✅🎊✂️ Hypnosis Won't Take Me There!! [alternative cut]

[Flashback Chapter 406: I Know How Hard Childcare Can Be]

Dean tried to feed Adelaide, but it was getting harder day by day. She would thrash around and throw food everywhere, meaning it was sometimes hard to keep the house clean. He could remember having similar problems with Belle, back when he was still a child himself and shouldn't have been left to raise his baby sister alone. He'd soldiered through then, because he wanted her to have as normal a life as possible. When he was nine, he'd done so much manual work that nobody could have expected, in order to make a holiday overseas possible and quell the young girl's tantrums. He'd thought he did well, only to find out later that the way his sister thought of him was going to be a problem as well. And then he'd had to pull away, leaving her to fend for herself more, and that had been more heart-wrenching than he'd ever thought possible.

With Adelaide, he hoped he might do a better job than he had with his real sister. He would protect her, and make sure she turned out knowing what she wanted from life. He was sure that with Chastaine's help, he could direct her towards the truth about who she really was on the inside. A person he might never get to meet if she stayed with her family and friends directing her upbringing.

But seeing her like this, unsure if she was angry or enjoying herself, was testing his patience. He needed to leave this place spotless, and the baby was making that very hard. But the only ways he could think of to stop her involved either spanking, which would make it a lot harder to make her trust him, or using her baby name, which would seriously affect the potency of the hypnotic playlist that Chastaine had prepared for them. For now, he just had to do what he could.

He decided he would leave the tray in her room. After they had been out, he could come back and tidy it up along with the rest of the mess, leaving her shut in the lounge with nothing she could use to create further mess. So he put the tray down, and told her that they would be going out today. Adi grinned and smiled, and then her eyes seemed to focus in the middle distance. He could tell she was wetting her diaper, and also pretty sure that she had next to no control at all after all the accumulated hypnosis training. So he didn't say anything to make her feel embarrassed, but lifted her up onto the improvised changing table and struggled to get a frantically squirming baby girl into a thick, fresh diaper.

"All ready to go now?" he asked, a little hope showing in his eyes. Adi looked down at her fresh, clean diaper, patting it as if to check that it was real. Then she squeaked "Yuh!" and nodded excitedly. For a second, the babysitter was tempted to tell her to use her words, like the Daddy Dom figure in some trashy ageplay romance. He'd skimmed a couple of those books when he was learning what age regression was all about, and he'd never been impressed, so he didn't give in to the cliche. He just smiled, glad that they were getting out of the door only twenty minutes after he had planned. Then he saw the look in her eyes change. Adi shifted position, and adopted an expression of intense concentration. She strained for a second, and started to mess her just-changed diaper.

Dean couldn't fight a scowl of frustration. It would have been so easy to get angry and yell, but he knew that with all the posthypnotic suggestions in Adelaide's head it was likely she hadn't been expecting it any more than he had. She was a helpless baby now, so adorable, but there was no way she could think well enough to know when this behaviour might be a problem. He couldn't hold her responsible; it was a consequence of the files. If he remained patient, he knew, her baby behaviour would soon begin a shift from random to controlled, and then his job would be so much easier.

He glanced at the changing table, and at the low stock of diapers in the drawer. There were almost none left of the ones with the cute nursery print that always seemed to make Adi giggle, and the medical diapers were running low as well. But in the same direction he saw the clock, and knew that if he was to get all his tasks done for today he needed to hurry. Changing a baby again, and then fighting every step of the way to get her in the car, wasn't at the top of his list of priorities. He hated to do it, but he grabbed one hand and half dragged her into the lounge.

"Listen, baby girl," he said, dropping to one knee to meet her eyes. "I've got some very important things to do today, and I haven't got time to change you again. So can you be really good and play here while I do the shopping? I'll be right back, I promise."

Adelaide just giggled, showing no sign of understanding what he was saying. He figured that was the best he was going to get. In a few more weeks he really hoped she would be able to take in instructions at least. But even with Alex Chastaine's help there was no guarantee that everything would go to plan.

* * *

Dean didn't know it at the time, but Adi had already been planning her escape before she started refusing to eat. It would take more than a month for him to properly understand what was happening, but once he understood what had happened in his absence, it made the whole episode a little more acceptable.

Adi grabbed some of her alphabet blocks from the floor, but ran back towards the door and pouted as she heard Dean pushing it closed. She'd thought that a double change would inconvenience him massively, but she'd never imagined that he might turn it around like this and make her live with it.

On the other hand, his expression when she began to poop had been priceless. She had loved the change to feel that she'd disrupted his plans for once, rather than being subject to them. And although she hated being locked in the lounge here, she wasn't as mentally regressed as he seemed to think. She'd been acting like a baby, mostly nonverbal, for weeks. And now it was paying off, because he'd assumed the latch on the lounge door would stop her.

She pulled herself up onto the window ledge, and watched the back of the truck vanishing along the path. Dean was gone, and Adi was free. A pencil wasn't hard to find, even in a room that should have been child-safe. And a second later Adi was out of the room and running towards the office upstairs again. She could try making the phone call home, and hope that somebody answered this time.

She was stopped on the first landing by the rumble of her stomach. While people could probably survive on less food, her digestive system just wasn't used to skipping so many meals. While refusing to eat was supposed to make Dean worry, she hadn't known that it would hit her quite so hard. She had only managed to consume a few mouthfuls of breakfast, and on some days recently it had been even less. She wanted to only eat what he could force her with, because that was sure to give him the worst possible impression of her current state. It could even make her appear unwell, which would be an advantage if they were noticed by some of the locals.

The only downside was the hunger pangs. Now, she couldn't follow through with any of the escape plans in her mind because her body was simply too weak. But Adi was still a genius, no matter how much hypnosis he heaped on her to restrain her intelligence. And she could see a way through. It started, today, with a frozen lasagne from the kitchen freezer, and a couple of seconds poking the unfamiliar microwave in order to determine how to input the desired time, and how to read the cooking instructions in an unfamiliar language. If she could feed herself in Dean's absence, she could keep herself fed without him ever noticing the changes.