In five seconds, I was to be a free man.
But this chick wasn’t dumb. I wouldn’t have been able to attack her now even if I had been my athletic teenaged self. I tried to swing my arms a few times into the air, but to no avail. She picked me up, her left arm under my diaper, her right hand resting against my stomach, and carried me over to the other side of the room.
Hannah tugged at my right hand and used it to wave at the wounded Liesel.
“Say goodbye!” Hannah said. “Wave bye-bye!”
“Leese… I don’t…”
“Hannah…” Liesel said, her head still resting on the ground. “I’m going to kill you… Sooner or later…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hannah said. “You go ahead and try, you dumb bitch.”
Hannah grabbed a pair of keys hidden at the edge of the couch. She hoisted me up and held me close as she exited the room, revealing a long, winding staircase.
16. One
The top of the staircase revealed a place that looked as normal as any middle-class home in Reno. But I could see in looking out the large windows on the left side of the house that we were no longer in Reno, or even Nevada.
We were in Los Angeles.
I could see large mountains up behind the house, as well as a congested, busy freeway in the distance. A helicopter passed overhead, and an ambulance zoomed by outside, screaming its loud sirens enough to make my little ears go deaf. It took me a few more seconds, but I finally caught sight of the Hollywood sign in the distance.
I’m a one-year-old now, I thought. I can feel it. I’m one. I have one hour left. One hour until…
Hannah kicked the back door open and led me outside, where a frightening black sky, with no moon in sight, lingered up above. It was cold outside, much colder than the dilapidated basement, and I could feel a light misty rain falling down to the top of my bald head.
“Welcome to L.A., Cameron. May I introduce you to… Griffith Park?”
A small hill and a two-lane road separated Hannah’s backyard from Los Angeles’ famous Griffith Park, which offered mountain after mountain of hiking and biking. We started heading up the hill, and I tried to make sense of where she was taking me, and why.
As we reached the top of the hill, I looked down at the back of the house, which lined a long and winding residential street. Here was a place of horror that housed a torture chamber and a decomposing body, and surely nobody in this neighborhood had a clue. But as I kept my eye on the house, I noticed a figure appear in the backyard.
It can’t be, I thought. Wesley?
I couldn’t be sure, and considering I was under the influence of a powerful sedative, it could’ve easily been my imagination. But as the backyard disappeared from my view, I was almost positive I had seen a male figure slowly tiptoeing up to the back door. And it had looked like Wesley.
He made it. Oh my God. He found us.
I hoped I hadn’t imagined it. I hoped he was there, making his way downstairs to save Liesel from the horrors and great pain that she’d been suffering for days.
Hannah held me close as she walked across a desolate road and entered the entryway of a dirt trail, one that was to wind all the way to the top of the mountain.
As we ascended, the rain started to fall, more and more and more…
---
A half-hour passed. The winds were tumultuous; the rain, even worse. I couldn’t tell how much of the calamitous weather was purely natural, or being egged on by Hannah’s powers—I assumed some of it she was enhancing to a certain degree. With each step in the mud, she was focusing more and more on the peak of the mountain.
“Are you ready, Cameron? We are minutes away. Minutes away… from your final goodbye.”
“Please, Hannah, give me a chance, we can talk about this, please, no, anything, I’ll do anything.” I just rambled on and on, even though I knew that by now, being a one-year-old, anything escaping my mouth was jibberish. I could still think like an eighteen-year-old and try to form the words I was thinking, but the words themselves would come out wrong, like the physical components of my mouth weren’t developed enough to literally speak them. But that was the least of my problems. I knew, even if I could ramble and plead like an adult, Hannah wouldn’t care. There was nothing I could say to stop her now. She had her mind set on something cruel, and I finally had the courage to shut up and wait for my demise.
When the hour is up, will I feel it? Will it hurt? Or will I just float away, never to return?
We reached the top of the peak, and even though the clouds were plentiful, and the rain was pelting us so hard it was difficult to feel anything but pain, I could still see past the mountains into the bright lights and city sounds of Los Angeles. I had only come here once as a kid, to go to Disneyland and Universal Studios. That had been a fun, innocent time, when I knew I had my whole life ahead of me. Now I was back, as an even younger child this time, without Mickey and Minnie to give me comfort, but with an evil witch who wanted me dead.
“All right, Cameron. It’s time.”
I know, I thought. But I didn’t say anything.
Hannah set me down just feet away from where I could start tumbling down a wet, muddy mountain. I looked up to see a swirl of black clouds forming right above my head. She stood directly over me, bri
nging her hands up into the air, as if God Himself was going to descend through the clouds, reach out, and give us both a firm handshake.
“He is here!” she shouted up into the night sky. “Cameron is here!”
A fierce electricity took hold of the sky above us, and not one bolt of lightning, but several, started intermixing with one another to form one, giant bolt. I opened my baby mouth in awe as more than a dozen bolts of lighting found each other and formed a sky so bright I had to close my eyes.
“We are running out of time!” Hannah shouted. “Soon, he will be gone! Send to me what was promised to me!”
I looked down at my hands to see that a stream of water was covering them, that water had started rushing over most of my body. I tried to keep my hands and feet clamped down to the muddy soil, but I didn’t know if I could hold on much longer before being swept down the mountain.
“It must be now!” she shouted. “Now, I tell you!”
I looked up to see the bright light, so blinding I thought this really was, finally, the end. I watched as the giant bolt of lightning prepared itself for launch, readied itself to pierce through my small, aching body.
It’s coming for me. She’s going to kill me with this lightning. And then it’ll all be over. Everything.
“Now!”
Instead of the lightning crashing down toward me, a bolt of a different kind of light flashed from behind me. I ducked just in time to see it hit Hannah straight in the heart and tip her over.
“Noooooo,” she said. Then she screamed it. “Nooooooo!”
A second white light erupted from the side of me, and I looked to my right to see Liesel, dirtied and muddy, racing to the top of the mountain with a look in her eye that suggested: it’s you or me, sis. It’s time for one of us to die!
But this time, Hannah was ready. She brought her arms out and deflected the second light, swatting it straight at my face. I ducked, again, but it slammed against my left shoulder and jolted every cell in my body. Before I could reach out for Liesel, and before I could scream, I started tumbling down the side of the mountain.
---
I think this is where we started, me climbing up the mountain, trying not to slip, knowing my time was limited.
I figured I had five minutes left, maybe less, before I turned zero. I could feel my heart beating rapidly, like it knew there was such little time left. I could feel the hopelessness in my aching hands, but I had to keep going. I had to make it to the top of the mountain. I had to see who won. Liesel, you have to stop her. You have to!
I was almost at the top, lightning shooting down from the clouds above as fast as the angry rain, the mud slide crashing down against me, almost as if it was trying to keep me from seeing the chaotic destruction on the other side of the mountain.
“Cameron! I’m here!”
I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t Liesel. It was Wesley.
What is he doing up here? Doesn’t he know he’s going to get killed?
I looked up to see him at the peak of the mountain, resting on his stomach, reaching out for me to grab his hand.
I shook my head. Wesley, you’re putting yourself in danger. Get out of here. It isn’t safe.
“Come on, Cameron! We are running out of time!”
He didn’t think I knew that? Here he was trying to save me, when I had just a couple of minutes left to live. But I continued to crawl anyway, fearing that I would die alone, with no one to hold onto. One last hug with Wesley would make me feel at peace. I kicked and crawled through the mud.
And just as the fierce mudslide started shooting over the top of the peak, I leapt into the air to grab Wesley’s hands.
But I missed.
My stomach slammed against the mud and the current above me started washing me down the mountain again, toward my death, toward my destiny.
But as the water continued rushing down, my body stopped moving. I found myself dangling, with someone or something grabbing hold of me. I turned around to see Wesley with his right hand gripped against the end of my diaper.
The diaper. The stupid diaper saved me.
“I got you!” he shouted. “I got you, Cameron! Come on!”
He pulled me back, wrapped his arms around my body, and lifted me up in the air. He held me tight as he ran to the side of the peak, where there was a thin, flooded trail to take us away from all the danger.
I turned to my right to see Liesel and Hannah battling in the distance, the sisters standing ten feet away from each other, both casting little balls of light at each other’s face; Liesel’s were white, and Hannah’s were red.
Get her, Liesel! Get her! Stop her!
“Come on, Cam,” Wesley whispered into my left ear. “We’re getting out of here. You don’t have to see this. You shouldn’t see this!”
But just as we started to disappear behind a tree, I watched as Hannah cast three giant balls of red light into the air, each one slamming against Liesel’s chest simultaneously. Liesel went down, back first, against the muddy ground.
I tried to scream, but Hannah beat me to it. She jumped on top of Liesel, and turned straight toward me. “Noooooo!” she shouted. “Leave the boy!”
She cast another red light, this time my way, but instead of it hitting me, it slammed against the top of Wesley’s chest. He dropped me to the ground as he went soaring backward, his head slamming against the trunk of a tree. He went silent, motionless.
“Wesley!” I screamed. “Wes! Oh God!”
As I started crying, I turned to my right to see Hannah gripping Liesel’s throat with both of her strong hands. It was over. I was a minute or less away from dying. And Liesel wasn’t going to save me.
I looked up to see the sky, which now had bolts of lightning shooting every which way. Some were landing in the distance; some were crashing down straight toward us. I could feel all the lights descending toward me, as if they were disintegrating fireworks, readying me for the dissolution of my physical body. I sat still.
Sixty seconds. Fifty seconds.
It was anytime now. I looked one last time at Liesel. She was sitting up. Hannah wasn’t strangling her anymore. It looked, funny enough, like the two sisters were simply talking to each other, like they were gossiping about the cutest boys at school.
Forty seconds. Thirty seconds.
I looked back up at the sky. The lights were coming closer. I felt at peace, knowing there was nothing left to stop what was about to happen to me. I had no idea what Liesel and Hannah were talking about, but I liked to imagine Hannah had allowed Liesel to utter some kind of prayer for me, one that would lift my spirits up past the dark skies into the Heavens above for all eternity.
Twenty seconds. Ten seconds.
This was it. I could feel my mind fading, my heartbeat slowing, my body coming to an infinite rest. They always said that your life flashes before your eyes in the seconds before you die, and they were right. Everybody that had ever meant something to me appeared in my mind. I could see my parents, standing in the entryway of our home, waving at me. Kimber was playing her violin in the living room, smiling at me, playing a majestic melody. There was Liesel standing next to her, nodding, blowing me a kiss, the biggest grin in the world on her face. Wesley stood on the far right, a camera on a big, black tripod in front of him. He kneeled over and pressed the red button, ready to film my life story.
I love you all.
I closed my eyes, took my final breath, and laid my back against the ground, which in the last few seconds had turned from muddy water to the warmest of sand.
Goodbye. Goodbye.
Good—
17. Eighteen
“Cameron. Get up.”
I’d heard that before. I blinked a few times and let the world come roaring back into focus. Above me was no longer millions of pellets of rain, nor a longwinded chorus of lightning bolts. All I could see above me was a calm, magical sky filled top to bottom with shining stars.
I sat up and looked down toward my feet. They w
eren’t directly in front of me like before. They looked far away, like they belonged to a different person. I analyzed my arms and hands.
No, I thought. There’s no way.
Then I caught sight of my diaper. It felt really tight against my privates, and I noticed it was ready to burst. I knew this meant two things: One, I was eighteen again, and back to a tall six-foot-one. And two, that in a matter of seconds, I was going to be butt naked at the top of this mountain, for all of L.A. to see.
Whatever. I’ll go nude. If it means I get to stay alive… I’ll go naked forever!
I smiled and looked to my left. But then the smile faded.
I thought I’d see Liesel to the side of me, patting the top of my head, comforting me just like she had a year ago when I survived my first aging disease.
But she wasn’t sitting in front of me. She was sitting in front of Wesley.
“Wesley?” I asked.
I jumped up to my feet—with ease, thank God—and raced over to Wesley, who had his back slumped up against a tree. He was breathing, but he had a large cut pierced through his chest, blood spilling out and rolling onto the dirt.
“Cameron,” he said. “Cameron… you’re back…”
He talked in a muffled tone that suggested he was in pain. I brought my hands down to his arms “You’re gonna be OK, Wes. Come on. Stay with me.”
Liesel had her hands pressed against his wound, and I waited for the fast winds, the blinding lights, the magical sight of a witch in progress. But there was nothing.
“Liesel…”
I brought my hand up to her but she swatted it away. “Cam, run down to the house.”
“What?”
“Run down to the house and call 911. I don’t think I have enough of my powers left to stop the bleeding.”
“Are you… are you sure—”
“Cameron! Do it!”
“OK!”
