⌚ A Little Attention

7. A Realisation

By the time Jacob could sink into a nice warm bath, steam rising all around him, he was feeling just a little proud of how quickly he'd managed to tidy the bathroom. Not only were there no more puddles on the floor, but all the bottles of foam bath and 'No Tears Ever™' shampoo were neatly arranged on the shelf with the full bottles positioned behind a dizzying variety of empty ones. He stared at those again, wondering why little kids needed to choose from so many different colours and scents. They surely couldn't be that different, and he doubted that Leah even knew the names of more than two or three pink fruits.

Jacob didn't need anything like that, he was a real man. The only thing he needed to get himself clean was a bottle bearing the name 'Big Green' in a font that wouldn't have looked out of place on an action movie poster. It was the Godzilla of toiletries, promising to be extra tough on dirt and somehow still good for strengthening aching muscles. There was nothing subtle like perfume either, it just smelled strongly of soap and promised it would leave you completely clean. The small print on the bottle might have mentioned black mint, soapberry, and white pine, but they were good honest ingredients that might have been used by primitive man to get themselves feeling fresh before the discovery of modern chemicals. Nothing like the perfume and fruits that seemed to be all the rage among babies.

And if Jacob was surrounded by a mound of cherry-scented bubbles today, that didn't make his bathing routine any less manly. He'd just been curious as he moved the different bottles around, and wanted to know how much of the product's claims were pure advertising BS. It was supposed to help you feel calm and reinvigorate tired little bodies, it said. Was that possible? Was it any different from a muscle rub? He was just curious, that was all.

As the foam rose up around him, Jacob could admit that he felt more relaxed now. His body was aching as if I'd put too much effort into running around the park. Which was crazy, as he'd barely moved enough to stop Dad yelling at him. Still, it felt good to unwind after a long day, knowing that tomorrow he could go right back to doing useful things with his life. Hanging around in the mall, training with his team, and helping to keep Morris out of trouble with whatever harebrained scheme he came up with next. No babies in sight, just the way Jacob liked his days.

And with that thought out of the way, he found himself dwelling on the events of the day again. He'd run around the woods like a little kid, chasing after monsters that don't even exist like it was the most important thing in the world. He couldn't understand how it had happened, and not knowing freaked him out more than anything else. It was crazy, but the only answer he could think of was that there was somehow a real fairy living in the woods around Baker Park, and the whole thing was magic. That was crazy, it was impossible. Or at least really, really improbable. If there was magic in the world, why would they choose a tiny town like this one to manifest? But there were no impossible answers to eliminate, and no matter what angle he tried to approach it from, this was the only thing that made any kind of sense.

"Okay," he said to himself, and gave a little chuckle at the sound of his own voice. A bath full of water and all the tiles around him made his voice echo just a little, giving him an air of authority that he didn't really feel. Perhaps that was why so many losers chose the bathroom as a place to sing; but right now it meant that Jacob didn't have to take his own words seriously, and that made it so much easier to think them. "Okay, a fairy appeared and gave me a magic pacifier. Magic, right. Or some kind of drugs or something, but how the hell is that going to work? I sucked on it and I was looking at the place like a little kid. The woods was a massive forest that I don't know all the paths around. There were monsters hiding in the shadows, and I could imagine smugglers and bandits used those paths to get to their weird daydream land. Crazy, but it felt so real. And I was a little kid like Leah."

He stopped to think then, dunking his head under the water to clear any residual mud out of his hair, as well as possibly washing away the idiocy that had taken up roost between his ears. He'd heard the words that he was saying, he knew just how they sounded, but they were still the best guess he could come up with.

"Okay, so what did she say? It's supposed to be granting my wish, but I didn't wish for anything. Maybe I didn't want to look after the baby or something. And... well, I got that. If I'm a baby I can't look after her. But then... she wasn't treating me like an adult. She wasn't begging for attention and trying to get me to give her things, she was just running with me. And Dad, he was talking to us like we were the same. Telling her to look after me. If it's some kind of joke... what would that even mean? Confuse the baby, that's for sure. I just can't see it."

He finished washing himself, and then allowed a little time to relax. He'd earned it, he was sure, and the hot water was still comfortable. He could lie back and let his shoulders float on the surface, every muscle relaxing. After a few stressful days he was sure he was owed a break. Time to think, maybe, if he could come up with any thoughts that didn't sound completely stupid.

"I went back to normal," that was the next thought that seemed important. "After I dropped the... the thing. I was thinking like myself again, I knew it was weird, but it took a minute or two to get back to normal. I was still all excited about the monsters in the woods when I knew rhey weren't real. And Dad was still treating me like a little kid, expecting the brat to watch out for me. If it's real that could be useful for getting out of trouble."

Slow breathing. Muscles soaking, body relaxed. No more thoughts for a minute or two, just letting himself take a break from all the worries in his life. He thought he should do this more often, instead of just rushing a shower. It could be good to take a break.

"He asked me to do laundry when I got home. He wasn't treating me like a kid then. But... he asked if I could do it. He apologised for making me wait. Like he cared about what I thought, not just what I can do for the baby or what I've done wrong. So it wears off slowly, right? Or it takes him a while to notice that..."

He stopped talking, and forced himself to think about that again. Dad had decided to treat him like a child after he got the magic item. That much made sense. And he hadn't been able to keep it up for long, quickly going back to normal. So there might be an easy way to test if this was all some elaborate joke.

"If I suck the... thing... without making a fuss, how would he know? If he keeps treating me like an adult this time, I know he's in on this. Whatever kind of trick it is. If he's back to calling me a baby and trying to do everything for me, he must have some way to know. But would that even make sense? I mean, how could he find out..."

He knew it was a crazy idea, a crazy thing even to be thinking about. But he had to find something in this situation that followed the usual rules of logic. There had to be some question he could ask that would help him to understand what was going on, and this was the closest he'd come to any kind of test. He'd suck the pacifier, just for a second or two, and then see if Dad was any nicer to him when he came out of the bathroom. Perfect, an experiment with predictable results. He knew what it would mean if nothing changed: That the whole thing was some kind of practical joke, even if he couldn't understand the mechanism. And if Dad suddenly started treating him like a baby again, that was a result as well. Even if he couldn't believe it, that would mean that magic was real. Or there was some fancy way to tell if the pacifier was still in its box.

"No time like the present," he chuckled. The pacifier box was right there, he'd brought it into the bathroom out of some irrational desire to keep it where nobody else could see it. In case they'd steal some practical joke? He didn't know why, but it was right where he needed it now.

He opened the box and slipped out the tiny pacifier. He dunked it in the suds, wiped it down, and then rinsed it under the tap to make sure any taste of soap was gone. And then before he could have second thoughts about this, he slipped it between his lips.