✅ Potty Genius [NaNoWriMo 2022]

Three

Author's Note: Sorry for the late posting of this chapter; vaccine boosters yesterday seem to have hit me pretty hard, and I was asleep well before midnight. Hopefully this will only last a day and I'll be back to writing at normal speed.

¿Did you not think that was weird?

Of course it was weird! I couldn't believe it had happened, and I was freaking out. I mean, here I am a month away from starting university, and I'd just wet my pants like a little kid. Because some stupid game told me to. I just panicked.

Now I realised that 'player hypnosis' wasn't some fancy jargon related to the game. I mean, I should have seen it before, with all the swirling colours and words that made me space out while I was reading what the app was going to do. But all the time I was reading, I was just hanging oin to the text, waiting for the next bit, not really thinking about what it was saying as a whole. And yeah, I should have known something was fishy when I didn't remember a single one of the questions afterwards, but it just never occurred to me. Maybe that's a part of it; I mean, that's kind of what hypnosis does. It all seems normal while you're doing it, and you can only think about it later.

By the time I could even see that peeing like that wasn't normal, it had already happened. The sheets were stained where I was sitting on the edge of the bed, and there was a puddle around my feet on the floor. So rather than working out what to do about this crazy app, I was more concerned with making sure my parents didn't find out.

¿Did you get in trouble?

Thankfully, it wasn't such a big deal. It was humiliating, sure, and my parents could have been back in half an hour, but they were just as likely to be out past midnight. All I had to do was clean myself up.

My sweat pants had to come off. They clung to my skin, soaked, but I threw them on top of the laundry bag anyway. I didn't have time to shower right now; if I was in the bathroom when my parents landed, they might have walked into my room to leave a present or something on the bed. So I dashed into the bathroom, glanced around, and saw a bunch of antibacterial surface cleaning wipes. They were the special pink ones that were supposed to smell like wild raspberries; the ones that seemed to be better than anything else at keeping mould from growing on the sealant around the bath. I'm sure they weren't designed to be used on skin, but they were absorbent, soapy, and scented. They wiped away any trace of pee on my legs, and I followed up with a quick spritz of sandalwood deodorant so that the fragrance wouldn't be recognisable.

Then I went back to my room and looked at a large damp spot on the floor. It was about two feet across now, and had pretty much soaked in. That would be harder to conceal. My head twitched around as the bedroom door started opening, and I froze in terror for a second. Had I not heard them come home somehow? They normally shouted up the stairs to let me know they were home, even if I didn't care whether they were in the house or not. Or could it be a burglar, who was stealthy enough to get a window silently open, while also dumb enough to steer clear of the room where the light was on?

No; it was just Cannibal. She bumped the door open with her head, and turned to stare at me before offering a plaintive meowl.

"Guess you can see the bottom of your bowl?" I greeted her. I'll deal with it in a minute. I just need to..."

The answer had been staring me in the face. I'd been looking at this as something that I didn't know how to deal with, but I realised now that this wasn't the first time I'd had to clean pee out of the carpet. The only difference was that it wasn't normally my own. I was about to race down to get the foaming carpet cleaner from the utility room, but then I realised that I should make a plan and organise myself to make sure I didn't miss everything. There was pee on my bed as well, so that would need cleaning. I could just put the sheets in the laundry, but that was bound to be suspicious, and Cannibal didn't go on my bed. I'd have to strip the bed and wash them. And that was probably the priority, because it would take longer to finish. There was still a chance that I could put the washing machine on a quick cycle and it would be finished before Mum and Dad returned; but that chance got smaller with every minute that passed before the machine was on.

I got to work quickly, and discovered the damp patch was only on the duvet cover. Once I pulled it off, the duvet inside seemed to be okay. I sprayed it with the fabric refresher stuff, in any case. Then I bundled up the cover and shoved it inside a hoodie, and added it to the laundry bag. On top of it, I put all the clothes that had ended up scattered around the floor over the last few days. Dad was always telling me that it would be so much easier if I put clothes straight into the laundry bag, but it was a habit I hadn't managed to get into. Okay, you can call me a slob, but it works for me, and stuff gets clean eventually.

And it worked for me now. With all those clothes, there was no way everything would go in the laundry bag. If they came home and saw the machine was running, they would just assume that I'd made an infrequent attempt at tidiness, and then had to wash stuff to make space for more pending laundry in the bag. I wouldn't have to tell them that I still wasn't quite potty trained.

Changing my clothes might have aroused suspicion; why would I be washing the sweatpants that I would normally laze around the house in for a week? I looked around the room until I found an answer. I pulled on a crop top and my lycra workout shorts. It was rare enough that I'd actually do some exercise, but when the bug bit was unpredictable. So if they saw me in this outfit, they'd assume I found some workout vids online with a hot guy, and spent twenty minutes doing stretches, crunches, and whatever in front of the screen. That would explain the laundry too; pretending to work out would have needed some clear floor space in my room.

Then I was downstairs stuffing clothes and a concealed duvet cover into the machine, grabbing the 'kitty emergency box' with its variety of cleaning products, and hurrying back up the stairs to attack my carpet with a disinfectant, foaming carpet mouse, absorbent pads, and a scrubbing brush. If I wasn't done when they came home, I would just say I'd spilled a drink, and let Dad assume I was lying to cover for my beloved Cannibal as usual.

It took twenty minutes before everything was clean to my satisfaction. Now there was a damp circle on the floor, but it smelled like the bleach that was supposed to smell like eucalyptus. I could hear the washing machine refilling downstairs, ready for the second wash cycle, and still no sign of my family. I might just have managed the best of all outcomes: that nobody would notice anything at all.

¿So you got everything looking normal again before they were home?

Not quite. I should have done; but when I came to get out a new duvet cover, I found that the last peach one was in the wash now. I'd have to change it, just in case they came back before I could put the one from the washing machine back on. If it didn't match the rest of the sheets, Mum was bound to criticise my poor eye for fashion. And if I changed them all, she would want to know why. I took a deep breath, and tried to compose myself. And then I thought of one thing that might possibly help me to hide my problem.

I opened the little cupboard on the wall over my desk. It was years since I'd been in there; it only contained things that I had outgrown, but which Mum said were precious memories. Among other things, there were a couple of blankets and bedspreads that I might occasionally spread out on top of the duvet if I wanted to take selfies or something; they were good enough to give the room an impression of cuteness, and avoid me looking like I had a warzone in the background.

The first one I pulled out happened to be Princess Mirabelle's Candy Knights. A cartoon series that had finished ten years ago, when I was already cringing to receive merch for something so childish. I'd only kept the blanket because it had been a gift from Granny Maven, who I adored even if she could never keep up with how old I actually was. I stared at the blanket, and how incredibly childish the designs were. Sure, I could have reached up and gotten another one out. But if I'd done that, I didn't think I could fold this one again neatly enough to get it back in the cupboard. Sure, it was a bit childish, but it was also a memory. If anyone asked, I'd say that it was a precious memory of my Granny, and I wanted to see it on my bed one more time before I spent so many months in a place of my own, away from my family.

Anybody would understand that, wouldn't they?