Edits - Ch 4.1.2.2.2.2.2

Chapter 4.1.2.2.2.2.2 - His father (40) becomes a little brother.

<<Previous (4.1.2.2.2.2) / Outline

Tim lay there on the couch for a long while, frozen due to indecision. At last, the sound of a SUV pulling up the driveway drew his attention out of his own head. He stood up and saw that his father had just arrived with his brother and sister sitting in the car with him. Then, even before the three of them could get out of the car, his mother’s car pulled up on the driveway beside them.

Tim smiled, watching as his family got out of their cars and headed inside. All of his potential targets were here now. He waited as they entered the garage.

He heard his mother’s voice first. “I keep telling you to get the kids to help you clean out the garage,” she said. “How long has it been since we could even park in there? A month?”

“I’ll get it sorted out this weekend,” he heard his father reply. “Promise.”

His mother sighed, her footsteps heading into the kitchen. “Sometimes it feels like I have four children,” she muttered to herself.

Tim smiled, silently thanking her for making his choice for him.

He pulled out his phone, opened the app, and waited for his father to appear. First, he saw his brother and sister pass by on their way upstairs. They glanced in his direction, and for a moment, he held his breath, wondering if they would notice that he had gone from being their older brother to being their younger brother. However, neither of his siblings even batted an eye when they glanced his way. Once they had made their way up to their rooms, his father finally walked into view, and Tim snapped a picture.

“Hi, Tim,” his father said when he noticed his son. “Sorry we were late getting here. You had no trouble on your way home from school?”

Tim shook his head, speechless, again experiencing a momentary panic at potentially being found out for being unexpectedly young. His father only smiled, not showing any indication that he found anything amiss.

“Great,” his father said. “I’ll be starting dinner soon. Could use your help putting away groceries.”

Tim nodded, put his phone away, and stood up.

“Come on,” his father said, smirking. “I’ll race you to the car.”

Tim smiled, and sprinted past his seemingly giant father. Hearing heavy footsteps chasing him to the car, he giggled at finally having an opportunity to do some playing for the first time since he had regressed.

Reaching the hatchback of the SUV first, Tim grabbed bags of groceries with both hands and turned to face his father, triumphant in his victory.

“Aw, man,” his father said, pretending to be disappointed. “You beat me.”

“Maybe you’ll win next time,” Tim said.

“Maybe.”

His father overfilled his hands with the remaining bags, and the pair of them lugged the food into the kitchen, where his mother helped them put everything away. Afterwards, his father got down to business with preparing dinner, which involved too many sharp objects and open flames for an 8-year-old to be involved. He contented himself with returning to the living room to plan his next move.

After some consideration, Tim decided to wait until dinner was ready before regressing his father as the meals he prepared were usually quite delicious. He would wait until after he had eaten a plateful of food. Then, it would be time to become a big brother again.

***

As the evening passed, Tim occupied himself by spending time in the company of his now comparatively enormous siblings. He was happy to find that the kids were willing to make a lot more allowances for a tagalong little brother butting into their lives than he might have expected. A quick knock on his sister’s bedroom door led to him being given an impromptu lesson in soccer ball juggling in the backyard. After that, his brother welcomed him into his bedroom for some co-op video game playing. It amused him to stand near his sister, being only chest high to her now, feeling so small in the girl’s presence. And, with his brother, he had to suppress his laughter when he discovered how his own voice was now notably higher-pitched than his brother’s. The experience left him with a desire to make them even older or himself even younger to further accentuate the difference in their roles, but he restrained himself, wanting to focus on changing his father first before overcomplicating the situation with any more changes.

Being so heavily engrossed, Tim waited seemingly no time for dinner to be ready.

He and his siblings followed their noses downstairs, detecting the delectable aroma of spaghetti with meatballs before they entered the dining room. It was one of his father’s signature meals, and the man was all too happy to dole out heaping plates of it to his hungry family.

They ate, chatting briefly here and there between mouthfuls. Tim enjoyed his meal. However, as his stomach filled, he started looking for an opportune moment to use the app to regress his father. He felt that it might be too chaotic to do at the dinner table, but he did not want to wait too long.

“Excuse me,” his father said, standing up from the table. “Got to go take care of some business upstairs.”

Watching as the man walked down the hallway, Tim knew it was time. “Me too,” he said, pushing his chair back. ‘Scuse me.”

He quietly followed his father upstairs and watched from a few steps down from the top as his father entered the bathroom in the master bedroom, shutting the door behind himself.

Tim opened the app on his phone and selected the picture he had taken earlier. His father’s caption read:

Sam Smith is a 40-year-old man. He works as a graphic designer for a marketing firm. He lives with his wife and three children, for whom he enjoys cooking meals. (Show more.)

Tim decided to just erase the last digit of his father’s age. When the app inquired if he wanted it to automatically revise the rest of the caption, Tim agreed. The caption was then edited to read:

Sammy Smith is a 4-year-old boy. He is an artistic preschooler with an outgoing personality. He lives with his mother and three older siblings, with whom he enjoys playing. (Show more.)

Tim nearly saved the change before he had a moment of inspiration. He wanted to turn his father into a kid, but he wondered how his father would react to the change if he could still remember having been an adult before.

Opening the awareness settings, Tim changed it from the default to now read:

(Custom Awareness) The user is aware of all changes. The subject is also aware of all changes, but all other people are not aware. The subject’s temperament, mental capacity, and knowledge will change, but memories will remain unchanged.

The idea of his father being a young boy with an adult’s memories amused Tim enough that he was willing to risk the complication of his father being aware of the app.

Tim saved the caption and watched as the progress bar began to fill.

As if in reaction to the start of the change, his father began to sing, his voice accompanied by the sound of a stream of urine hitting porcelain.

Tim crept up the stairs and lay his head down sideways on the floor outside the bathroom door. Although disappointed that he would not have a clear view of the full change, he was content at least to have a view of his father’s toes peeking out from beneath the rumpled cuffs of his jeans.

After only hearing a few lyrics, Tim recognized the song. It was one of grandpa’s favorites, an old bit of rock and roll that was meant to sound like even older music, a tune about some guy asking his wife if she would still love him when they were older, 64 years old to be exact.

While not a great singer, his father did the song justice. In fact, his voice sounded fresher and smoother with each verse. Soon, Tim noticed his father’s toes retreating away under his jean cuffs as the tone of the stream of urine became weaker and thinner. Meanwhile, his father’s voice rose in pitch, cracking up into falsetto a few times before it took on a more authentic childish tone.

Then, just as he finished the final line of the song, his voice sounding very much like Tim’s did now, his father gasped.

“W-what’s goin’ on?” he inquired, the stream of urine ceasing to flow as his toes disappeared up the legs of his jeans.

Tim felt a moment of panic and regret, expecting his father to start screaming and crying at any moment.

Instead of making a fuss, though, his father just hopped down from the toilet and stood there in silence, which Tim interpreted as stunned awe.

“I’m… a kid again?” his young father asked in disbelief.

The relatively huge cuffs of his jeans shrank smaller, revealing tiny toes and then whole tiny feet. At last, the jeans became the proper size for a preschool boy’s legs, and the physical changes were complete.

After that, the relative silence of the moment was interrupted by an increasing whining noise emitting from Tim’s phone that rose to be almost deafening, until it was cut off by a bright flash of light.

Tim sat on the floor outside of the bathroom, not sure what to do now that the change was complete. He decided that it might be best just to have a little talk with the boy in the bathroom.

“D-dad?” Tim said.

There was a startled shuffling sound from behind the bathroom door as if a child were pulling his jeans up and zipping his fly.

“W-who?” the boy inside inquired, his voice taking on a mousy tone. “Tim?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied. “It’s me. I can explain what’s going on.”

The doorknob turned and then the door swung open, revealing the tiny figure of a 4-year-old boy who Tim did not immediately recognize. Even seated on the floor, Tim's face was only a little beneath the little kid’s eye-level. Staring at each other, Tim now detected some immediate similarities to his younger brother. The boy had the same color hair and eyes as his father and was wearing a similar green T-shirt to what his father had been wearing, only now the shirt had cartoon characters printed on it.

“What happened?” inquired Sammy,Tim’s regressed father, his flute-like voice sounding more curious than frightened.

Tim gave his new brother a brief explanation of the app on his phone and the power that it had. He described how he had chosen to transform his father. The boy listened, his eyes growing wide with wonder.

“So,” Sammy said after taking a moment to absorb it all. “You turned me into your widdle…” he paused and corrected himself. “Little brother?”

Tim nodded.

“Why?” There was not even a trace of a complaint in the question.

Tim just shrugged and said, “I thought it might be fun.”

The boy nodded and gazed down at his body in awe, lifting up his small hands and flexing his newly tiny fingers to confirm that they belonged to him.

“Are you… okay?” Tim asked.

Little Sammy looked back towards Tim and appeared momentarily bashful. “Well,” the boy said. “I guess I shouldn’t be. But, this feels… I dunno… right? Weird, but right. It’s, wike… like… I know I oughtta be a grown up, a dad, and I know I used to be one. But, I’m not now. Now, I’m supposed to be wike… like… this. Weird, huh?” The boy smiled in amusement.

Tim smiled back.

“Can you turn me back?”

Tim nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Anytime you want.”

“Okay,” the boy said, his eyes focused on his little fiddling fingers again.

“Do you want to stay this way for a little while at least?” Tim asked, hopefully.

“Yeah,” his little former father said and smiled, his round face beaming with enthusiasm. “I do. I wanna have some fun with you, first.”

“Great,” Tim said, standing up.

The 4-year-old boy stepped back as he was momentarily intimidated by the relative hugeness of an 8-year-old boy’s body.

“You ought to wash your hands,” Tim said. “Mom might not be happy if she found out you didn’t.”

“Oh,” the boy said. “Right… Mom… Okay.” He went to reach the faucet, but found that it was too high up for him now.

“Use the stool,” Tim suggested, pointing to the one pushed up against the wall.

Sammy grabbed the stool, dragged it to its place in front of the sink, and stepped up onto it. Then, he set about soaping up those little hands.

Tim smiled as he watched his former father and current little brother, standing there, looking and acting like an actual 4-year-old boy again, his mind racing with ideas for what they would do together now.

What do they do?

They go back downstairs to finish up dinner.

They go play in Tim’s bedroom.

Tim regresses himself to be his former father’s twin.

Tim grows himself up to be the new father of his family.