Published: October 8th 2022, 12:00:05 pm
"What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?" Pat demanded, arms crossed, almost before Brigid was all the way inside the house. She should have known she'd be immediately upset with her, even though she hadn't heard Carissa call her to explain things... It was possible the girl had done so before she'd picked Brigid up, but more likely, Pat had simply seen the change in Brigid's records on the school's system, and instantly knew.
In a way, it was nice, and certainly convenient... She didn't have to hand over a note, or stammer her way through an explanation; it also meant, however, that she didn't have a chance to spin it in her favor. How she would have done that, she didn't know, but she would have at least made an attempt, if she'd been able to. It was different, doing it now, when Pat already had all the facts.
"I-I was just trying to get to the bathroom!" she whined, stomping her foot. "It wasn't my fault!"
"I find that very unlikely," Pat informed her, furrowing her digital brow. "I could see that leading to you leaving class without permission, but you also lied several times, and tried to run away, and..." Brigid could have sworn she heard a hint of discomfort in the AI's voice, though perhaps that was only her imagination filling things in, thanks to the pause between words, "attempted to do something very inappropriate with your teacher."
Brigid's face turned bright red, having hoped that part wouldn't have made its way into her file. Carissa giggled behind her, making her wonder if that part had been a surprise to her, if she hadn't been informed of it, or if she was simply amused by the thought of it all over again. Maybe this could help her, could make Pat see that she wasn't a little kid... It still made Brigid squirm, hearing it brought up, and having it laughed at, her head lowering in shame to stare down meekly at her feet; it had a much different impact on Pat, however.
"I've never seen anything like this kind of behavior from you before," Pat said. "I don't know where you got that idea, but clearly I haven't done a good enough job of monitoring what you do and watch. That is obviously going to change from now on."
Brigid groaned, letting out a quiet, "No..." It already felt like Pat was watching her every move... How could she possibly do any more than that? Brigid really didn't want to find out, though, unfortunately, it seemed that she was about to.
"Yes, young lady," Pat put her hands on her hips and glared. "For now, I want you to go to your room and think about what you've done, understand?"
Brigid sighed, embarrassed about the childish punishment, but, honestly, it might have been for the best. She didn't want to stay around them any longer than she had to while she still had a diaper under her uniform, and at least there would be some privacy in her room. Or, rather, something that felt like privacy... Pat would certainly be watching, whether Brigid could see her or not.
"Yeah," Carissa added. "Run along, and I'll come check on you in a bit!"
"No," Pat contradicted coldly. "I need you to do something else for me."
Carissa seemed as surprised by that as Brigid, though she let it go with a shrug. "Okay. I'll see how you're doing afterwards, then."
Pat looked as if she wanted to say something, yet didn't, gesturing for Brigid to head for the hallway. Brigid obeyed, shuffling along, hearing her diaper crinkling between her legs as she slunk past the hologram, feeling its eyes on her, as silly as that was... Her real eyes weren't on that image, they were everywhere, and Brigid had no idea where most of them were hidden. She definitely sensed the AI's intent, however, its disapproval and disappointment with her.
Brigid paused for a moment outside the bathroom door, peering back, seeing Pat already speaking to Carissa. Distraction, of course, didn't mean the same thing to Pat as it would to a human, but Brigid still felt safe enough to reach her hand out, give the bathroom doorknob a jiggle. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, it was locked, and by the time she gave up and turned away, there was another Pat standing behind her.
"I told you to go to your room, didn't I?" she demanded.
"Y-Yes, ma'am," Brigid blushed, peering past that Pat to the one in the living room with Carissa. There was nothing she could do here that Pat wouldn't see, wouldn't know about... "I-I just..."
Pat's expression softened slightly. "Do you need to use the potty?"
She didn't, not really... Her bladder still hadn't refilled after her last accident in the corner. The bathroom had felt like it would give her a bit more privacy to sit and think than her bedroom, though, after whatever Carissa had done yesterday, she wasn't so sure.
Pat took her silence as an answer, a small smile spreading across her face. "I can have Carissa come help you, if you like."
"N-No," Brigid shook her head. "I-I could do it myself..."
"I'm afraid you don't have the permissions to do that, Brigid," Pat reminded her. "I can't let you in there on your own."
"But..." Brigid shifted in place, thinking. "What if I really, really had to go, and Carissa wasn't around? Or I needed to take a shower?"
If she'd thought she had Pat there, she was wrong, the hologram not even pausing before answering, "That's why you have your diapers now," she said. "And it is far too dangerous to allow small children to stay in the bathtub by themselves, so you'll only be getting bathed while under direct supervision."
"I'm not a small child!" Brigid pouted, although it was hard to deny that was how it looked, her standing there in her school uniform and diapers, having just gotten home from school.
"Excuse me," Pat smiled. "You're a big kid now, aren't you?"
Brigid huffed, rolling her eyes. "No! I'm..!"
"Don't think you're fooling me," Pat warned her. "You need to go to your room, young lady. You aren't going to get out of it by arguing with me." With that, she vanished.
"I-I wasn't trying..." Brigid blushed. "I-If I was...!" She was a lawyer! If she had wanted to argue, she would have been great at it, could have won it, even when she was going up against a computer! Or, rather, that's what she might have assumed, before coming here, before meeting Pat... Now, it felt like she hadn't won anything in weeks, certainly not against the AI.
Scowling, she trudged to her room, closing the door behind herself, hearing the lock click shut, trapping her in the pink nightmare of her bedroom. She had no doubt that Carissa or Pat could come in whenever they wanted... The lock was just for her, just to keep her there to 'think about what she'd done.' She sighed, looking around, her entire face lighting up as she saw her potty training chart.
If Pat had known about everything else that had happened at school, it made sense, of course, that she'd know about the 'accidents', such as they were, but, somehow Brigid was still mortified to see them marked on her chart, one more frowny face 'sticker', along with a new one that looked even more upset, tears streaming down its cheeks, that could mean only one thing.
"No!" she protested, shaking her head, wishing she could run up to it and rip it off, though, of course, that was impossible, since it was just an image on the screen that was her wall. "Pat, I didn't have..." She blushed, unable to say it out loud. "I-I didn't do that! I don't deserve that sticker! I tried so, so hard to make it to the bathroom on time, and I did! I-It was only a little bit that got on my Pull-Ups! I-It doesn't count!"
Pat could hear her - as upset as she was, and as loud as she found herself getting, without meaning to, she suspected Carissa could, too - but the AI showed so sign of it, not showing up to respond, or saying anything through the speakers, and certainly not erasing that awful image from Brigid's chart. Even with no context, it was obvious what it meant, would have been to anybody who saw that chart... Either that, or they'd assume she was always messing herself, and had somehow only wet herself once, though that would be less likely, if far more humiliating for her.
Not that she expected to have many house guests anytime soon. Even if she did, there was no way she'd let them see this room, let them see where she slept now... There was no hint of her adult bedroom - or any of the rest of her adult lifestyle - left here, nothing that would make it stand out from the bedroom of any other little girl who happened to be struggling with her potty training well beyond the point when she should have been in big girl panties.
She did her best to ignore it, to pretend it wasn't there, but every time her eyes wandered to the wall where the chart was, that was immediately where they were drawn, that one different sticker standing out like a sore thumb, getting under her skin more and more, until, finally, she couldn't take it anymore.
"Pat!" she stomped her foot. "I didn't poop my pants!"
It took her by surprise, blurting it out like that, admitting it, even under the guise of saying it hadn't happened. Hearing those words from her own mouth shook her, made her cheeks heat up, recalling how close she'd been, how, if she'd waited any longer, if she'd been any slower, if the teachers had caught her, she absolutely would have done that, would have made a far bigger mess in her trainers, and really earned that sticker.
But she hadn't! It had been a very, very close call, but she'd won! She wasn't going to let the stupid nurse marking it down in her chart wrong haunt her this way! She stormed over to her desk - which was also pink now, as opposed to the dignified dark brown it had been before - and tore open the drawers, stomach churning as she saw that all her important paperwork had vanished, replaced with coloring books and basic worksheets offering to help teach her the alphabet, and how to count to ten.
"No, Brigid," Pat's voice scolded over the speaker, the desk starting to slide into the wall. "You're supposed to be thinking about your behavior. No coloring."
Brigid hadn't even thought of that until the AI mentioned it, but that inspired her to grab a pack of crayons from the desk before it vanished into the wall, a panel sliding shut behind it, as if it had never existed in the first place. "What are you doing, Brigid?" Pat demanded. "Put those down, young lady."
Brigid didn't answer; instead, she walked over to the chart, opening up the crayons, debating for a moment whether the blue or purple was darker before settling on the latter, pulling it out and letting the rest of the package fall to the floor, where it was sucked down almost instantly. "Good girl," Pat told her. "Now, go sit on your bed quietly."
If this were a person Brigid was dealing with, she might have waited, given her a chance to walk out of the room, to get a little distance... It wasn't, however, so it didn't matter if she did it now, or an hour from now, the result would be the same. She lifted her hand upwards, reaching out with the crayon she'd hidden behind her palm, and began to scribble over the offending sticker.
"Brigid!" Pat exclaimed. "Stop that right now!"
Really, there was no reason for her to. She should have known that Pat would be smart enough to only provide her with crayons that wouldn't work on the walls - that, or the walls had been built specifically to withstand that sort of thing, in case a little kid lived there - but no matter how hard she pressed, nothing happened, other than the tip of the crayon flattening.
"It's not fair!" Brigid told her again. "I didn't do it!"
The chart shifted upwards on the wall, out of her reach, though that didn't stop her from getting up on her tip-toes, stretching as far as she could, not caring that her diaper might be peeking out from beneath the hem of her dress while she did so. "Take it off!" she commanded. "I didn't poop my pants! I'm not a baby! I don't deserve to be in these stupid diapers! It's not fair!"
She gasped as she felt a hand close around hers, turning back to see Carissa behind her, the bedroom door now standing open, the babysitter apparently having entered in the midst of her tantrum without her noticing. "You stop that right now, you little brat!" Carissa snatched the crayon away from her, tossing it on the floor for it to be vacuumed down with the rest.
Brigid didn't have time to watch it, however; she was too busy being dragged over to her bed, where Carissa sat down on the edge, pulling her, kicking and thrashing, over her lap. "No!" Brigid squealed, immediately disproving her insistence that she didn't need her diapers, feeling a fearful stream of warmth soak into them as it dawned on her what was about to happen, again.
To her surprise, Pat's voice took her side. "No, Carissa," she said. "She was misbehaving, but she doesn't deserve a spanking. She didn't do any damage."
"She would have, if she could," Carissa insisted, folding Brigid's skirt back, exposing her wiggling, padded bottom. "That's just as bad."
"She's already been spanked today," Pat said, Brigid blushing as she recalled everything that had happened in Mr. Dorley's classroom. "And you spanked her yesterday. She's had enough."
Carissa pouted, pausing for a moment, hand on the seat of Brigid's diaper. "No," she replied haughtily, "I don't think she has. If she had, she wouldn't have been trying to draw all over the wall." As desperate as Brigid had been to get out of this bulky, hot diaper, the sound of the tapes being undone, and the cool breeze on her bare bottom as it plopped to the floor, still filled her with dread.
"Yes, she has," Pat's form appeared, glaring down at the babysitter. "Send her to the corner if you want, but I do not approve of this!"
Carissa looked up at the hologram icily. "I guess it's a good thing that doesn't really matter, then, isn't it?" She gave Brigid's backside a hard swat, the girl on her lap squealing in pain.
"I'm warning you," Pat told her. "Stop it right now."
Carissa stared into the AI's eyes defiantly, and landed another spank, then another, Brigid already bawling. It only got worse as the spanking went on, her bottom bright pink before Carissa decided she was done and taped a fresh diaper around it, dressing her up in her PJs and sitting her down on her bed.
"B-But... I-It's so early..." Brigid sniffed, one harsh look from Carissa enough to put an end to her complaints.
"What about this?" Carissa asked Pat haughtily. "Are you going to tell me how to do my job some more, and say this isn't an appropriate punishment either?"
"This seems much more fair to me," Pat admitted, the sky outside the fake window on Brigid's wall turning dark. After everything she'd been through, Brigid almost didn't mind being put to bed now, but that image didn't fool her... She knew it was still way too early for any adult to be going to sleep.
"Let me go get you a snack first," Carissa told Brigid, stepping out of the room and returning with a pink sippy cup, handing it to Brigid, brushing her mouth against her ear to whisper, barely loud enough for the girl - much less Pat - to hear, "You didn't poop your pants, huh? Well, this will take care of that, brat."
Brigid gasped, squirming in place, hearing her diaper crinkling beneath her as she stared down at the cup, not knowing what was in it, and not wanting to now. "B-But..." she pouted.
"Drink it right now," Carissa snapped, "or you're going back over my lap."
Brigid squeaked, mind reeling at the choice before her... Guzzle down something that was intended to cause her to mess herself, or subject herself to yet another spanking... If the former happened, she might have no hope of convincing Pat that she didn't belong in these diapers... But, after the two she'd already gotten today, she just didn't have the strength to face down the latter... Reluctantly, she lifted the sippy cup to her lips, wrinkling her nose as she tasted the milk. Or, more accurately, the gritty texture of it, evidence that there was definitely something mixed in there, making her certain the babysitter probably hadn't been bluffing...
It was probably her imagination, but she was sure she could almost feel her tummy already rumbling as she finished up the milk, and got tucked into bed. "Night-night," Carissa kissed her on the forehead. "Try not to have any accidents."
Brigid whined, wanting to protest how unfair this was, only to hear a faint hiss as the room began to fill with sweet-smelling mist, making her eyelids immediately start to droop, and, in no time, she was fast asleep, no longer able to worry - or do anything about - the state her diaper might be in when she awoke.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"This is it?" Carissa asked, glancing back over her shoulder to be sure. She was deep into house's programming now, eyes starting to ache from spending so long staring at the ancient monitor. Normally, her shift would have been over by now, but Pat had offered to pay her triple to keep going, and she hadn't been able to turn that down.
"Yes," Pat confirmed with a nod. "Just type the last command in there, exactly as it's written."
Carissa looked at the paper. It was filled with all sorts of technobabble gobbledygook, far above anything she understood; Pat had displayed it to her on the living room's screen, made her copy it all down, double-checked it to be sure it was all exactly as it had appeared there, before she'd even let Carissa go into the control room, where she'd been watching her like a hawk, ensuring she put it all on just how it was written. Carissa had crossed them off, one by one, to make it easier to keep track of where she was, and now, there was only one left.
"You're sure about this?" Carissa checked, one more time.
"I've had a long time to think about how to do this," Pat told her. "I'm sure this is it."
Carissa didn't quite know what she meant, though she was more than ready to get out of here and go back home. The meal Pat had made for her had been delicious, and it had been nice, getting paid extra to not even have to deal with Brigid, but it felt like she'd been here for an eternity by now, and she still had homework to get done.
She typed it in, holding up the paper to the monitor when she was done to compare it. "Make the last 't' upper-case," Pat said instantly, "and you're done."
"All right," Carissa shrugged, taking her word for it, backing up the cursor to make the adjustment and hitting enter. Instantly, she was plunged into darkness and silence, the sound of the computers, and the glow of the monitors, blinking out at once. "Shit," Carissa frowned. "Was there a power outage?"
Of course, there was no answer; how could Pat say anything when the power was out? What she did hear, instead, was a distant knocking. Taking out her cell phone to use its flashlight, she made her way out of the room, wondering if she'd done something wrong, having no clue what to do to fix it if she had, or even who to call to help.
She also had no idea who might be outside at this hour, but checking that sounded more appealing than staying by herself in here, the house's sudden stillness strangely spooky as she walked past the blank walls.
She looked outside first, of course, and saw what seemed to be a fairly pleasant looking woman, certainly not someone she expected to be there to try to murder her. She opened up the door with a smile. "Hi," she said. "Are you a neighbor? Did your power go out, too, or...?"
"Well," the woman cut her off, reaching up to brush a strand of sweaty hair out of the girl's face, "you're even more adorable than your picture."
"Wh-What?" Carissa took a step back. "Wh-What are..? Wh-Who are..?"
"I'm here to take care of you," the woman told her. "Come along, dear... Your nursery is ready and waiting."
Carissa slammed the door shut, heart racing as she turned the lock. "Pat?" she called into the darkness. "Pat, what did you do?!"
Suddenly, the house began to spring back to life, a faint glow coming from all of the walls before they blinked back to their former state. "Pat, who is that out there?" Carissa demanded.
"I think you know," Pat's voice echoed around her. "My little girl never behaved like that until she met you... I know that had to have been your influence... And then you refuse to listen to my advice on how to discipline her? Clearly, you need a little more discipline of your own, young lady."
Carissa heard a click behind her, and the sound of the front door opening, putting a spring into her step as she hurried down the hall, towards the control room. "You call her off right now, Pat!" she ordered. "This isn't funny!"
"No," Pat agreed. "It isn't. This is what you need, Carissa."
Carissa was glad to see the monitors back alive as she turned the corner into the control room, back to the same spot they had been when they'd turned off. She didn't know much about the system, certainly not this deep into the programming, but she knew enough to know that it was important, that she could do some real damage there.
"Call her off right now," she warned again, "or I'm going to start deleting stuff. I bet I can do an awful lot of damage before she can get here. Maybe even enough to erase you! And there is nothing you can do about...!"
She didn't even have time to finish that sentence before she felt a hand close around her wrist. She gasped, heart pounding; there was no way the woman could have caught up with her that quickly! "I-I don't know what she told you," she squeaked, sounding an awful lot like Brigid when she was scared, "but..."
She paused mid-sentence, eyes widening as she turned her head enough to see who was behind her, who had grabbed her, with hands strong, and solid, enough to hold her in place, no matter how much she struggled. "B-But..." she stammered. "H-How...?!"
"Thank you so much for your help," Pat smiled down at her. "I've been looking for a way to do that for years. Now... Let's get you to your babysitter, so she can get you all diapered up and tucked into your crib."