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.

 

Simon’s Journal - Volume I 
Thirteen Days – The First Crusade

 

Simon’s Journal - Volume II

Thirteen Nights – After the Crusade

 

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 twisted 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simon's Journal

Volume III

 

Thirteen Sails
Adventures Abound

 

Written by Danny

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter - 25

With friends like you...

 

BJ wanted me to ride back with him and parents but my mom said that she thought I needed a little time alone with her and dad.

After saying my goodbyes and thank you for bringing me along, I climbed into mom’s van and buckled myself in. I really don’t know what they had in mind for the drive back home. Perhaps they hoped I would have questions for them or something but I honestly didn’t feel like talking.

As the car began to move I looked out the window at the setting sun hanging only a few inches above the water. That is when I saw her. She was silhouetted against the blue sky right at the edge of the horizon. Even from that great distance I could tell that all thirteen sails were driving the Banachelli forward. A momentary panic filled my heart as I wondered if Tom saw her too and though I quickly looked around for him I didn’t see him. All I could do was hope that he hadn’t seen her too.

A moment later and we were out of sight of the beach house, the sandy shore and the water. We were on our way back home. I made myself comfortable, pulled out my electronic journal and was about to begin writing but when I saw my e-journal it struck me that all along I had thought that my e-journal had been a birthday gift from my aunt when if fact it was a birthday gift from my real mom. With that thought a chill ran up my spine and caused me to shiver.

“Are you cold?” mom asked.

“Nah, I’m fine.” I replied and turned on my e-journal to begin writing some more...

 

“You sent for me?” I asked as I pushed open the door to Runts private room.

“Oh hey Simon, didn’t think you would be here so quickly; ‘mon in and uh, close the door would ya.” Runt said without looking in my direction.

“Hiya Tate!” I said when I spotted him sitting on Runts bunk.

“Spaz! Howzit going?” Tate shot back.

“Ah you know,” I said back.

“So what’s for dinner?” he asked.

“Bat bladders and rattlesnake rectums.” I said repeating what I had heard Fyer say once.

Tate looked away as he said, “Hope there’s lots of ketchup.”

Runt piped in, “With warm diaper gravy!”

Tate put a hand over his mouth, “OK! I am sorry I even brought it up!”

“Oh yeah, speaking of bringing it up...” I began knowing that I’d get Tate with this one, “That’s what we’re having for desert.”

Tate made a fake retching sound before saying, “Whelp Runt ol’buddy, ol’pal, ol’chum, ol’...!”

“Whatever you’re going to ask for the answer is no!” Runt said with a half laugh.

Tate grabbed his heart with both hands and looked mortally wounded. With a phony expression of shock and hurt Tate looked back and forth between Runt and me.

“Do you believe him?” Tate said to me while motioning toward Runt.

“My best friend thinks that I would take advantage of our friendship like that?” Tate said still feigning a mortal wounding.

“Well they say that the sword of a friend cuts the deepest.” I said off handedly.

Tate now looked honestly stunned and was staring at me with his hands out like a common street beggar.

“What?” I snapped when I couldn’t stand his eyes burning a hole through my forehead any longer.

“Spazoid, that was incredibly deep!” Tate said and though I hadn’t seen Runts face yet I could tell he was chuckling.

With a shrug of my shoulders I dismissed his comment.

“So I was told you wanted me for something?” I said directing my words to the back of Runts head.

“On that note, I think I will leave you two fruits alone!” Tate said beginning to get up.

Runt turned partially toward Tate and threw something at him. Whatever it was it missed him by a mile and instead ricocheted off the wall before falling behind Runt’s bunk.

Before he left, Tate stepped up behind Runt and said, “See ya melon head!” right before giving Runt a big, wet, sloppy, puppy dog kiss across the neck and ear.

“You sick mother...” Runt complained as he wiped at the tongue slime. Before Runt could finish Tate gave him a firm swat to the diaper and ran from the room messing my hair up in the process.

“Hey!” I complained but it was too late.

“See ya Spaz!” he called from the hallway.

“Later Tater!” I said partially laughing.

And a second later I called out, “Oh wait! Tater come back a second would ya?”

I heard Tater’s shoes squeak as he stopped and did an about-face. He stuck his head back in the door, “Yo?”

It was all I could do not to laugh when I said, “So how far would you be right now if I hadn’t called you back.”

He shot me a dirty look and flipped me off before slamming the door.

From the moment I had come in, Runt had been standing in front of a large canvas that had three bright yellow diagonal slashes of paint on it and one big splotch of black; at least it looked black but when I got closer I could tell that it was a very deep blue. Runt was wearing noting but his diaper without any plastic paints and a paint spattered bandanna wrapped around his head. It wasn’t until after Tate ran from the room that I realize it wasn’t a bandanna but an old cloth diaper knotted in the back to keep it in place. It was the first time I had ever seen him like that and to be completely honest, it was giving me the heebie-jeebies big time. I mean yeah I knew he wore diapers too; you would have had to of been blind not to see the obvious bulge under his clothes... and I ain’t talking about his muscles.

“So did you just call for me to stand here and help heat your room?” I tried teasing but even I knew that it had sounded lame.

He reached up, pulled the diaper from off his head to wipe the sweat from his brow and when he did I saw that his hair had been completely buzzed off. At first I was stunned because his head looked like a fuzzy cue ball and I almost laughed out loud but I chomped the inside of my cheek to ward off any giggles.

“Nice hair cut,” I said and he put the diaper back on his head but at least now I understood why Tate had called him a melon head.

I’m kind of surprised that I hadn’t noticed when I first came in that his cabin room had been decorated... obviously by Runt himself. Three of the four walls were covered with pictures which frankly looked like he had taken a bunch of magazines and tore out any ad or picture he could find. When I was back home I had a chance to talk with Ian, the guy that lives in the same building that my brother Jamie and his mom live in. He was the same guy painted the portraits of Jamie and I for my newly decorated room. He told me that he had known of some artists that did that too. They used the images kind of like models when they painted.

The far wall in Runt’s cabin room was different; it had several paintings of various sizes and colors hanging in an absentminded fashion. There were several more painting on the floor leaning against the same wall and still more blank canvases stacked in the far right corner of the room. The floor was paint-spattered and even the ceiling had hints of green, white, gold and one big splatter of yellow.

Music was playing and it wasn’t rock or anything from our lifetime. It sounded like something an old man would listen too. Also, the room wasn’t lit very well; actually it was down right gloomy but I guess that was the way Runt liked it.

Seeing Runt like that kind of threw me. I mean Runt didn’t seem the type of guy to enjoy painting but then again, when I first met him I didn’t think he was the type of guy to get mixed up in drugs and crime. So I guess we’ve established that I am a dreadful judge of people, huh?

“Huh, what are you d-doing?” I ask trying to be friendly even though I knew that Runt and I weren’t on the friendliest of terms. We’re more like the United States and Japan. We have some bad history and know we don’t like each other but most of the time we pretend that we don’t know it.

At first he didn’t answer me. He was sanding before his canvas with his diapered butt swaying to the crooning of the man on the radio.

“Come here a sec’.” He eventually said and he sounded almost... well nice; but I knew better then to let my guard down around him. Once upon a time I blindly trusted him but those days are long gone. I’ve seen him do an emotional flip-flop too many times not to keep my guard up around him.

I stepped a little closer.

“No, come over here; I want to show you something.” He said and after thinking to myself, “This isn’t a good idea Simon!” I walked right up to his side.

You know, it was kind of funny because with each step I could hear Captain Janeway from the TV show Star Trek Voyager in my head...

 

“Shields up!”

Step...

“All hands to battle stations!”

Step...

“Bring weapons to maximum!”

Step...

“Prepare for impact!”

Step...

 

Had the current song on the radio not ended, my imagination probably would have gotten the better of me. Runt stopped painting and the way he was just standing there; well, it was almost as if he was studying the canvas or something. Like it knew what was supposed to happen next and Runt was waiting for it to tell him what color to use.

I watched him watching his painting for a few seconds then asked, “Since w-when d-do you p-p-paint?” my anxiety was becoming apparent in my stuttering.

“Since always,” he said stepping back from the painting.

The radio announcer said, “That was Gregory Gilbarco singing ‘Loving the Rain’ and now here’s the Tweeters with ‘High Life’.

I wonder if I will ever outgrow the habit of speaking before engaging my brain; because that is just what happened to me yet again. “I-isn’t th-that k-kind of gay?”

The little voice in my head was screaming at me, “Way to go idiot! Now you’ve gone and pushed his buttons.”

Runt made a sound that told me he thought my comment was amusing, maybe even witty but I would have liked it if he had laughed... I’d have even settled for a tiny chuckle but I had to settle for his amused grunt.

“Wanna give it a try?” He asked me.

The memories were still fresh in my head of him chasing me with Fyer’s cooking knife and now he wanted to teach me how to paint? Granted it wasn’t just yesterday that it happened but it also hadn’t been so long that I would have forgot about it. Maybe he thinks I have that thing, uh what’s it called? Oh yeah, selective amnesia.

“B-be gay or p-paint?” I asked and couldn’t believe that I’d done it again. Mentally I envisioned slapping myself in the back of my head and saying, “Hey up there! You won’t to get with the program here?”

As soon as I asked, “Be gay or paint?” I thought I could see his neck muscles tighten just before he softly replied, “Paint.”

“N-nah, y-you seem t-to b-b-b-be doing j-just fine.” I said even though none of his paintings, I mean the few that I could see, seems all that good.

I then added, “B-besides, I d-don’t w-w-want t-to g-g-g-get my clothes d-d-dirt-ty.”

“Why do you think I’m dressed like this? Strip down and step up. It’s really easy.” He said.

Ok, now I got it! Painting was just a ploy to get me out of my clothes; or was that just my imagination? I mean I did kind of set myself up for that one.

A silent argument was going on inside my head. The voice inside my head was trying to get me to understand that I was pushing Runt too far and that I needed to get my diapered butt out of there and fast. The other side of the argument went something like this, “Yeah but what if he is genuinely trying to mend the fences between us? Wouldn’t it be better if we were good friends again? I mean isn’t life here bad enough without having Runt as my enemy?”

So, against my better judgment I started to remove my jacket and shirt. All the while that dang little voice wouldn’t stop taunting me, “You’re the one that pushed his buttons! Whatever happens now is your own fault!”

“Better lose the pants too.” Runt said as I dropped my shirt and jacket to the floor, “Like you said, you don’t want to get paint on your clothes. She wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

“She?” I thought to myself knowing that he had meant Miss-M, “When did SHE get brought into this?”

The little voice was beginning to win me over and I hesitated as long as I dared before lowering my pants to my ankles and stepping out of them. That left me wearing my socks, cloth diaper and clear plastic pants.

Somehow I got the feeling that Runt probably knew I was contemplated making a run for the door and I knew that if I was fast enough I could probably have reached Sister Sarafina or anyone before Runt caught me; that is, if he chased me at all. There was a chance that he wouldn’t come after me; small as that chance might have been, I seriously considering it for an extremely long ten seconds.

That whole time, Runt had kept his back to me, but when my pants hit the floor he turned and for the first time I saw his bare chest and his face. There was a bright red mark on his chest exactly the shape of someone’s hand. Each finger was clearly evident and I knew instantly that his chest had been slapped appallingly hard. I looked up at his face and he had the biggest and blackest shiner around his right eye. I mean it was so dark and so shiny that I wondered for maybe half a second if it was shoe polish or makeup or something. The bruise covered most of his upper cheek and stretched all the way back to his ear; it was shaped kind of like a tear drop on its side. Like he was wearing half of a black mask.

“Yikes! Holy b-buckets!” I exclaimed, “W-what the heck hap-p-pened t-to you?” I asked, “Y-you g-get in a f-fight w-with a w-wall or s-something?”

Without a reaction or an answer he turned back around, drops his left arm to his side and reached back with a brush in his hand. I got the hint that he either didn’t want to talk about it or wasn’t able to talk about it yet. I mean, by the look of him it couldn’t have been too long ago that it had happened; maybe the day before or possibly earlier that morning.

Maybe it was because of his shiner, maybe it was the red hand imprint on his chest or it could have been because I’d never seen him so emotionally stripped that I decided to trust him this time. I suppose only God knows the real reason I lowered my shields.

With my right hand I took the brush he was holding out for me and he also handed me a tray that resembled the bottom half of an egg carton only it was made of clear plastic. It also looked like it had never been used before now. He set his brush down; removed from the easel the canvas he’d been using and replaced it with two smaller ones.

“Now we can start,” He said softly.

As he went to pick up his brush again I said sharply, “Wait!”

He paused and looked at me with that prominent black eye.

“I-I-I d-don’t have a c-clue what I am d-d-d-doing!”

He smiled and I think it was the first time in a long time that I saw the old Runt. He put a hand against my right cheek and rubbed my lips with his thumb.

“It’s called painting?” He started to say, “You put your brush in the paint and then put the paint on the canvas.” He removed his hand from my face and added, “It’s not rocket science you know!”

I tried to joke with him to get a better feel for this strange new artistic Runt I was meeting for the first time. “Rocket science I c-can d-do... but p-painting? Th-that’s hard!”

I was surprised when he put his hand on my cheek again and played with my bottom lip with his thumb. It kind of tickled too.

“No it isn’t. All you have to do is listen to the music.” He spoke softly as though he were trying to charm a butterfly into landing on his finger. “Follow the song, don’t think about painting and don’t worry about trying to create something. Just paint.”

His thumb was partially in my mouth only stopped by my bottom teeth and he looked at me hard and long before reaching down and taking up his own tray of paints. He dipped his brush into his tray of paints and added, “Let the song become part of you.”

I was feeling very nervous, I knew this because my heart was thumping almost as loud as the radio was playing plus I had just soaked the front of my diaper. “B-but w-what if it sucks rocks?”

He gave me a bump with his diapered hip. “Don’t worry about that.” He said, then walked over to the radio and turned it up more.

The music filled the room and seemed to swallow up everything including Runt and me. The music was so loud that I could see little ripples in my paint tray and it felt like someone was using my chest as an amplifier.

First there was a single flute playing and it was soon joined by some kind of deep throaty sounding horn. A violin began to grow up between the notes and eventually took center stage. It cried out like a lady weeping deep within her soul. And then a voice, this saintly, smooth voice began...

 

Never knew I could feel like this

It’s like I’ve never seen the sky before

Want to vanish inside your kiss

Every day I'm loving you more and more

 

     I looked up at Runt, he had his eyes closed and his head tilted way back so that his nose was pointing toward the ceiling.

 

Listen to my heart can you hear it sing?

Come back to me and FORGIVE everything!

Seasons may change winter to spring

I love you, ‘til the end of time

 

“Wait, I think I know this song but who is that singing?” I asked him.

“Don’t remember but you probably heard it sung in that movie Moulin Rouge.” Runt said with his eyes still closed.

“Oh, I remember that movie. Whoever this is singing now, she’s really good!” I said.

“Don’t dwell on the words too much.” Runt said opening his eyes and ready to put his brush to the canvas. “Go along the melody.”

At first I didn’t know what he meant so I watched and imitated him. I plunged my brush into my paint tray; it wasn’t until I put it on the canvas that I knew I had dipped into a cinnamon-brown color. I drew in a breath of air through my nose, held it, raised my hand to the canvas and listened to the music.

 

A man had joined her...

 

Come what may! Come what may!

I will love you until my dying day

 

I placed my brush against the canvas and tried to make the bristles dance in time with the song. I swooped it left, then right again... I was not painting a thing, I was painting a song.

 

The song continued...

 

Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place

Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace

Suddenly my life doesn't seem such a waste

It all revolves around you

 

I watched Runt clean his brush in a small can hanging beneath our canvases so I did likewise before trying a different color. A red that was nearer to copper than red came to rest on the canvas in random splashes while an emerald green seemed to tease the cinnamon lines.

 

The song ended and another, more modern sounding song began. It was a man singing this time with a low deep sad voice like he was singing a bit of poetry...

 

Little boy wishes he wasn't small

He'd give his turtle to be six feet tall

He's got photos of Shaq and Ewing up on his wall

And he'd try a jump shot but he's afraid he'll fall

 

I allowed my eyes to drop to the tray in my hand and contemplated all the different colors Runt had given me. Runt was humming now and I remembered seeing this guy painting on TV a long time ago; he hummed when he painted too. I remember they guy would put more then one color on his brush at a time so I thought I would give it a try. I added a mixture of burnt umber and mist gray to my canvas with a single, bold flick of my wrist.

Not sure what to do next I closed my eyes and just listed; when I opened my eyes I glanced over to Runt and saw that he had been looking at me, not my painting but me. I think he realized that I got what he was saying.

Another song and I was able to see things on my canvas; the hint of distant trees against the balance of an autumn night sky. I hadn’t meant to paint trees or a sky but none the less, there they were.

Runt startled me by speaking, “You know what happened before?” he said as though the words were razorblades slicing at this tongue.

I figured he meant the incident with the knife but won’t sure.

“Y-yeah,” I answered back.

Still focused on his own canvas he made a stroke of blood red, “I-I didn’t... I mean I’m sorry.” He said.

Twenty minutes ago I wouldn’t have believe him. Twenty minutes ago I would have thought he was setting me up. Twenty minutes ago I secretly wanted him dead. But now... well... now I didn’t know anything for sure.

“Y-y-yeah, m-me t-too.” I said though I didn’t know if I really believed my own words.

I stopped painting and watched him for a moment. He became lost in the music again, moving his brush as though he were caressing the canvas. His emotions seemed to be flowing down his arm and out the bristles of his brush.

He must have sensed my stillness and turned to me. There was something in his expression the moment before he spoke; I couldn’t tell whether it was genuine sorrow or something else. Was he unsure of his apology or unsure of mine?

“So let’s see what you painted.” He said and the moment, whatever it was, had gone.

“It’s not very good.” I said as the next song began.

“Let me see.” He said.

Part of me wanted to quickly smear all the paints with my hands to keep him from seeing but I step aside to let him get a good look at it. He was standing beside me; his diaper was brushing my upper arm. Runt was looking at the songs that I had recorded on my canvas. When he spoke Sammy Davis Jr. was singing, ‘What Kind Of Fool Am I’.

“Simon, this—-this is remarkable!” he said breathfully.

I dismissed his complement, “Nah, you’re just saying that.”

But I could tell by the way he was talking, by the air in the room, by the electricity between us, that he meant what he was saying.

“No really Simon, this is really good!” he said again and then looked down into my eyes, “You’re a natural! You must have paint running through your veins.”

I was still holding the paints and paintbrush; as Sammy sang his last verse Runt reached down for my hand and guided my hand across the canvas leaving an apricot swash across the bottom.

Our hands lower together but Runt still held my hand and was squeezing in rhythm with the music of Nat King Cole. He began to sing the words...

 

I think of you every morning

Dream of you every night

Darling, I’m never lonely

Whenever you are in sight

 

I love you for sentimental reasons

I hope you do believe me

I've given you my heart

 

Right then the door to his room burst open. We both turned to see Tater’s younger brother Mikey standing in the doorway. He looked surprised to see us and said, “Oops! Wrong door!” and quickly closed it again with a wall rattling bang.

Runt and I both looked down and seen that we were still holding hands. He released my hand and returned to his painting. After a moment he looked over at me and smiled; I was almost sure that it was the old Runt that was smiling at me. “You probably better get dressed and get back before someone figures out you’re not in the kitchen.”

I paused and looked into his eyes; I couldn’t believe it at the time, heck I don’t believe it right now but I honestly wanted to stay. I smiled back and started to raise my brush to my canvas again.

“I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” he snarled like a pit-bull dog.

Maybe I was so startled because he yelled so loudly into my face, or maybe the fact that I’d witnessed in a brief second the old Runt being yanked back like a dog on a leash and the mean Runt reemerge. Either way it didn’t much matter because they both would have resulted in my reaction which was my body shaking with shock, my brush and paint tray falling to the floor and me tumbling backward onto my diapered backside. I wasn’t about to take the time to debate with myself why I was on my diapered tush. Like a fish I flopped onto my belly, quickly gathered my clothes and scrambled to my feet. With my clothes wadded up in my arms I started to open the door as I turned to look at him one last time. I shouldn’t have stopped.

“You know with a friend like you...” I began, “who needs enemas!”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Runt griped.

“It means you’re a real shit!” I said and tried to run out the door but I didn’t make it even half a step.

His hand came toward my face in ultra slow motion and collided with my chin sending the back of my head knocking against the doorjamb and then bouncing forward into the edge of the solid oak door like one of those speed bags you see boxers training on in the gym. When my head hit the edge of the door it sounded like a melon being smashed open. I had been laid open from over my right eye, down past my temple to my cheekbone. Of course I hadn’t known it at the time, all I knew was that I’d heard the crunch of my face hitting the door and saw the platter of blood.

After that first hit I swear I tried to fight him off but he was too strong and he only had to punch me in the chest once to completely overwhelm me. Even with my plastic rib guard on it didn’t stop the full impact of the blow. The air was forced out of my lungs and I collapsed to the floor with a knee crunching thud. How many times he hit me after that I don’t know; I just remember lying in a ball and him kicking me over and over and over.

The next thing I knew I was lying face down on his bed and the top of my head kept ramming into the hard wooden wall while on the radio the Judds sang...

 

Mama, he's crazy

Crazy over me

 

I could feel him on top of me, “NOOO!” I cried out. Then suddenly I couldn’t breathe; at first I didn’t know why but then I realized that HE WAS CHOKING ME! I tried to move, tried to buck him off and I must have succeeded because the next thing I knew I was on my back on the floor and he was on top of me with his hands clamped around my throat. His face was right there, less then an inch away from my own and oddly it was his buzzed head that I focused on. And just before I blacked out I heard a screech, saw Vera appear out of nowhere and attach herself to Runts face. Runt screamed like a girl, fell over backward and then everything went dark.

 

Chapter 26

 

** I know this was a difficult chapter to read and believe me it was even harder to write. I’ve been writing Simon’s story for so many years that he seems real to me; like he’s a part of me. I know that this chapter will upset some of you, maybe more then some, so if you feel the need to vent please feel free to send any comments, questions, suggestions, or criticism to me at: [email protected] **