Tick Tock

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. There'd been some music, once upon a time, music with beat and melody, but all of it had faded to the very simple and soothing and predictable and charming sounds of the clicks. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. I'd been wearing clothes when I sat down, I thought, although I couldn't remember getting dressed in them. Dully, in another county, I could feel my uniform skirt far far away, brushed against my feet. I was aware of the plush arm chair, ticklish on my bare skin in places it shouldn't have been bare. Naked? No, I had my bra on. Tick. Tock. Underwear? Tick. Tock. Blank. Like a scene cut out of a movie. Tick. Tock. This made sense. What was in my hands...? A bottle?

~~~

The bottle found my lips and I started to suckle, like a baby nursing from her mother.  Why did that thought come into my mind?  But as I sipped away at the warm milk, I felt small, in the arms of a woman.  Her nipple was placed in my mouth and I was happy.  The sharp snap of fingers pulled me back to the present.  The empty bottle fell from my lips and I looked up at the dark figure against the sharp white backlight.  My head was swirling...

~~~

"Here is home."

Where is home? I couldn't focus, everything was soft, fuzzy like the sofa and warm like my waist area. I shook my head left and then right, listened again, replayed what was said in my head, and repeated it out loud.

"Here is home."

I didn't know where here was, but this felt right to say. I nodded in reassurance.

~~~

The figure reached a hand out for me and I took it without thinking.  The hand was soft.  Inviting.  The figure led me into another room, through a door with one word written on the front.  Home.  But when we got inside, it didn't look familiar at all.  The furniture was so large, and the walls were so colorful.  Toys were scattered across the floor, and the bed had bars along it.  I looked nervously at my host, who despite the lighting, seemed obscured from my vision. 

"What's... what's going on?"

 ~~~

"You're home. Here is home. These are your toys. These are your friends."

The voice indicated to me that those two concepts were one and the same. I knew the bears name was Cookies. I knew that the bunny's name was Carrot. I knew that each of the little Calico Critters was named after a different flavor of milkshake, and that I had a budding town made out of wooden train track. I both knew this, and yet had never seen any of it before in my life. 

Tick. Tock.

This is home.

~~~

I looked around the room in confusion.  But what came next was even more confusing.  The voice above me said something strange, something I couldn't hear, and I felt a heat wrap around the skin between my legs.  I looked down at the diaper as it began to swell and color.  And then, without thinking, I began to cry.