“Should we tell her or should you?” June demanded of Rebekah.
“Why don't you?” suggested Wendy, “Rebekah can serve us some drinks and then she can sit and play nicely while we talk.”
Soon Rebekah stood poutyfaced in front of June, the girl who not hours earlier he had been bullying and dominating with his male bravado. Now he was offering her a glass of soda from a tray while he stood in a humiliating rainbow print dress and pinafore with his frilly girls bloomers exposed as he was being utterly and completely dominated by his big sister.
Rebekah curtsied to June and said “You're welcome,” when thanked after prompting from Wendy. Wendy then sat him down on the floor in the corner kneeling and went down to the basement to retrieve something.
Abby sneered at him, “We're going to help your sister keep you like this for as long as possible. My sister was depressed all summer, you jerk!”
Samuel and June nodded along with her words.
“I'm sorry!” he whined, “I didn't know!” None of them seemed satisfied. “Please don't help my sister!' he begged but they were not moved by his plea.
Wendy soon came back up the stairs carrying a large pink box. “First things first,” she said. She reached into the box and pulled out a small jewel case and opened it, inside were instructions which Wendy began to read. “Who has nimble hands?”
Samuel volunteered, eager to help in anything that would leave Doug further stuck as Rebekah Rainbow, and that seemed to be all his sister had in mind for Rebekah. Reading the instructions and what the device would do, Samuel laughed. “Where did this stuff come from?” he asked. “This is downright evil,” he said, grinning.
He knelt down beside what used to be the stupid bullying boy named Doug from the grade ahead of them who now was a soppy little girl who went by the name of Rebekah Rainbow. He took the tweezers from the jewel case and delicately used them to pick up one of the small miniaturized speakers. The instructions said the ashesive on the tiny marvel of technology would keep it in place for months hidden just inside Rebekah's ear canal, and since it wouldn't have to make much noise at all to be painfully loud from within his own ear, the battery inside would last that long too.
With satisfaction he shined a light into Rebekah's ear with his phone and saw that the first speaker was set perfectly in place. He moved to Rebekah's other side and repeated the process. “There, all done!” he announced.
“Let's try it out!” Abby said.
Wendy reached into the box and pulled out an uncannily, creepily hyper-realistic looking baby doll dressed in a simple pink onesie, wearing a pink knit cap. Wendy handed the baby doll to Rebekah who started with fright at how realistically heavy it was, almost dropping it at first. He shuddered, the doll felt warm almost like it was alive. He reasoned that it must be electronic and use a lot of power. It appeared to even have a movable animatronic face.
June and Abby rummaged through the box and brought out several more items for Rebekah. There was a small baby bottle full of water. There was a diaper bag full of diapers and baby powder. There as a spoon and feeding bowl. There was a brush and comb for baby's hair. There was a towel for burping. There was a change of clothes which was a pink and white dress. There was a baby doll sized little swing chair. Last but not least, a little stroller to complete the set. Everything a little Mommy would need to take care of her pretend baby.
“What am I supposed to do with all this?” Rebekah asked moodily. "Dolls are boring," he whined.
“Watch your tone, young lady,” Wendy commanded. She smiled to see him grip the doll more tightly in fear at her sharp rebuke. “You're to play with your doll and have fun so you won't bother the big kids while we talk about what you've done.”
He heard a soft voice suddenly say, “Mommy! Baba!” He looked around trying to see where it had come from. Nobody else in the room had seen to hear it. Suddenly he heard it again louder, “BABA!” the voice said. Dumbfounded, Rebekah looked down at the doll. It seemed to have an angry or distressed look now on it's creepy little face.One last time he heard the voice say, “MOMMY BABA MOMMY BABA!” Then, the toy's face shifted into an even angrier expression and it started to turn and twist in his arms.
Suddenly he heard a screaming, crying baby. Loud doesn't even begin to describe it. It was the scream of a banshee, directly in both of his ears. Imagine the most miserable, high pitched, LOUDEST, screaming baby temper tantrum you have ever heard in your life, and now push the volume up to eleven with the baby screaming directly in your ears. Rebekah would give anything in the world to make it stop.
Everyone else in the room, heard a very soft, quiet, gentle, cutely squeaky, and barely bothersome “wah-wah” sound from the speaker in the toy itself. “What do I do!?” Rebekah screamed in utter horror, his head spinning in confusion that everyone else was just sitting calmly despite the deafening cry.
The tantrum gradually started to diminish to a lesser volume, but from the way the baby's face still showed an angry expression he reasoned it was only a brief respite before the temper tantrum resumed. He looked up at the “big kids” in desperation. Samuel had been trying to tell him something over and over but he couldn't hear.
“The instructions say the baby will tell you what to do, Rebekah. She only starts crying if you ignore her. Now be a good Mommy and do what she....”
The screaming resumed. Rebekah desperately lunged for the bottle and jammed it as quickly as he could into the baby's mouth, but that only made the screaming LOUDER. He couldn't believe that was possible. He looked up for help again, and Abby was miming repeating the action, but in a gentle motion.
Using all the willpower he could muster not to start screaming himself, he very gently placed the bottle in the baby's mouth. The expression on the doll's face shifted to one of contentment with a barely audible clicking sound, and the baby suc-kled at the teet. The intolerable screaming stopped and a quiet content gurgling and suc-king sound replaced it. With a sigh he started to remove the bottle but as soon as he did the screaming started back up and he had no choice but to resume "feeding" the baby until the bottle was done.
“This is your brand new BabyGuard. Baby, meet your Mommy, Rebekah Rainbow!” Wendy said, “She has cameras in her eyes, microphones in her ears, and a sophisticated AI program to monitor you. If you don't take good care of her she will scream and debilitate you.”
“BabyGuard? Like a bodyguard?” Abby asked, “How's a baby supposed to guard him?”
Wendy grinned, “The BabyGuard isn't to protect Rebekah. It's to protect all of us from having to put up with bored, mischievous little girls causing trouble when nobody is around to keep an eye on them. When I saw it on the website, I knew one would be perfect for you, Rebekah. You're always causing trouble just to get attention. Well now that won't be a problem anymore. When you're playing with Baby her and Mommy will have each other's complete attention. No need to bother the older kids or Mommy. You don't want baby to cry, do you? See, it's not boring. It's a game. You just match the accessory to her need. If she needs a baba, you give it to her. If she needs diaper change you give her one.”
“But that's easy. That isn't a game!” he whined.
Wendy laughed, “It will get harder as you go. After a while sometimes she won't tell you what she needs before she starts crying. But guess what? Each time before she needs a baba she will gurgle or mumble in exactly the same way. The same thing when she needs to be fed too, and everything else. It will just be a tiny, tiny little bit different or maybe it will be a squeak or a squeal instead of a gurgle. That's for Mommy to figure out. So, if you don't want to hear her cry at all, you can learn to sit very quietly and listen for her tells when you're playing with her.”
“But I won't be able to do that all the time. What do I do if I don't know why it's crying?! You don't understand how loud the crying is!”
Wendy crossed her arms, “Oh yeah? Like I don't know how loud a whining and crying little girl can be, Rebekah? Haven't I lived with you my whole life? Well anyway, it's not my problem. You're the little Mommy so it's your responsibility.”
“The facial expressions will be different,” Samuel said, looking up from the instructions. “Where did you get this? I've never seen technology like this. It must have been expensive.”
“Nope,” Wendy shrugged.
“But ho..” Samuel began, “Well nevermind, as long as we get revenge for what he did to Rebecca last year I don't care how much of your Mom's money you spent.”
“I said I was sorry!” Rebekah squealed from where he sat kneeling on the floor, but they ignored him. He heard the voice in his ear. “Sleepy Mommy, Sleepy!”
“How do I put her to sleep!?” Rebekah demanded desperately. Abby giggled and made rocking motions at him with her arms.
Rebekah started to rock the baby back and forth and the eyes slowly started shut, but each time one of the other kids spoke the baby's eyes shot back open. Rebekah looked at them al in desperation and said the only thing he could think of, “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Wendy laughed. “Okay, little sis, time to go play outside so we can talk.” She collected all of the baby's accessories in the stroller and pushed it and Rebekah towards the door.
“Is it okay to leave him alone out there? What if he tries to climb the fence and run?” June asked, not wanting to see her chance at revenge slip away.
Samuel laughed, “He's not going anywhere.”
“And why not?” June asked.
“That's what the BabyGuard is for, to keep him here and keep him occupied. If he goes and leaves the doll here, the crying will make it so he can't even think enough to run. If he takes it with him, well it has a tracker in it obviously. If it gets too far from approved locations the crying will debilitate him anyway and Wendy will know exactly where he is.”
“But someone might see me out there!” Rebekah whined as he was herded out the glass door.
All four of them said at once, “Good!”
The sliding door slammed shut. The four kids watched Rebekah Rainbow looking glumly towards the fence for a few moments. Then, he stamped his foot, making his petticoats bounce adorably. He rubbed for a few seconds at his pained thighs before turning around and blushing realizing he was still being watched. He heard the laughter through the door. With no other option, he walked towards a lawn chair and plopped down with the doll in his lap. He started rocking it back and forth and after a few minutes it almost looked like it was going to “Sleep” but then the sliding door opened and Samuel's head popped out, “You should talk to it and comfort it too! That helps!” The baby's eye's popped back fully open.
Rebekah glared at Samuel but he could not dare talk back or complain. He only had one choice. He started to rock the baby again and blushed in mortification as he softly added things like, “There there, baby. There, there, go to sleep,” and “Mommy's here.”
Inside, Wendy turned to her new little group of co-conspirators in feminizing her brother once and for all. “So come on, enough chit chat. Tell me about the name. Don't you know how insanely rude it is to keep people waiting and waiting like this?”