This is the continued story of Simon’s Journal.
Before you begin this third volume in this series,
I would highly recommend that you read the first and second volumes
as each picks up were the previous left off.

ADMONITION:

The following narrative is nearly a complete work of fiction. Some events and characters were pulled from real life but have been changed, enhanced and twisted to comply with my will. Any other similarity to actual individuals living or dead is completely unintentional, but it would be incredible!

WARNING:

The following story contains diaper use, violence, adult language and strong sexual content. If reading a coming of age story about boys wearing diapers and exploring their awakening sexuality doesn’t tickle your pickle, or if pickle tickling is illegal in your area, then I suggest you select something else to read.

Chapter - 15

Open your arms to me

That small two-seater plane was all it took to steal my thoughts from the moment. However, it was Tom that managed to keep me from slipping away into the past once again.

“Hey what was that for?” I complained when one of the cushions from the porch swing had collided with the side of my head.

“You looked like you had left us, so I brought you back.” Tom said with a suggestion of comedy in his voice.

I tossed the cushion back up to him and BJ said, “Well that was dumb, now he can throw it at you again.

“Not if he wants to live!” I shot back without looking at either one of them.

“Boy? You are lucky I am so comfortable right now or I would...” Tom then laughed, “Oh forget it!” and with no warning at all backhanded BJ with cushion.

“What was that for?” BJ groaned, “I ain’t the one that was spacing out he was!” he said while pointing an accusatorial finger in my general direction.

I looked back toward the plane and asked, “That plane, it’s a Cessna right?”

I didn’t know if they could see it from the porch swing but it didn’t really matter because I was sure it was.

Tom answered, “Well Cessna is a brand name but it very well could be.”

“It’s a lot like the plane we were in huh?” I added.

BJ surprised me when he answered, “Not really.”

I looked over at the two of them on the swing. Tom added, “Yeah, it’s smaller. The one we were in was a wee bit bigger and much older.”

“You can tell that from that far away?” I said motioning toward the plane.

Tom made a snorting sound, “Well gosh golly gee willickers! Doncha knows I is ed-jew-ma-ca-ted?”

Despite my better judgment about acknowledging that stupid comment I couldn’t help but chuckle because it was funny.

“Well it looks kind of like it to me.” I said after several seconds of silence.

At first, I didn’t even know I started thinking out loud and since neither of them butted in right away I began to verbally recount for them what I could remember from the moment just before we crash landed.

“I had been staring out the window at the blue sky and the tree tops as they blurred past when a stutter from the engine snapped me out of a daze. I looked over at you, Tom and saw that you were either asleep or dead.”

I paused when I almost looked over at the two of them on the swing but forced myself not to look at them. I continued, “At any rate your eyes were closed and your head was craned backward against the headrest. I can remember screaming at you to wake up but instead of awaking you up, I had woke up Lowell.” For reasons that I don’t understand I actually giggled to myself at this point before continuing. “When Lowell opened his eyes he began to scream as the very top of a tree clipped the wing on our side of the plane. We were low, too low. I hadn’t been aware that we’d dropped so low but now we were in danger of hitting the trees if we didn’t get some altitude and quickly. Lowell must have known this too because he was pulling on your arm like mad and was screaming at you to wake up but it wasn’t any good.”

Maybe I knew that I was giving voice to my thoughts because right then I looked over at Tom and said, “I could tell you had checked out!”

Tom’s expression kind of caught me off guard. He was smiling and what made it worse was he tried to say something cute, “What? I couldn’t take a little siesta?”

“Yeah, well it was a good thing you showed me how to fly the plane before you took your siesta!” I said using my fingers to draw quotation marks in the air when I said the word “siesta”. I punctuated it by sticking my tongue out at Tom.

BJ must have been stunned silent or was scared to say something because he was just sitting there looking back and forth between Tom and I.

I looked back up into the sky but the plane was gone now, “I remember shouting at Lowell to help me fly the plane. I think I might have said something like, ‘Lowell I need your help!’ but he was too hysterical.”

I glanced over to BJ again and he seemed to be waiting for me to say something else, “Well, I mean,” I started to say to BJ, “wouldn’t you be hysterical if someone woke you up by screaming in your ear and you opened your eyes only to see that you were about to die?”

BJ nodded, first to me and then to Tom. Tom then wrapped an arm around BJ and pulled him close.

“Tom?” I said softly while looking down at my dangling feet.

“Yeah?” Tom answered.

“I tried, I really tried!” I said with a lump forming in my throat.

“I know you did.” Tom said.

“No, really I pulled back on that, that, that wheel thing. I pulled with all of my strength but it wouldn’t budge. I think I even screamed out that it was stuck.”

Despite my best efforts to keep from crying the tears began to escape from my eyelids and spill down my cheeks. I didn’t look over but I heard Tom stand up and come over to where I was sitting on the porch. He lowered himself down behind me, wrapped his two strong arms around me and held me tightly while I wept.

“I can’t remember what happened after that!” I sobbed. “I don’t remember crashing or anything. I only remember opening my eyes and seeing nothing but trees above me.”

I wiped my runny nose on my bare arm as I continued to talk through my tears, “I could also hear the sound of voices shouting as if from a great distance.”

For the first time BJ said something, “The rescuers?”

I didn’t look up, I just shook my head.

“So many things were coming into my head all at the same time and my brain even hurt trying to process them all. The best I was able to do was to catch glimpses of the thoughts as they ricocheted off the inside of my skull.” I emphasized this point by randomly jabbing myself in the head with my index fingers until Tom took hold of my arms and held them tightly against my stomach. I was crying harder now and it seemed that the harder I cried the harder Tom would hug me.

“I thought about stuff like how much my butt was itching inside of my diaper; and why everything smelt like a car parts store. Then all at once all of the thoughts and questions ceased when I passed out again.”

“Car parts store?” Tom asked softly into my left ear.

I just shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t have a clue as to why everything smelt that way.

“Maybe it was because oil was leaking from the plane?” BJ offered.

I twisted my head around so that I could see into Tom’s one good eye, “Could that be why?”

With a wink he acknowledged that it was; I then looked over at BJ, sniffled hard and then said, “I should have thought of that.” And that made BJ grin proudly.

I wiggled a bit and Tom loosened his grip so that I could turn my body around and wrap my arms around his neck. When I did move, I heard the GoodNite I was wearing crinkle slightly but I didn’t care. I rested my head against his shoulder and I stayed like that until my tears slowed and my breathing calmed.

BJ, unable to stand the prolonged silence asked, “How long till the rescuers found you?”

“It wasn’t rescuers that found him,” Tom answered for me.

BJ’s voice jumped about four octaves when he asked, “It wasn’t?”

“No,” I said softly as I lifted my head from Tom’s shoulder and wiped my nose on my arm again.

“Thank you for not wiping that on my shirt.” Tom said comically and made me laugh as I sniffled.

Impatiently, BJ whined for more, “So who found you and how long were you out there?”

“I don’t know how long I was lying out there but I do know that when I tried to reopen my eyes they wouldn’t respond,” I stopped talking long enough to stand up from Tom’s lap and move over to the swing, “but then I thought that maybe they did open but it was so dark that I couldn’t see anything. At least that is what I thought at first. Oh yeah, and I also had a dull achy feeling in my head.”

I looked over at Tom who had turned and was now leaning against the porch post and looking up at me.

“While I was lying still I started to have a funny feeling inside.”

“What sort of feeling?” Tom asked with genuine interest.

“You know that feeling you get deep down inside when something is familiar but you’re just not sure what?”

Both Tom and BJ nodded but it was BJ that said, “Deja vu?”

“Yeah like that.” I continued, “Anyway, I tried to take a breath but it was difficult to breathe. I wondered if I was having an asthma attack again but I wasn’t feeling that same kind of pain that I normally get with my asthma attacks.”

“Maybe you were still trapped in the plane!” BJ offered.

“Yeah I thought that too but then I thought I smelled gas but it wasn’t exactly the same as gas. And then I realized that it wasn’t gas at all that I smelled.”

“Well what was it?” BJ nearly shouted.

“Mothballs!” I said very matter-of-factly.

“Mothballs?” BJ and Tom said in unison.

I proceeded to explain to them the significance of mothballs. “The first time I was taken I had been tied up in an old wool blanket that reeked of mothballs.”

“No way!” BJ exclaimed.

“That’s just what I said when I realized what I smelled. I stared screaming ‘No! No! No! No! This is not happening! I am dreaming! I am dreaming! No I won’t dream this! No! No! No!’ and I kept screaming my head off.”

“Whoa, I bet you were!” Tom declared.

“I had tried to move my arms and legs but found that I could not move.” I said and then screwed up my face in thought, “I can’t really put into words just how frightened I was and how much I wanted it all to be a bad dream but at the same time I didn’t.”

BJ was looking at me with watery eyes and I added, “I know that probably doesn’t make much sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” Tom said.

Somehow my memories got a hold of me and took over. Tom must have seen it happen because he asked, “Simon, are you ok?”

My whole body began to shake and I don’t mean just a gentle shaking but more like an earthquake inside my body. I abruptly felt like I was trapped inside that blanket again and just as I had done before I cried out, “HELP! HELP!” as loudly as I could. Both then and now it was totally an act of desperation; I wasn’t thinking rationally, I was in full panic mode.

With Tom kneeling before me, his mouth was moving but no sound was coming out; instead I heard a familiar low, harsh, and menacing man’s voice growling in my ears, “A’ight you! We’ll ‘ave none o’ ‘at!”

I could see Tom shaking me and shouting but I couldn’t hear him. I was too focused on the voice; the voice that I knew at once and then I began to hear my own cries too, “No please, no! God no please not again!”

Out of no where I saw BJ’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Otteranski, come running up onto the porch but despite their lips moving I couldn’t hear them either. Tom was holding me tightly now and slapping my face but I didn’t feel it. Instead just as it had happened back then, I felt what at first seemed like dynamite detonating throughout my entire body then inconceivable pain just before I blacked out. However, in the present I didn’t black out. My body suddenly stopped shaking and I felt myself go limp almost like a candle suddenly melting in Tom’s arms.

“Simon?” Mrs. Otteranski said and what’s more, I heard her too.

My eyes rolled toward her; her face was streaked with tears and she looked horror struck.

“Mrs. Otteranski, you look terrible.” I said without thinking.

She laughed fretfully and said, “I do?” and erased her tears with her hands.

Chapter 16

** As always, your thoughts matter to me very, very much, so please send any comments, questions, suggestions, or criticism to me at: [email protected] **