New Commission - "The Change" - Part 1

Also known as "Second last story about Parkdale!" 🎁. This is a tale commissioned by Fossil, and I'd like to share it here before the main website. Enjoy - and if you have any favourite Parkdale characters, all I can say is...keep your fingers crossed...

The Change

A Parkdale tale commissioned by Fossil

Parkdale

October 2022

Sometimes it’s gets messy. Scrappy. Untidy. Jessie, Parkdale teen agent for long enough, understands that regressing someone to childhood often feels like being a spider, patiently waiting for the target to get stuck in her web.

Other times, it’s like trying to swat an insect with a flyswatter.

Tonight, Jessie must use the swatter. There will be some clean-up required, some explaining to do.

Is she supposed to feel bad about that? Shit happens, as Rachel says. (Stuff happens, as Katie used to say).

Jessie stands at the top of the stairs.

“Toby,” she calls out. She spreads out the two syllables, treats them like too different words. “Toe….bee.” It sounds playful, like a game of hide-and-seek.

This is not a game.

“Toe…bee. Where arrrre yoooooou?”

No reply. Jessie wasn’t expecting one. The question serves as a distraction; in case the target has managed to avoid the flyswatter. In case he’s still thinking about getting the hell away from the sweet, sixteen-year-old girl who had been so friendly this morning with the shy new boy, who had taken him under her wing, and then insisted on his first day at Parkdale Academy being his first day at Parkdale Primary instead.

The client wants her awkward teenage son to be how he was in the good old days. Mummy wants her adorable five-year-old back.

Everything was going just fine. Toby was back in shorts and having the best time playing Connect 4 even though (as Toby was discovering) it’s kind of a hard game. Counting to four is easy but thinking more than one move in advance is definitely something for big boys.

Everything was going as planned. And then the spray (more like a steam, really, or a vapour) which has become one of Jessie’s go-to gadgets for mental regression, back-fired, spewing its contents in the air and making Jessie reflexively jump back, before she caught herself, before she could put her game face back on.

There was Toby, looking too cute, too perfect, in his bright red school sweatshirt, grey shorts and knee socks, (his mother will squeal with delight, Mummy will want to gobble him up) aware enough, even in his smaller state, even being such a good boy with his favourite baby-sitter, to understand that something rotten was going on.

“Hey,” he said, following Jessie’s example and backing away from the steam. “You’re…something’s…” He looked at the yellow and red game pieces on the floor, at his own outfit and body. His expression was one of confused betrayal.

He pushed at the vertical blue rack, knocked it over and got to his feet. “You’re…” He looked as though he was fumbling for a damning accusation. Stupid head? Dummy? Monster? And then he ran from the bedroom and down the stairs.

It was a careless mistake. Somebody’s careless mistake. Why had the gadget malfunctioned? Was it Jessie, was it Dr. Sucette? Jessie will be blamed of course. Blame the kid. (Even though really, Jessie isn’t a child.) Who’s going to argue with Parkdale’s chief scientist? Still, this isn’t the first mistake of the year. The well-oiled machinery of Parkdale has been squeaking and grinding, ever since what happened to Katie.

“Toe…bee. I’m coming to get yooooooou!”

Jessie walks downstairs. She’ll check the front and back doors first, and then the kitchen. She hopes she isn’t about to find a little boy armed with a carving knife.

Toby is at the front entryway, facing the door.

“There you are,” says Jessie calmly. “There’s Toby. You want to finish our game?”

The boy doesn’t reply. He puts his hand on the doorknob. He fumbles at it, as if his coordination has deteriorated.

Jessie steps across the hallway. “Going out?” Her voice is light, airy. “Nipping out to the shops? Do we need to buy milk?

Toby replies with one word. Well, one syllable. “Ow.”

He pats the doorknob again, slaps at it with his little hand, and then he turns around.

“Ow?” Jessie echoes softly. “Out?”

Toby doesn’t look afraid. Instead, he resembles the sulkiest of toddlers. Because he has been swatted.

“Ow.” There is a dark patch on his shorts. His eyes are glassy. And his lips are open, saliva bubbling and running down his chin. “Ow.”

He wants to leave; that’s understandable. Jessie is sympathetic, but there’s no leaving for Toby now. Not until his mother comes to pick him up.

She crouches in front of him. “Is the door being naughty?” She pouts. “Is it a naughty door?”

Toby blinks and nods, drooling onto the front of his sweatshirt. He must have wondered why the doorknob was sticky. He must have brought his hand to his face with a frown, maybe even a sniff. And perhaps he understood, in that moment that he had made a mistake. He might have rubbed his fingers on his shorts or taken a first step towards the kitchen to wash his hands.

Too late.

Just one stroke, just a single step, before his mind felt the force of the drug, chemicals invading his brain, swaddling his intelligence with the thickest and softest of baby blankets.

“What a naughty door!” Jessie exclaims. She taps her chin thoughtfully. “I wonder what we can do about that.” And then she nods, straightens up, and reaches for the school blazer hanging on its hook. “Will this help?” she asks mildly, retrieving a set of keys from the pocket.

Yes! From the expression on the boy’s face, it’s clear that the keys will undoubtedly help. Toby clutches the keyring in his fist and shakes it up and down, provoked into chortles by the jangling metal.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Jessie says. “All nice and clean for Mummy, hmm?” She holds out her hand and Toby takes it without protest, his simplified mind leaving him as docile as a lamb.

They go back upstairs to the music of jangling keys and a giggling little boy, and while Toby is no longer a flight risk, there is still a mess to clean up. That’s the problem with swatting, that’s why the spider’s web is always better.

Because what is Toby’s mother going to say, when she finds that Parkdale has regressed her son physically to five years old, but his mind is that of a toddler’s?

As she undresses and cleans Toby, the boy unconcerned his naked and exposed condition, Jessie remembers a previous time a mental regression tool had misfired, in a bookshop with an unplanned target. She thinks back to the toy rocket, and the little boy with an accent that told Jessie that he was a long way from home.

Toby grows bored with the Wet Wipes and crawls away, a five-year-old baby, and makes his way to the Connect 4. Any sense of counting has gone, and he reaches for one of the yellow discs.

“Not for you,” Jessie says briskly, because surely the boy is intent on putting the piece in his mouth. “Here,” she says, handing him keyring so he can enjoy a second round of jangling. And then, with the big baby occupied, Jessie sends an encrypted message on her mobile phone, so that Parkdale can alert the mother.

When she puts the phone down, it buzzes almost immediately.

Jessie sighs. Look who’s in a hurry to see their little boy.

The mother will be there in around ten minutes, and then Jessie will have some explaining to do. She inspects Toby’s clothes for what she can salvage. The red sweatshirt is still clean, but the boy is lacking underwear.

Jessie looks in the wardrobe where there should be a range of outfits to fit the target, whatever the outcome.

Should.

Jessie finds a single school uniform, for a boy twice Toby’s age. She groans; Parkdale isn’t running like it used to. Parkdale might just be grinding to a halt.

Her phone buzzes again.

She sighs. The woman must be desperate.

But when she looks at the screen, Jessie finds that it’s someone else entirely.

She answers. “Hey stranger.”

“I have a brandy with your name on it,” Rachel says. This is the teen agent who cleaned up the mess at the bookshop, years ago. In fairness, it was also this teen agent who created the mess in the first place.

Jessie laughs. “You’re as bad as Luke.”

“Or as good?” Sarcastic, sardonic Rachel. Since what happened to Katie, Rachel has a new demeanour to go with her pixie hairstyle.

Katie. Speaking of, Jessie says, “Aren’t you babysitting tonight?” Agents don’t drink on the job. Especially when the job is to care for one of their own.

“You should come over,” Rachel says. “Girl’s night. Like the good old days.”

Jessie hears music in the background. Arianna Grande, or Selena Gomez. Something like that. Normally for babysitting, it’s nursery rhymes or Peppa Pig. Jessie waits for the obligatory guilt-trip; Katie misses you. She asks for you.

“After I clean up,” she replies. “Made a bit of a mess, the gadget backfired.” She groans. “Doesn’t anything here work anymore?”

“Seriously,” says Rachel. “Come over.” It sounds like an order now, even though she has the same seniority as Jessie, nothing more. There’s something hard in her voice. She sounds bullet-proof. There’s a pause, long enough for Jessie to decide that it’s Selena Gomez after all. Lose You To Love Me. Of course it is.

“Please, Jess. Soon as you can,” adds Rachel, and her hard tone has gone. Which makes sense, because none of them are bullet-proof, especially these days.

Jessie makes the calculation. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes, forty-five tops.” She ends the call, turns her attention to the over-sized toddler.

He’s gnawing on the keys, and Jessie should find something more appropriate for him to chew on.

Yes, there will be some explaining to do. Justifying. Jessie dresses the boy in the sweatshirt and then waits for the doorbell to sound. He’ll be half-naked when his mother arrives, and maybe that will actually work in Jessie’s favour.

She thinks of the right words to use; We were too successful. Toby really wanted this, he wanted to be Mummy’s sweet toddler!

The mother will be shocked, but she’ll come around, either doting on her backward five-year-old, or they’ll fix the physical age.

There are bigger problems. There are rumours. There is going into every job wondering if Jessie come out intact.

She’ll go and see Rachel. She could do with a drink. Besides, Katie misses her. And there are rumours.