The Institute, Daddy Issues(11)

“If you say so.” I shook my head again. “But I hon­estly can’t see it.” I pushed my plate away. “I’ve lost my ap­pet­ite. Could you please just show me the cos­tumes I’m go­ing to have to wear?” Might as well get all the bad stuff out of the way.

“Of course.” Stevens pushed away his own half eaten sand­wich and nod­ded at me. “If you’d like to come into the other room?”

I fol­lowed him back to the liv­ing room, where he’d left the dryclean­ing bag and Salt came as well, like a si­lent, omin­ous moun­tain at my back.

“Now,” Stevens said, open­ing the bag. “I have sev­eral choices for you. And it all de­pends on what age you want to re­gress to.”

“Ser­i­ously? I have to pick a cer­tain age?”

“Makes sense,” Salt said, sur­pris­ing me. “Is ne­ces­sary to know the age to tell what man­ner­isms to use.”

“I guess so,” I grumbled. “Well, show me what you’ve got and tell me what age it goes with.”

“All right. Well, start­ing from the bot­tom…” Stevens pulled out a pink ruffled jump­suit that looked like some­thing a young girl would wear ex­cept it was in my size.

“Eww!” I pro­tested. “Tell me again how this isn’t about pe­do­philia, Stevens? Be­cause how can it not be when you want me to wear some­thing like that?”

“It has noth­ing to do with pe­do­philia be­cause the Age Play­ers are not in­ter­ested in chil­dren—only each other,” he ex­plained pa­tiently. “Re­gress­ing to this age al­lows the Baby­girl to be al­most com­pletely non­verbal. She’ll get naps, have bottles, and be rocked to sleep by her Daddy. Be­ing held in the strong, warm arms of a man who loves her and will never hurt her—there’s noth­ing sexual about that. It’s all about com­fort.”

“Still,” I said. “I’m not wear­ing that. Op­tion num­ber two, please.”

“All right.” He pulled out a blue checked party-type dress, again with lots of ruffles and lace. It looked like some­thing an eight or nine year old girl might wear to a fancy party.

“Nope,” I said at once. “Still too young. God, this is gross.”

“Con­sider it be­fore you turn it down,” Stevens urged. “At this age, you get to be Daddy’s little prin­cess. You’ll sit on his lap a lot and be taken out to the zoo and the park and any Dis­ney movies that might be play­ing. Your Daddy will cut up your meat for you at din­ner and check un­der the bed for mon­sters be­fore tuck­ing you in. It’s rather nice, ac­tu­ally.”

“Rather sick, you mean,” I said. “No. I’m not do­ing that age.”

“All right…” He sighed. “Well, I do have one more op­tion for you, De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker. Here.”

The last out­fit he pulled out looked like a school uni­form with a white blouse and a short—a very short—red and black plaid skirt.

“At this age,” Stevens said. “You’re a re­bel­li­ous tween or teen­ager. Ac­tu­ally…” He looked thought­ful. “This might be the best age for you to play. Sas­sing and brat­ting would be al­most ex­pec­ted—it would fit your, ah, per­son­al­ity nicely.”

“If you’re try­ing to say I’m a bitch be­cause I speak my mind, save it,” I said shortly. “I know ex­actly what most of the guys at the PD think of me and I don’t give a good God­damn.”

“No, I was just say­ing—”

“Whatever.” I waved his half­hearted protests aside. “Look, don’t you have any­thing between Daddy’s Little Prin­cess and Slutty School­girl?”

“I’m afraid not,” Stevens said apo­lo­get­ic­ally. “Did you have an­other age in mind to re­gress to? If so, I can try to find—”

“This one.” Salt poin­ted to the plaid skirt and white blouse combo. “This one will fit you the best, Andi.”

Some­how I knew he wasn’t just talk­ing about the size.

“All right, fine,” I said, grabbing it from Stevens’ hands. “I’ll wear it.”

“Try it on first,” the pro­fessor said. “You need to get used to wear­ing it and prac­tice the man­ner­isms that go with it.”