After Amanda paid the cabbie and unlocked the door to her home, she quickly doffed her daughter’s old clothes and changed back to her older self. She had some shopping to do before Kimberly came home and she didn’t want to arouse suspicion with a teenaged appearance. The disembodied voice she had heard earlier came back to her and said, "Well now! That was fun, wasn’t it? I think you’re starting to understand just how powerfully you’ve really become!"

"Who the Hell are you, really? Am I going nuts?", asked Amanda.

"No, you’re not crazy," the voice rejoined, "At least not in the clinical sense of the term. You are different now, though. As for what I am, I’m your Avatar. Once you truly understand and utilize your powers, then I’ll fade as I integrate with your personality. In a sense, I’m part of the future you that has come back to help you integrate yourself with the Reality you now behold."

"So what am I missing, ‘Oh, Wise Savant’?", Amanda said sarcastically.

"That your daughter cares more about her boyfriends and sex than your life," answered the voice in a tone of absolute surety.

"Sooo, she’s a teenager! Just what the Hell am I supposed to do about it?", Amanda answered tartly.

"You’re her mother, punish her! Make sure that she understands who is the Mommy and who’s the child in the house!", answered the voice firmly.

"How?", asked Amanda in a perplexed tone.

"How did you deal with those ‘juvenile delinquents’ at the movie theatre?", asked the voice rhetorically.

"Ohhhhh!", she answered and began giggling like a schoolgirl, "I can’t do that to my baby girl! The police, the hospital, and the diapers would scar her emotionally for life!"

"What if she really was your ‘baby girl’ again? There’d be no embarrassment then! Now would there? With your powers, you can make yourself any age you choose. If you like, you can remain at this age forever! You have all the time in the world to regress her to a baby again and bring her up right the next time!", the voice tempted.

"I don’t know….How can I be sure it’s the right thing to do?", Amanda queried.

"Just think of what WILL happen if you let her go on like this! One day you’ll become old and helpless! What will happen to you then? If she cares about you so little right now when you’re her primary source of income and provide her with free bed and board, what will happen when you’re old and feeble? I’ll tell you! She’ll rifle your bank accounts and sell every possession you have the minute she gets a Power of Attorney!", the voice countered.

"Oh, my God! You’re right!", Amanda exclaimed, realizing the voice was correct in its evaluation of her daughter, "She doesn’t give a damn about anyone but herself! What can I do?"

"Give her time to bask in your love. Make her understand how much you love her. Let her be a baby again. But be firm with her this time! You are and will continue to be as far beyond her puny powers as a newborn with a mature mother. You will be in control, not her or her petty whims! You have the power! Make it true!", the voice answered with conviction.

"I shall!", Amanda agreed.

After re-dressing herself in a blouse and slacks, she put on a pair of flats and picked up her purse and keys as she left the house silently thanking whatever Spirits ruled the weather for the continued clear sky. She had to hurry if she wanted to have everything ready by the time that Kimberly got home.

Two hours later, she had finished dragging the last of the cartons and bags from her car’s passenger seat and unfolded cargo area of her station wagon. Although she had been extravagant in her purchases, her bank account hadn’t suffered one bit. At the very first store, when she saw the enormous price that the cashier had rung up on the register, she had idly wished that her pocketbook was stuffed with hundred dollar bills as she opened it to write out a check. To her surprise, the checkbook refused to lay flat on the counter because of a fat lump that had suddenly appeared in her pocketbook. Amanda opened the banknote section of her pocketbook to discover that it had a quarter-inch thick stack of spanking new one hundred dollar bills. She smiled down at the small fortune with an air of negligent forgetfulness to cover her surprise from the cashier and casually handed the woman at the register three of the one hundred dollar notes.

After that store, Amanda went on the fastest and most extravagant buying spree of her life. By the time she was finished with her shopping, there wasn’t room in her old station wagon for even the smallest bag. She had to schedule a delivery by truck later that afternoon for the last piece of furniture she had purchased. If she hadn’t been assigned several stockboys to assist her in loading her car at the specialty store where she purchased the new furnishings for the spare room, she’d have never made it home in time. As it was, after phoning her boss to tell him that she had won the lottery and that she was quitting her job effective immediately, there was barely time to remove her sewing machine and mountains of boxes from the room which had once been her husband’s office and den into the garage.

The room had two doorways; one going to the hall and one that connected with the master bedroom. The architect had obviously originally intended for the room to be used as either a nursery or a den. Since her husband’s untimely death in an auto accident when Kimberly was a small child, Amanda had used the room as a storage and sewing room. The magick of her new found powers allowed her to empty the room quickly and assemble the petite, airy furniture which she had hauled in from the car. She made record time as she hung new drapes, decorated the wall with an incredibly detailed and highly colored wall mural and changed the globe on the ceiling fixture. Even though superhuman strength and endurance allowed her to complete the job in two hours, she wouldn’t have managed the feat before her daughter’s arrival without the aid of Kimberly’s extreme tardiness. Nonetheless, the room wasn’t completely finished by the time Kimberly came home. It wasn’t an immediate necessity. Amanda knew that Kimberly wouldn’t be needing it until the next evening.

Kimberly’s lesson in maternal love and duty had yet to begin. Amanda wanted her daughter’s punishment to be slow and be emotionally painful to insurer that her daughter would never forget the lesson she was about to teach her. She waited patiently for her errant daughter to return, filling her time by washing and drying the new clothes she had purchased. In order to be positive that the clothes would be as soft and comfortable as possible, she used liquid fabric softener in the washer and dry softener sheets in the dryer with the dryer set to air fluff. Amanda had just finished putting the new clothes away and had sat down to drink a cup of coffee at the kitchen table while she read the afternoon mail when Kimberly came home. Amanda looked up at the kitchen clock on the wall when she heard the front door slam and saw that it was five-forty-five PM.

Kimberly came in the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door, looking for something to eat. She didn’t notice that her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, calmly watching her as she sipped her coffee. What Kimberly did notice was that the bottom shelf of the refrigerator had suddenly become populated with latex-nippled, plastic baby bottles filled with the off-white infant formula she had seen so often when she had worked on weekends as a teenaged babysitter.

"What the Hell?", Kimberly said aloud in angry surprise, "What’s Mom gone and done now? If she thinks I’m going to sit around all day and babysit some friend of hers’ shitty-bottomed baby, she’s got another thing coming! I did that crap when I was twelve and I refuse to have anything more to do with wet or stinky diapers! I’d rather clean the grease trap out at Micky D’s, than wipe some smarmy baby’s bottom!"

"Kimberly!", her mother reproved with the mildness of maturity, "I thought I taught you better than to use that sort of talk when you were four years old! Apparently the lesson didn’t take!"

"Mom!", Kimberly said in utterly astonished reply, "I thought you were in the hospital! When did you get out?"

"If you had cared, you’d have been there and known when they released me!", Amanda retorted bitterly, "but you were more concerned with sleeping like some sort of trailer park slut with your boyfriend than your mother’s health and well-being. Just look at you! Your clothes and makeup make you look like some sort of trashy streetwalker!"

"Mom, you don’t know what the fuck your talking about! ALL the girls in my class dress like this!", Kimberly replied defensively.

Amanda shook her head as she continued, "And do you really think that the smell of that cheap Patroulie perfume you wear covers up the reek of marijuana? Your clothes stink of ‘grass’! Don’t you think I can see how bloodshot your eyes are or that I can’t hear the slur in your voice? Do you think I was born yesterday?"

"No, Mom," Kimberly said with a sneer in her voice, "I don’t think that! From the way you look and act, I’d have thought that you were born…oh I don’t know…centuries ago! You’re positively medieval!"

Amanda nodded to herself as she made the final decision as to her daughter’s fate, "Nonetheless, I can see that I’ve failed in your upbringing. Kimberly, I just received a series of progress reports from your teachers in the mail today. It seems that you’re flunking every class. Do you have an explanation for your poor schoolwork? I can see by the notations from your teachers that you’ve also missed a number of classes. It looks like you’ve been cutting classes, is that true?"

"So what if I have? It’s nobody’s business but my own! School is a waste of time, all they teach is crap!", Kimberly in an overly emotional, teenaged, angry defense against documented wrongdoing.

"I see," Amanda said evenly, "Well, I can’t say I’m surprised…The good news is, from your standpoint, is that you won’t have to worry about attending school anymore! From now on, you’ll be spending your time at home with me. I called in at work and tendered my immediate resignation from my job so I can stay home and take care of you. Maybe at some time in the future, you can go back to school when you’ve given me reason to believe that you’re sufficiently mature to return to formal public education outside of our home, but right now, I think secondary education for you is completely out of the question for you!"

Kimberly dropped her lower jaw and let her mouth hang open in utter astonishment, "Do you really mean it? After all the crap you’ve given me about graduating from High School, you’re going to let me drop out? I thought you said you would kick me out of the house if I quit school…Do you really mean that I can stay here even though I’m not in school? What’s the catch?"

Kimberly looked at her mother suspiciously and said, "Wait a minute, I saw the baby bottles in the refrigerator, and I’m telling you I’m not going to be someone’s babysitter!"

Amanda sighed heavily at her daughter’s poor attitude before she began explaining Kimberly’s duties. "You won’t be asked to babysit anyone, because I plan to stay home and take care of the baby myself," Amanda said tersely, "Nor will you be asked to do any work around the house. In addition, as of today, you’re no longer working for the hamburger place. Don’t worry about having shopping money, I have all the money we’ll need." She took the pocketbook out of her purse and opened the bill compartment wide so Kimberly could see the thick stack of hundreds inside as she said, "Would you like to see? From now on, you don’t have to worry about working, I’ll give you everything you could possibly want."

"What gives? I mean like…what about the baby you were talking about?", Kimberly asked in confusion.

"She’ll be here tomorrow. In the meantime…," Amanda began as she took the shopping bag up from the floor and put it on the table in front of her and continued, "Why don’t you come and see the dress I bought you? I think it’s the perfect look for you. I know how much you like short dresses with plenty of lace to show off your skin. It’s not quite the ‘Madonna’ look you favor, but it’s short enough to be one of her outfits! Both the bodice and sleeves are trimmed in hand-made, Italian lace. Take a look at it! I went to a designer clothing shop today and bought it especially for you. It was very expensive. The dress is an off-white taffeta and is so short that if you bend over, every boy around will be able to see your panties."

"Mom!", Kimberly exclaimed happily as she rushed over to see what was in the shopping bag, "You didn’t!"

"Yes," her mother answered sourly, "I did!" Then she added with grim parental honesty, "The white dress will lend the necessary illusion of innocence to your somewhat tarnished reputation, or at least I hope so!"

Kimberly snatched the shopping bag from her mother’s hand and opened it up to reveal a somewhat small cardboard gift box within. "Is this it?", Kimberly demanded, "It’s got to be REALLY short if it can fit in this tiny box! This is a joke, right? Where is the dress that you bought me?"

"In the box," Amanda answered in the driest tone that she could possibly manage, "Open it and see."

Kimberly opened the box and unwrapped the tissue paper to discover a lacy, white dress sized for a toddler of one or two years. She looked at it disbelievingly and said, "This is a bad joke, right? You’re pissed off with me, so you thought you’d get your jollies by having a joke at my expense! Mother! You’re horrid!"

"Not at all," Amanda replied, "I sincerely bought that dress for you to wear."

Kimberly held up the infant’s dress against her developing bosom and answered in a surely tone, "Duhhh! Look at this thing! It’s meant for a baby! No way can I wear this!"

Her mother smiled as she said, "I know that some ‘alterations’ will have to be made before it will fit you, but I’m sure you’ll look charming in it."

Kimberly’s face flushed with anger as she threw the dress in a pile on the kitchen table and shouted fiercely, "No way are alterations going to make a difference! There’s barely enough material in this dress to cover a baby’s bottom. You can’t make this dress fit me!"

Amanda nodded and said in an extremely quite tone, "I never intended to make the dress fit you." Raising the volume of her voice slightly, Amanda said in a parentally pejorative tone, "Kimberly, have you ever thought about how childish your behavior has been lately? You have the language of a gutter-snipe and you skip school on a regular basis. Your room is a mess and you never help me with the chores around the house. All you care about is your own pleasures. You haven’t been this self-centered since you were two-years-old!" She picked up the shopping bag that was beside her feet and handed it to her daughter, saying, "Since you don’t like those clothes, maybe you’ll find these are better to your liking!"

Inside the bag were delicate pink panties festooned with white lace, a shocking pink T-shirt and matching pink corduroy overalls with a bib. Kimberly took the clothes out of the bag with a dour expression on her face and exclaimed with a disbelieving sneer in her voice, "Mommmm! Just what the FUCK are these? Do you really expect me to wear fucking pink like I’m some kind of little baby girl?"

Kimberly took out the overalls and laid them next to her body to see how they fit. It was evident from the fact that the ends of the cuffs that barely reached down to her knees that the clothes were intended for a much younger child. Kimberly immediately became incensed with her mother’s personal insult by buying her clothing sized to fit a little kid in order to make her feel foolish and silly. She reacted as any self-possessed, conceited teenaged girl might do under the same circumstances, i.e., she exploded in a fit of blind, foul-mouthed rage.

"Fuck you! You can’t treat me like this!", Kimberly screamed, "Since you don’t care whether I go to school anymore, than let me leave. I have friends! I don’t have to stay here and put up with your crap!"

Amanda sighed patiently and said, "I can’t let you leave. I’m responsible for you until you’re an adult. As for putting up with another person’s smelly messes, it’s me that that will be putting up with your shit, not the other way around. I’m sorry, Dear, but it’s time for the ‘alteration’ we discussed earlier."

"Just what the fuck are you talking about, you BITCH?", Kimberly demanded, knifing a look of pure hatred at her mother.

Amanda concentrated and adjusted her daughter’s reality pattern. The kitchen light behind Amanda diffracted into a multi-hued haze around the golden aura that expanded to occupy a volume one foot larger than Amanda’s body as Kimberly began dwindling in size. Within seconds, Kimberly’s age halved.

Amanda smiled as she considered that Kimmie had no way of knowing the best part of the spell. Each cell in Kimmie’s body had been given the DNA coding to produce an enzyme called telomerase. As each cell divided, telomere "caps" on the ends of the DNA strands would be reduced one notch as if it were a TCP/IP packet with a defined TTL (Time-to-Live) which would be decremented for each router it crossed.

In the same way, the human body decremented the length of the telomere cap on the end of each DNA strand to clock down the number of replications that each cell could make without error. In much the same way, the popular OS, Microsoft’s Win95, was set give its packets a low value of TTL while NT was set to a much higher value because it was a "networking" platform and had been designed to achieve maximum performance over a network. While the TTL value of the TCP/IP values of Win95 were "hackable", those of the "biological clock" weren’t.

Amanda’s spell had ensured that the biological clock for aging, i.e., the telomeres, which wound down and destroyed the body’s ability to reproduce on the cellular level, would be continuously reset because they’d never be clipped or shortened. The ability of her body to produce telomerase in normal cells was eliminated while her pituitary gland’s ability to produce HGH (human growth hormone) was curtailed to the point of extinction. Her hepatic and renal functions were altered so that free radicals would never accumulate in her body. As an added precaution, the remaining stem cells of her body were redistributed throughout her anatomy and encapsulated within special cysts with their own capillary network to keep them alive and ready in case she should ever need to regrow parts of her body or organs. In effect, Amanda had made Kimberly immortal.

Kimmie would never grow a day older, nor would her DNA autocorrupt as it ticked off another replication as each cell in her body replaced itself with a newer version. She would be as young as her mother made her forever! Under normal circumstances, the repeated clipping of telomere cap on the DNA strand limited cellular division to approximately one hundred fifty divisions, thus promoting a catabolic or aging process. The normal process of aging would be short circuited by the constant length of the telomeres so that life could be prolonged for well over three hundred years. Of course, even if a spell wasn’t evolved, Mother’s milk was part of the secret to stopping cancer. Babies’ didn’t get metastatic tumors, only adults! The unique biochemistry of mother’s milk allowed normal cells to divide rapidly, while inhibiting carcinomic cellular division. If an infant had it’s DNA modified to eliminate the presence of telomerase in every normal cell as well as removing the basic processes of aging and growth (i.e., free radical removal) while receiving mother’s milk, theoretically, the individual could live forever as a child, infant or adult!

An eight-year-old version of Kimberly stood in shock on the floor, swaddled in her scanty teenaged garb like a young child caught playing dress up in her older sister’s clothes. Kimberly looked down at the short dress and black bikini panties which had pooled around her high-heeled feet while she screeched in a high-pitched, prepubescent voice, "No! This isn’t real! I must be dreaming! This can’t be happening to me!" She looked down upon the hairless, flat mons of her pubes, felt the soft skin beneath her fingertips and said in a tone of rising panic, "Mommmm?"

With a smile on her face at Kimberly’s shrunken, flat-bosomed, near-naked state, Amanda said with warm maternal certitude, "I think those overalls will fit you now, ‘Kim’".

"My name is ‘Kimberly’, not ‘Kim’!", Kimberly shouted in the high-pitched angry voice of youth.

Amanda shook her head slowly and said with finality, "When you were thirteen you asked me to call you ‘Kimberly’ rather than ‘Kim’ because you had read a book in school about a boy named ‘Kim’ by Rudyard Kipling and I agreed that it was too tomboyish for a young woman. I’d suggest that you take a long look at yourself in the mirror, Darling girl, you aren’t sixteen any more. In fact, you haven’t even reached puberty yet! You’re just my little eight-year-old girl, Kim! If you aren’t careful, things could get worse. Remember when you were little? I called you ‘little Kimmie’ and you never objected to your Mommy’s pet name for you. It could happen again, Kim! Behave yourself!"

"No! I won’t! I can’t accept this!" Kim screamed up at her mother, "I’m sixteen-FUCKING-years-old and you’ll treat me as I deserve! I don’t know what the HELL you’ve done to my body, but I demand that you change me back, right now! Do you hear me, right NOW!!"

"Are you demanding that I should treat you according to the way you’ve behaved around me?", her mother asked in a mild but quietly threatening tone.

"Yes, you Bitch! You’ll treat me as I deserve! Immediately!", Kim demanded.

Amanda sighed and said with a negative shake of her head to indicate her parental reluctance to the fate Kim had brought upon herself by her words, "As you wish, Kim. I’ll do as you request. On your head be it! Come over to the kitchen chair where I can sit down and help you out of those clothes. Once things get back to normal, we can work on our relationship with each other."

"That’s more like it," Kim said as she moved over to the chair to have her mother help her remove her tangled tank-top from where it was knotted about both wrists as it had fallen to her waist. As she walked, her oversized high-heeled shoes fell from her feet, leaving her clothed in only the huge, disarranged tank-top that bound her hands.

Once Amanda sat on the chair, she easily disentangled her daughter from the folds of stretchy fabric which had fallen down to rest loosely about the slim hips of childhood. Kimberly’s prepubescent clumsiness had made removal of the springy garment next to impossible for her. Amanda merely grasped the bottom of the tank top at Kim’s waist and pulled upwards, lifting the bra-like garment free of the flat torso of her eight-year-old daughter.

"Good!", Kim said with an unconscious nod of approval as she was freed from the confining garment. Then she said, "Now make me what I was before!", she demanded with a defiant stamp of authority from her bare right foot.

Amanda replied, "No, Kim. You’re my little girl again. No more High School, boyfriends, after-school jobs, drugs or chores for you! You’ll stay this age until I decide that you’re ready to grow up. If you use any more naughty words around me, I’ll spank you so hard you won’t sit down for a week! Is that clear?"

"Go…to…Hell!", the pint-sized Kim declared defiantly between gritted teeth.

"That’s it!", her mother said as she grabbed Kim by the arm and hauled her over to where she had been sitting. A moment later, Kim had been hauled by main force into the master bathroom to have her mouth washed out with liquid hand soap from the beige plastic pump-topped soap container that sat beside her mother’s washbasin.

"I left you with your teenaged mind so you could learn a lesson from this experience," Amanda said with maternal firmness, "Are you going to behave yourself or shall I continue washing your mouth out?"

"Fuck…you!", the eight-year-old frothed angrily.

"Since you act like a willful child, I’ll treat you like one. Tell me when you’ve decided to be a good girl. Then I’ll stop!", Amanda said as she squirted hand soap on her toothbrush and began scrubbing the little girl’s teeth.

Shortly afterwards, Kim began weeping and hollering for "Mom" to stop as the humiliation of being treated like a child regressed her psychological reality from the defiant stance of a teenager to the more pliant and dependant frame of childhood. Kim wriggled helplessly as her punishment continued. Kim’s besieged psyche had no experience with being treated like a small child and had no ready solution or counter to Amanda’s punishment. Kim’s subconscious cast around wildly through all its memories, trying to find an escape. Finally, in the dimmest reaches of Kim’s mind, her subconscious dredged up a memory of childhood that might help. From the viewpoint of her subconscious, the tactic had worked years before, so it was worth a try again. Her subconscious flooded her mind with the memory of a day long gone by when she had been an especially naughty toddler of three years. Kim felt the same emotions that she had felt when her mommy had spanked her unmercifully because she had gone into her mother’s purse and stolen the brightly colored disposable butane lighter. After some experimentation, Kim had managed to set the couch on fire. When she was caught and the fire was out, Amanda had soundly paddled her fat naked bottom.

The infantile emotions that took over Kim’s mind caused her to auto-regress. She began squealing high-pitched, childlike pleas for her mother’s mercy. Kim’s teenaged, pseudo-composure collapsed under the emotional strain causing her to begin whimpering like a small child in a desperate attempt to find an escape from the physical torture she had brought upon herself. Although Amanda’s spell had run its course, the psychological effects on Kim were just beginning. Amanda continued to spank her without let until Kim mewed out in a soapy, defeated voice, "Please Mom, no more!"

Amanda froze the freshly soaped toothbrush only inches away from the mouth of her daughter and asked, "What did you call me?"

Kim choked on her sobs and suds for a moment before she said fearfully, "Mom?"

Amanda’s face softened as she lifted her naked daughter to sit on her lap. "Oh, so I’m ‘Mom’ now rather than a ‘Bitch’?"

"Y..yes," Kim answered as tears of pain rolled down her cheeks.

"Are you going to be a good little girl?", Amanda asked.

"Yes, Mom," Kim said in a defeated tone.

"And you realize that from now on you’re going to have to talk like my little girl instead of some teenaged gutter-snipe?", Amanda demanded.

"Yes, Mom," Kim answered in a voice that was almost too low to be heard.

Amanda said, "You asked me to treat you as you deserve and you got the mouth washing you earned. Since you’re eight-years-old again, you should wear the clothes of a eight-year-old girl. Don’t you agree?"

"Yes, Mom, I’ll wear them," Kim agreed in a low tone that revealed her unconcealed rage at both her helplessness and her mother’s domestic tyranny.

"Good!", Amanda said as she helped Kim rinse out her mouth with water from the tumbler that was kept by the bathroom sink, "I don’t want to hear any more nonsense out of you about what you’ll wear or won’t wear! Now go and dress yourself in your clothes like mommy’s good girl!"

Kim trudged back to the family room with Amanda bringing up the rear to insure that Kim wouldn’t attempt an escape. When they arrived, Amanda handed the shopping bag to Kim without a word.

Slowly, Kim slipped the hated pink, white-laced, ruffled panties up her legs and pulled them up her ugly bumpy knees and her skinny, undeveloped thighs. The strange sensation of comfort as she pulled them over her bottom gave her a most unsettled feeling of rightness. She almost spat on the floor in fury, but remembering the spanking she had just received for misbehavior, she held back, When she had finished with her underwear, she put on the T-shirt with an air of abhorrence, feeling that it was a public declaimer of her sudden flat-chested lack of sexual maturity.

"Mom?", Kim asked politely, as she bite her lip to keep herself from mouthing-off to her mother and thus incur another soapy-mouthed session in her mother’s bathroom.

"Yes, Dear?", Amanda answered as she watched the eight-year-old girl slip the hot pink corduroy overalls up her legs.

"What about Mike?", Kim asked.

"Who’s Mike?", Amanda asked sweetly while knowing the teenaged response that she would get from Kim.

"Mike’s my boyfriend, God Damn It! Don’t you know anything?", Kimberly exclaimed

"I know a eight-year-old girl who’s about to get her filthy mouth washed out again with soap, if that’s what you mean!", Amanda told her firmly, "If any more profanity comes out of your mouth young lady, you and I are going to make a trip to the bathroom where I’ll brush your teeth again. Only this time I’ll use a bar of laundry soap! Do you hear me?"

"What about Mike?", answered Kim, stamping her foot in childish anger.

"That will be quite enough of that, young lady!", Amanda ordered in no uncertain terms, "From now on you will deport yourself as a young lady! Do I make myself clear? You’re eight years old and you’re too young to have a boyfriend! That’s final! End of conversation!"

"But…but…but Mike is going to call me on the phone before he takes me out tonight!", Kim said as tears began to fill her face.

"Eight-year-olds are too young to have boyfriends," Amanda ruled, continuing, "If it makes you feel any better, I’ll tell him that I saw your grades today and put you on a plane this afternoon to live with your Aunt on her ranch in West Texas. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to tell him that it’s not your fault you couldn’t make the date."

"What Aunt? I don’t have any Aunt in West Texas! You don’t have any sisters, so I don’t have any Aunts at all!", Kim shouted.

"Exactly!", her mother explained, "You’ll be right here with me. No one will ever have to know that you’ve become a child again! So you don’t have to worry about the sniggers of your friends. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them that my sister is ill and you went to West Texas to help take care of my sister’s household while she’s sick. In return, I’m taking care of her preadolescent daughter while she’s sick. Texas is such a mystery to most people that they won’t ask questions, and if they do, they’ll discover that families in Texas help each other in the same way that I propose to tell in my ‘little white lie’. I had a friend from Texas once who had similar family problems and her entire family did everything they could to help her out, including taking in her children when she became gravely ill. Believe me, anybody who knows anything about Texans will believe the story. You’re out of luck, Dear!"

During her mother’s explication of her plans, Kim struggled with dressing herself in her new clothes by herself. Her inability to pull the straps of the overall over her shoulder and attaching them to the front of her bib constituted her major difficulty; whenever she managed to grab one for buttoning, the other strayed from the frame of her immature, sloped shoulder slip off and hang down her back against her bottom.

When Amanda saw Kim grappling ineffectually with the straps of her overall, her mother grasped the frail frame of Kim’s eight-year-old shoulders and turned her around to face her. In a thrice, Amanda had the straps of the bib fastened properly. Amanda looked down at the little girl in front of her in satisfaction; the former, and much sought after, "hot" Kimberly of the Clinton High School had been turned into a whiney-voiced, prepubescent girl with absolutely nothing to attract or recommend her to her wayward male schoolmates. When Amanda finished dressing her daughter, she said firmly, "Kim, your room is a mess. When I walked into your room today, the floor was littered with your dirty clothes! You and I are going to clean your room right now, since you’ve proved that you lack the maturity to take care of your own things!" She grinned at the little girl in front of her as she continued, "It’s obvious that you need Mommy’s assistance, you can’t even dress yourself without Mommy’s help!"

They went into Kim’s room with a cardboard box full of forty gallon, black plastic, lawn and leaf bags. Amanda ordered that Kim pack everything that didn’t fit her new size or position in life to be packed away. Kim wept silent, bitter tears of grief over the demise of her former life as she placed all of her expensive clothes into garbage bags and her mother hauled them out to the garage for storage. When Kim opened her lingerie drawer in her dresser, she broke down and began crying inconsolably. Kim folded herself up on the floor in the corner formed by her dresser and the wall refused to move or respond to her mother’s urgings to finish the job. Amanda went over to the lingerie drawer and began packing away her daughter’s bras and undergarments herself in the black plastic lawn bag as Kim huddled herself together in the corner and wept like a small child in a paroxysm of terror and loss of personal status.

All Kim knew was that her proto-adulthood had somehow been stolen from her and that she had become a little girl again. Kim’s memory of being transformed was terrifying. The brilliant aura of power that had formed around her mother as her transmogrification began had made her mother look like an angry Goddess. The day before she would have never guessed that her mother had possessed such unworldly powers. The ultimate nemesis of every teenager, i.e., her parent, had become an omnipotent Goddess with no outward warning.

When they finished cleaning Kim’s room, Amada allowed Kim to come out and watch TV. Much to Kim’s dismay, her mother would only allow her to watch the children’s cartoon channel on cable TV rather than let Kim view MTV as was her usual wont.

At nine o’clock, Amanda said, "It’s time for little girls your age to go to bed!"

Kim protested that she hadn’t received the call from her boyfriend yet, but was reminded by her mother that Amanda intended to intercept the call and deal with her daughter’s boyfriend herself. Amanda helped her take off her overalls and into the baby-doll nightie that she had bought for Kim in anticipation of her rejuvenation into early childhood. Kim was aghast at the empire-length, pink, baby-doll nightgown with lacy white trim that her mother had bought for her to humiliate her. The arms of the nightie barely came down to over her elbows, and the total effect made her look even younger than the ostensible eight years old that she had physically become. However, because of the mouth-soaping her mother had given her earlier that night, she remained silent as her mother quickly disrobed her and slipped the frilly nightie over her head. When Kim looked down at her legs before she hopped into bed, she saw that the baby doll dress left her pink, white-ruffed panties fully exposed to public view.

Kim shivered in fear of what her mother might do next if she disobeyed her mother and was as polite as possible while her mother tucked her into her bed. Amanda nodded, then went into Kimberly’s walk-in closet and found flannelette blanket of her toddlerhood and the scruffy, fur-barren teddy bear which had been Kim’s favorite companion when she was young. She went back to her daughter’s bed, pulled up the coverlet and laid out the fleecy blanket against her daughter’s legs and waist. After she was properly tucked in for the night, Amanda placed the teddy bear between her daughter’s arms, and then kissed her goodnight as she did when her daughter was young.

As Amanda tucked her in, Kim closed her eyes. Although she had planned to escape the house in the middle of the night, however, her rejuvenated body’s demands for extra sleep and the warm comfort of the flannelette coverlet caused her to drowse off to sleep while she was considering her revenge on her mother.

When she awoke in her bed at six o’clock the next morning, Kim found herself cuddling her teddy bear as if she was a small child. She had the strangest feeling of cognitive dissonance; laying in the bed felt so warm and nice that she didn’t want to get up. She wanted to snuggle in the downy folds of her blankets and dream the morning away with the comforting sensation of the soft fur of the teddy bear against her chest. She felt so relaxed and secure, laying in bed like a baby girl. When her mind cleared itself of the night’s cobwebs, her mind shuddered in revulsion, causing her thin body to quiver and shake in response. Suddenly, Kim was overtaken by a falling sensation accompanied by intense nausea. The symptoms she felt were psychologically induced; there was nothing wrong with her aside from her inability to accept her maternally imposed rejuvenation. The idea of laying in bed like a little girl, cuddling a child’s teddy bear, made the teenaged mind of Kim want to throw up. Kim abruptly sat straight up in the bed to face her fate.

When she swung her feet over the side of her bed and stood up, her undies hung loose on the nethermost portion of her bottom, threatening to escape entirely from her diminished derrière. As the cotton panties which had become baggy overnight slithered down her slim childlike legs, she screamed the magic word which had resolved all issues when she was a tot; "Mommm!

A minute later Amanda came in to discover that her daughter had dwindled to pre-Kindergarten size during the night. Because Amanda had caused the transformation of Kim’s pattern, she was not surprised by her daughter’s regression into the body of a four-year-old. The nightie, which had been so short on her the night before, now reached down to her knees. Amanda chuckled at how adorable her little girl looked in the over-large baby doll nightie. The frilly short sleeves that had barely reached her elbows the night before reached half-way to her wrists as Kim’s shrunken shoulders allowed the surplus fabric from her shrunken shoulders to cause her sleeves to slide down her arms.

Since Amanda had planned the nocturnal halving of Kim’s age, she had purchased clothes to fit a four-year-old the day before. During the cleanup of her daughter’s room, she had secreted an outfit on the top shelf of Kim’s closet that would be exactly her size the next morning. Amanda came to her weeping daughter’s rescue and helped her step over the white pool of over-large pink, cotton panties pooled uselessly about her daughter’s tiny feet while she pulled the huge nightie over Kim’s head.

"Take a look at yourself in the mirror!", her mother ordered after she stripped the near-toddler down to her bare skin.

Kim walked over to her closet door and opened it to reveal the dressing mirror. Strangely, she had to reach up slightly to be able to turn the knob. When the door opened, she saw what had happened to her in the night; she had become a nursery schooler! From the immature features that reflected back at her in the mirror, she knew that couldn’t be more than four years old at the most! Her legs had become skinny and her chest had thinned to match. Her jaw and nose had receded while she slept, leaving her with chubby babyish face with huge brown eyes that stared back at her in innocent disbelief.

Amanda went into the closet and retrieved the clothes she had hidden the night before. "Sit down on the bed!", Amanda ordered as she emerged from the closet.

With tears filling the corners of her eyes, Kim trudged despondently over to her bed. Amanda was waiting for her at the side of her bed as Kim shuffled her bare feet against the carpet with an air of melancholic despair. "Sit on the edge of the bed, Kimmie!", commanded Kimmie’s mother, pointing to a spot in the middle of it’s length.

"My name is Kim! Not Kimmie!", replied the four-year-old in a high pitched squeak.

"Look down at yourself! Where have your boobies gone? Look at how thin your legs are! Do you honestly think you’re still a teenager? Do you remember going through puberty and growing hair in your pubic area? Can you find it? It’s gone, isn’t it? Where’s your ’bush’ now? Face it, Kimmie, you’re only four years old! I didn’t start calling you Kimberly until after you went to First Grade! You’re an older toddler now! Now sit on the bed like a good little girl and be quiet!", her mother commanded.

Kimmie sat down where Amanda indicated and was surprised when her mother placed her palm on Kimberly’s chest and pushed back as she said soothingly, "Lay down, Sweetheart! Mommy will dress you."

Kimmie lay on the bed helplessly as her mother lifted her legs and slipped a pair of panties over her feet. As Amanda pulled the cotton briefs over her daughter’s knees, Kimmie was aghast when she saw that the briefs were decorated with "Care Bear" prints. Kimmie squeezed her eyes tightly shut in humiliation while her mother lifted her legs further and pulled the elastic of the cotton panties over her behind. When she had finished arranging the little girl panties on Kimmie’s bottom, Amanda pushed Kimmie’s legs back so that they were folded up over her stomach and began putting socks on her daughter’s feet.

Amanda smiled for a moment at how cute Kimmie looked, then told her, "Sit up on the edge of the bed, Darling."

Kimmie unfolded her legs and struggled with the weak abdominal muscles of extreme youth as she forced herself to a sitting position. Her mother stood over her and said with a smile, "Raise your arms, Sweetheart, and help Mommy dress you! You’re not a baby. you know!"

"At least not yet!", Amanda thought to herself silently as she pulled the T-shirt over her daughter’s arms and settled it around her waist.

"Okay! Now lie down again so Mommy can dress you in your overalls!", Amanda ordered.

Amanda noted with some small satisfaction that Kimmie’s humiliation of being dressed by her mother as if she was a little girl who was too young to manage dressing herself was having the intended effect; Tears of mortification were rolling down the sides of Kimmie’s cheeks as she lay on the bed with her eyes held tightly shut.

Amanda pulled the short-alls up to her bottom and lifted Kimmie’s legs to work the fabric over her behind, then she took Kimmie’s right hand in hers and pulled Kimberly to a sitting position in order to fasten the bib to the short-all’s shoulder straps. It didn’t take long for Amanda to slip pink socks over Kimmie’s feet and buckle a pair of tiny white leather sandals on each foot. Amanda took a hair brush from the right rear pocket of her blue jeans and sat down on the bed beside her daughter. After brushing out the tangles of Kimmie’s slumber, Amanda parted Kimmie’s hair down the middle and plaited her daughter’s hair into two pigtails. She completed Kimmie’s ensemble by tying off each pigtail with a rubber band and adding a decorative "Care Bear" hair clip two inches up from the bottom of the pigtail. When she was done, she said, "Go to the mirror and see at how pretty you are in your new clothes, Sweetheart!"

Kimmie opened her eyes as she got up from the mattress and slowly plodded over to the mirror with downcast eyes. She was certain that her mother had dressed her in the most humiliating outfit she could find as punishment for her behavior. When she reached the mirror and saw her reflection, she burst out in tears! Standing before her was an adorable, blue-eyed, blonde-haired little girl who was wearing a pair of short-legged pink overalls with a huge picture of one of the "Care Bears" printed on the bib. Her beautiful mane of hair had been plaited into pigtails with matching "Care Bears" hair clips. When she looked down at her socks, Kimberly saw that they too, were pink with embroidered portraits of the "Care Bears"! Even if she found a way to escape her mother’s clutches, no one would ever believe that the reflection of the cute little toddler in the mirror had once been a teenager.

Amanda came up behind her daughter and said with a cruel smile, "I think you look darling in that outfit, Sweetheart! I’ll bet your friends would think so too! Mommy was thinking about going out tonight. What is the name of that friend of your from High School who babysits? Her name is Dorothy, isn’t it? Maybe Mommy should call her and see if she can come over and babysit you tonight. You’re much too young to leave her all by yourself! After she gives you your bath, puts you in your sleeper and tucks you into bed, she can read Winne the Poo and Dr. Seuss stories to you until you fall asleep. Wouldn’t that be nice?"

The thought of being babysat by one of her girlfriends was too much for Kimmie, she began to bawl like a little girl. Amanda knelt down beside her and said with mock tenderness, "Ohh, Sweetiepie! Mommy didn’t think that you’d mind spending an evening with one of your friends. After all, when Mommy was sick, you stayed out all night and most of the day after. Mommy thought that you’d be happy spending ‘special time’ alone with one of your friends while she went out. It’s obvious you’d miss your Mommy if she went out tonight. Don’t worry, Mommy will stay home and take care of you. Mommy’s sorry! But you were so rude to Mommy earlier, that she had no idea that you felt that way about needing her."

Kimmie threw her arms around Amanda’s neck and hugged her for emotional support as she wailed in a fit of helplessness and confusion. Amanda hugged her tightly, then patted her bottom affectionately like she had done when Kimberly was a toddler. After a while, Kimmie quieted and then choked on her sobs for a moment before she asked fearfully, "Mommy? Are you going to send me away? I’m scared of being little again!"

Amanda smiled down at the plaintive note in her little girl’s voice and cooed in an understanding maternal tone that covered up her true plans for the toddler at her feet, "That’s all right, Sweetheart. Don’t worry your little head about it. Everything will be alright. Come on, Mommy has breakfast all ready for you. When you’re finished eating you and watch TV or play with your toys on the carpet in front of the TV." "Okay, Kimmie?", Amanda asked gently.

"Okay, Mommy," answered a much relieved Kimmie.

Amanda stood up, then bent down and picked up Kimmie by the armpits. She seated her daughter on her right hip with one leg in front and one in back as she wrapped her right arm around Kimmie’s back, holding her bottom up with the palm of her hand the way she did when her daughter was a baby. Then she carried Kimmie out to the breakfast nook and seated her in the yellow plastic booster seat that she had placed in the chair before she began breakfast. Taking a paper napkin from the holder in the middle of the kitchen table, Amanda shook it out and tucked it into the bib of her short-alls to form an impromptu feeding bib. She left Kimmie where she was as she said, "Just sit there quietly, Kimmie. Mommy has breakfast all ready for you on the stove. I’ll be back in a minute."

Kimmie nodded in acquiescence as her mother ladled out a large bowl of John McCaan’s, steel-cut, Irish oatmeal that she had prepared for Kimmie’s breakfast. She opened the refrigerator with one hand and took out the small glass of fresh goat’s milk that she had decanted from the refrigerated carton earlier that morning. When she placed the bowl of oatmeal in front of Kimmie, the little girl made a frown of distaste. She absolutely abhorred oatmeal and her mother knew it!

As Kimmie picked up her spoon and scooped up a bit of the oatmeal from the bowl, Amanda seated herself across from Kimmie and sipped on her mug of morning coffee. Kimmie’s frown deepened as she considered the mushy light gray substance in the spoon before her. It was obvious that her mother was going to make her eat oatmeal every morning as part of her punishment. When she placed the spoon in her mouth, Kimmie discovered that aside from the small amount of salt that her mother had placed in the water while boiling the oatmeal, it was completely unseasoned. It was bad enough to be made to eat oatmeal for breakfast, Kimmie thought, but unsweetened oatmeal was horrid! Kimmie sighed and made a long reach across the table with the foreshortened arm of early childhood for the bear-shaped, clear plastic container of honey, only to find her hand being slapped for her efforts.

"No, no, Kimmie! Little girls your age mustn’t eat honey!", her mother decried as she moved the plastic container of honey out of Kimmie’s reach, "Don’t you remember that children under the age of five can get botulism from honey?"

Kimmie opened her mouth in surprise as she realized that her mother was right. When she had worked as a babysitter on weekends when she was fourteen, her mother had repeatedly warned her not to give honey to small kids. Kimmie closed her mouth and frowned as she realized that she had fallen into the category of very young children. She looked at her mother and asked politely, "Mommy, may I have some sugar for my oatmeal, please?"

Amanda shook her head and said, "No, Dear. Don’t you remember how hyper you got as a toddler when you ate sweets? I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some nice sweet cream here on the table for my coffee. Why don’t we sweeten your oatmeal with cream? Milk sugars don’t seem to have the same effect on toddlers that table sugar and candy does. Also, if I put some cream in your oatmeal, you won’t need any butter! Doesn’t that sound like a good idea to you?"

"Oookay, Mommy," Kimmie agreed grudgingly.

Amanda took the container of cream and poured a healthy dollop of fresh, heavy whipping cream into her daughter’s oatmeal bowl. Then she took the spoon from her daughter’s hand and mixed the concoction up until it had the consistency of a light porridge. She placed the spoon back in Kimmie’s hand and allowed her to feed herself.

The second time she tried a spoonful of oatmeal, Kimmie discovered that it wasn’t as bad as she had originally thought. The cream had sweetened the oatmeal considerably and the fats in the cream had given the fluffy, almost flowerlike kernels of Irish oatmeal a smooth, buttery taste. Suddenly, the ravenous hunger of early childhood seized her and she began ladling the oatmeal into her mouth as fast as she could swallow. Within minutes, the toddler had finished her bowl and looked to her mother for more.

Amanda smiled at her daughter’s reversal of opinion about oatmeal as she took the bowl from her hands and went back into the kitchen. When Kimmie was four, she had adored oatmeal with cream. It was only when she had gotten older that she had developed a distaste for the nutritious, fiber-rich breakfast. Apparently, the tastes of her childhood had returned with her rejuvenation. If so, then the rest of her plans for her daughter’s re-education would be swallowed by Kimmie as smoothly as the porridge that she had just eaten.

Instead of refilling Kimmie’s bowl with the scrapings from the nearly empty pot of oatmeal, Amanda reached to the back of the stove and grabbed the handle of the small pot she had left to keep warm at the rear. She took another bowl from the cupboard to her right and used a spatula to empty the contents of the pot into the clean bowl.

Amanda returned to the table and set her daughter’s breakfast desert in front of her. Kimmie looked at the purplish-black stew in front of her and asked with some annoyance, "What’s this, Mommy? I thought that you were going to give me more oatmeal!"

I’m afraid that we’re all out of oatmeal. This is your desert. Don’t you remember what it is? You used to love this dish when you were little!", Amanda responded.

Kimmie looked at the dish suspiciously and said, "No, I don’t remember. What’s this, Mommy?"

Amanda smiled as she took the spoon from her daughter’s hand and dug in with the spoon. She ladled out a heaping spoon full and brought it close to Kimmie’s mouth as she said, "You’ll remember just as soon as you taste it! Open wide, Sweetheart. I know you’ll love this!"

Kimmie did as she was told and allowed her mother to spoon-feed her the first taste of a dish she had eaten since early childhood. Kimmie had a hard time placing the flavor. It tasted somewhat like the bottle of Marsala that she and her boyfriend had consumed two days before when she had spent the night at his house making love all night. The taste of the fruity stew wasn’t unpleasant, but it had a decidedly odd flavor that she couldn’t put her finger on. Puzzled, she asked her mother again for a third time in a petulant tone, "What’s this, Mommy?"

"Has it been so long that my baby girl has forgotten?", Amanda asked condescendingly, "Those are stewed prunes, Sweetheart! You used to eat them every morning when you were four. Don't you remember how constipated you used to get after you were potty-trained?"

"No, Mommy," Kimmie answered truthfully.

"Well then," Amanda said gently, " I don’t want you to get constipated. Finish your breakfast and then you can watch TV or play. Okay?"

Kimmie finished her stewed prunes and was delighted to discover how good they tasted. When she took a sip from the small cup of milk in front of her, she was surprised by the thin, rich taste that it had. She couldn’t remember milk tasting so rich and sweet, but having such a thin feel on her tongue. After she gulped down half the glass, she asked her mother, "Mommy, this milk tastes strange! I like it! Is it a new brand?"

"No, Dear. I used to give it to you when you were young. After I stopped breast-feeding you, I started you on ordinary cow’s milk, but it upset your stomach. When I took you to your pediatrician, he recommended that I give you goat’s milk until you were older. I guess you were too young to remember that. You got over your sensitivity to cow’s milk by the time you were in Kindergarten, so I never gave you Goat’s milk again. I’m glad to hear that you like it!"

"Oooh," Kimmie replied with a childlike acceptance of her mother’s explanation. Somehow her toddler’s breakfast and her mother’s treatment of her had silenced the cortical censor of her teenaged mind. She put her spoon into the stewed prunes and finished them off with alacrity before she downed the rest of her milk in a single draught. When she had finished, she asked her mother, "Can I go watch TV now?"

Her mother chuckled at the purple-prune-stained oatmeal ring of uneaten food which surrounded her daughter’s mouth and replied merrily, "Just as soon as I wipe your face, Baby! Your face is an absolute mess!"

Kimmie sat still while her mother took the napkin from her neck and carefully wiped all the stray food from her face and chin. When her mother was done cleaning her face, she was helped down from her booster seat at the breakfast table and was led by the hand to be escorted into the family room to watch TV.

When her mother turned on the TV and finished setting the TV for her daughter’s viewing, Kimmie was a little surprised to discover that a "Care Bears" movie was on. Initially, she wanted to scream at her mother to change the channel, but after a few moments her attention had been captured and she became mesmerized by the animated story. Kimmie hadn’t noticed that her mother had set up the VCR to play a tape of a "Care Bear" movie that she had purchased the day before. Amanda had planned her daughter’s session with the TV with forethought and care; aside from the little "excursion" she had planned for them that morning, she had bought enough three-to-five-year-old-level, "Care Bear" movies to last until the early afternoon, when she would begin showing her still rejuvenating daughter two-to-three-year-old-level "Barney" tapes for her still youthening mind.

While Kimmie watched the tape, Amanda went to the spare bedroom and completed her work on the decor. She had purchased some fast-drying acrylic paints and stencils the day before and wanted to finish off the room in grand style. The murals she had started were almost done, but with the powers that had come with her transformation she could visualize an incredibly detailed, grand design for her daughter’s new abode. The final touches she had in mind would turn the decorations into a masterpiece of psychological jujitsu! With her four-year-old daughter engrossed in the "Care Bears" tape, she had time to finish her decorating. Since the paint dried in two hours, it would be ready when she needed it that night.

When Amanda finished painting the room, she gathered up Kimmie and her purse to carry them to the car. After strapping Kimmie in the backseat of their car, Amanda drove down to the lottery bureau and turned in the winning ticket. Although Kimmie wanted to scream out what her mother had done to her, she was terrified by her mother’s powers. She sat quietly in the baby seat that her mother placed her in, looking embarrassed at being publicly dressed and displayed as a prettily dressed little girl in pink ruffles and bows.

Her mother took her with her to the IRS office and held her while she completed the forms for mandatory tax payments after winning the lottery. Even though she had not won the lottery, Amanda’s magick made it appear as if her sudden wealth had come from that source. Since she could produce banknotes on demand, the value of her personal holdings was a moot point. Her trip to the IRS office was "pro forma" at best. After filling out the income tax forms, both for the State and the IRS, Amanda filled out another form that would directly deposit the whole of her newly won fortune in her checking account. Once she had insured that she would always have adequate funds, she carried the four-year-old Kimmie on her hip back to the car to go home.

When they got home again, Amanda sat Kimberly in front of the TV and started up another "Carebear" tape while she went back to decorating. Every hour or so, Amanda would come in the family room and sit for a time as the current tape ended, then she would pop another tape in the VCR and set it to play. After the first tape, Amanda was pleased to see that her daughter was sitting on the floor with her right thumb in her mouth as she watched the movie. Even though she retained her teenaged personality, Kimmie’s physical behavior was regressing to match her physiological age whether she willed it or no. Since the spell/pattern change that Amanda had imposed on Kimberly’s aura made her age halve every twelve hours, she knew that Kimmie was steadily regressing into a two-year-old. Since the age regressing/rejuvenation spell had been cast at six P.M. the previous evening with a twelve-hour halving pattern, Amanda knew that Kimmie would become a two-year old by six o’clock that night and become a one-year-old baby by six the next morning.

At noon Amanda set out a lunch suitable for the toddler that her three-year-old daughter had become. Instead of using the booster seat, Amanda made Kimmie sit in the high chair that she had purchased the day before. Kimmie whimpered a bit as her mother drew the strap up between her legs and fastened the buckle behind her in the high chair, but seemed pleased by her lunch plate of macaroni and cheese. Kimmie was even more pleased by being allowed the privilege to feed herself with a small white rubber-coated spoon. Kimmie spooned the cheesy pasta unassisted into her mouth with evident pleasure, making the expected toddler’s mess of her face and lap because of her diminishing lack of fine motor control.

An hour later while watching TV, Kimmie had an embarrassing accident in her panties. She was so engrossed in the "Barney" tape that she didn’t notice what she had done until the smell that emanated from her soiled bottom migrated to her nose. Not only had she peed, but her loose bowels had made a movement in her pants. Kimmie’s teenaged mind panicked, causing her to run to the front door in an attempt to flee the consequences of her childish accident. When Amanda caught up with her, she was futilely attempting to turn the knob of the locked and bolted front door with both hands.

"Kimmie! Just where do you think you’re going!," her mother cried as she swept up the two-year-old from her feet and carried her back to the family room.

Kimmie looked up at her Mommy with tearful eyes and explained her behavior with eyes that refused to met her mother’s, "I had an accident, Mommy. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!"

"You smell stinky, little girl! Did you make a poo-poo in your panties?", Amanda asked.

"Yes, Mommy," Kimmie admitted shamefaced.

"Why didn’t you tell Mommy?", her mother asked in a maternal tone.

Kimmie answered with a voice that trembled with remorse as she stammered in fear, "I…I..was…was ashamed, Mo..mo..Mommy! I didn’t want you to tink I was a little ba..baby! I’m ss…thorry that I twied to wun away! I got..scr…scared!"

Her mother hugged her and said, "I think it’s time for your bath anyway, so it won’t be any more trouble for me to clean your dirty hiney. After your bath, I’ll dress you in some clothes that will insure that you won’t have to worry about little "accidents" like this in the future. Is that okay?"

"Yes, Mommy," Kimmie agreed in relief. She had thought that she would be punished. Instead, her mother was being very understanding of her loss of her potty-training skills. She couldn’t understand her mother’s attitude, she expected to be scolded at the very least and had realistically had thought that she might paddled for loosing control of herself.

Her mother took her in the bathroom and ran a large tub full warm water laced with bubble bath. While they were waiting for the tub to fill, Amanda removed Kimmie’s clothes and used several baby wipes to clean her behind which embarrassed Kimmie to no end. After all, she thought in dismay as her bottom was being wiped, she wasn’t a baby!

Kimmie’s mother removed the rubber bands from Kimmie’s hair and helped her into the tub before she scrubbed her daughter’s body diligently. Amanda gave Kimmie’s hair a shampoo with baby shampoo and conditioner before she rinsed off her little girl and drained the tub. When the tub was empty, Amanda used a pair of scissors and proceeded to give Kimmie’s hair a short cut that lay close to her head. Kimmie’s hair cut was followed by a home permanent to make her hair curl up in ringlets next to her skull. Although Kimmie whimpered while the foul-smelling (With an overpowering ammonia reek that smelled just like badly spoiled cloth diapers.) setting solution was on her hair underneath the plastic wrapping that her mother had wound about her head, she remained, on the whole, silent throughout the procedure.

When her mother had finished perm’ing her hair and blow drying it, she led her daughter by hand back into her bedroom. She lifted her daughter and placed her on her bed and admonished her to remain as she was until her return. When Amanda came back with a thickly padded, plastic-coated cotton brief in her hand, Kimmie whimpered again. In a thrice, Kimmie was clothed in a pair of waterproof plastic training pants and a clean white T-shirt. Amanda allowed her to look in her dressing mirror after she had been dressed and Kimmie was dismayed to discover that the image of a curly haired blonde two-year-old with adorably tiny ringlets of hair had replaced the reflection which she had seen in her reflection that morning.

Even though Kimmie found her regression into toddlerhood deplorable, at least the clothes she wore were somewhat less embarrassing. True, the absorbent foam padding of her training pants made the front of the pink plastic-coated undies bulge a little, but at least they weren’t covered with the damnitable "Care Bears"motif that the teenaged mind of Kimberly abhorred.

Of course, she hadn’t gotten scot-free of juvenile decoration; the panty’s plastic had been imprinted with multiple pictures of the purple dinosaur, "Barney". The combination of pink and purple was one only a small child would endure. The simple white T-shirt she wore pleased her the most; it was wholly free of decoration.

After Kimmie’s bath, her mother hoisted her up by her armpits and carried her on her hip back out to the family room. Amanda switched the taped and put in a "Barney" tape for little Kimmie to watch.

Although the teenaged part of Kimmie’s mind loathed the image of the silly purple character, her infantile subconscious was enchanted by the image of a singing dinosaur. Despite herself, she began unconsciously singing along with the song, "I love you! You love me! We’re one big family!…"

Kimmie’s anatomy dissolved into infancy as the day and mindless video tapes drew her into childish oblivion. By six o’clock, her age had halved again and she had both wet and messed in her training pants without noticing it. Her right thumb had taken up permanent residence in the corner of her mouth. When her mother came for her, the two-year-old body who was happily wallowing in the warm slippery mud created by the combination of her pee and poop that she had made in her training pants gurgled in delight at her mother’s attentions.

Amanda looked at the yellow stain on beneath the front of her little girl’s training pans and said, "Oh, Dear, it looks like you’ve gone pee-potty in your pants again! By the smell, I think you’ve made a poo-potty too!"

Amanda said as she picked Kimmie up and saddled her on her hip to carry her to her new room, "Let’s go get you changed into some clean clothes!"

Kimmie could not see where they were going because of her backwards-facing position as her mother held her to her chest and carried her into the room adjoining the master bedroom.

Amanda laid her gingerly on the plastic covered-foam pad of the changing table that she had assembled the day before and removed the loose, soiled training pants from the baby girl’s behind. She took a baby wipe from the plastic bin at the rear of the changing station and quickly cleaned Kimmie’s filthy bottom. After Amanda cleansed Kimmie’s nether regions and groin, she lightly powdered the baby girl’s groin. Kimmie squirmed, but said nothing as Amanda quickly diapered her in a pair of doubled, soft, cotton flannelette diapers and slipped a waterproof, soft, pink-plastic, baby panty up the two-year-old baby girl’s legs.

When Amanda finished dressing her, Kimmie put her hands down to her crotch to feel what her mother had done. When she felt the soft plastic of the panties give under her fingertips and met the thick padding of the fabric diaper beneath, Kimmie began to whimper, "No dydees, Mommy! Prease, no dydees!"

Amanda picked her up and patted her diapered bottom maternally, saying, "Don’t cry, Baby! Don’t you remember? You weren’t potty-trained until you were almost four! When you were two, you made messes in your dydees day and night. Now that you’re two again, you’ll need to wear dydees."

"Come on, Baby," Amanda said as she lifted Kimmie from the changing table and carried her to the brand-new white crib that occupied the west wall of the room, "Mommy will put you in your crib while she makes you a nice bottle of warm formula. After you’ve had your milk, she’ll put you down for a little nap before dinner.

]

Kimmie gripped the white, lathe-turned spindles of the American Colonial-styled crib between her tiny fists and stared out at the nursery as her mother left the room. Kimmie was in a state of total confusion; the day before she had been sixteen years old and on the top of the world. She had truly believed that she was the equal of anyone she saw. She was the one who directed her life; not the councilors at school nor her mother. She did as she pleased and came and went as she pleased. No one held sway over her existance.

Without warning, her world had been turned upside-down. Within twenty-four hours she had become a diaper-dependent, two-year-old toddler who had been relegated to a room of the house she had never seen before. Her sudden transformation into early toddlerhood, plus the unaccustomed viewpoint of facing backwards over her mother’s shoulder while she was held tightly to Amanda’s chest as she was carried from room-to-room had completely disoriented her. Kimmie had no idea that the nursery where she found herself in was her mother’s former sewing and storage room.

The identification of her location in the house was made even more difficult by the extensive redecorating that her mother had done before and after Kimmie had returned home. Amanda had circumscribed the storage room with a painting of a black, three-foot tall, black, wrought-iron fence that made the nursery look like it was walled off from the world by bars of heavy iron spikes. Outside of the fence, she had created a mural with a park-like backdrop of multihued, green-leafed trees, blossoming bushes and varicolored flowers. While she hadn’t changed the wall’s off-white paint beneath the waist-high, mural of an iron fence, she had tinted the wall above with a gradually deepening blue that was almost white at the top of the fence and midnight navy blue at the ceiling. The ceiling itself had been painted with several coats of midnight navy blue which was adorned with shimmering, laser-cut, silvered, holographic stars which seemed to dance in the sunlight with a multihued diffraction aura. Amanda had painted a series of clouds around the walls room at an adult eye level with fluffy white ends and dark blue-grey, rain-foreboding centers. Next to the corners of the room, Amanda had painted large, diapered teddy bears sitting with a balloon or two under the escaped balloons.

Once the latex paint was dry, she had used acrylic paints to both create the mural as well as stencil the wall with groups of brightly colored balloons beneath the clouds. In a final touch worthy of a cunning artist, she had hot-glued strings of jute to the wall beneath the painted portrayal of the balloons to form three-dimensional strings that "held" the balloons in place. She had mounted a pair of cast-iron "horse-head" coat racks to the walls on opposite sides of the room with heavy-duty molly-bolts at the same height as the fence through the plasterboard and had painted in four-inch thick, black iron posts to give the viewer the impression that they were hitching posts for ponies rather than coat racks. The ends of the jute strings were tied in a bundle at both ends of each "hitching post" to complete the illusion. To add to the illusion, she had painted tiny groups of "lost" balloons of various diameters entering the clouds and had hot-glued pieces of thick tan thread to simulate the visual effect of diminishing size with distance.

The overall effect was fabulous. If a person looked around the room, he or she got the distinct impression that the room was a wrought-iron enclosed area of a park at twilight. Aside from the rose drapes with the teddy bear motif, the nursery had the emotional "feel" of being outdoors. Psychologically, the room was devastating for any occupant but an actual infant. The room abounded with symbols of lost freedom and infantile restrictions that wouldn’t be understood by an infantile mind, but would be devastating to a more mature mind who was forced to live in the room. The multicolored balloons whose strings were tightly tied to the cast-iron hitching posts symbolized the impossibility of escape from the bonds that Amanda had formed, while the diminishing size of the groups of balloons that free-floated into the clouds represented the loss of control over one’s dreams and ambitions. The dark rain clouds depicted on the wall of the nursery gave the occupant a feeling that they would soon be wet, while the diapered teddy bears gave a clue as to where the wetness would come from and how it would be contained as well as the lack of control of the teddy bears. The midnight blue color of the ceiling gave no reference point to focus the mind on other than the stars which threw off "real 3-dimensional images" of rainbow holograms that made the observer doubt his or her sanity. The sharp points of the mural of the black wrought-iron spikes gave the viewer the impression of a deadly barrier to freedom while the fence itself emphasized the limitations and defined the area in which the occupant would re-experience babyhood. All in all, Amanda’s decor was a master stroke of dark genius that would psychologically grind her daughter’s psyche down into early infancy over a short period of time.

In counterpoint to the theme of the wall mural, all the main pieces of furniture in the nursery had that airy, dainty, slightly feminine feel that only the highest examples of finely crafted, white-painted, American Colonial baby furnishings can impart. Everything matched in color and style. From looking at the furniture, Kimmie knew that the dresser, the changing table, the tiny armoire, high chair and crib had been purchased as a set along with the drapes and border. Teddy bears of the same design and coloration abounded everywhere! Even the comforter draped over the end of her crib had the same motif!

Kimmie looked up from her position on her back on the crib mattress and silently "damned" her mother inventiveness in the nursery’s decor. Above her hung a battery-operated "Barbie" mobile that depicted all the elements of "Barbie’s" bourgeoisie "La Dulce Vita" that Kimmie was fated to miss as a perpetual infant. Whenever Kimmie moved, the motion sensors in the mobile above her head turned on the mobile’s motor and began to slowly rotate small plastic models of "Barbie’s" imagined perfect existence into the direct view of the baby below. Miniature plastic models of Barbie’s car, renowned house, her beach home, her houseboat, her party RV, her plane and yacht swung around in slow motion above Kimmie’s head. Kimmie’s teenaged personality was sickened by the entire idea of playing with a Barbie doll. She rolled over in utter disgust and used the slats on the crib side to pull herself erect.

Her standing view of the nursery gave Kimmie no reason to celebrate. If anything, the feeling of being imprisoned behind the bars of the nursery’s crib made her feel like she was a caged novelty to be exhibited for public derision. She dropped to her knees in despair and began exploring the limits of her infantine world on her hands and knees.

Kimmie moved around the crib, silently damning the thick folds of cloth that impeded the free movement of her legs. The bulkiness of the double thickness of diapers bunched up at the bottom and made it impossible for her to bring her thighs together. As a consequence, she had to assume the unfamiliar, wide-gaited stance of a baby who had just learned to walk in order for her to ambulate around the bed. If the spindles of the crib railings hadn’t been there to support her, she was sure she would have fallen and been forced to creep on her hands and knees. When she got to the end of the crib, she looked out over what would be her new bedroom and saw a large, white-painted toybox down by the foot of the crib. She saw one of the chairs from the kitchen standing next to it and realized that it was the only piece of furniture that didn’t match. For some strange reason, the discontinuity of decorative motif bothered her; it implied that her mother hadn’t finished with her nursery yet. By extension, that implied that her mother hadn’t finished with her punishment! The idea that her mother had deeper plans for her made Kimmie pee in her diapers in a momentary paroxysm of terror.

A minute or two later, Amada entered the nursery with a bottle of baby formula that had been warmed to body temperature that she carried in the side pocket of her jeans. Amanda lowered the side rail of the crib and gently hoisted the diapered toddler into her arms. Then she took her over to the kitchen chair beside the end of the crib and sat down to cuddle the baby girl in her lap. After a half-a-minute of rearranging, Kimmie found herself laying back against her mother’s arm, looking up as her mother nestled her comfortably in the hollow of her shoulder. Kimberly watched in horror as the nipple of the baby bottle which Amanda had taken from her pocket descended towards her mouth. Surely her mother didn’t really mean for her to nurse from a baby bottle!

Kimmie’s fires of disbelief were quenched in a deluge of wet, lukewarm formula as the latex nipple of the baby bottle was forced between her teeth and she gulped in surprise at the steady stream of formula that was forced down her throat. Her gulp had caused a slight vacuum in her mouth and had allowed a jet of the formula to squirt in. Unbeknownst to her, Amanda had purchased one of the newest baby bottle designs on the market. It allowed a baby’s caregiver to apply pressure at the base of the bottle and force the liquid into a baby’s mouth whether the baby sucked on the nipple or not. Kimmie grabbed both sides of the bottle in self-defense as the formula continued to stream into her mouth. She soon found herself nursing on the nipple in order to regulate the flow of formula so that she wouldn’t choke. When the bottle was three-quarters finished, Amanda put a cloth diaper over her shoulder like she had done when Kimberly was a very small baby and held her to her chest. She patted Kimmie’s back gently a few times, producing a loud (and particularly embarrassing) eructation from the stomach of her two-year-old daughter.

Kimmie was so dismayed by her huge belch that she whimpered in mortification. Hearing her daughter’s muted cries, Amanda let her down from her shoulder and held her close to her bosom as she rocked back and forth. A minute later, the toddler’s shrunken, inelastic infant bladder responded to the signals from a tummy full of formula by immediately emptying the balance of its contents into her diaper. Kimmie’s state of embarrassment reached its nadir when she felt a stream of urine trickle down between her legs to soak the thick diaper that separated them. When the warm pee began to crept up the back of the absorbent cloth, she hid her head in humiliation between her mother’s breasts and whimpered in temporary surrender to her ignominious infantile fate.

Amanda carried Kimmie back to her crib and laid her down for a nap before dinner. Although the slight increase in warmth that emanated from the back Kimmie’s soaked diaper had alerted her to her daughter’s need of a diaper change, she decided to wait until Kimmie woke from her nap. Aside from the practical necessity of allowing her baby girl’s body to fully void itself, Amanda thought that the experience of sleeping in a warm, wet diaper would bring home the vast change in Kimmie’s social station to her teenaged mind. Besides, Amanda knew from past experience that the doubled diaper would wick most of the moisture away from Kimmie’s skin unless she really soaked her diaper.

Amanda tucked the toddler in and made sure that the teddy bear which she had given Kimmie the night before was within close reach. Within minutes, the sharply rising blood sugar of the tiny girl caused her to begin softly snoring as she drifted off into a deep, dreamless, utterly secure, infantine slumber within the warm, wet confines of her soggy diapers.

Kimmie awoke to find her diaper being changed by her mother. When she began to object, Amanda placed a pacifier between her lips to silence the outraged murmurings of the soaking wet toddler. Although Kimmie objected mentally to the pacifier, her newly awoken infantile reflexes caused her to begin sucking on the orthodontic nipple the minute it was placed in her mouth. When Amanda had finished changing her daughter, she carried Kimmie into the breakfast nook, strapped her into the high chair and snapped a hard plastic bib around her neck. Kimmie watched in dismay as her mother brought her plate of toddler food and placed it on the locked-down tray in front of her, placing a small, blue-rubber-coated, feeding spoon in her daughter’s hand.

"Eat your din-din!", her mother said encouragingly to the small girl, "Or do you want Ma-ma to spoon feed you like a ‘little’ baby?"

Kimmie gave her mother a look of disgust at the thought of being spoon-fed and declared independently, "No, Mommy! I can feed myself!"

The dinner was not one that she would have chosen herself, but Kimmie found it palatable enough to eat without retching. The meal was softer than the macaroni and cheese that she had eaten for lunch, but still had a somewhat solid basis. Kimmie was disturbed by being placed in a feeding bib like an infant. Did it imply that she was going to get still younger? As it was, she had discovered that she had an almost overpowering urge to suck her thumb. How far did her mother intend for her punishment to go? Was she going to end up as a pre-weaned, nursing babe in arms?

Kimmie wished she had looked closer at the dress her mother had shown her the day before. She had the impression that the dress was sized to fit a twelve-month-old baby, but she couldn’t be absolutely sure. If her mother regressed her into a one-year-old, she would lose her ability to speak other than in unintelligible gurgles and babbles. Once that happened, she’d have no chance to escape her fate. She’d become her mother’s baby girl in fact.

With an anticipatory shudder of horror, Kimmie foresaw a near future that was rushing towards her in which she became a docile, accepting, infant-in-arms. She would enjoy her nursing formula from her baby bottles and crawling around the carpet at her mother’s feet while she made poopies and pee-pees in the soft, comfortable folds of the dydees that confined her loins. Kimmie had a vision of herself as a baby at a Daycare center, crawling around wearing nothing but a disposable diaper as she explored and played with baby toys that surrounded her on the babies’ playroom floor amidst a group of similarly clad infants. The expression on the baby’s face in her vision truly disturbed her; her drooling countenance appeared to be completely happy and content as she twaddled and gibbered incontinently upwards towards the smiling faces of the young matrons who looked after the needs of a former teenaged body that had slid backwards in time until it had regressed into a babyish condition that was completely beyond Kimmie’s conscious control.

When Kimmie had finished feeding herself, Amanda used a wet washcloth to cleanse her face, then unstrapped her daughter from the high chair. To Kimmie’s surprise, she was not taken back to her crib, but she was carried into the family room to be sat in the mesh-walled playpen that Amanda had emplaced in the corner of the family room while Kimmie slept. Amanda popped a pacifier in Kimmie’s mouth and left her to become acquainted with her new surroundings while she put the next stage of her plan in action.

Kimmie watched the mesh-distorted image of her mother as she sat in confusion on the plastic floor of the playpen. Unknown to her, her resurrected infantile reflexes were causing her to voraciously nurse on her pacifier unconsciously as she crawled about the playpen and examined the toys that her mother had left to amuse her.After her nap, Kimmie had found that standing had become much to difficult for the weak muscles of her infant’s legs and as a consequence, Kimmie had begun creeping around on her knees from place to place on all fours. Kimmie dawdled a bit and toyed with a complex rattle that was constructed of a series of concentric rubber spheres formed by a triad of geodesic arches that constituted each layer. In the middle of the toy was a clear plastic sphere with a number of multi-colored beads that rattled noisily around internal baffles when the toy was rotated or moved.

For some odd reason, Kimmie found the toy fascinating; she dropped the pacifier from her mouth and put the toy to her lips to explore it further. As she wrapped her lips around one of the rubber arches that formed the outermost shell, a pleasant hissing and rattling noise issued from the strange toy.

The voice of Amanda’s Avatar spoke again to her soulmate as Amanda looked lovingly down at the baby girl she had created from her foul-mouthed teenaged daughter, " You’ve done very, very, well! Little Kimmie is coming along nicely. But haven’t you forgotten someone? Don’t you remember your former boyfriend, Mark? He was such a baby! Don’t you remember wanting to marry and settle down with him so you could have a little baby boy? Why couldn’t HE be your baby boy? After all, it’s not like anyone would miss him! He’s such a non-entity! You’d love and care for him just like Kimmie!"

"But he isn’t mine!", replied Amanda.

"But he could be…forever…If…If you want to have a baby boy!", cooed the voice persuasively.

"I don’t know…", temporized Amanda.

"I’ve seen his life and I can assure you that he’ll be happier for the change. You’ll be happier too! Once you’ve done this, I won’t ask anything else because you’ll have created the happy future that I’m part of. We will merge into the same person because you’ll have become me. Give poor Mark a chance to be happy again! He’d love to be your baby rather than the depressed adult he’s become. It’s an act of charity. Please do it, if not for me, or yourself, than for him!", the voice pleaded.

"How can I be sure that you’re telling me the truth?", Amanda demanded.

"Look now! And see what a miserable excuse for a man he’s become!", the voice said as it flashed images of Mark sitting at home in a depressed state, eating box after box of New York-style, chocolate Grenache-topped, eclairs filled with sweetened heavy cream flavored with real vanilla while weeping in a fit of desperate loneliness and despair.

Amanda was so moved by the scene of Mark’s angst that she decided to call Mark immediately. Kimmie was so enchanted with her odd toy that she never heard her mother pick up the phone and call her ex-boyfriend.