Whatever humiliations my nocturnal visitor decided to inflict upon me in the earliest hours of the morning, the effects were never present by the time my blaring alarm vibrated me back into consciousness. Sometimes it would keep me awake for what felt like hours, but daybreak always found me feeling refreshed and comfortable; it was something I hated to admit, but being “tucked in” by the coalescence of shadows that invaded my bedroom gave me the best sleep of a lifetime full of bedtime regret.

Waking up in diapers, though, was something I was still having trouble getting used to.

Despite my less than grown-up attire, though, and the scent of baby powder that accompanied me until I stumbled my way to the shower, mornings had become more tolerable than the dreaded inevitability they used to be. I’d never be what you could classify as a morning person, mostly because my disposition hovered somewhere between ‘unapproachable’ and ‘rabid’ until about noon, but being able to wake up without wanting to die felt like a step in the right direction.

It came as no surprise for that to be the easiest part of my day.

Heat rose to my ears, and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck starting to bristle in irritation. In the interest of full disclosure, my lip was probably twitching too; that would make for a fun close-up on the evening news.

The press conference had gone off without a hitch for the most part. My statement was less of a train wreck than it could have been, and I was glad that it was over. I never would have thought the typically brief question and answer section at the end of the meeting would have turned out the way it did, but it was immediately clear that the representative from the local shock-jock radio team had singled me out to generate some listeners.

“I acted in the best interest of everyone involved.” I spoke through clenched teeth, and when I realized my hands were balled into the tightest fists imaginable on the desk, I forced myself to unwind a little; being featured on tabloids for bleeding palms was pretty low on my agenda. “Training dictates that we neutralize active threats, and everyone involved in the operation came away unhar—”

As I spoke, though, I was aware of a chill that crept along my body. Despite the heat of my anger, coldness tickled up the length of my spine and spread along the back of my neck in a way that made me lean forward in my seat. My heart started to beat a little harder in my chest. The sensation was too familiar for me not to recognize, and the thought of being gripped by that creature outside the sanctity of my bedroom made my anger pulse harder.

“Everyone except Mr. Conal, you mean?” His inquisitive airs masked his smug disposition in a way that had me fantasizing about knocking his teeth down his throat, but I held my tongue as best I could; by nearly biting the tip of it off. “The official reports say that he was unarmed at the time of the infiltration. Did you shoot an unarmed man, special agent?”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding m—”

I was livid, especially when I noticed the smile that was trying to creep across the reporter’s face. He knew that he was getting under my skin, and it was only a matter of time before I gave them the sound clip that they wanted. My boss stepped in to interrupt me before I could make too much of a fool of myself, though; as much as I hated to admit it, he knew me well enough to understand when the conversation was over.

“When a confirmed serial killer has his hands on a hostage that he has professed interest in killing numerous times, you pretty quickly realize that whether or not he’s armed is no longer the question.” The police chief’s voice was even, placid, much more practiced than mine. He had been doing this for long enough to become an expert at defusing the situation, regardless of his personal feelings on the matter.

I was doing my best to ignore the fact that I was no longer alone in my mind. Shadows danced at the corners of my vision, creeping in like veins of frost, and I stopped glowering at the crowd for long enough to try to see what was happening. The hazy blackness always stayed just to the right, though, regardless of which way I turned my head. I felt my ears start to burn a little and set my jaw tight, suddenly desperate for the pointed interview to end, and endlessly thankful to the chief of police for taking the heat off of me.

“Detective Malone carried out the operation to perfection.” I became aware as the Chief continued to speak, silencing the resulting snide comment that must have been coming from the reporter. When he got to his feet, I quickly followed suit, tucking my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket and snorting unabashedly at the agent in the crowd. “The hostage is safe, and a brutal, sadistic murderer was put in the ground. That’s our statement.”

When the Chief left the interview table, I followed along behind him, sparing one more baleful glare at the jockey who had tried to make a story out of me. Along the way, though, my boss stopped to talk to a couple of the neighborhood patrol, but I continued past him and back into the building. The chill remained in my body, reminding me of my otherworldly visitor’s presence, and I was eager to get out from under the scrutiny of the press.

“Don’t let ‘em get to you, sugar.” The dispatch officer, a southern-tinged leopard that always had a cutesy nickname for me, reassured me as I passed through the front area of the building. I just grunted, distracted and irritated, but she didn’t seem to take it personally. Rather than disappear into the squad room, where the other members of the squad had no doubt been preparing their best quips about my television performance, I moved down the darkest hallway on the premises towards my boss’ office.

In the hopes of disappearing for a few minutes, at least until my temper had abated and the monster from under my bed had vacated my spinal column, I pulled my jacket a little tighter around my body and stepped under fluorescent tubes that had long since burned out.

It was the very second I disappeared from view, shrouded in black and unseen from anywhere else in the station, that reality melted away from me.

I fell through the floor in a lurching, unexpected drop that made me bark in surprise, but the sound was muffled, and far-away, as if I’d somehow left my body behind. The icy presence centered in my spine radiated outward, moving down both my arms where my fur prickled up in its wake. Straining to see anything at all in the inky depths I’d been plunged into, I held my hands in front of my face even as I felt the last vestiges of cold bleed from the tips of my fingers.

A sound like shuffling cloth tickled my ears, and I became aware of a vague presence in front of me. It grew as the shadows coalesced until I could make out the faintest of outlines; the same one that had been visiting me often enough behind the closed doors of my apartment. I remained suspended in mid-air, stunned into total silence by my bedtime babysitter’s reality-altering display.

“We meet again so soon, Tiger.” Like usual, his voice swelled from somewhere in the depths of my consciousness and filled my head, drowning out the pounding of my heart. He sounded amused, guileless as always, and I found it impossible to ascribe any malice to his behavior. Whatever his plans were, hurting me never seemed to be on his otherworldly agenda.

The reverse was not always true.

“How—” I started, but my question withered in my throat. I still sounded as if I was speaking from a mile away, somehow. It was unnerving, and I finally brought my arms down to my side and tried to take a step forward to reassert my balance. My boots lazily paddled the air, as if I was treading water; needless to say, I didn’t move forward. “…w-what are you doin’ here?”

“Have you not figured it out yet?” The voice moved from primarily one ear to the other as the creature fluidly circled behind me. I didn’t realize what it was doing until my jacket was being slid off my shoulders, and I instinctively reached to stop it from undressing me. “You called me, Tiger. The same as you have always done.”

Despite myself, I paused, stunned by the apparition finally committing to an answer. It was one that I didn’t understand, but it was more than I’d ever heard before. I was only vaguely aware of my jacket slipping off of my arms, and I squinted into the blackness. Even looking over my shoulder, feeling something like breath on the back of my neck, I couldn’t see anything but the slightest outline in the dark as the shadows moved.

“I didn’t call you.” Swallowing what felt like a watermelon in my throat, wanting answers, I forced myself to speak again in hopes of making the monster elaborate. Feeling my belt loosen, I instinctively reached down to hold it together; the pressure relented after only a couple of seconds, and I felt the intruder’s laughter tickling the bristling fur on the back of my neck.

“Your anger called to me.”

I could have grabbed for my gun; I felt its heavy presence against my hip. All I had to do was draw it and turn it upon the shadowy beast again, and I could drive it back. Just like I did before, a story clearly told by the ugly bullet hole in my bedroom wall.

“That sick feeling in your stomach, the bile in the back of your throat.” I didn’t draw my gun. My belt was pulled undone and slid free of the loops of my pants, and the wraith continued to speak as it undressed me. “The burden of your anger is how I found you. And today, for that brief moment, when you wanted nothing more than to tear that man apart, it pulled me to you.”

“It ain’t—” I started, eager to defend myself, but there was nothing I could say. The thought that it had been my rage that had caused this creature to seek me out had never occurred to me. I felt myself pulled and tilted backward, as if to lay on my back. Pressure supported my head and the back of my knees, like arms cradling me, and I put forth token struggles. “…stop.”

“Your anger, and your grief.” Though the volume of its voice never diminished, it sounded like it was whispering directly into my ears now. My legs were lifted by unseen hands, my boots unlaced and removed in short order. This was the familiar part of the ordeal, and the police station I’d been plucked from had never felt so far away. “A entire life of regret. The burden of missed opportunities, and the loss of hope that a young dog was never given.”

“God dammit, please…”

My words were ineffective, though, and my struggles were even less so. The mounting anger in my chest had burned away, and the creature’s words, the creeping knowledge of just how correct it was, had taken every ounce of fight out of me. It felt too good to lean into the presence around me, to allow it to hold me, and to feel its voice reverberate through my body.

“The depths of your loneliness.” My pants were pulled down, along with the snug, white briefs I had dressed myself in, and I could hear the familiar far-off rustle of a plastic shell. “The despair in your soul, Tiger. You’ve always believed that you were meant to spend your life alone, detached from the rest of the world.”

Tears pricked at my eyes, and despite being completely unable to see, I wiped them away with both hands. Even as it raised my legs, lifting my ankles like a baby until my ass was pointed up in the air, I refused to let the creature see me cry. It was one thing that I could still control, at least for the time being.

“But the world is so much bigger than you could ever know.” Warmth rolled over me like a blanket, and I didn’t even squirm as a comfortable softness was pushed under my butt. It was the standard diapering procedure that I was embarrassed to have become accustomed to. Hands gently gripped my thighs to spread them apart, and I was baby powdered from crack to package.

When I opened my mouth to say something, still forcing back tears, rubber was pushed into my mouth, and I immediately anticipated the usual pacifier. I bit down, ready to spit it out, but liquid dripped from the end onto my tongue and I hesitated for just long enough that the shield of the oversized bottle was pushed against my lips.

“You don’t need to hate the world anymore, Tiger.”

Grape juice. It had always been my favorite. It didn’t surprise me that this creature somehow already knew that.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I listened to the crinkle of the thick diaper underneath me, softening my curves and reminding me of its presence with every move I made. I felt more tickling through the sensitive fur of my inner thighs as the bulky diaper folded up between my legs, wings spread along the trimness of my stomach.

“That’s right. Good boy.”

Despite myself, I felt my tail thump between my legs in a lazy wag, and my cheeks burned at the way it made my diaper crinkle. It was pulled tight around my hips, both sides at once, and tapes peeled back unseen to wrap over my belly and stick comfortably to the front of the thick diaper. It never even occurred to me to fret about where I was; that I was being diapered up in the police station, just a few feet outside of my boss’ office.

I was beyond caring. With my head against the presence beside me, I nursed my bottle and relaxed in my fresh diaper, cradled like a baby and feeling the concerns of the world melt from my body, shed like a second skin that had been constricting me for as long as I could remember.


It had been a long time since I fell asleep in the afternoon, but that's apparently what happened. Before I even processed what was going on, I was out, like an oversized puppy in need of a nap.

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Hey, looks like we're back in action. Really enjoying this commission, giving me an excuse to flex some of my writing muscles. :) Hopefully it's not too heavy-handed for you guys, feel free to let me know what you think!