Generic Hypnosis Story

[bestrapperalive 161]

I've never posted any of them before, but I've actually written a bunch of short Omo stories, and one very, very long Omo story that has taken me years and that I hope to one day release. It's 12 chapters so far, probably 2/3rds done, with a detailed world and character development and all that, and it's very important to me.

This is none of those stories. I wrote this in about 2 hours. I did not worry about character development or concern myself with writing a unique story. What happened is basically, after @KimAustad's request for hypnosis stories, I ended up writing a scenario for her, and then found that I had some lingering 'hypnosis on the brain' that I needed to unload. So, to try something different, I wrote this, proofread it once, and I'm posting it here before I can stop myself. This is chapter 1 of however many chapters i feel like writing about this character. Maybe it's the only one. Have fun.

 

 

 

The boy leaned in close to the fire for emphasis, letting the flames cast what he imagined was an eerie light over his face. When he continued speaking, it was the same grandiose, conspiratorial murmur that he had been putting on for the last ten minutes. 

 

“You know, the government already has the cure for cancer, they just won’t share it because it doesn’t make enough money.”

 

Claire rolled her eyes. Whatever opinions she might hold about the dubious morals of late stage capitalism, she hardly found it likely that the cure for cancer was languishing for lack of a monetary incentive.

 

“You really think so?” asked her friend Amanda excitedly.  

 

Claire winced. Amanda was a lot less discerning than her, prone to believing almost whatever nonsense someone suggested to her, as long as they said it with conviction. 

 

“Absolutely,” the boy nodded fervently. “They figured this shit out in the 1950s, with sound wave therapy and that kind of thing. But if it won’t sell, they won’t let doctors prescribe it.”

 

Sighing, Claire pulled out her phone, and started browsing idly through social media. She enjoyed going out to parties as much as the next person, but when it came to these tedious conspiracy theories, she couldn't help but get exasperated. How were people this stupid, even now, in the 21st century, when anyone with a brain could look things up on the internet and determine whether they had even a shred of real evidence to support them? Maybe it was narcissism, or maybe it was just true idiocy that allowed people to talk themselves into this garbage, and not stop to question why no one intelligent agreed with them. Claire had been raised to question things that have no evidence, like conspiracy theories, and religion, and believe in the things that did, like science and technology. She also believed in structured, empirical debate - the cornerstone of the career in law she dreamed of one day pursuing - and so had no patience for the free-form rambling of stoned college sophomores. 

 

“…And then, when doctors get too close to finding the truth, the government sends hypnotists to make them forget what they’ve learned!” 

 

Claire couldn’t take it. She had to say something. 

 

“Seriously? Hypnosis? Are you hearing yourself right now?” she asked incredulously. Some of the people around the fire chuckled. Apparently, hypnosis was a bridge too far for a number of them too.

 

The conspiracy boy was unfazed. 

 

“Of course. Hypnosis is real. Haven’t you ever seen the videos?”

 

Claire snorted.

 

“I’ve seen videos of charlatans with eager volunteers who want hypnosis to be real, yea. Anyone will pretend they’re a bird if you get them up on a stage and pump them up a bit.” 

 

Her opponent was gearing up for a response, but before he could say anything, a new voice spoke up.

 

“Well… That’s not real hypnosis, but hypnosis IS real...”

 

A small, dark haired boy with gloomy eyes was sitting near the back of the circle, looking almost surprised to hear his own voice. Claire recognized him from some of her classes, but she didn't know his name. She turned to him instead.

 

“What does real hypnosis look like then? Because I’ve never seen it.”

 

The boy looked off to the side nervously, but he stuck to his story.

 

“It’s complicated… I’m not going to tell… these people… but I could show you… if you want.” 

 

Even in the dark, Claire could definitely see him blushing. Was this just his fairly sad attempt to get her alone to talk to him? She supposed he was kind of cute, in a nerdy way, but not someone she had ever had any interest in talking to. His face was always buried in a laptop, and she doubted he had much experience talking to girls. 

 

“What’s so complicated about it?” she asked him bluntly. “Why can’t you just show everyone?” 

 

The people around the fire looked at him expectantly, and he looked at his feet uncomfortably. 

 

“It needs to be one on one… If there’s too many people, it won’t work,” he explained, quietly.  

 

Claire cringed. 

 

“I’m not going to go do ‘one on one’ hypnosis with you, sorry. You realize how creepy that sounds, right?” 

 

The boy stared at the ground, looking chastised. But just when it looked like that might be the end of it, Amanda piped up. 

 

“I could come with you!” she yelled excitedly. “Then it won’t be so awkward!” An enthusiastic smile was beaming from underneath her button nose. Claire just groaned. Unsurprisingly, Amanda didn’t seem to know the definition of ‘one on one.” Apparently, it wasn’t that important though, because the boy perked up. 

 

“Actually, that might work… You could at least come and witness it… I have to get my laptop out of the car though…” 

 

Claire couldn’t believe it. Was she really getting roped into this? She could see Amanda brimming with excitement, and knew she was stuck. Once Amanda got this worked up about something, she always made it happen. Sighing, Claire stood up from the circle.

 

“I’m going inside then, I’ll meet you there.”

 

And so, after a few minutes, Claire, Amanda, and the black haired boy found themselves holed up in a small, dark guest bedroom, barely large enough for the three of them, ready to experiment with “real hypnosis.” The boy, who’s name, it turned out, was Collin, fumbled with his laptop, while Claire sighed with boredom. The decor in the bedroom was tasteless and moldy, with blankets that had probably been passed down for several generations, and a forgotten portrait of some catholic saint or another adorning the peeling wallpaper. It would have been unbearably awkward if not for Amanda’s clueless exuberance. 

 

“This is so exciting! My cousin was hypnotized once. A magician had her come up on stage, and he swung a pendant and counted down from 10, and then she said she couldn’t remember. But apparently she danced a perfect salsa in front of everyone!”

 

“Amanda,” groaned Claire, her head in her hands. “Even Collin already said that that’s not real hypnosis. Your cousin was just really into the magic show.” 

 

“But she didn’t know how to dance salsa, and then she did!”

 

To Claire’s relief, Collin interrupted before this debate could really get going. 

 

“Ok… sorry it took so long, I had to log in to my VPN and get Tor set up… But it’s ready now.” 

 

Over his shoulder, Claire could see a forum page that looked straight out of 2006, almost illegibly formatted with dark text over dark backgrounds. An image of something vaguely spiral shaped was opened up in one corner. She was starting to get an idea of what was going on now. Collin must have gone down some deep web rabbit hole, and ended up convincing himself that THIS was the true hypnosis, and now he was going to try it on her. 

 

There was a brief silence. 

 

“So… Are you going to hypnotize me or what?”

 

“What should be the goal for the hypnosis?” asked Collin. 

 

“I don’t know,” grumbled Claire, “can’t you just make me think I’m a cow or something? Get some good moos, and Amanda can take a cellphone video, and we can get on with our lives?”

 

Collin shook his head. 

 

“No… no, it’s much harder to get people to actively DO things… with real hypnosis, it’s easier to get people NOT to do things, if that makes any sense.”

 

Amanda was hanging on to every word, but Claire was nonplussed.

 

“No, not really. Have you actually done this on anyone, anyway?”

 

“Only my sister…”

 

“And what did you make her do - er, not do?”

 

Collin smirked.

 

“I got her to stop being so mean to me. She doesn’t even remember being hypnotized. Basically, I just had her forget how much she hates me, and she stopped being such a bitch.”

 

Unbelievable, thought Claire. Absolutely insane. Collin’s ‘proof’ that hypnosis works was that his sister was being nicer to him? She would have been nicer to her brother too, if she had one, and he was so desperate for attention that he was resorting to hypnosis. Still, she decided not to say anything, and just get this over with. Besides, Amanda had clearly not had the same reaction, because she was staring with rapt attention, eyes wide underneath her strawberry blonde curls, knees bouncing up and down like crazy.

 

“Amanda. Amanda! Can you stop fidgeting like that, you’re shaking the bed.”

 

“Sorry,” said Amanda. “You know me, I get excited and I can’t sit still!” 

 

“Well, control yourself. How am I supposed to be hypnotized if I’m experiencing a localized earthquake?”

 

“Sorry,” said Amanda again. She crossed her legs tightly. Claire groaned.

 

“Do we need to stop while you go pee?”

 

Amanda blushed. 

 

“I can wait. You don’t need to ask me that all the time, you know.”

 

“Oh please. I’ve known you your whole life, I know the signs.” 

 

Collin looked on with raised eyebrows, looking somewhat flabbergasted. Claire figured that this conversation was probably not what he imagined banter between college girls to center around, but Amanda was a special case. Claire supposed she should stop embarrassing her friend, but then again, it was Amanda’s idea to even be here, and when she thought about that her sympathy vanished. She turned to Collin. 

 

“She’s always been like this Collin, she gets distracted, and then she gets stubborn and then, well, I’ll let you guess what happens next.”

 

Amanda looked at her furiously. 

 

“Shut up. It’s not my fault I have a small bladder.”

 

Claire smirked. 

 

“You’re also 20. When are you planning to finish potty training, age 30?”

 

“Shut UP!” 

 

“Ok,” Collin said nervously, “you two have some things to work out… but we’re supposed to be figuring out a prompt for hypnosis.” 

 

“Why don’t you hypnotize Amanda instead, and try to help her remember to go to the bathroom more often,” Claire said, with an evil grin. The whole thing was so stupid at this point, she couldn’t even pretend to take it seriously.

 

“You heard what he said, he can’t make people do things they don’t know how to do.” Amanda interjected angrily. She turned to Collin. “I know, can you make it so that Claire always forgets to go to the bathroom when she has to pee? Then maybe she'll have some sympathy.”

 

Claire burst out laughing, but Collin frowned. 

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea… that could really be a problem for her…”

 

“No, it’s perfect,” giggled Claire. “I bet even hypnotized I’d have better bladder control than Amanda.” 

 

Collin looked hesitant, but Amanda had fire in her eyes now. 

 

“Bet. Well, you heard her. Do it! Or are you scared it won’t work?” 

 

Even though his biggest supporter was now turning on him, Collin tried once more to inject a note of caution. 

 

“It’s a funny idea, but… I don’t want to do anything mean… if she starts having accidents, it will be a real problem, and I don’t want to be responsible for that.” 

 

“It’s not going to be a problem,” Claire snorted, “because hypnosis is fake. So go ahead, show me your spiral jpeg or whatever and let me out of this dusty room.” 

 

Whether it was because of Claire’s repeated disparaging of hypnosis, or Amanda’s badgering, Collin finally relented. 

 

“Alright, everyone calm down. We need to create a soothing, peaceful environment, or it won’t work. Claire, try to stop laughing, Amanda, try to stop fidgeting.”

 

It seemed that now that it was finally time for the hypnosis, Collin was finding his confidence. He indicated to Claire that she should lie down in bed, and told Amanda to go stand in the corner. Once the girls had done as they were told, he placed the laptop down next to Claire’s face, with the spiral graphic blown up to fill the screen. 

 

“Ok. Make yourself comfortable. I want you to take deep breaths, long and slow, and keep doing it until you feel your heart rate dropping. In the meantime, work on emptying your mind. We are going to enter your subconscious, and rearrange it.”

 

Claire did as she was told. Even though she didn’t believe in hypnosis, intellectual rigor demanded that she give it the fairest attempt possible. 

 

“Good, Claire, good.” Collin leaned over, and pressed something on the laptop. The spiral image, which had previously been stationary and kind of stupid looking, started to oscillate, waving and shimmering in and out. It didn’t even look much like a spiral anymore - the colors were changing too, and Claire couldn’t take her eyes off of it. Somewhere, she could hear Collin’s voice droning on, but she didn’t know what he was saying. After an unknown amount of time, he came back into focus, and the tone of his voice had changed. 

 

“You are staring down a long, dark hallway. There are doors all the way down, but we are not going to open them yet. When I say so, you can begin walking, one foot in front of the other. We are going to make our way deeper into the recesses of your mind. You don’t need to be afraid. Are you ready? Good. Let’s go.” 

 

The bedroom was gone. Amanda seemed to have disappeared. All that Claire could see was a long hallway in front of her, and there was nothing to do but begin to make her way down it. 

 

“You’re doing great Claire. We’re getting very deep now. Let’s open up the door on your right and take a look. Are you ready? Good.”

 

Claire opened the door, and strode serenely inside. The room was infinite in size and complexity. Tall, black boxes with innumerable wires going in and out of them stretched beyond the horizon, with flashing lights occasionally blinking on their faces. She wandered over to one of them, inspecting it curiously. Then, without thinking, she grabbed one of the cables hanging down, and ripped it out. 

 

“Well done, Claire. That was very good. You’ve removed one of the connections between your brain, your bladder, and your higher reasoning skills. We’re going to be here a while, because there are a lot of these, and we need to find all of them. Do you think you can do that?”

 

Claire nodded enthusiastically. 

 

“Very good Claire… Very good.” 

 

Claire’s body lay motionless on the stiff mattress for a long time, while the Claire inside her head wandered around, slowly deprogramming the inner workings of her mind. By the time she was done, and the bedroom started to come back into focus, Claire had no idea how much time had passed. Amanda was still standing in the corner, chewing on her fingernails, eyes as wide as dinner plates, and the spiral image on the laptop was just a spiral again. Claire blinked, trying to shake the cobwebs out of her eyes. A sliver of drool had wet the pillow beneath her, and she wiped her chin off quickly, embarrassed. No one seemed to know what to say. 

 

“Did it work?” asked Amanda, finally.

 

Claire looked at Collin, who shrugged. 

 

“We won’t know if it worked right away. She needs to get a full night’s sleep and let her brain process the rewiring.” 

 

Amanda looked a little deflated, but Claire felt her confidence start to come back. It seemed that Collin knew how to run a good meditation, because she had really been out of it for a moment there. But now, when asked for real results, he was stalling for time. Claire, still feeling relaxed from the trance, decided not to be mean.

 

“I guess we’ll just have to see,” she said patiently. “Thanks for trying, it was… different, if nothing else.”

 

With nothing else to do, the trio exited the bedroom. Amanda made a beeline for the bathroom, while Claire waited outside. She didn’t really need to go herself, not like Amanda, who she figured would probably have peed her pants if the hypnosis kept going much longer. Instead, she grabbed a glass of water. She’d had a little vodka earlier, not much, but she didn’t want any kind of a hangover. The party was winding down, and once Amanda was done, the two of them started heading back to their dorm. 

 

“So did you get hypnotized?” asked Amanda eagerly, now that Collin was gone. 

 

“I don’t know,” said Claire, truthfully. “Probably not, because hypnosis is fake. But it was pretty relaxing.”

 

“You were totally out of it,” said Amanda breathlessly. “Like, you were barely breathing even. You didn’t move like forever.” 

 

“I guess,” Claire admitted. “But that’s not hypnosis necessarily. I mean, I never said meditation wasn’t real.” 

 

“You don’t know if it was hypnosis or not,” Amanda chastised her. “Collin said we wouldn’t know until tomorrow.” 

 

“Right,” Claire laughed. “Well, I’m going to bed. I can at least get a good night’s sleep out of this while I’m still all hypnotized or whatever. Maybe Collin should try working with insomniacs, I’m exhausted.”

 

“Wait, Claire,” Amanda stopped her, biting her lip, a look of concern on her face. 

 

“Yea?”

 

“Do you think… maybe… should you get some diapers before class tomorrow? You know, in case the hypnosis worked.”

 

Claire looked at her in disbelief. 

 

“Amanda. Seriously. Listen to yourself. I’m not going to need diapers. Where would I get diapers anyway? It’s the middle of the night.”

 

“Oh.. yea… Well, you should set an alarm to remind yourself to go to the bathroom at least.”

 

Claire opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. There was no helping some people. 

 

“Sure Amanda, good idea. I’ll do that.” She was definitely not going to do that. 

 

The two girls said goodnight, and Claire was asleep before she hit the pillow. 

 

 

The next morning was Monday, and Claire’s first class, The Physics of Sound,  was bright and early at 8:30. It seemed that the effects of the hypnosis had lingered, because Claire’s good night’s sleep had been a little too good. By the time she woke up, she was running uncharacteristically late. Speeding around her dorm, she collected her books, threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, ran a comb through her straight brown hair and hopped on her bike. She figured she had just enough time to swing by the cafeteria for a cup of coffee, plus one to go. But she was not quite right about that, and by the time she walked into the lecture hall, class had already started. Her professor glared at her disapprovingly and she performed the walk of shame over to her seat. 

 

“Well, now that even the less punctual among us have decided to grace us with their presence,” he griped sarcastically, “we can hopefully discuss the properties of sound waves without any more distractions.”

 

Claire blushed. Her professor was being melodramatic, but she prided herself on being punctual and organized, so his words still stung. Stupid hypnosis, she thought. It seemed like the only thing it had accomplished was the minor annoyance of putting her behind the 8-ball to start her Monday. 

 

As the lecture got going, Claire forgot completely about hypnosis, lateness, or anything else, and focused on sipping coffee and taking notes. The class wasn’t something for her major, but it was an engaging enough topic, and Claire always took her studies seriously. Her mind was totally consumed with sine waves, and the velocity of sound through different mediums, and the frequencies of different overtones. The only thing that was odd was that she was unusually fidgety for some reason - maybe that second cup of coffee had been a bit too much, and the caffeine was hitting harder than usual. She’d been so groggy from oversleeping, and eager to shake herself out of the funk, but now she was crossing and uncrossing her legs, bouncing up and down, playing with her hair… She was reminding herself of Amanda. She even caught a few people glancing in her direction. Frustrated, she straightened herself out, took a deep breath, and focused back on the lecture. After class, she could get some water, and have some food, and that would probably dilute the unruly concentration of caffeine. Plus she could take a walk and just try to burn off some of this energy. 

 

It was a little past the halfway point in class when something happened that, in retrospect, made the fidgeting make a lot more sense. Claire didn’t really know what she was feeling at first. It seemed to be getting very warm between her legs, starting from her underwear, quickly enveloping her butt, and then surging along the bottoms of her thighs. Had she spilled her coffee? No, the coffee was still on her desk, and it was empty anyway. She looked down, staring in puzzled disbelief at the stain actively spreading across her lap. The hot liquid was running down her calves now. A trickling sound was coming from below her, as the liquid overflowed the bench and splashed onto the floor, drawing the eyes of classmates nearby. One of them covered her mouth in shock. Only then did it dawn on Claire what was happening. 

 

If there was a playbook for how to react to suddenly discovering that you’re wetting yourself in class, Claire had never studied it. She let out a loud, involuntary yelp of surprise, drawing even more eyes, and grabbed herself fiercely between her thighs, clenching at the soaked denim with desperation and causing the stain to grow even larger around her hand. It was both ineffective and far too late. There was no stopping her bladder until it was empty. Still actively peeing her pants, Claire flung her books into her bag in one motion and just ran for it, a dripping, headlong dash for freedom, ears ringing and cheeks blazing. She didn’t stop until she had reached the bathroom, where she flung herself down on the toilet, ripped off her pants, and… nothing, really. It was all over. She hadn’t even been close. 

 

Claire was too shocked to cry right then. She wiped herself automatically, flushed the toilet, and pulled her pants back up. Her jeans were so thoroughly soaked that at first, the drips down her legs made her think that she had started peeing again. There was no point in trying to dry herself off, or wasting any more time in this bathroom. With her brain in crisis mode, Claire quickly realized that the best she could do was head back to her dorm as quickly as possible, before the first block of classes ended, and even more people saw her. Tying her sweatshirt around her waist, she scurried outside to her bike, leaving wet footprints along the way, and slung her saturated legs up over the seat. As she pedaled, her mind was blank, too traumatized to properly consider what had happened. More students pointed and whispered as she passed, on the street, and then in the hallway to her dorm. But it was all a blur. Reaching her room and slamming the door behind her, she peeled her jeans off like clingwrap, toweled off her legs, pulled on a pair of pajamas, flung herself into bed, and finally allowed herself to cry.

 

 

Edited January 20 by bestrapperalive (see edit history)

[Luna 862]

Definite a nice read, love the imagery for the hypnosis as I always wondered how to write through those. 

[Lapis Lazuli 173]

Nice title! Also, I like Collin, scaring looking emo boys who are actually sweethearts has gotta be one of my favorite genders.

[KimAustad 91]

I'm glad I got tagged in the intro, because this was a really great read! Perhaps it's just my completely healthy obsession with omorashi hypnosis, but it really hit all the right spots for me. I think hypnotizing those who have no belief in hypnosis is such a great theme, especially when it involves them proving just how real it is with a wet patch running from their crotch down to their ankles!

Keep up the great work, there can never be enough Hypnomorashi content out there! I'd love to see how this plays out for Ms. High and Mighty after her public incident in the future, a girl can dream!

Also, had a bunch of fun filming your script! Just need to find a way to edit everything together. Handling wet patches on long, 4K video is quite the challenge, though, much more doable than keeping my pants dry!

[bestrapperalive 161]

On 1/17/2023 at 11:10 PM, Luna said:

Definite a nice read, love the imagery for the hypnosis as I always wondered how to write through those. 

I sped-listened to a youtube hypnosis video before i wrote Kim's script, built off that, and then for this i shorthanded it and got a little more surreal/less specific. Thanks!

On 1/18/2023 at 12:56 AM, Lapis Lazuli said:

Nice title! Also, I like Collin, scaring looking emo boys who are actually sweethearts has gotta be one of my favorite genders.

Thank you! Not my usual type of character, but I'm glad you like him! If the story continues he will make a prominent return

15 hours ago, KimAustad said:

I'm glad I got tagged in the intro, because this was a really great read! Perhaps it's just my completely healthy obsession with omorashi hypnosis, but it really hit all the right spots for me. I think hypnotizing those who have no belief in hypnosis is such a great theme, especially when it involves them proving just how real it is with a wet patch running from their crotch down to their ankles!

Keep up the great work, there can never be enough Hypnomorashi content out there! I'd love to see how this plays out for Ms. High and Mighty after her public incident in the future, a girl can dream!

Also, had a bunch of fun filming your script! Just need to find a way to edit everything together. Handling wet patches on long, 4K video is quite the challenge, though, much more doable than keeping my pants dry!

Thanks 🙂 Yea, I've never really focused on hypnosis as one of my main 'things' within this thing we're all here for, but whenever hypnosis content has come up it's always hit the right spots, as you say. I love humiliation, and involuntary loss of control, and people being taken down a peg, and psychological torment, and people being controlled (although I tend to prefer when there's an element of, i don't know, 'reasonable denial' or other intention from the controller so that it's almost more humiliating, like with Collin being pressured into really screwing up Claire by Amanda and herself so that she can't really blame him)... so pretty much everything that hypnosis about.

I have some good ideas for where this story can go and I wrote part of the second chapter already, so I'd put it at 65% or higher that this story keeps going. Ironically one of the problems I face with this story is that I'm not into ABDL but this entire premise SCREAMS ABDL... I'm almost forced to write in at least some amount of it just to progress the plot realistically. Funny where these things can lead you.

[KimAustad 91]

6 hours ago, bestrapperalive said:

Thanks 🙂 Yea, I've never really focused on hypnosis as one of my main 'things' within this thing we're all here for, but whenever hypnosis content has come up it's always hit the right spots, as you say. I love humiliation, and involuntary loss of control, and people being taken down a peg, and psychological torment, and people being controlled (although I tend to prefer when there's an element of, i don't know, 'reasonable denial' or other intention from the controller so that it's almost more humiliating, like with Collin being pressured into really screwing up Claire by Amanda and herself so that she can't really blame him)... so pretty much everything that hypnosis about.

I have some good ideas for where this story can go and I wrote part of the second chapter already, so I'd put it at 65% or higher that this story keeps going. Ironically one of the problems I face with this story is that I'm not into ABDL but this entire premise SCREAMS ABDL... I'm almost forced to write in at least some amount of it just to progress the plot realistically. Funny where these things can lead you.

Not into ABDL? Looks like you just need to spend some more time with hypnosis, that'll fix it. 😉

Seriously though, Hypnosis is just such a versatile kink. Any other kinks you like can be spiced up with hypnosis in some way, especially when it comes to kinks that deal with losing control like Omo. And you're right about Collin's deniability making things more humiliating for her. He can play the "I told you so" card all day long, super juicy.

[bestrapperalive 161]

Chapter 2 is here, a lot faster than I anticipated. The positive feedback induced me to run with it more enthusiastically than I had planned. I also made some *tiny* edits to Chapter 1, but I only mention that because one of them was to tease the fact that Claire wants to go to law school after she's done with undergrad, which will probably come up throughout the story, and is referenced by Amanda in this chapter (this kind of retrofitting is why my 'omorashi novella' languishes until i can finish it 100% - it's hard not to write yourself into a corner and want to go back and change or tweak things - On the flip side, for this story, having the major plot points set in stone as I publish them constrains me from overthinking the plot going forward).

Chapter 2 deals with the internal fallout from Chapter 1, and focuses on Claire trying to process what's happening to her, Amanda trying to help with that, and Claire continuing to experience unexpected issues. Chapter 3 will involve Claire starting to actually try various ways of diagnosing and coping with her situation, will almost certainly dip a toe into ABDL (but just a toe!), and will feature the triumphant return of Collin.

 

Enjoy, and be sure to let me know if you like it - like I said, the feedback makes it worthwhile.

 

 

Claire had only just about finished crying when her phone started going off. She tried to ignore it at first, not wanting to engage with this new world in which she was known for peeing her pants in class, hoping that if she never left this room again, she would never have to accept that as reality. But that couldn’t last forever. Figuring she would just turn off the phone if it was too much to handle, she reached over for it and pulled up the notification screen. She had 4 missed calls and a double digit amount of texts, almost all of which were from Amanda. 

 

Oh my god Claire, I just heard what happened!! Are you okay???

 

Claire?

 

Claire??

 

I’m going to call you, hang on.

 

Did you get my call?

 

Are you there? Did this message send?

 

Are you at your dorm? I’m going to skip class and come over if you don’t answer soon. 

 

That last text was only a few minutes old, so Claire quickly typed out a response.

 

I’m fine, go to class. I’ll talk to you later.

 

This was, of course, more or less a lie, but Claire didn’t feel ready to talk to Amanda yet. Something was wrong with her, but she didn’t seem to be having a medical emergency, and there wasn’t anything Amanda could do to restore her shattered dignity. The last thing she needed was to have Amanda swooping in trying to save her before she had even had time to process things on her own. 

 

Deciding that she’d wallowed enough, Claire got out of bed, threw her pissed jeans into an otherwise neat pile of laundry, walked down the hall to the washing machine, and tossed it inside. From there, she went on to the shower. As she stood in the bathroom waiting for the water to heat up, she stared closely at her naked body in the mirror, wondering what on earth was going on beneath the surface. Her olive green eyes were red from crying, but other than that, she looked the same as ever. Her long brown hair was still tucked neatly behind her ears, flowing down around her square face and past her bony shoulders. Her full lips were still just a few degrees removed from what would be their normal confident smile. She ran her hands over her smooth skin, cupping her breasts, feeling her stomach, touching between her legs, feeling for… what, exactly? Was she expecting some random swelling, some telltale rash, some (ugh) unnatural discharge that explained why she was suddenly pissing her pants without realizing it?

 

The now scalding water made her flinch as she stepped into the shower, finally washing away the tracks of dried urine down her legs. Claire tried to think back to the moment it had happened. She remembered the caffeine - the extra caffeine she’d had to shake off that stupid hypnosis fog. It had clearly been affecting her more than usual, since she’d been physically shaking, although she wasn’t sure exactly how much that was connected. The weirdest thing was still that she hadn’t realized she needed to… go, until she was already going in her pants. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. Nothing like that ever happened to anyone, at least not anyone healthy. Was it possible that she had a UTI? She’d never had one before, but that would make a lot of sense. What other things could cause incontinence in an otherwise healthy young woman? For a terrified moment, she wondered if she could be pregnant, but that wasn’t even close to possible, mathematically speaking. By the time she got out of the shower, Claire was no closer to a definitive answer, only a number of unsatisfying theories.

 

Back in bed, wearing her comfiest pajamas and nursing a cup of tea, Claire closed her curtain, pulled out her laptop and begrudgingly started to research her situation. She had decided to skip her afternoon classes. Even if she didn’t know exactly what was wrong with her, it was clear enough that SOMETHING was wrong with her, and she needed a sick day to recuperate both physically and mentally. A few awkward, concerned texts had come in from people other than Amanda, which she had tried to handle as maturely as possible, saying that she was sick, probably a UTI, and that she’d be ok, and thanks for reaching out… Still, each clumsy acknowledgement of her incident made her want to die of shame all over again. It didn’t help that Google had already started serving her ads for adult diapers - a reasonable development, with her search history consisting of: 

 

What does a UTI feel like?

 

Can a UTI make you pee your pants without feeling it?

 

Peed my pants without feeling like I had to go

 

Peed my pants without feeling like I had to go young woman

 

Urge incontinence

 

Overactive bladder

 

Medication for overactive bladder

 

Medication for UTI

 

Home Treatments for UTI

 

 

There were so many different variations on the same theme that it made Claire’s head swim trying to decipher between them all. What she had experienced was definitely more in the ‘urge incontinence’ category, although it didn’t fit as neatly as she’d like, with the ‘sudden and total flood’ as opposed to the quick onset of a need and then a smaller accident. Some of the possible explanations for this were so terrifying, she clicked away from them quickly, not wanting to let an isolated incident elicit a bout of hypochondria. Some of the explanations were more mundane, although not always in a reassuring way. Claire was a proactive person, but there was only so much she could glean from internet sleuthing. She needed a plan of action. Write to her teachers, take tomorrow off, and go by health services first thing in the morning. 

 

There you go, Claire said to herself. A well thought out, proactive plan to put yourself back in charge of the situation. Nothing to worry about. 

 

Even inside her own head, the words sounded hollow. 

 

Claire felt herself starting to get fidgety again, which caught her by surprise. The tea she was drinking was decaffeinated - she wasn’t going to risk any more caffeine today, after how things had started. She’d been sure to drink plenty of water - all the information she’d seen said that hydration was the best home remedy for UTI, along with maybe cranberry juice if she could get ahold of it. So why was she feeling like this? Maybe her stupid housemates had mixed up the decaf green tea with the regular, and the cup of soothing liquid she’d just consumed to relax was instead having the complete opposite effect. Wondering what else could go wrong, she flopped back in bed, and noticed that she’d missed a text.

 

How are you doing??? I’m coming over, I’ll be there in 5 minutes.

 

It was Amanda. The text was exactly 5 minutes old. There was a knock on her door. 

 

“Claire?? Are you in there?”

 

“Yea… You can come i- “

 

Amanda had already burst through the door, a ball of reddish curls and concern, and was plopping down next to her on the messy bed. 

 

“Oh my god, you poor thing, I’m soooo sorry, did you forget to set an alarm?? I’m so sorry, this is all my fault, I didn’t think it would work so well!”

 

“Amanda,” Claire said, bemused. Amanda looked like she was going to cry. “Amanda! Calm down!” Claire implored her. “What are you talking about?” 

 

A look of complete and total confusion replaced the guilt on Amanda’s face. 

 

“What do you mean what am I talking about?”

 

“What do you mean, what do I mean? What alarm? What’s your fault?” Claire asked, annoyed.

 

“Don’t you remember? You said you were going to set an alarm so you remembered to go to the bathroom before class!”

 

Claire stared blankly at her. She remembered saying something like that to shut Amanda up, but she didn’t see the significance. 

 

“Oh my god Claire, do you even remember what happened last night?” Amanda gasped. “You don’t remember, do you?” Amanda seemed close to panicking, and looked as though she thought Claire might have suffered serious brain damage. 

 

“Can you PLEASE calm down?” said Claire, agitatedly. “Of course I remember. We went to a really lame party, and some lonely nerd tried to hypnotize me, but it didn’t work and just made me really tired.” 

 

“Didn’t - Didn’t work??” Spluttered Amanda in shock. “Claire, don’t you remember? I asked him to make it so you wouldn’t remember to go to the bathroom!” 

 

“And?” asked Claire.

 

“And you peed your pants in class!”

 

Claire winced, but still managed to snort. 

 

“Yea, and that sucked, thank you. But it wasn’t because of the hypnosis. Hypnosis isn’t real.” 

 

Amanda shook her head, a look of disappointed incredulity plastered across her earnest face. 

 

“How can you still say that, Claire? You were hypnotized to forget to go to the bathroom, and you peed your pants. How much more obvious can it get?”

 

Claire frowned. “Amanda, we’ve talked about this. Correlation doesn’t imply causation.” 

 

“What, so it’s just a coincidence?”

 

“Yes, it is literally exactly that,” replied Claire, with a hint of exasperation. “There are a lot of normal medical things that can cause… um, incontinence, without there needing to be a supernatural force involved. I’ll go see health services tomorrow, but I probably just have a UTI or something.” 

 

“Why do you think that? Are you having to go a lot? Does it burn when you pee?” Amanda, who was a nursing student, and who had also actually had a UTI asked shrewdly. 

 

Taken aback by Amanda’s relative expertise, Claire tried to answer.

 

“Well… I never had.. Um, issues before. So a UTI is the most normal explanation why I would suddenly be having… you know… accidents.” 

 

“You didn’t answer my other questions,” Amanda replied, unimpressed. 

 

“Well… no, it doesn’t… burn… yet. And I…” Somehow, Claire couldn’t remember how many times she’d peed recently. She wasn’t used to being backed into a logical corner by Amanda, and found herself quite flustered by the experience. 

 

“Yea, thought so,” smirked Amanda. “I bet you don’t even remember the last time you peed before class.” 

 

Claire frowned. It was true, she couldn’t remember peeing before class. But she’d been running late. She probably just hadn’t needed to go, until the coffee and the UTI or whatever teamed up and caused the… situation. 

 

All at once, the combination of being lectured by Amanda and reliving the most embarrassing moment of her life overwhelmed her, and she found herself staring at her feet through moist eyes. A pathetic sniffle escaped her, then another, and a single, tiny trace of liquid rolled down her cheek. 

 

Amanda’s face softened. She scooched up close to Claire and pulled her into a hug.

 

“I’m sorry Claire… I didn’t mean to be impatient, you know I just want to help. I still think you’re probably hypnotized, but it makes sense to try to think of other explanations too.” 

 

“I just feel so STUPID,” Claire wailed miserably. “I just don’t know how I could let this happen, no one’s ever going to look at me the same way again, how is anyone supposed to take me seriously if they know I can’t even control my bladder? I mean - ” Claire choked apologetically, “I know you’ve had stuff like this happen sometimes, but you’ve never just totally… p- peed your pants out of nowhere in the middle of a lecture in front of everyone.” 

 

“Why wouldn’t anyone take you seriously?” Amanda asked. “This could happen to anyone. It’s not your fault.” 

 

“Who’s fault is it? No one else made me p-p piss myself.” 

 

Amanda opened her mouth to contest that assertion, then thought better of it. 

 

“Look, Claire,” she said softly. “I know it really hurts right now, but really, it’s a much, much bigger deal to you than it is to anyone else. No one else is even…” 

 

“Don’t say no one is going to remember,” Claire cut her off, disparagingly. “Everyone remembers this stuff, even if they say they don't. I still remember you pooping your pants, and that was kindergarten.” 

 

Amanda, her cheeks a distinct shade of pink, maintained her patience. 

 

“I wasn’t going to say that. I once had a boy who I didn’t even know come up to me in high school and ask me if I was the girl who pooped her pants in Mrs. Davio’s class. So I know that.” 

 

She paused briefly to let that unpleasant memory dissipate. 

 

“But this isn’t high school anymore. The people who saw you are young adults or adults. They’re here to meet people and try things and get an education. They literally all have better things to do than make fun of you, even if they wanted to.” 

 

“It’s not about whether they MAKE FUN of me or not,” Claire said, rolling her eyes. “It’s about respect. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously as a woman without also having to explain… whatever that was…” she trailed off miserably. 

 

“Fair enough,” said Amanda sympathetically. “But even then, it’s only like, 40 people out of 10 thousand or whatever on this campus who saw you… sorry, pee your pants, or 40 people out of, uh… one million or… one billion… Ok I don’t know how many people are in the United States but you get my point.” 

 

“300 million something,” Claire corrected her, managing a wet smile. In this time of great upheaval, it was nice to know she could at least still count on being able to correct Amanda about basic facts. 

 

“Yea, that,” grinned Amanda. “I mean seriously, in 5 years, what are the chances you even see any of these people ever again? And it’s not like there’s a question on the bar exam that asks ‘have you ever peed your pants? If so, instant failure, and also, straight to jail.’”

 

Claire laughed. 

 

“Yea, I guess not, probably.”

 

Amanda, sensing victory, pulled Claire into another hug, which Claire reciprocated gratefully this time. Her friend’s warm embrace and fruity smelling hair was soothing, if a little stifling, and she worked her way through the facefull of hair to let some of her tears dry on Amanda’s shoulder.

 

“Anyway, it’s -” Amanda stopped talking abruptly. An odd look had come over her. Despite the lack of words, her mouth stayed hanging open, while her eyes slowly widened, as if she had just walked in on something unseemly, and was temporarily too stunned to function. 

 

She leaped back from Claire.

 

“Claire! What the fuck!” 

 

“What?!” cried Claire, startled. Amanda was standing up from the bed, feeling around her butt, which Claire saw had a huge salmon colored wet patch adorning her otherwise pink jeans. For an infinitesimally brief moment, a smirk of schadenfreude tried to break out upon Claire’s tear streaked face. But then she followed Amanda’s eyes, which were now fixed upon her, specifically, the massive, rippling puddle she was sitting in, and she too leaped up in shock. Without the bed to absorb it, pee cascaded down her legs as she stood, quickly wrapping itself around her ankles and spreading eagerly out on the floor. Claire tried to stop it, but like before, it was hopeless - it just kept pouring out of her, almost as if her bladder muscles had already been abused to the point of complete impotence, and were now providing approximately the utility of a paper boat in a waterfall. This time she didn’t bother to run to the bathroom - she just stood there, stupefied, as her comforting plush pink and gray pajama bottoms turned a shamefully dark shade from crotch to ankle, and her warm, cute, fuzzy socks were transformed into cold, squishy, soaking rags. 

 

“Jesus, Claire! Why didn’t you say you had to go?!” yelled Amanda, having apparently forgotten about her belief in hypnosis in the aftermath of being peed on. 

 

“I don’t know!” sobbed Claire. “I - I - didn’t…” Tears streamed down her face unabated this time as she stood there, wet and quivering. 

 

“It’s ok,” said Amanda quickly, collecting herself. “Shhh, shhh, it’s ok.” She tried to pull Claire back into a hug without standing in her puddle, which, due to the size of the puddle, necessitated essentially dragging Claire into the center of the room. Claire didn’t resist, and, after several minutes of awkward, wet embrace, Amanda guided them towards the dry part of the bed to sit down. 

 

“We’re going to get you through this,” Amanda vowed. “I think we should go see Collin again, first thing after classes tomorrow.” 

 

Claire looked aghast. 

 

“No no no, no way, I’m not going to that kid and telling him ‘hey great job, you made me pee my pants all the time now, can you please help?’”

 

“He’s the only one who might be ABLE to help!” Amanda beseeched her. 

 

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Claire snapped back, stubbornly. “I’m going to go see as many doctors as I can find, as quickly as I can find them, and they’re going to prescribe me antibiotics, or injections, or…” Her lip trembled. What if they couldn’t help? What if there was no prescription for what was happening to her?

 

“You should do that,” Amanda replied soothingly, “and we should also go see Collin. But we can talk about that tomorrow. First, give me your phone.” 

 

“Huh?” Claire replied, although she handed it over without complaint. 

 

Amanda typed in Claire’s passcode, opened up the clock app and got to work, explaining as she went. 

 

“I’m setting an alarm, every day, for every two hours of time that you’re awake, to remind you to go to the bathroom. No, that’s too vague. ‘Go to the bathroom and pee in the toilet…’ Yea, that should do the trick.” 

 

Claire, who thought her pride could not possibly take any more damage, felt it reeling again. 

 

“Every two hours?? And what are those instructions? I’m not a toddler Amanda, I don’t need step by step instructions on how to go to the bathroom. What if someone sees these over my shoulder?!”

 

“Yes, every two hours, and be glad I’m not making it every one.” Amanda chided her. “And yes, you do need step by step instructions. I’m not taking any chances here. Have you been to the  bathroom a single time since the hypnosis?” 

 

“Yea, of course,” Claire snapped back, indignantly.

 

“When?”

 

“Well, I went to the bathroom after I peed my pants, obviously, and I went and took a shower when I got home. And, uh…” Claire trailed off. 

 

“Exactly,” clipped Amanda. “You won’t admit it, but you’re obviously severely hypnotized, and you can’t make the connection between having to pee and going to the bathroom until we reverse it. Unless you want to keep learning you have to pee when it’s already in your pants, this is the best we can do.” 

 

Amanda’s tone was firm, and she moved with ruthless efficiency. Claire, who had never let Amanda boss her around for even 5 seconds in her entire life, was stunned. Her protests were shot down one after the other, and the cold, wet pajama pants clinging to her pee streaked legs sapped her ability to resist. 

 

It was getting late. Amanda had done everything she could do for Claire, and Claire needed to wash her sheets before her mattress could soak up any more stale pee. She also needed to wash Amanda’s jeans, which, as a result of Claire, were too obviously peed in to leave the room. This left Amanda temporarily without pants, but fortunately, after some trial and error, a pair of Claire’s more stretched out sweatpants were able to fit around Amanda’s healthy but slightly more padded frame, freeing her up to leave the room without embarrassment. With both girls now wearing dry clothes, they shared a last hug, and Claire thanked Amanda for being such a good friend. Then they went their separate ways. Amanda, back to her dorm, and her normal, mostly dry life, and Claire, back to the uncertain wet nightmare that stretched out into an unknown future. 

 

 

 

Edited February 7 by bestrapperalive
further very minor retcons (see edit history)

[FromIncognitoMode 214]

I can't thank you enough, stranger! Hypnosis piss without ABDL taps into true potential, but it's very rare. Appreciated.

[Preston14444 33]

Excellent work! I think you have a gift for writing. Please keep it up.

[bestrapperalive 161]

Chapter 3! I actually wrote most of this like a week or two ago, then had some stuff come up and had my interest stall a bit. I finally proofread it and wrapped it up and it's ready to go, with Chapter 4 following very soon. My promise of a return for Collin is going to have to wait till then- i exceeded my unofficial word cap before I had finished writing the events of Chapter 3. But he's a main character in Chapter 4 and beyond.

This chapter contains what the more obsessive among us might consider a minor plothole. I've addressed it at the end. Of course, this is a story about hypnosis omorashi, so the plot is going to contain some liberties throughout.

Enjoy, and if you have any thoughts, please leave a comment. Even just observations about the characters and story are fun to read.

 

Buh buh buh, buh buh buh buh buh, buh buh BUH buh…

 

The obnoxious, uplifting notes of something that sounded almost like a synthesized tuba looped mercilessly from the overburdened speaker of her Iphone as Claire shot awake, groaning. Who in the entire world other than Amanda would choose this abomination for an alarm tone, especially for the first thing in the morning? Grabbing her phone angrily, Claire skimmed past the words on the alarm (‘Go to the bathroom, and pee in the toilet’), flipped it off, and set a nice, normal alarm to wake her up 15 minutes later. She needed a second try at starting her day, one without tuba fanfares.

 

For as devastating as yesterday had been, she had at least managed to finish it on a stronger note. Thanks (or, in her opinion, no thanks) to Amanda’s cheesy alarms, she had diligently used the bathroom more or less as instructed with no further incidents, and been able to channel the self confidence from that into writing vague but self assured emails to her professors, saying she was dealing with a health issue, wouldn’t be in class today, and would catch up with the notes they posted online and/or come by their office hours to see what she missed. She had been nervous about needing to compose a slightly less vague email apologizing to her physics professor, but she needn’t have been - despite his toadlike grumbling about her lateness, he had already written her a very sympathetic email advising her to take as much time as she needed and telling her not to worry about anything. Lastly, she had sprayed down her mattress with gratuitous amounts of fairly aggressive cleaning spray, dabbed at it with every towel she owned, put a fan on it, and eventually flipped it over, putting the evidence of her second incident, at the very least, out of sight and out of mind. Claire could at least count herself lucky that this was happening to her when she was almost 21, living in a single room in a larger dorm, rather than a prior year when she would have had to deal with hiding from or confessing to a roommate. At any rate, the room still smelled somewhat sterile when her 15 minute alarm went off, and prompted her to make a more sincere attempt to start her day.

 

Claire meandered into the kitchen, refilled the empty glass of water from her bedside, heated up some oatmeal in the microwave, and made some coffee. When she sat back down at her desk to eat, she noticed that, even though she’d barely started her coffee, her leg was bouncing up and down involuntarily, that same twitchy anxiety that had been plaguing her for the last 24 hours. Apparently, for all her resolve and planning, she couldn’t shake the effects of the stress she was under. At least she could comfort herself with the thought that -

 

BUH BUH BUH, BUH BUH BUH BUH BUH, buh buh BUH buh

 

Claire swore, reached for her phone, and accidentally knocked it under her bed, forcing her to listen to another 10 seconds of tuba while she crawled after it. Goddamnit Amanda! There was no way that had been two hours, in fact, she knew it to have been exactly 30 minutes. Triumphantly getting her hands on the phone, her eyes narrowed on the text of the alarm.

 

You probably ignored the first alarm, so this time, actually go to the bathroom, and pee in the toilet. We don’t want any accidents! ❤️

 

Hm. The annoying brass fanfare was right. She didn’t really need to go to the bathroom, but she couldn’t just start ignoring all these alarms, either. Hopping a little from foot to foot, she made her way down the hall, opened the door, and walked to the toilet, hand between her legs, for some reason. The sound of liquid hitting water forcefully started almost the instant her skin touched the toilet lid, and continued unabated for quite some time. It wasn’t until Claire went to pull her pants back up that she noticed something that made the blood drain from her face. Her purple hipster panties were dark and damp around the gusset, and had even left a small but distinct stain on the gray leggings she’d worn to bed. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

 

Ok… Not a big deal. Pay more attention to the alarms next time, and you’ll be fine.

 

She wasn’t going to let a small leak get her down. This was still a major improvement from yesterday, something that would have gone unnoticed if it took place in public. Claire knew that with her strong work ethic, impeccable planning abilities, situational awareness and knack for sticking to a plan, it was only a matter of time before she got the hang of managing these bladder issues. Besides, she’d soon have them taken care of medically. Then she could laugh at Amanda for jumping on the hypnosis explanation, and get back teasing her for her own shoddy  bladder management.

 

That was her outlook when she left her dorm for health services that morning, and that was still more or less her outlook when she arrived at the walk-in clinic in town a few hours after that. 2 hours later, as she watched the gloomy gray day fly by out the window of her Uber, she was feeling distinctly less optimistic.

 

“You a student at the college?” Her Uber driver, a 40 something man with a cigarette laugh, asked, showcasing that special talent unique to cab drivers for being able to completely ignore the signs that their passenger doesn’t want to talk.

 

“Mm,” Claire mumbled, as disinterestedly as she could manage.

 

“Whatcha studying?”

 

“Criminal Justice.”

 

Claire felt the leering eyes of the driver sizing her up, and wished, for a multitude of normal and less normal reasons, that he would look at the damn road.

 

“Oh ho! Ho ho, I better watch out! You might arrest me for speeding!” He waited for her to respond, and when she didn’t, tried a different tack. “Or are you the gal I’m gonna call after I get arrested for speeding?”

 

“I’m planning to study law, if that’s what you’re asking,” replied Claire, coldly.

 

“Oh ho ho ho!” wheezed the driver. “The next Kim Wexler! You know… Better Call Saul!” He took his hands completely off the wheel to make finger guns.

 

Claire ignored him completely this time. She was actually a fan of the show, but there was no way she was giving this cretin even the slightest bit of encouragement.

 

As dreadful as the one sided conversation was, Claire dreaded the conversation she was going to have to have at the end of the ride even more. But as the entrance to her university came into view, she steeled herself for the inevitable.

 

The car came to a stop, and as Claire stepped out, she cleared her throat, and laid it on bluntly.  

 

“So… You should know, the reason I was at the hospital was because I recently developed an issue with Urge Incontinence. And I mention this, because during the ride back, I… Ugh… Peed. In your cab.”

 

She was gratified to see, at least, that this revelation wiped the stupid grin off her lecherous driver’s face.

 

“Oh,” he managed, gruffly, with no laugh this time.

 

“Yea. So I’m going to tip you… 300 dollars. That should cover a detailing to clean the seat, plus the lost time, and I hope that I never have to hear about this or hear from you ever again. Ok?”

 

The cab driver just stared. His brain was still stuck in a reboot - it seemed as though he was working through a combination of fury, pity, and severe sexual whiplash. Claire, who was not interested in seeing how these emotions resolved, booked it without another word.

 

It was just in her head, but as she walked past the carefully manicured trees, distinguished buildings, and young people with messenger bags and backpacks, all of them seemed to shy away from her, recoiling from the boiling frustration that she felt must be scorching the very air around her. She had done one thing right - her leggings, which she had chosen for being the blackest pair of leggings she owned, more or less completely masked the fact that they had been peed in, and no one pointed or whispered as she passed. But that was a small consolation. She almost wished they would have, because she felt like she wanted to attack someone, something, anything to offload the anger she was feeling towards herself. How, HOW had she managed to pee her pants AGAIN, with alarms going off and with a day and half of evidence to teach her that she was not going to feel when she needed to go, and had to plan ahead? She didn’t even care about the stupid Uber driver, or the 300 dollars. Ok, she would have liked to keep the 300 dollars, but at this point, it was about more than just inconvenience or embarrassment. Losing control of her body was scary and embarrassing on its own. Was she losing control of her mind as well?

 

These thoughts were pushed to the side somewhat when she discovered Amanda waiting outside her dorm, clutching a large bag and huddling against the side of the building to ward off the persistent drizzle.

 

“Oooo thank god you’re back, I’ve been waiting here for like 15 minutes. Didn’t you see my texts?”

 

“No,” grumbled Claire. She was not happy to see Amanda. It seemed to Claire quite thoughtless of her to show up here without permission, with no regard for her physical or mental personal space after a stressful day of embarrassing medical inquiries. Was this mostly because she’d wet herself, and would have liked to have been able to change, tell no one and let this particular misfortune stay her little secret? Yes, but that didn’t mean she was wrong.

 

Begrudgingly, she unlocked the door, and Amanda scurried inside gratefully. The two walked to her room in silence, Amanda, seeming somewhat distracted, and Claire, contemplating the possibility of pushing her down the stairs, going to her room alone and locking her out. But ultimately, she couldn’t do it. They shuffled into her room together with Claire resigned to the inevitable. 

 

Once the door was shut, Amanda wasted no time.

 

“So, how’d it go?”

 

Claire flung her jacket into the corner with enough pent up frustration to make Amanda flinch.

 

“That bad, huh?”

 

Claire just glowered at her. She wasn’t going to speak to Amanda until she was wearing dry clothes. She tried to rip off her leggings and panties with similar vigor, but they were too wet, and she almost fell over trying to pull her feet through them too fast.

 

“Oh, Claire,” sighed Amanda. “What happened? Did your alarms not go off?”

 

“They went off,” said Claire, through gritted teeth, and in contradiction of her vow of silence, “when my Uber was about to pull up to take me to the walk-in, and then again right in the middle of seeing the doctor.” She stood there, naked from the waist down, glaring daggers at Amanda until she was embarrassed enough to look away. The nudity wasn’t embarrassing - the girls had seen each other naked enough times that Claire could have drawn a map of the freckles on Amanda’s upper thigh. Not only had they known each other since preschool, they’d roomed together their second year of college, before Claire ultimately concluded that they were too distracting to each other in close quarters, and decided to get a single for Junior year. But Claire had already toweled urine off her legs in front of Amanda once in the last 24 hours, and felt that it would be better for her dignity if she would at least look away this second time.

 

“I’m sorry,” said Amanda, eyes glued to the ceiling in the opposite corner of the bedroom. “I should have asked you when you were planning on making those appointments before I set the alarms.”

 

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” sighed Claire, defeatedly.

 

“Can I ask what the doctor told you?” Amanda prodded, timidly.

 

“You can ask,” said Claire flatly, pulling up her sweatpants. “The NP at health services sent me to the walk-in, and after I waited at the walk-in for like an hour, this useless guy basically just told me to do some kegels and fuck off. I had to have the most embarrassing conversation I’ve ever had with anyone, twice, and all I got was ‘kegels’ and a referral to a urologist who won’t see me for a month.”

 

“Wow. That’s really it? Did either of them at least say what they thought might be wrong?”

 

“The nurse was at least nice about it, but she mostly gave cop out answers saying they could do more tests at the hospital. At the hospital, I peed in a cup and he said I didn’t have a UTI, then basically just gave me some crap about how incontinence is surprisingly common in women, ignoring my actual symptoms and the fact that it just started happening to me out of the blue.”

 

“What a jerk,” grumbled Amanda sympathetically. “I hate doctors like that, they think they know everything and their patients are just exaggerating, especially women.”

 

“Total waste of time, and now I have to come up with a way to explain the insurance charge to my parents… Although I suppose once I see the urologist, it’s going to be kind of obvious,” Claire sighed. 

 

“Well, you don’t have to tell them the full extent of things if you don’t want to,” Amanda reasoned. She knew how Claire’s parents were. They tended to oscillate between emotionally distant and just kind of out of touch, until something set off red flags, at which point they became overbearing and controlling until it went away.

 

“Yea. Well, I guess I’m back to square one. Maybe I do need alarms every hour,” Claire said, glumly.

 

“Well, about that…” Amanda, who was still holding the large bag, put it down and went to take something out of it.

 

“Don’t get angry, but I knew you would be too embarrassed and stubborn to buy these yourself, so I overnighted them on Amazon right after I left yesterday. I had a feeling that you weren’t going to get over hypnosis right away.”

 

“Oh no,” groaned Claire. She knew what was coming, but when she saw it out of the bag, she was even more appalled than she expected to be.

 

“Amanda, that’s like… a full on diaper! I thought it was going to be just like, disposable underwear or something, there’s no way I’m wearing those.”

 

“You don’t have to wear them all the time! I just thought maybe you should wear them when you go out, or at least in class, just in case. And I’m sorry, but I didn’t really think anything less than this would be enough, after how much you peed last night.”

 

Claire stared at the fluffy package in horror.

 

“Look, I appreciate you trying to help and all, but there’s no way I’m wearing those, no chance. I didn’t think I could live with people seeing me pee my pants, but I KNOW I couldn't live with people seeing that I wear diapers.”

 

"Why not?" asked Amanda, indignantly. "You've got a medical problem, in your own words. It's not like you're wearing them for fun... Not that there'd be anything wrong with that either."

 

Claire shook her head.

 

"It doesn't matter WHY I'm wearing them, Amanda. They're DIAPERS."

 

If Claire thought this came across as a compelling argument, Amanda disabused her of this notion quickly.

 

"So anyone who wears diapers deserves to be shamed, in your opinion?" she asked, eyebrows raised, a dangerous glint in her eyes.

 

"I didn't say that..."

 

"Then what ARE you saying, exactly? Because it sounds like what you're saying is that you can't stand to be in the same category as people who have to wear diapers because of some medical disability, and I'd like to know why that is." Amanda's passionate interrogation caught Claire by surprise, and she felt herself getting defensive.

 

"I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wearing diapers if you need to. You know I have a ton of sympathy and respect for people with disabilities. I'm not judging anyone who has to wear diapers to deal with incontinence."

 

"Right, sure, you're not judging them. You just don't want to be associated with them," Amanda replied, sarcastically.  

 

"It's not that I don't want to be associated with them..." Claire trailed off, distinctly flustered by now.

 

"But you'd rather pee your pants than wear diapers?"

 

"I don't want to do either! I want to figure out a solution to my problem, not treat it like a disability!"

 

Amanda narrowed her eyes.

 

"What does that mean to you, treating it like a disability?"

 

"I don't know..." Claire shook her head. "Like, just giving up, having to accept that I can't do the things I used to do."

 

"As the person in this room who has actually worked with people with disabilities..." said Amanda, crossing her arms. "I can tell you that their biggest problem often isn't even their so-called 'disability.' It's people like you acting like their lives are over just because of some limitation that, in many cases, isn't a real limitation for any reason other than the way people treat them."

 

Claire knew, on some level, that Amanda was right, and felt somewhat chastised. Still, her problem had never been that wearing diapers was immoral, and she felt like Amanda was trying to trick her by reframing the conversation.

 

"Ok, but isn't that the entire point? People are patronizing and shallow, and if they see me wearing diapers, they're going to stigmatize me as an object of pity instead of treating me like an equal. It doesn't matter what I personally think about it."

 

"Sure, I guess, if you wanna look at it that way.” Amanda shrugged. “But that’s only IF they see you wearing diapers."

 

Claire rolled her eyes.

 

“Sorry, WHEN they see me wearing diapers. There's no way you could wear that gigantic ball of paper out in public and not have people notice."

 

A look of beaming triumph flashed across Amanda's face, and Claire knew immediately what was going on. 

 

"Don't tell me you're..." Claire put her hand on her forehead.

 

"Yup," Amanda said cheerily, pulling up her shirt, and pulling down her jeans to reveal a fluffy white waistband. “Abena m4. I did some research, and these seemed like the best combination of discretion and absorbancy. I read that you can wear spandex over them to cut down on the noise even more.” 

 

Claire shook her head in disbelief. Wearing a diaper to make someone feel better was very sweet, and also very Amanda. But for as touching as the gesture was, and as badly as she was getting crushed in this debate, Claire couldn’t let go of her skepticism. 

 

“You’ve outdone yourself this time, I’ll give you that, but you have to admit this wasn’t really a fair test. I was distracted and it wasn’t even that long for me to have a chance to notice.”

 

Amanda just laughed, still riding the high of victory. 

 

“Should I have done some gymnastics first?” She giggled. “Or did you want to see how it would hold up to some twerking?” 

 

Claire had to smile. 

 

“Yea, and after that, the runway. Let’s see how the diaper blends in with a little high fashion.” 

 

BUH BUH BUH, BUH BUH BUH BUH BUH, buh buh BUH buh…

 

“Perfect!” exclaimed Claire, shutting the alarm off as fast as she could. “That can be the song as you go down the catwalk!” 

 

“I knew you’d love it,” beamed Amanda, and Claire wondered if she was more oblivious than she realized, or more conniving than she’d given her credit for. It was time to throw some water on the whole thing. 

 

“Amanda, seriously,” she pleaded. “Even if that diaper were totally invisible, I still wouldn’t trust it to actually hold up to an actual, like, full accident situation. I really don’t see the point of wearing something where the best case scenario is I never use it, and the worst case scenario is I get caught wearing a leaking diaper.” 

 

“Yea, I thought you’d say that,” nodded Amanda.

 

“Well, am I wrong?”

 

Amanda’s grin had faded a bit, and her cheeks were showing a definite tinge of pink. 

 

“I don’t know, but I drank a ton of water before I came over here…”

 

Claire gaped at her.

 

“Get OUT.”

 

“I’m serious! How else are we supposed to test it?”

 

“We’re not, because I’m not going to wear it.” 

 

“Yes you are,” snapped Amanda. “Even if you don’t agree to it now, you’re going to see sense eventually.” She was squirming a little, and Claire realized now why she’d been seeming so distracted. She shook her head.

 

“I don’t know anyone other than you who would put on an adult diaper and pee in it just to find out if it works… This is so gross.”

 

“What? It’s just pee. At least it’s going to be my own pee this time, unlike yesterday.” 

 

“That was gross too,” Claire shot back. “That doesn’t make this less gross.” 

 

“You’re such a prude,” Amanda said, laughing. “I’m using your shower right after, and I brought a change of clothes if I need it.” She squirmed a bit more, and then stopped, spreading her legs a bit, a look of determination on her face. 

 

Nothing happened, or at least, nothing seemed to be happening. 

 

Claire eventually grew impatient. 

 

“Well? Are you going?”

 

“Not yet,” Amanda admitted. “This is weird.” 

 

“I told you.”

 

“Not like that. I’ve just never done this on purpose.” 

 

“I’m shocked,” grinned Claire. “Do you need me to play some running water noises? 

 

“Maybe…” 

 

“Just pretend you’re in my bed after Hayley’s birthday party.” 

 

“Very funny,” said Amanda, who had become almost completely inured to jabs like this. She furrowed her brow, and after another moment, a look of calm washed over her. 

 

“There we go… ooh, it’s warm.” 

 

“Might as well just put up a woman’s bathroom sign on my door at this point,” Claire observed ruefully. She watched Amanda’s crotch like a hawk, waiting for the denim to change color. But it didn’t. 

 

“Are you done?” 

 

“Nope, still going. I told you I drank a lot of water.” 

 

“Dance around a bit, see if it leaks,” suggested Claire. 

 

“Don’t rush me,” Amanda reprimanded her. After another 30 seconds or so, she nodded. 

 

“Ok, all done… I think.” She performed a little dance, shaking her butt at Claire. 

 

“See anything?”

 

Claire had to admit, she didn’t. It seemed like the diaper was doing its job, at least for now. Amanda strode triumphantly over to Claire’s bed, and plopped down on it. 

 

“Squishy,” she giggled. She leaned back, making a big show of looking perfectly content. 

 

“I might start wearing these to bed if I’m really drunk, I didn’t realize they’d work so well.” 

 

Claire was at a loss for words. In the last 36 hours, she’d peed herself 3 times, and now she was watching her best friend waltz around her room in a wet diaper. To say things had gotten weird would have been the understatement of a lifetime. 

 

Amanda, on the other hand, looked to be taking things completely in stride. 

 

“So hey, listen,” she said casually. “Now that the doctor turned out to be useless, can we finally go see Collin?” 

 

Claire turned red.  

 

“Didn’t you hear me yesterday? There’s no way I’m ever letting that guy find out what’s going on with me, no way. Can you imagine his reaction? He’s gonna write to whatever weird forum he hangs out on like, ‘Hey everyone, guess what - today I hypnotized a girl into peeing her pants! Do you think she’ll go out with me?!”

 

Amanda frowned.

 

“I don’t think he’s like that, you’re just being mean. I know what you said yesterday but that was before the doctor said you don’t have a UTI… And before you had another accident in public.”

 

Claire was obstinate. 

 

“They’re gonna come back with more tests still. And I’m just still getting the hang of not feeling when I have to go. Besides…” she pouted. “I don’t care if I AM hypnotized. If I’ve got the option to keep Collin from hearing anything about me peeing my pants, I’m taking it, and I’m taking that information to the grave.” 

 

She crossed her arms resolutely, daring Amanda to argue with her. But Amanda wasn’t meeting her eyes. There was a guilty, squeamish look on her face, a look that Claire had no trouble recognizing. Amanda was not a very good liar, and she was terrible at keeping secrets. Claire’s eyes narrowed. 

 

“...What?”

“Would it change your opinion if…” whispered Amanda. “He already kinda… knew…” 

 

Claire exploded. 

 

“And how would he know, Amanda? Why would he know that?”

 

“I’m sorry!” wailed Amanda. “But I figured I should get his number in case anything like this happened, and it did, so I texted him! I was just trying to help!”

 

Claire gritted her teeth. 

 

“What did you tell him?”

 

“I only told him about the first time, and I didn’t go into like, crazy detail or anything. Just told him it seemed like the hypnosis worked, and asked if we could come by sometime and see what he can do about it.” 

 

Claire slumped, defeated. It was the party all over again, with Amanda running over her excuses like a raging elephant. She felt dazed and abused, as if the whole world was conspiring to share the news that she was incontinent as quickly as possible, with all the people she least wanted to know first. But she also knew that Amanda, in her fervent naivete, truly was only trying to help. If she believed Claire was hypnotized, it only made sense that she would turn to the so-called hypnotist for help, even at the cost of some of Claire’s dignity.

 

Amanda seemed to sense that Claire was giving in.

 

“Look, if we go over there and he’s just useless and you still don’t think you’re hypnotized after, we never have to talk about him again,” she cajoled. “But I’m trying to help you, and this is part of that, and I really need you to do this for me.” 

 

Claire nodded wordlessly. Each blow to her ego landed like an electrical shock, immobilizing her from protesting until it wore off. 

 

“I also,” Amanda admitted, “really need a shower. Can I borrow your shower kit and a towel?” She collected the items where Claire gestured to them, with Claire watching as she bent over. Her padded butt was definitely a little puffier than usual, but in spite of that, her outfit was still dry on the outside. . 

 

“By the way,” Amanda added shrewdly on her way out, “your alarm went off earlier. So you need to go to the bathroom too.” 

 

“You go first,” mumbled Claire. “I need a moment, I’ll go in a second.” 

 

But a few minutes later, Amanda was stepping into the shower, and Claire had forgotten her promise completely. 

 

***

 

 

 

 

Plothole thoughts:

 

How does Claire go give a urine sample at the hospital, then have to go so badly that she wets herself in the cab like an hour later at most? My lazy headcanon is that she only pees enough to fill the cup, for no particular reason. She's hypnotized, it doesn't have to make sense! (But it makes enough non-sense that it does kind of bother me...)

 

[KimAustad 91]

23 hours ago, bestrapperalive said:

"Plothole thoughts:

How does Claire go give a urine sample at the hospital, then have to go so badly that she wets herself in the cab like an hour later at most? My lazy headcanon is that she only pees enough to fill the cup, for no particular reason. She's hypnotized, it doesn't have to make sense! (But it makes enough non-sense that it does kind of bother me...)"

Girl bladders are just weird like that! I have an exceptionally full and overactive bladder in the mornings, and perhaps Claire could too. I've had plenty of mornings where I'll get up, pee, run a bath, and need to pee badly enough again to hop out of the bath a mere twenty minutes later. Plenty of explanations outside of hypnosis!

 

Edited February 7 by KimAustad (see edit history)

[ornery 0]

i like this so far, pretty good read

[bestrapperalive 161]

32 minutes ago, KimAustad said:

 

True - I've written characters with bladders like that, but we know from the start that Claire is mean to Amanda about her shoddy bladder control. So I'm forced to infer that Claire's bladder probably runs on an at least somewhat more leisurely and predictable schedule, which, combined with (what she would call) her better organized mind, has allowed her the privilege of talking down to Amanda... until now. Actually, the characters try to sort of nail down the exact pace of Claire's bladder in Chapter 5, for... let's call it 're-association training.' But we'll get to that 🙂

Looking forward to that script video someday 😉

[bestrapperalive 161]

Time for Chapter 4! Collin is back, finally. Looking ahead, I have a pretty good idea where Chapter 5 is going - we'll get into some of the backstory and nuts and bolts of this universe's version of hypnosis, as well as progressing the relationship between Claire and Collin and hopefully doing our first session of re-association training. After that... I honestly don't know. There's some obvious sexual tension that could be fulfilling to resolve, and the (at least partial) restoration of Claire's bladder control is a thread to follow. But I don't have a lot of direction outside of that, and writing for Claire gets more difficult the longer I go - they tell you to write what you know, and I don't actually know anyone like Claire. If anyone has any suggestions that might stimulate my creative process, or at least give me an idea of where people WANT the story to go, I'd be interested to hear them.

As always, feedback/comments are welcome, including writing critique. I have some self critique that I could go into but really these prologues are self indulgent enough already. Enjoy!

 

***

 

The late fall sun was already giving up on the day by the time Claire and Amanda left for Collin’s dorm. Amanda, just to make a point, was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing over the diaper, while Claire, ever fashionable, wore a pair of faded ankle cut skinny jeans, suede ankle boots and a black cardigan. Amanda had assured her that Collin would be waiting for them, but as they walked up the concrete steps to his dorm, Claire noticed her looking uneasy. 

 

“I don’t know why he’s not answering me… He said we could come by and he’d meet us. I don’t know where his room is even if we did get into the dorm without him.” 

 

Claire said nothing, choosing instead to smirk quietly and hope that Collin would never find his phone. But before she could make a serious case for giving up, Amanda called out triumphantly. 

 

“Ah ha! There he is, phew,” said Amanda. “He says he’ll be down in just a minute, and sorry for keeping us waiting.” 

 

“How nice of him,” grumbled Claire. 

 

When Collin appeared on the other side of the door, he was just as she remembered him. Short, at least by her standards, and scraggly, wearing skinny jeans that had seen better days, and a ‘The Cure’ t-shirt that would have been rejected by the Salvation Army. He looked glum and nervous as he let them in, mumbling some sound that probably was meant as a greeting, and staring at their feet from under the black bangs that shadowed his eyes. At least, Claire thought, he hadn’t gone so far as to flat iron his hair or put on eye shadow, and so managed to present as a young adult rather than an edgy middle school boy. 

 

When they reached his room, it became clear why Collin had been slow to answer. 

 

“Sorry for the mess…” he apologized, clearing off the bed in a hurry.  “I didn’t… think you would actually come…” 

 

Collin’s room wasn’t gross or smelly, but it was overwhelmingly disorganized outside of the computer area. His dirty laundry was at least contained in a hamper, but his clean clothes were piled in a way that suggested a rotation of 3 or 4 outfits, none of which ever quite made it back to the dresser. Computer peripherals and vintage stereo equipment had spread out across every surface like a fungus, many in advanced states of disassembly or reassembly. A select few items seemed to have been placed for aesthetic value; a vinyl copy of “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine, and a large, framed, black and white poster with the words “SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY…” which stood out as the only proper wall decoration. Collin’s office chair looked to be one of the only new and expensive things in the room, another clue, if there was any doubt, as to where he spent the most time. 

 

“You can sit down…” Collin said, gesturing hesitantly at the bed. Amanda plopped down graciously, but Claire shook her head stiffly. 

 

“I’ll stand.” 

 

The unlikely trio found themselves, for the second time, in a small, dusty bedroom with no one saying anything, everyone either unwilling or unsure of how to break the silence. Ultimately, it was up to Amanda, as the person who had brought them together, to take the initiative. 

 

“So, um.. Like I said, it seems like Claire might have been… affected… by the hypnosis.” 

 

The implications of ‘affected’ pinged off the walls, with opposite effects on the coloration of Claire and Collin’s cheeks - one, turning red in spite of herself, and the other, already pale, seeming to become even whiter. 

 

“Right… um… How… affected, exactly?” Collin asked reluctantly.

 

Amanda looked at Claire, who shook her head vigorously. 

 

“Oh, uh… Let’s just say… Pretty affected,” Amanda explained, walking on eggshells. “Like… problematically so.” 

 

Collin nodded slowly.

 

“Right… Well… That was certainly a possibility, which is why I was reluctant to try something so potentially debilitating... It was impossible to know how… severe… the impact was going to be.” 

 

Claire scoffed. There it was again, Collin equivocating to make hypnosis sound more grand and believable than the showy farce that she knew it was. 

 

Amanda glanced at her reproachfully. 

 

“The other thing, Collin, is that won’t admit that she’s hypnotized. She keeps saying it’s just a medical issue.” 

 

“It’s not a question of ‘admitting’ anything,” Claire interjected with annoyance, “I’ve just pointed out, correctly, that it’s more likely there’s a medical explanation for my… issues… than that hypnosis is real and this random guy from a crappy Sunday night house party is the only one who knows how to do it.” 

 

“But you never had medical issues before!” Amanda insisted. “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that the only thing that changed between you feeling totally normal and you having these accidents is that you just happened to try being hypnotized?” 

 

Mercifully, Collin cut them off. 

 

“Uh, I think you’re both right actually... Amanda’s right that the hypnosis could be one possible explanation, but Claire’s right that correlation doesn’t imply causation. We need to investigate more to really know what’s going on.” 

 

Claire smirked.  Even though Collin was backing both sides, she felt that his analysis vindicated her more than it supported Amanda. 

 

“So how do we do that, then?” Amanda prodded eagerly. “Like, how do we investigate more?”

 

“Well…” pondered Collin. “I guess… To start with, are the… symptoms… more mental, or physical?”

 

“Physical,” said Claire. 

 

“Mental,” said Amanda, at exactly the same time. The girls glared at each other. Collin raised an eyebrow. 

 

“O…k…” he said slowly. “So, there’s some disagreement on that point, which suggests that it’s probably a mixture of both.” 

 

“She doesn’t feel when she has to go,” Amanda explained rapidly, “but she also can’t remember that she needs to go, even after a day of trying to adapt, I keep setting alarms to remind her to go to the bathroom and it’s not - “

 

Amanda stopped talking momentarily, because Claire was making furious throat cut gestures and shushing her viciously through her teeth. 

 

“Oh for crying out loud Claire, how are we supposed to get any help if I can’t even talk about what’s going on?” asked Amanda, exasperated.

 

“Maybe it would help if I just asked some more… general questions,” Collin suggested, before things could get out of hand. “Would that be ok?” 

 

Amanda nodded, Claire shrugged. Let him run through his ‘questions,’ she thought, and let me out of here. It’s not like she had to answer them, anyway.

 

“Ok…” Collin began, in his slow, low, quiet drawl. He sounds like Eeyore, thought Claire, giggling internally.

 

“So… I’m just going to ask you a series of questions to try to get a… personality baseline and see if there are any… underlying issues, or… any inconsistencies that might be signs of hypnotic delusion. If you’re not comfortable… with any of them you don’t have to answer. Some of these won’t seem to be related to your problem, but that’s intentional. 

 

“Oh lord,” groaned Claire. “Hypnosis was bad enough - Now you’re trying psychoanalysis too? Should we go get me a couch to lie down on, or is that too much?” 

 

Collin turned a little pink. 

 

“Well, I AM a psych major… and you should probably sit down… if you’re ok with that. You can have the chair,” he added shyly. 

 

Ah, what the hell, thought Claire. She accepted the chair with a laugh, while Collin relocated, gingerly, to the bed, taking very obvious care to keep a respectful distance from Amanda. 

 

“She won’t bite, you know. Not until you get her clothes off,” Claire commented wickedly, making both of them blush. Poor Collin. Not a lot of social skills for someone studying humans, she thought, although the combo of psych major and aspiring hypnotist did seem fitting. 

 

“I’m surprised, by the way,” she added. “I assumed you were Comp Sci, based on how I’ve never seen you more than 3 feet from a computer.” 

 

“Uh… I’m both actually… double major,” Collin admitted. 

 

Even though it played into her stereotype, Claire had to admit that she was a little impressed. Collin might be nerdy, shy, and a bit far out with this hypnosis stuff, which she found ridiculous, but he was also clearly smart and hard working, which she respected. Somewhat mollified, she nodded at him. 

 

“Alright, let’s do it. Fire away, Freud.”  

 

“Wait - let me get my phone out,” Amanda interrupted. “I want to record this. We might need to reference it later.”

 

“Oh, uh… Good idea,” Collin agreed, although for a moment, he seemed caught off guard. “But let’s use my laptop instead. It’s got an HD camera and I can just set it up here and leave it so you don’t have to hold the phone.” 

 

Without waiting for Amanda’s answer, he quickly orientated his laptop camera towards Claire, and started to record. 

 

“Alright then... What’s your name?”

 

“Claire Emerson.” 

 

“Age?”

 

“20.”

 

“Eye color?”

 

“Olive green,” laughed Claire. “Are we doing a psych eval or are you processing me for a driver’s license?”

 

Collin’s eyes showed just a twinkle of a smile. 

 

“Just starting you off with some trivial questions to see how you respond… We’ll work through some common personality disorder screening next.” 

 

It took a while, and Collin stumbled a bit at a couple points. But after a number of very clinical sounding inquiries, it was clear to everyone that Claire was not suffering from any mania, delusions, or OCD. There were some comments from the peanut gallery about Claire’s temper, but they all agreed that she was not impulsive or self destructive or anything else that would indicate a disorder in that area. Collin’s other questions were all over the place, from “Do you consider yourself a very emotional person?” (No) to “Are you good at making people do what you want?” (Yes). Sometimes he would ask followup questions, or ask the same question in different ways.

 

“Would you consider yourself to be particularly well organized?” 

 

“Yes.” 

 

“More organized than the average person?”

 

“Absolutely.” 

 

“Do you ever find yourself in situations that you feel unprepared for, with no idea what led up to them?”

 

“Nope, never.” 

 

They went on and on, and Claire had almost forgotten why they were there, until…

 

“Ok… I do have to ask this at some point… Have you ever had any issues with bladder control in your adult life?”

 

“...No.”

 

“Ever waited too long to go to the bathroom, and not quite made it?”

 

“Nope. But if we wanna get Amanda in the chair…”

 

“No need for that…” Collin deflected, while Claire giggled. “I think I have what I need from the personality questions… This next part is a bit outside of the normal evaluation. I’m going to ask you about some specific real life scenarios, and I just want you to tell me, honestly and in detail, what you would do in each of them. These may seem a bit… trivial, but they’ll help... Are you up for that?” he asked, evidently uncertain about Claire’s level of patience. 

 

“Sure,” Claire replied readily. She’d expected to be annoyed by now, but she’d never been psychiatrically evaluated before, and found herself enjoying the attention. She was feeling a little fidgety, but figured it was probably something to do with sitting too long in this cramped, stale room. 

 

“Alright… I want you to imagine… You’re catching a plane the next morning, and you’re getting ready to go to bed. Walk me through some of the things you’d want to make sure about before falling asleep.”

 

“Sure,” Claire began. “So, I want to make sure my suitcase or suitcases are all packed, except for things I absolutely need in the morning, like my outfit for the day, makeup, phone, boarding pass printed out. Make sure my phone is charging overnight. Toiletries for travel in ziplock bags and airplane sizes… Double check that I don’t have anything that can’t go on a plane... Double check that my carry-on bag fits the airline requirements. I might shower if I’m really getting up early for the flight, and I’ll have my ride to the airport sorted out with either a friend or with a rideshare.” She paused, thinking. “Also, when my family went on trips, we always tried to empty out the fridge most of the way, so there wasn’t spoiled food when we got back. And watered the plants, got someone to take care of the dogs and stuff… But that stuff wouldn’t apply to me right now, obviously.” 

 

Collin nodded along while Claire covered every possible base, including some that she was sure Amanda had never even thought of. When she was finished, he went straight on to the next question. 

 

“Another variation. Let’s say you’re leaving for a long car ride… What are some things you do right before you leave the house?”

 

Claire crossed her legs, and put a hand on her chin. “Um, well, I’ll skip the stuff that I already said in the plane section that applies to any trip. So… I guess make sure there’s gas in the car, make sure I’ve checked the traffic and shared my ETA with anyone that I’m going to see… Bring some food or plan a stop along the way where I can get food. Same for coffee - especially for coffee. Make sure to…” she trailed off, a somewhat dazed look on her face.

 

“Make sure to what?” probed Collin. Claire just shrugged. 

 

“Is there anything else?” Collin prodded gently. “Like say it’s a really, really long drive, and you've already had some coffee.” 

 

“Uh.. No.. I don’t think so anyway...” Claire mumbled. 

 

Amanda, watching from the bed, was looking as though she had just heard a piece of particularly shocking gossip, and Claire didn’t know why. 

 

Collin showed no reaction. 

 

“One more variation. Let’s say… You’re seeing a movie in the theater. It’s a long movie, so you’re going to be there awhile. Is there anything you do before you go in and sit down?”

 

Claire listed off a few things; buy the tickets ahead of time, get to the theater early, buy snacks and soda...

 

“Figure out which room my movie is in. Go to the… Uh, go pick a seat. And… silence my phone, if it’s not already silenced. I guess that’s it, there really isn’t that much for this one…”

 

“…Noted,” said Collin, when it became clear that Claire had not noticed the glaring omission in her planning. Next to him, Amanda looked positively flabbergasted. 

 

“What about… after the movie?” asked Collin, giving Claire one last chance. “Let’s say you drank a large soda, and you’ve got a bit of a long ride home.” 

 

Claire looked at him blankly. Her leg was tapping the floor now, and she didn’t like the feeling she was getting, the nagging suspicion that everyone else in the room knew something she didn’t. 

 

“Uh… Um… I don’t know… Text my ride? If I didn’t come in my car or with friends? Maybe text my parents if I’m going home? I don’t know… You’re making me feel silly, but it’s just seeing a movie, it’s not rocket science…” She trailed off, looking lost. 

 

“That’s ok…” Collin said soothingly. “There’s no right answer… I’m just getting an idea of how you plan for different situations.” 

 

He looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. 

 

“Alright… Almost done. I’m going to ask you a few more direct questions… Do you know what a diuretic is?”

 

“Yes,” answered Claire snappily. “Duh.”

 

“Just making sure… And can you name some drinks that are diuretics?”

 

“Coffee, tea, alcohol… Maybe cranberry juice, if that one guy from ‘The Departed’ knew anything.”

 

“I dunno, but it doesn’t matter,” Collin replied. “So, if for example, you’ve been out drinking a lot of alcohol, is there anything you might try to be… more aware of throughout the night?”

 

“Definitely,” Claire nodded. “I always drink a lot of water if I’m drinking alcohol. People are always complaining about hangovers, but they don’t even try to hydrate, it’s ridiculous.” 

 

Instead of lightening the mood with her mild complaining, it seemed that Claire had made things even more inexplicably dire. Amanda had her hand over her mouth now, and was looking at Claire like she had just grown a second head. Claire had absolutely no idea what was going on with her, and she was decidedly uncomfortable at this point. She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, still tapping her foot, and looked back at Collin, searching his face for an explanation. What she saw was concerning - his poker face was mostly intact, but his eyebrows had disappeared, retreating involuntarily up into his bangs. He corrected this quickly, though.

 

“Yea… that’s smart… Anyway, one last question. I’ve noticed that you’ve been getting really fidgety as we’ve been talking. Do you have any idea why? And… sorry, one other personal question… When was the last time you went to the bathroom?”

 

Claire shrugged. She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to tell Collin he was making her nervous, even just as an excuse. She didn’t know when the last time she went to the bathroom was, either, but she didn’t see the relevance, and was getting tired of bathroom questions. Collin, for his part, made no attempt to drag the answers out of her.

 

“So, did I pass?” asked Claire flippantly, once it became clear that there were no further questions. 

 

“Uh… Well, it wasn’t a ‘pass/fail’ test, but, I do think you’re showing some… pretty strong effects from the hypnosis,” Collin mumbled apologetically. 

 

“Can you do anything to help?” cried Amanda, like the distressed relative of a terminally ill patient. 

 

“Hm…” Collin sat, looking pensive, for a long, pregnant moment. 

 

“No, probably not.” He shrugged.

 

“WHAT?” yelled Amanda, while Claire burst out laughing. The sheer anticlimax of Collin’s response was just too perfect. After all that grilling, all of those slick personality questions, he ultimately had nothing useful to say after all. He was just jumping right back into the hypnosis boat with Amanda. Well, they could sail away together for all she cared. She stood up from the chair, and walked over to the door. 

 

“Well, there you have it Amanda, he’s just as clueless as the doctors. And he can’t fix me with more hypnosis, probably because, plot twist, hypnosis isn’t real.”

 

“Why CAN’T you fix her with more hypnosis?” asked Amanda beseechingly, ignoring the rest of Claire’s comment. 

 

Collin, who was still looking a bit shell shocked from Amanda’s indignant scream, tried to explain. 

 

“I mean… it’s basically what I said before… it’s easier to hypnotize away someone’s inhibitions or abilities than to give them brand new ones.”

 

“But this isn’t a brand new ability,” Amanda persisted. “You’re just restoring an ability she already had.” 

 

“It doesn’t work like that…” Collin mumbled.

 

“Why not? How DOES it work then?” It seemed like, now that Collin was no longer presenting a helpful or interesting version of hypnosis, Amanda was finally starting to demand answers, and Claire looked on with glee. 

 

Collin took a second to compose himself, then launched into an analogy. 

 

“So… Imagine Claire’s brain is like a house. An impossibly large and complex house, with hallways, staircases and doors connecting all the different rooms together. What I did was the equivalent of handing Claire’s subconscious a sledgehammer, and telling her ‘go tear down all the staircases that are relevant to bladder control…’ Or more accurately, ‘think of everything you can that reminds you that you have to pee, or should pee, and destroy all those triggers one by one.’” 

 

Claire pictured a little tiny version of herself walking around her brain, covered in plaster and splinters, and she giggled. But a silly construction metaphor was not the same as a scientific explanation, and did nothing to actually sway her opinion. 

 

Amanda seemed less sure. 

 

“Well… Why can’t you build new staircases then? Why not just tell her brain, hey, go put those staircases you destroyed back up?”

 

“Well, two reasons… One, Claire’s subconscious isn’t a carpenter… Building connections is a lot harder than tearing them down. And two, as the hypnotist, I’m letting Claire’s mind do all the work… I can put her in a suggestive state, give her a prompt and let her run with it... But I can’t tell her ‘go build a bunch of staircases connecting your brain and your bladder’ because that’s not a specific enough set of instructions. And she’s got no reference point to follow, unlike before, because she’s destroyed the blueprint…” 

 

Amanda furrowed her brow. 

 

“Hmm… I guess that kind of makes sense…”

 

“What? No it doesn’t!”

 

Claire was disappointed to see her friend giving in to Collin’s cheesy explanation. Loudly, and rather animatedly, she let it be known that even if the analogy SOUNDED smart, nothing Collin was saying provided any kind of actual scientific basis for hypnosis. But to her annoyance, no one listened to her. In fact, Amanda gestured at her, and her twisting, bouncing legs, and addressed Collin like she wasn’t even there. 

 

“But if all her brain bladder staircases are destroyed… Why is she doing all this pee dancing? I’d almost never seen her pee dance in my life before this, and she’s been squirming for like 30 minutes now without doing anything about it. It’s honestly kind of disturbing.”

 

“Well, it’s what you said…” Collin answered. “Her brain doesn’t connect the symptoms of having to pee with the realization of having to pee, and that includes the uh… pee dancing. But it seems like her body still has some residual, automatic reaction to the sensation of a full bladder that makes her fidget… She just doesn’t know what it means. At least that’s my guess,” shrugged Collin. “Who knows, really.” 

 

“HEY! Dumb and dumber! I can hear you, you know!!” Claire interjected, red faced and properly peeved. “And I’m not PEE DANCING,” she added, straightening herself out and standing completely still. “If I’m fidgety, it’s because I’ve been trapped in this shithole dorm room for the last hour, listening to you two dweebs speculate about whether my brain is more of a three story Victorian, or just a mid century ranch.”

 

Collin and Amanda just stared, at a loss for words, while Claire went on ranting. 

 

“I’ve had enough! A couple accidents and you two jump to the most unlikely explanation. ‘It’s got to be the HypNoSis! There’s no other explanation!’ God, listen to yourselves. Besides, Amanda is exaggerating the whole thing anyway.” 

 

Now that she was done with Collin’s investigation, Claire had no reason to be honest, and surged on with the blatant lie. 

 

“I’m not TOTALLY unable to feel when I have to go. And I’ve already basically got this under control. I have one little incident, and y'all decide I’ve got a spell on me or whatever, while Amanda spends her whole life barely making it to the bathroom but that’s supposed to be normal. This whole thing is one long stupid overreaction. I’m not going to pee my pants again, and I don’t need you two brainstorming how to fix me with hypnosis, because, reality check, hypnosis isn’t real…”

 

Claire trailed off. Her audience was not looking at her anymore, or rather, they weren’t looking at her face. They were staring, wide eyed, at her crotch: Amanda, with an expression of pity and disappointment, and Collin, with an expression of stunned embarrassment. 

 

“Claire…” Amanda shook her head sadly. 

 

A pit had opened up in Claire’s stomach. She could feel it now. Traitorous, rippling warmth was emanating from the intersection of her thighs, blanketing the insides of her legs and running up backwards along the contours of her perky butt. When she dared to look down, she saw her jeans rapidly darkening around the path of the relentless rivers inside them, forming an unbroken stain from origin to terminus, alongside a few shiny tributaries that snaked out from the main deluge and trickled down at their own pace. The flood poured out over her expensive shoes and onto the floor, most of it caressing her legs the whole way down, but some of it, too much to contain, breaking free at random points along her jeans and dripping down directly like the runoff of melting icicles. Claire let out a high pitched whimper of dismay, and, in a quavering voice, summed up the situation in two words.

 

“Oh fuck…” 

 

Her mind was spinning a million miles an hour, trying to think how this was happening, as if hoping that if she could only categorically rule out the possibility that she could be peeing her pants, it would cease to be real. But everything added up. She couldn’t think of a time that she’d gone to the bathroom since the cab ride, and she’d had plenty of water and coffee to drink since then. She’d ignored one bathroom alarm, and turned the other off in advance. What had she been expecting? In a daze, she only just noticed that something had hit her in the feet, and realized that Collin had somehow leapt off the bed and procured a towel without her noticing, then thrown it over her to mitigate the damage. Was it more embarrassing to completely flood his dorm floor with pee unabated, or more embarrassing to have him needing to jump in and intervene to prevent it? 

 

“I’m so sorry,” she sniffled. “I’m… I’m just… I don’t…” 

 

Collin shrugged. His face was still red with secondhand embarrassment, but otherwise, he seemed to be composing himself quite quickly.

 

“It’s fine… just… finish… It doesn’t matter.” 

 

It took a minute, but Claire did ‘finish.’ What else was she going to do? The towel contained things somewhat, but not completely. No one dared adjust it. 

 

Amanda wasn’t saying anything this time. There was still a trace of pity in her eyes, but only a trace. She clearly felt that Claire, who had blown off her attempts to help, lied to discredit her, and accused her of ‘exaggerating,’ had more or less immediately got what she deserved. 

 

With Claire paralyzed and Amanda pouting vindictively, Collin tried to take charge.

 

“You probably could use some space…” he said, kindly.  “I can go get a garbage bag and some paper towels, and you can… clean up. There’s another towel you can use. If you want to put on some of my clothes…” Collin struggled to shoulder the audacity of such a personal suggestion, before recovering enough to follow through. “You know, to change into some dry clothes, you can use whatever fits… Or not… Or whatever…”

 

Claire just stared into space, but Amanda reluctantly broke her silence. 

 

“I actually happen to have a change of clothes, because… reasons,” she admitted. “If you want to go get that stuff she can put those on.” 

 

Collin didn’t need to be told twice. He was eager to put some distance between himself and the intimate female drama playing out behind him. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, he saw a certain bitter irony in the fact that he’d finally, inadvertently, convinced a girl to get naked in his room, only for it to happen, by necessity, without him in it. If he did, though, he pushed it aside. For better or for worse, he had dragged an extremely strange situation into his orbit, and he was going to need to figure out how to get control of it. 

 

If only it were that simple. 

Edited February 13 by bestrapperalive (see edit history)

[bestrapperalive 161]

This is a little extra, but i decided to sketch Claire in that last scene. Don't look if you'd like to keep the vision you've formed of Claire in your head free from my interpretation 😉

Spoiler

 

[KimAustad 91]

19 hours ago, bestrapperalive said:

This is a little extra, but i decided to sketch Claire in that last scene. Don't look if you'd like to keep the vision you've formed of Claire in your head free from my interpretation 😉

  Hide contents

 

Oh, if only more art just like this existed! I adore it, and it's honestly very dead-on with how I envisioned Claire. Very into all of this!

[bestrapperalive 161]

1 hour ago, KimAustad said:

Oh, if only more art just like this existed! I adore it, and it's honestly very dead-on with how I envisioned Claire. Very into all of this!

Thank you so much! I'm not a trained artist, so I can rarely get things to look exactly how I envision them, but this was close enough and fun enough to draw that I was able to work up the courage to share.

 

In other news, the rough draft of Chapter 5 is done... I obliterated my unofficial word cap and still didn't get to the reassociation training. Will publish some time during the week when I've had a chance to sleep on it and proofread.

[bestrapperalive 161]

Well, it's been a month, and I've been procrastinating by writing other, more lighthearted stories, mostly not publishing them (I will eventually), and playing around with AI. After my rough draft, I just couldn't quite get the tone right for the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next one. In fact, I'm still not thrilled with it. I don't love the dialogue and I just can't quite nail the vibe - I don't want this story to get too bogged down in a sci fi drama plot, but it keeps trying to, and I keep having to edit it back down to keep things light and moving. Furthermore, I still only have an uncomfortably rough idea of where the plot of this story is going to tie up, and that makes writing chapters like this that are mostly bridge chapters more anxiety inducing. After all, no one wants to end up with a bridge to nowhere! But anyway, I decided screw it, let me just put out the damn chapter and see where it goes before this story gets totally covered in cobwebs.

 

************************

 

“So, if for example, you’ve been out drinking a lot, is there anything you might try to be… more aware of throughout the night?”

 

“Definitely. I always drink a lot of water if I’m drinking alcohol. People are always complaining about hangovers, but they don’t even try to hydrate, it’s ridiculous.” 

 

Amanda paused the video, and looked at Claire grimly. They were all sitting on Collin’s bed, with Claire now dressed in the somewhat oversized clothes loaned to her by Amanda, reviewing the video of her unique ‘psych eval.’ 

 

“Do you see where you went wrong here?”

 

Claire had her head in her hands. She had already had it pointed out to her for the prior two and a half scenarios that a well organized person such as herself should be going to the bathroom before a long car ride, a long movie, or at the end of a long movie. And a well organized, incontinent person (such as herself), doubly so. 

 

“I forgot about going to the bathroom,” she mumbled dejectedly. 

 

“Exactly!” said Amanda cheerily. “See, she’s learning already.” 

 

Collin looked skeptical. 

 

“It’s one thing to answer these when we’re shoving the answer in her face… She’s going to have a harder time actually doing these things on her own.” 

 

“Well, one step at a time,” Amanda said, breezing past the doubt. “Now…” 

 

She skipped ahead a bit in the video, which had kept going after the unofficial ‘last question,’ to where the tiny Claire on the screen was unknowingly pee dancing for her life.

 

“Do you see what you’re doing here? Do you remember what that means?”

 

Claire just sniffled. The version of her on the laptop had launched into a tirade, almost comically oblivious to the imminent disaster. As she stood there, exaggerating her ability to monitor her bladder, a leak had already appeared between her legs, and then, as she confidently asserted that she was done peeing her pants, that leak became a flood, and…

 

Claire looked away in shame. Every time she thought her situation couldn’t get more embarrassing, it found a way. First, she wet her pants in a crowded classroom. Then, she literally peed on her best friend. Then, she peed herself in a cab. And now, not only had she pissed her jeans right in front of a boy her age, but there was a high definition video of the accident saved on his laptop. At the rate this was going, she’d be seeing it on the front page of Reddit sometime tomorrow morning, and on CNN by Sunday.  

 

“I think she’s seen enough…” mumbled Collin. Amanda seemed to have been hypercharged by the opportunity to finally prove that Claire was hypnotized, but Collin more sympathetically felt that she needed space to recover. 

 

“I don’t know how much it can help to keep showing her this stuff… I’m pretty sure she gets the point, you don’t need to keep rubbing it in her face.” 

 

“I want to hear her say it,” Amanda insisted, fiercely. “No more evasive answers. I want her to say, ‘Amanda, you were right, hypnosis is real and I’ve been hypnotized.” 

 

“You were right,” croaked Claire, weakly. It was too much to repeat the exact sentence verbatim, but it was all true. There was no explanation for the mental deficiency she was showing that encompassed both the fact that she had become as clueless as a toddler in all things related to bladder control, and retained perfect mental acuity in literally everything else. It all made so much more sense in retrospect. If all she was dealing with was a bladder infection, or a nerve issue, there’s no way she would have handled difficulty making it to the bathroom by choosing to… almost never go to the bathroom. There had to be some biasing factor in her logic. And why else would she have completely abandoned common sense when it came to preparation for toilet restricting activities? She wondered if she would ever have realized it on her own, without Collin teasing out the glaring inconsistencies in her thought processes, and recording it for her to see. Would she have cluelessly gone on wetting herself in perpetuity, never making the connection to her own behavior, until she ended up in 24/7 diapers, or a psych ward, or both? Her only consolation was that, thank god, the conditioning seemed to have managed to specifically target her bladder, and she was not going around blindly shitting herself as well. 

 

“I really think you should let her go get some sleep, Amanda…” Collin opined. “You’ll both be back tomorrow… How long did you say it was between her cab ride and the, uh… incident in my room?”

 

“About 3 hours, but she was drinking coffee all day. I saw her finishing one when she got home and she was drinking from her water bottle after that,” Amanda rattled off.  

 

Collin thought for a second. 

 

“Alright… So, how about... Claire, don’t go to the bathroom for 2, maybe 2 and a half hours before you get here… And drink the amount of coffee and water or whatever that you would normally drink, but no more than that. I know this is painfully unscientific,” he sighed,  “but I don’t really know how to fix that without more data… Hopefully that will be enough to where you don’t have an accident, but you need to go badly enough that I have something to work with for the reassociation training.” 

 

Reassociation training. A confident, official sounding name for what was in reality a complete moonshot of a plan. By putting Claire into a state of hypnosis while she had to pee, Collin said, he could hopefully help guide her in reassociating the sensation of a full bladder, which she had been interpreting as a kind of heightened anxiety, with its actual meaning; that is, with the fact of having a full bladder. Would it work? Collin wasn’t sure, but having seen Claire’s condition with his own eyes, he ultimately agreed with Amanda that they had to try. There was simply no telling if Claire would recover any time soon on her own. Still, even if it worked, it would be painfully slow. Claire would at first have very little warning between recognizing that she had to pee and reaching her limit, as the association would have to gradually work through less and less obvious levels of discomfort. And even once they improved that, it would be up to her to relearn proper bathroom preparation habits, or she would still run the risk of getting stuck with a full bladder away from the toilet more than the average person. 

 

“So basically, I need to be potty trained all over again,” Claire had summarized glumly. 

 

As she lay in bed that night, Claire turned this notion over in her mind, trying to make sense of it. What did that actually mean, to be potty trained approaching her 21st birthday? Surely the main difficulty of potty training was working around the fact that children are incredibly stupid, irrational, and lacking in self awareness. Given that she was none of those things, shouldn’t this be a walk in the park? And yet, just as she was thinking this, she was startled awake by the bathroom alarm, and realized that without it, she would have fallen asleep without ever going to pee. Would she have wet the bed, or made it till morning? How was that even a question? She’d never been a bedwetter. But she’d never had to rely on an alarm clock for her bathroom visits, either. 

 

It had now been 2 full days since she’d been hypnotized, and, consequently, 2 full days since she’d gone a day without peeing her pants. As the third day dawned, Claire was forced to confront the fact that she was not going to get over her continence issues on any sort of condensed timeline. If she wanted to continue her education, she was going to have to do it with a reduced or entirely absent capacity for bladder control. A day and a half of missed class was already a stressful enough chunk of time, and there were no antibiotics or miracle injections coming to justify drawing it out any longer. She had only one class that afternoon, and it was a lecture. She wouldn’t have to interact with anyone, and could pay attention to how she sat, and who could see her. Perfect for testing out the diap… the protection. She wouldn’t allow herself to call it a diaper, because diapers were for babies, and she was an adult with a medical… er… mental… well, an issue. 

 

In a private window on her laptop, Claire reluctantly googled the Abena M4, and found step by step instructions for how to put it on herself. As the soft paper slipped over the goosebumps on her legs and covered her privates, she felt a mixture of relief and terror - relief that, at least theoretically, she was finally protected from wetting her pants, and terror that she felt relief from putting on a dia… protection. The protection was unfortunately a bit large for her slender frame - at 5’ 7 and a bit over 120 pounds, she fit in around the minimum waist size recommended by Abena for the M4, something that probably hadn’t occurred to Amanda. She would have to hope that this wouldn’t decrease the effectiveness… not that she planned on testing it, of course. Regardless, it did mean that, to her chagrin, she was probably going to look even more unnaturally puffy than she’d hoped. Reluctantly, she held the protection up with her back against the wall, and taped herself in. No going back now. She pulled a pair of spandex on to slim down the profile, exactly as Amanda had suggested, and pulled a pair of her loosest, highest waisted jeans up and nearly over the telltale white band. In the full length mirror hanging from her door, she tried every pose she could think of, trying to convince herself that she looked normal, and not like… well, a girl wearing a gigantic diaper under her pants. No matter how she fixed things, that pesky white line always found a way to peek out. The Abena rose way higher than she would have imagined, far up her back, and almost to her belly button in the front. Fortunately, it was late fall, and she was under no obligation to have her waistline visible at any point outside of her room. Resigning herself to this imperfection, she threw on a long, loose sweater, and matched the rest of her makeup and accouterments to the theme of ‘warm and cozy chic.’ With one last skeptical glance in the mirror, she headed out the door. 

 

The weather had improved dramatically from the day before, and Claire relished the crisp air on her walk to breakfast. As she strolled along the sidewalks and grassy promenades of her campus, she was at first hyper aware of the crinkly chafing between her legs, sure that soon, someone would pull her aside to explain, hey, just so you know, you’re wearing a diaper, and everyone can tell. But as with anything, the longer this went without happening, the more acclimated Claire became to the risk. By the time she had procured tea and avocado toast and settled into a sunlit table at the outskirts of the student center, she was feeling better than she had at any point in the last 48 hours. Laptop out, she observed that the classes she’d missed had by now all posted notes on their online portals, meaning that as she’d hoped, all she would need to do after looking them over was swing by her professors’ office hours. Scrolling through pdfs, cross referencing with her textbooks, and tuning out the babble of students swirling around her, she found herself feeling almost… normal. The sunlight was rippling off the sheen of her chestnut hair, catching the eyes of some of the male passers by, who snuck glimpses at her when they thought she wasn’t looking. Claire smiled. Normally, she didn’t need to be reassured that she looked good, but today… Today, she needed the boost. Still, when she stretched out her arms behind her back, and felt her sweater rising around her waist, she pulled them back quickly. There was still that peek of puffy white to be cognizant of.

 

“Claire!” 

 

Claire turned to see the first real challenge to her improved mood approaching from her left. It was Ben, a guy in her outer circle of friends who had been in her Physics of Sound class to witness her complete bladder meltdown on Monday. 

 

“Oh, hey Ben…”

 

Ben bounded over like a golden retriever, and sat down across from her uninvited. 

 

“How are you doing? You feeling better?” 

 

“Uh…Yea… Much better, thanks.” 

 

“That’s great! Hey, just so you know…” 

 

He leaned in, lowering his voice. 

 

“No one’s talking about that thing that happened in class. We all know it could happen to anyone, it actually happened to my sister once in middle school so I know how it is.” 

 

Every single composite part of Ben’s attempt at reassurance made her feel uniquely worse, and Claire gritted her teeth. It was almost impressive how the second half of his counseling immediately contradicted the first half, before topping it off by comparing her to an actual child. She would have felt more crushed if she wasn’t impressed by how clueless it was. 

 

“Yea, sure Ben, thanks. I’m not really worried about it, just want to forget it happened,” she said, pointedly.

 

“Oh yea, sure, makes sense. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that in case you were still feeling down about it. See you later!” He bounded off, oblivious to the destruction his pointless intrusion had caused. 

 

Despite this vibe killing interaction, the rest of Claire’s afternoon went more or less according to plan. She had been forced to set her bathroom alarms to ‘vibrate’ and time them around class, but she still managed to react appropriately to at least one of them, rendering the protection as superfluous as she had hoped. By the time she got home, around 3:30, she was feeling confident enough to remove the Abena, and change into some more normal, form fitting clothes. Even though she would be purposefully going there with a full bladder, there was just no way she was wearing protection to her rendezvous with Collin. It was just too risky, too difficult to hide in a more intimate setting like that. She couldn’t justify it logically, but the thought of him seeing her in a diaper still flustered her more than him watching her piss her pants. A normal person could accidentally pee their pants, at least, occasionally. Maybe not 4 times in two days, but sometimes. Normal people did not, however, wear diapers. Disabled, incontinent people who had given up on hiding their abnormality wore diapers. If Claire was going to wet herself, she would at least wet herself looking good. 

 

Uh… What? Wet yourself looking good? What the fuck does that even mean? And why do you care? 

 

Why DID she care? After all, Collin was just some nerd who was essentially functioning as a doctor, treating her for a very unique medical issue. Would she have cared about a doctor seeing her in diapers? Well, yea, she would have, but she knew that she shouldn’t. 

 

Whatever. She wasn’t wearing the diaper, and that was that. 

 

***

 

“Oh… uh… hi.”

 

Collin stared, flustered, through the crack of his doorway, where Claire was standing unannounced.

 

“Hi,” she said back. “Can I come in?”

 

“Um… I… How did you get in here, anyway?”

 

“I just waited until someone let me in, this isn’t a prison. Let me in, come on.”

 

“Didn’t we… didn’t we say 6?” stuttered Collin, still thrown by the unexpected guest. 

 

“Yea,” said Claire impatiently,  “but I’m changing the plan. I’ve got some questions that need answering before we get to the reassociation whatever.” 

 

“Is Amanda there?” stalled Collin, trying to peer around Claire. 

 

“No, she’s not. Can I come in already? I don’t care about whatever anime porn you were watching, I don’t want anyone seeing me out here.” 

 

It was a very rude thing to say, and Claire kind of regretted it, but it also seemed to work, because Collin shrugged and admitted defeat. 

 

“Alright… You can come in, but don’t look at my computer for a second.” 

 

Claire slipped through the door and shut it behind her, while Collin went over to his computer and minimized some windows. He was wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt, and it looked like he had just gotten out of the shower. His bed was unmade, and he scampred around throwing things out of the way as Claire just looked on, laughing. 

 

“You don’t need to bother with that stuff, you know,” she said. “I get it, it’s a dorm room, I’m not expecting the Ritz Carlton.”

 

Collin still looked a little embarrassed, but he abandoned the nervous tidying. 

 

“I was gonna clean up more before you got here… I didn’t expect you to be a full 2 hours early.”

 

“Sorry,” shrugged Claire. “I’d have texted you, but I don’t have your number, and I didn’t wanna ask Amanda for it because she doesn’t know I’m here.”

 

“Why not?” asked Collin, with some trepidation. 

 

“Like I said,” Claire repeated, “I have some stuff I need to ask you. And I’m tired of her always derailing the conversation.” 

 

“Well… alright…” mumbled Collin. He looked like he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about Amanda not being there to, in Claire’s words, ‘derail the conversation.’ 

 

Claire, however, had neither time nor patience for alleviating Collin’s discomfort. She got right to the point.

 

“So, listen. I did some research about hypnosis, and it’s not as much of a fake thing as I thought, but it also shouldn’t be able to make me… you know. Like apparently it really can induce a trancelike state that makes you suggestible to some level of prompting, but it can’t just completely take over your mind and alter your behavior against your will. So whatever you did, it’s different. Like, way different, and I need more than like, ‘your brain is a house’ or whatever you told Amanda. I want to know how this really works; like, how are you doing it, what is it exactly that you’re doing - And why is there absolutely no reputable information about it that I can find anywhere?”

 

It was a lot of questions, but Collin didn’t respond to any of them. Instead he sighed, looking away from Claire with a guilty grimace.

 

“See, I was afraid you were going to ask me stuff like that…” 

 

Claire raised her eyebrows. 

 

“Why? I promise I’m not going to be difficult anymore, you were right about everything. I’m sorry that I was so stubborn.” 

 

“It’s not that,” Collin replied. “It just… would be… easier… if you didn’t ask…”

 

Claire blinked. She hadn’t expected stonewalling, and felt her face getting hot. 

 

“Easier for you maybe,” she said, trying not to sound bitter. “I don’t get it, you couldn’t wait to tell me about hypnosis at the party. Now you’re being weird about it? Like, what changed?”

 

“Sobriety,” mumbled Collin darkly, kicking the air.   

 

Claire looked at him with annoyance. For her, this situation was a potentially life-ruining upheaval, and she felt it rather trivialized things for him to reduce it to an inebriated lapse in judgment. Feeling her temper bubble up like a tea kettle, she took a deep breath. Shouting wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Collin was going to answer her questions, she just needed to find the right angle. 

 

“Collin,” she said softly. “You hypnotized me so severely that I’m peeing my pants. This is not a small thing.” She looked at him imploringly. “You NEED to tell me what’s going on, like I have a right to know.” 

 

“Yea, I mean, I agree,” Collin squirmed. “It’s just…” He trailed off. 

 

“Just what?” asked Claire, bemused. “Are you trying to keep some kind of like, hypnotist trade secret? Because I’m not going to tell anyone, believe me. Even if this wasn’t the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me, which it is, it’s not like anyone would ever believe me if I told them, ‘guess what? I got hypnotized, and now I can’t control my bladder!”

 

“Yea… I mean, I believe you…” Collin struggled. “But it’s still too big of a risk… We could get in real trouble.”  

 

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?” Claire asked, perplexed. “I looked it up, there aren’t any laws about hypnosis in this state. Honestly I was… shocked that there are laws about hypnosis in ANY state, but…” 

 

“Yea, I’m not worried about state laws,” Collin said quietly.

 

“Well, so tell me,” Claire implored him. “What ARE you worried about?”

 

Collin just shook his head glumly.

 

“I really shouldn’t tell you… I’m really sorry…”

 

He wouldn’t look at her, but Claire could see real conflict in Collin’s midnight eyes. As hard as he was for her to read sometimes, Claire was pretty sure that in this case, Collin was not brushing her off just to get rid of her. He wanted to tell her his secrets, whatever they were. But something was stopping him. Some unknown factor had him convinced that it was tremendously important for him to stay silent, and she needed to show him that whatever it was, it was not going to be enough to outweigh her need for information.

 

“Collin,” she said, with a bit of an edge, “I don’t know if you thought I was just going to blindly go about my life, showing up for ‘reassociation training’ in the evenings and just… I don’t know, not thinking about this the rest of the time? But if you did, you’re being ridiculous. This is going to be the most important thing in my life until I get to the bottom of it, or I’m cured, or both. So if you’re not going to help me, I might as well just get back to researching, cuz I’ve got nothing else planned for the next two hours.”

 

With that, Claire strode purposefully over to Collin’s unmade bed, plopped down, and stretched out as if she owned it. She would make herself as much of a nuisance as possible until Collin realized that he wouldn’t be able to get on with his life until he told her what she wanted to know. 

 

Collin just stared, somewhat slack jawed, as Claire pulled out her phone and started flipping through the saved tabs, making a big show of pondering their contents. 

 

“You’re… You’re not going to find anything like that,” he said, after a few minutes of this.

 

His face was blank, his tone impassive, but Claire could tell she was getting to him.

 

“That’s too bad. It’s really unfortunate that there’s no one in this room who could just answer my questions, so that I don’t have to scour the internet for the rest of my life,” she pointed out, with withering sarcasm. 

 

At first, it looked like Collin was going to take the sarcasm on the chin, and continue holding out. But then, his expression changed. The tension in his stance dissipated, and it was obvious that he’d come to some kind of decision.

 

“Fine,” he said simply.  

 

“Fine?” Claire beamed at him triumphantly. Too easy. 

 

Collin did not smile back. 

 

“Yes, fine. You’re right, you deserve to know. I didn’t want to get you involved, but… Obviously that’s not really realistic now.”

 

“Involved?” Claire said, somewhat indignantly. “What does that mean? How am I not already extremely involved?”

 

“There are levels of involvement,” Collin replied, without a hint of humor. “If I’m going to tell you everything, none of it can ever leave this room. You can’t tell Amanda, or your family, or anyone, ever, about any of it.”

 

“I already told you, no one would believe me,” Claire brushed him off. “Why is it such a big deal, anyway?”

 

For one of the first times ever, Collin looked Claire directly in the eyes, and the intensity in his stare caught her completely off guard. She’d always thought of Collin as almost like a kid, playing around with hypnosis and being scared of girls. Now, though, something about him looked much older, more serious, as though whatever he was about to tell her was incompatible with the facade they’d both been holding up. 

 

“It’s a big deal,” he said, in a strange voice, “because if anyone finds out about your condition, you, me and Amanda might wake up tomorrow with no memory of any of this, and no clue why you can’t stop peeing your pants.” 

 

“Huh?” Claire blinked. She didn’t know what she was expecting, but definitely not that. “Why?”

 

Collin looked at her with a faint smirk as he answered. 

 

“Because the US government doesn’t like sharing its secrets.”