"Brrr.... It's cold..."muttered the stork. "I need a nap too."
"Let me go! I want to know where I'm going! I am not a damn baby!" I scream and try to move out of the basket.
"Oh hush", replied the stork. "This attitude will get you nowhere".
The wind picked up.The temperature did drop. I started to shiver. Frustrated, I screamed louder my refusal to having been grotesquely regressed. The stork ignored me but then said: "I'll sleep a while but I cannot deliver you sick. Let's keep you quiet at the same time. And you should sleep as well, your new family will expect a dozing bundle of joy, not a foul brat."
"What do I care? I am not up for adop..."
I couldn't finish because the stork sat on me , covering my mouth, enough to breathe but reducing my words to mumbling. Biting was impossible because of the feathers and the huge female stork while not squashing me kept me pinned down. However, each time the stork moved or I did then her soft feathers tickled me. I couldn't help but laugh. She noticed.
"Ticklish? Yes, the regression does that. Get used to it, your new parents will love doing it to you. That and playing with you."
In spite of my involuntary giggles I feared in advance the implications of being cooed at, tickled, listening to lullabies and humiliated with simple talks and stupid hand and word games, not to mention toys. All for weird or supernatural creatures who had chosen my body and life as in a catalogue without thinking of my feelings. A toy to play house and doll with. I tried to scream in frustration but the stork moved her butt over me to silence me and my rebellion was drowned in peals of laughter. She then slept and so did I because of lack of better to do.
I was woken up by a conversation. The ticklish weight was then lifted. I still was awaiting my infantile faith. When my new peals of laughter subsided, I noticed that a much smaller or normal stork was next to the huge one.
"Change of plans, there was a mix-up.", said the large female one."You'll get new bodily changes and I'll carry you to your new destination."
Perhaps I was going to be put back to normal! "Oh, great! I can go home! I won't be an overweight baby and return to...".
"Of course not!" cut the smaller stork with a too-sweet voice. "You'll be sent to the other couple who desired a custom-made child".
"Another freakish body???", I gasped. "Oh, please, no..."
" But you'll get used to it, little one, and our customers chose their little sweeties with bodies they want so they can shower them with love and affection and kisses. They'll know you'll need time to become their precious cutie and they will be all the more doting on you."
Hugh... Just the way she said it made me want to puke.
"Now let's get to work. I've got the liquid solution to fix the problem."
With her incredibly flexible talons, she placed a syringe next to my neck. I tried to move but my body made of baby fat wouldn't help at all. I did scream.
"Now why would you be agitated? You will be the happiness of a couple that can't wait for you to arrive. You are such a silly baby. What more would you want? You will act your age and shape over time."
"I want my old life! My body! My dignity! My..."
"He doesn't understand he became a raw material to make others happy.", snapped the other bigger stork. "Like all of his kind, he is afraid of change. He sees it as degrading."
"Oh, then don't be so frightened, little one. You will still be male, and regressed to a real baby of three months. Well, the two clients wished for blond hair but insisted on you retaining your eyes. They do want you with a little souvenir of your former life, even when you won't remember it. Aren't they considerate? And they said that if you are the best baby you can be, they will ask for a little sister for you. You can help another be showered with love".
I shouted yet again in frustration:"Help a poor bastard finish like I am? You must be crazy! Another reason to not be their damn stupid toy doll." Yet I was secretly relieved not to end up as a baby girl, although some poor dude might suffer such a fate because of my actions. Perhaps if I found a way to be rude to the extreme to my future mother...
"I've seen your new parents and their home. Such caring men. They've set up everything for you. Their house is a real baby dream and if you are as sweet and obedient as the little sweetheart you are about to resemble, I can ask them a few favors from you like choosing an original girl for your future playmate. Both these men's jobs sound rough and virile but at home they show their motherly instincts. Just for you, lucky you, and..."
I stopped at that."Men?!? Men?!? It is a gay couple that will adopt me?..."
The lack of movement made the stork press the syringe and I felt like shrinking. I could here the annoyingly sweet voice of the stork over my brief pain. While never having been truly homophobic, making fun of gay men had been with my friends a virile way of integration. I had never cared for them but certainly didn't think they should adopt, due to their odd family image. And now that I was going to be adopted by them... Seeing them all the time, maybe nude...
"Yes, and they will fawn over you, and they promised to talk in English for you to adapt and their Spanish will be simple so that you'll grow up listening and learning ..."
Not only was I about to be raised by the people my buddies and I despised but who were probably the immigrants we liked to make fun of and insult after a few beers. This was not deserved. I wasn't the meanest of us. I wanted to die, or even cry like the little kid I now was. Somehow these two homosexuals wanted me, an Anglo-American kid, to the point of changing my hair color, choosing me like a doll to play with.I was going to grow up again and suffer the same insults I dished out.They probably wanted revenge, a sick, twisted form of revenge. It wasn't fair.
"Enough", said the now mammoth stork towering over me. "As if he needs to listen to this. You know you can't talk to the deliveries. Bundle him up and fly on your way. I'm just happy I don't have to endure him further, him and his heavy weight".
She flew away and the too-nice stork wrapped me up in a blanket smelling of clean odors then departed in another direction. Before she grabbed my basket and clamped her beak upon it, I tried to ask her what she meant about my two fathers, but I couldn't even talk anymore and after useless baby gibberish I bawled like one. Until I fell asleep without even noticing, hoping to wake up from my nightmare.