✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

69. My New Start

This chapter is dedicated to Dewayne. Thank you for all the support you've given me!

On Saturday morning, I was waiting eagerly to see how Tess would feel when she woke. Would she stop fighting me and accept that she loved being a baby? Would she feel some irrational guilt about enjoying it and snap back to pretending she was an adult? I had no idea how she would feel, and that had me on edge. But perhaps the most worrying thing would be the realisation of how many accidents she had over the last few days. Each time I said the trigger phrase, it had seemed like a natural thing to say in that moment. But now I thought back over it, I realised that she'd wet herself four times in a little over twenty-four hours. On the bus to school, after coming home, while she was sleeping, and again when she woke in the morning. To someone who was finally getting used to waking up wet two or three times in a week, and had only wet herself during the day a handful of times, that sudden increase could have been something to worry about.

I promised myself that I would dial it back a bit. She had just had an intense experience, feeling what it was like to sink completely into her baby headspace. She might have been there before, but when it was her own choice I was sure she would be a little more receptive to the hypnotic suggestions. I really didn't want her to associate that with her loss of bladder control, especially on a subconscious level where it could make her more reluctant to try it again. So I made a plan, and decided that I would stick to it at least until the end of the year.

If Tess acted like a good little, I would praise her and reward her with anything I could think of to keep her happy. I would keep a pacifier close to hand, and offer it as a treat if she seemed eager to regress. Every moment would be filled with praise, I would do everything for her, and I would be so proud of anything she attempted to do herself regardless of the outcome. If she acted like a normal child her age, however, I would react in kind. I would keep talking to her the same way I always had. And if she was hostile, doing things like refusing a pacifier or claiming not to be a baby, I would take that as a sign that she needed help to realise how little she was. That was the only situation in which she would have an accident this year: when she claimed to be an adult. Whether she noticed the pattern or not, I thought that would make her just a little more nervous about fighting who she really was.

Breakfast was already cooking when I heard her moving about on the landing, so I quickly finished up one portion and slid a couple of waffles onto her plate. I saw as soon as I turned around that she had taken a little step back after last night's fun. Her hair was back to its previous messy bun, and she was dressed in jeans and a shapeless grey hoodie. Warm clothes, but not so pretty as what she'd been wearing the day before.

"Good morning, baby," I greeted her, and waited to see her response.

"Morning. That smells good." She didn't seem to mind, and that made me a lot more confident. If she meant what she'd said about admitting she was a baby, she would learn to get into her headspace more quickly and easily, and then I wouldn't need to keep worrying about things that might bother her. I needed to work on her trust, and everything else would follow easily.

"Thanks. Seeing your friends today?"

"Don't know," she gave a half shrug. "Haven't talked to anybody yet. It's weird so close to the holidays. Families putting up decorations, some got them up already. People going away, or visiting family. I'll probably head into town, see if I bump into anybody. But no real plans."

"Must be tough," I said. "When I was a little kid, all my friends were on the same street. Could go round, see them playing in the garden, and there'd always be somebody free. I guess that's a downside of all your friends being in another town." That wasn't entirely true; not one hundred percent. But it was close enough, and I figured that a little information about my own childhood would help Tess to open up more.