The Padded Palace Act IV: Chapter 11
“HAHAHAHA! Get a load of this one!” cackled Latasha, sitting cross-legged on her living room floor before a stack of cover letters and resumés. After recently firing her last assistant for sneaking naughty pictures of the Padded Palace’s inhabitants, she was left to hunt for a replacement. She wouldn’t have normally been this ruthless toward potential hires, but with two of her five paying customers opting to end their service with her over this, it was hard for her not to feel a tad petty. Blowing off some steam as she sipped at the glass of wine in her hand, she began reading aloud to Carol, who was seated adjacent to her on the couch, “Part-time adult, part-time bahAHAHA!” She barely made it through the first sentence before bursting into a fit of giggles once again.
Slapping the arm of the couch with one hand and shushing Latasha with the other, Carol attempted to reign in her friend’s tipsy hysterics while struggling to stifle her own. Red liquid sloshed dangerously close to the rim of her wine glass, seemingly defying physics. “Staaaaawp! Every time you laugh, it makes me laugh! HAHA! I’m gonna pee!” she shouted, recoiling into the ball on the sofa.
Now, it was Latasha’s turn to quell her drinking buddy’s volume. “Shhhhhh! You’re gonna wake the girls!” she said, letting out a few more subdued chuckles as she gestured to the nursery, where Skye and Ellie were slumbering in their cribs. After taking a moment to collect themselves, Latasha cleared her throat before restarting her rapturous resumé reading. Only this time, she added a deeper, male-coded affect to her voice to better emulate the cover letter’s author, “Part-time adult, part-time baby. I’ve been known to be an easygoing, yet firm caretaker, who’s willing and able to dish out kinky discipline whenever necessary. I hope you don’t mind if I work padded. I can assure you it won’t be a distraction. My years of experience as a Daddy Dom should speak for themselves.” She picked up the resumé corresponding to the cover letter and passed it off to Carol. “And yes, in case you were wondering, he listed EVERY SINGLE Daddy relationship he’s ever had under work experience.”
“Nooohoho!” said Carol woefully, the agony of second-hand embarrassment causing her to pull on her hair with both hands. Unclasping her luscious locks, she gleefully took the cringy resumé from Latasha and proceeded to examine it herself. “Well, he certainly came on strong, didn’t he? They can’t all be this bad, right?” she asked, almost dumbfounded by the social dissonance on display.
Sighing and shaking her head in despair, Latasha failed to laugh away her anxiety over finding a new assistant. “Besides the, like, two or three vanillas that clearly have no idea this is an ADULT baby daycare, they pretty much all sound like this to some extent,” she said, gripping her ankles and rolling dejectedly onto her back, “Maybe I should put out a call for girl caretakers instead. I know Riri and Skye prefer Daddies but after what happened, I'm not sure I’m ready to trust another dude yet, ya know?”
“Hmmm…I suppose you could, so long as you're not worried about shrinking your future client list,” responded Carol, sliding her butt off the edge of the couch and onto the floor to peruse the resumé stack. An obscure lightbulb, the kind that only someone a couple of drinks deep could manifest, appeared above her head as she ruminated on Latasha’s previous remark, “You mentioned getting a handful of vanilla applicants. If you don’t want someone to fetishize your clients, so to speak, why not try for one of those?”
Raising a crooked eyebrow, Latasha was flabbergasted by Carol’s suggestion. “Pffft! Any certified child caregiver expecting to find an actual nursery would run for the hills the moment they had to deal with their first messy change,” she said, dismissing the idea outright.
Undeterred, Carol continued sifting through the caregiving candidates as Latasha spoke. “What about him?” she said, plucking a resumé from the pile and holding it aloft, “Childcare experience but not certified. Definitely vanilla but he’s young and his cover letter reeks of desperation. Who knows, you could get lucky.” She waved the resume and cover letter over Latasha’s head.
Dragging herself back into an upright position, Latasha snatched the papers from Carol’s finger. “Connor Fitzpatrick,” she mumbled, her eyes scanning his resume from top to bottom. None of it was very impressive, and the attempt to embellish looking after his younger brother as a teenager did not inspire confidence. For him to be remotely qualified, let alone willing to handle the day-to-day responsibilities involved with working at the Padded Palace would be a miracle. However, as she moved to his cover letter, she was struck by his sincerity surrounding his college debt-ridden financial situation; a position she had once found herself in many years ago. Influenced by an overwhelming abundance of drunken compassion, she set his resumé aside, separating it from the pack of kink-centric applications while maintaining the belief she would come to her senses about Carol’s silly idea once she sobered up in the morning.
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Tapping her nails rhythmically on her desk, Latasha’s elongated exhale did little to mask how bitter she was. Across from her sat a very nervous Connor, who had yet to look up from the desk since arriving in her office. “And exactly how long was this going on?” she asked, her guilt-induced rage bubbling at the news that Stacy had been blackmailing Connor for most of his employment.
“She approached me the day after Ellie’s party and showed me the picture,” said Connor, elaborating on the reason for Stacy and his current attire. Each diaper crinkle left him cringing internally, serving as a constant reminder of his failings as a caregiver and an adult. Craning his neck backward, he glanced through the doorway at a stone-faced Stacy. She and the rest of the Padded Palace crew were stationed on the couch, awaiting their turns to give their sides of the story.
SNAP!
Connor’s attention was suddenly reclaimed by Latasha as she leaned forward and snapped her fingers out of sheer frustration. “Hey, eyes on me, Connor. I’m not talking to those three right now. I’m talking to you, and I expect your attention,” she said, deflecting the wrath she felt at herself toward Connor as she scolded him like the immature child that his attire was meant to imitate. She rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers to decompress her throbbing sinuses, “It’s my fault. My gut…my gut said you weren’t ready but did I listen? Nope! My dumbass just needed to go to CrissCon.” Her mood soured further as memories of her comparatively regressive evening replayed in her head.
Clenching his teeth to stave off his simmering sorrow, Connor hadn’t felt this powerless in front of an authority figure since dealing with his principal in high school. “I-I’m sorry,” was all his wilted voice would allow him to say. He wanted so badly to prove to Latasha that she hadn’t made a mistake when taking a chance on him. The irony that he found himself in the same seat he was in first hired in was almost too much to bear.
Latasha’s frown withered as she took in Connor’s brief yet sincere apology. It may not have fixed anything but it was certainly nice to hear. Moreover, how was she supposed to stay mad at him when he looked like a sad puppy in need of a good cuddle? “Thanks. But again, this isn’t on you,” she said, sighing as much of her anger away as possible, “Why don’t you run along and get changed? I don’t have anything else to ask you about. Plus, I still have to deal with Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup over there.”
Confused by how easy he was getting off, Connor tilted his head slightly. “Wait, that’s it? You don’t need to hear anything else?” he said, having barely made it through the first Act of Stacy’s blackmailing saga by this point.
“Yeah, I don’t really need the explicit details. I think your outfit speaks for itself,” said a very snarky Latasha, filling in the blanks of Connor’s wild night with her extensive knowledge of ABDL erotica. Had she been in higher spirits, she likely would’ve made a joke at his expense to bolster his blushiness. Not that she needed to with how rosy his cheeks got from that comment alone.
Gripping the skirt of his nightie, Connor’s anxiety refused to ease up despite the light tone Latasha had adopted. “So…I’m not fired or anything?” he asked, needing assurance that his worst fears wouldn’t be realized.
“F-Fired?! Connor, be serious. Of course, I’m not firing you for this. Trust me, it would take a lot more to…” said Latasha, finding no difficulty in erasing Connor’s deepest concern. However, she trailed off as her eyes drifted toward the open office door. Moving to the other side of the room, she quietly shut the door, ensuring the girls weren’t able to eavesdrop, “Did anyone tell you what happened to your predecessor?”
Stumped momentarily by the sudden shift in subject, Connor took a second to think before replying, “You mean the guy who worked here before me, right? I heard Stacy mention something about him last night but I don’t really know anything.”
“I wasn’t going to burden you with it but I feel like you should know where the bar is at,” said Latasha, steeling her emotions as she prepared herself to step into the past, “The guy who worked here before you was my boyfriend at the time. When this job became too great for me to handle on my own, I asked him for help in the daycare. Everything seems to be going great. The girls liked him well enough, and his presence helped bring in clients with an affinity for male caregivers. And then…I’m sorry.” Holding a hand to her chest, her vision strained upward as she fended off tears. It didn’t matter how much time passed. This story never got easier to verbalize. “Then, one day, I wake up to a phone call from Stacy demanding to know why her business partners had stumbled across a website filled with lewd diaper photos of her and everyone else inside the Padded Palace.”
“Oh, fuck,” uttered Connor, his chest tightening at the idea of pictures of himself all dolled up ending up online. He couldn’t imagine anything more horrifying.
Nodding along with Connor’s minor interruption, Latasha continued, “Oh, fuck, indeed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was missing from every photo. Most of the girls got lucky that they already lived fairly secluded lives. Sadly, that didn’t stop two of my clients from walking. Nor did it help Stacy. I’m sure she’s bragged to you about cashing out her company shares so she could live a pampered life 24/7 but I doubt she mentioned the part about her reputation being destroyed beyond repair.”
With his kinky evening inside the Padded Palace now completely recontextualized, Connor’s empathy grew for a girl he had once viewed as nothing more than an entitled, selfish brat, who would stoop to any level to get her way. “I had no idea. That’s so awful,” he said, still in disbelief that someone could be uncaring enough to do something so cruel.
“Yeah, it is. It’s a big reason why I picked you to take his place,” said Latasha, crouching down next to Connor’s chair to speak to him at eye level, “Your number one responsibility, above any duty I could give you as a caregiver, is discretion. Never forget that.”
Affirming Latasha’s sentiment with a single nod, Connor understood the weight that was being placed on his shoulders. She didn’t care if the girls knew he enjoyed diapers or dresses, nor did she mind if those same girls downgraded him from caregiver to baby doll. Her only concern was upholding the Padded Palace as a safe haven for anyone wanting to express themselves through ABDL. “I won't, I promise,” he said, placing a tender hand on Latasha’s shoulder.
It was a simple action but enough to trigger Latasha's raw feelings toward being consoled. Having been shoved into a Little Space lockbox only half a day prior, her unreceptiveness toward any form of comfort was on full display as she gently pulled Connor’s hand away from her clavicle. “I know you won’t,” she said, ruffling his hair with her free hand in an unintentional effort to assert her Bigness over him, “Now, go clean yourself up before I decide to make this your new employee uniform.”
TO BE CONTINUED…