Eyes in the night

(Rating: 2/5 (light ABDL), CW : scary narration, goblin, diaper use (messing), diaper change.)

Is there a name for the fleeting moment between night and dawn? When the darkness of the night slowly fades away and the skies lights up, but the Sun hasn’t appeared yet? It’s a peaceful moment. The dim light bathes everything with a pale blue shine. Sounds are muted, save for the birds chirping cheerfully as they wake up. It’s not quite as breathtaking as the rising Sun, but there’s a simple happiness to it. Nature’s gift to those who wake up early, a few moments of silence to enjoy a cup of coffee before the day begins in full.

“Twilight”. That’s the word I was looking for. It’s called twilight.

Most people sleep through twilight, and Monica was no exception. Spread over her queen-sized bed, sheets thrown all over the place, a drip of drool running off the corner of her mouth, she let the beautiful moment go to waste as she snored the night away. Her (unfortunately quite messy) room was only lit up by LEDs from her various electronics and the dim light of early morning. She slept the blissful sleep of those who didn’t wake up early to enjoy the twilight.

And out of the shadows that extended behind her room’s door, a shape made of pure darkness emerged.

The creature was small, thin, and impressively flexible. Every step it took was careful, controlled, smooth and effortless. It was like an inkblot given life, crawling on the floor of Monica’s bedroom. Yet it wasn’t completely silent, as each step forward produced a subtle, almost inaudible crinkle. Like someone was trying to open a bag of chips as silently as they possibly could.

The thing prowled ever closer to the bed, infinitely patient in its task. Hand-shaped shadows grabbed the edge of the mattress and pulled the silhouette up on the bed. The blackness of the creature contrasted with the light gray bed sheets, sketching out familiar shapes: legs, arms, head, and long ears. The homunculus inched ever closer to Monica, seemingly coveting her with all of its being.

It’s at this point that we notice the creature’s eyes. Oh, those eyes, how terrifying they were... Entirely too large for the head they were lodged in. Almond-shaped in a way that no human eye could ever be. Blood red in color, with a cloud of fiery orange spreading from the center, and cut in half by two vertical slits in place of irises. Shining under the dim light of the newborn day, they burned with a fire sent from the hottest pits of Hell.

The nightmarish eyes inspected the asleep woman for a long time, devouring her with its unblinking gaze. Then, slowly, the creature extended a clawed hand, moving it to Monica’s shoulder, and scratched it. Lightly at first, then more insistently, tapping and running its long fingers up and down her bare skin.

The sleeper didn’t react at first, but soon her face betrayed a worry. She emerged from the depths of her sleep, and as her eyes focused on the blurry shape in front of her, she gasped at what she saw, her heart suddenly startled awake and beating furiously. Her mouth cracked open, ready to scream, and…

“SAURON! Oh my God, you scared me! How did you get out of your crib?!”

(Of course, the little creature of darkness with fiery eyes was called ‘Sauron’. What other name could it possibly have?)

The creature blinked once, slowly, apparently satisfied. Sauron was a bit thin compared to other goblins, and his skin leaned more towards a blue hue than a green one. His footed pajamas, dark blue and dotted with star shapes, clinged to his skin like a burglar’s skintight suit. While his remarkable eyes were the first thing you’d notice, if you stayed near him for any amount of time, you would discover that the goblin never made a sound. He never talked, never whined, never produced any noise of any kind; compared to how loud and chatty most goblins were, it was a trait rarer than his fiery eyes.

Even though he didn’t talk, he had ways to make himself understood. He stroked Monica’s shoulder with insistence, his unblinking eyes looking straight into hers. The woman, still half-asleep, looked at the bedrest to her right. Her alarm clock beamed a scintillating 5:33.

“Sauron, it’s too early…” she complained in a barely awake voice. “It’s not wakey-wakeys for another hour!”

The silent goblin pawed at her again, this time leaving his hand to clutch her shirt with his long fingers. His gaze was even more insistent, if such a thing was possible.

“What is it?” groaned Monica. “What do you want? Are you hungry?”

Sauron’s eyes widened as his slit pupils grew thinner. She had captured his attention with her words, and his grip on her shirt tightened in return.

“Really?” she replied with a hint of annoyance in her voice. “You couldn’t wait until breakfast? It’s not time for your bottle yet. You’ll get num-nums when mommy gets up. Now shoo!”

Still half-asleep, she gestured at the goblin to get away from her. But the tiny thing refused to let go of her shirt and tucked at the fabric several times. Obviously, she must not have understood the message, since she wasn’t waking up to feed him. This simply won’t do. So he insisted.

But Monica was not having it. “Sauron, NO!” she barked at him, prompting the goblin to let go of her shirt. “It’s time for SLEEP now!” She picked one of her pillows and tossed it in the goblin’s direction, before turning around and burying her head deep in her own pillow.

Sauron looked at the pillow for a moment, pawing at it curiously, then turned his fiery gaze back to his human. He stared for a long time, hoping she would change her mind and finally give him something to snack on. But there would be no snacks, as Monica was looking to claw back that hour of sleep she was owed. Already, her breathing was getting gentler and her heartbeat calmed down to a slower pace.

The goblin sat on the mattress, silent as always, but fiercely annoyed by the situation on the inside. No matter how hard he looked at her, she didn’t give him the num-nums he needed. Maybe more drastic actions were required.

He lifted his butt off the bed, barely an inch above it. His eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. A plastic crinkle fluttered in the air. Then there was the tiniest of sounds, like a mouse let out a long whisper, followed by the subtle fall of wet dirt on the garden's grounds.

Then, he waited.

Monica was falling back into the comfortable void of a much-needed rest, when something at the fringes of her mind pulled her back up to wakefulness. Something was off, but she couldn't tell what. She knew the intense silence meant that Sauron had not left the room, but there was something else that -

- and that’s when she smelled it.

“Oh my God, Sauron! Did you…?”

She gagged. The smell was so strong and so putrid that she was startled awake for the second time in a few minutes.

“Jesus Christ,” she croaked as she reached for her glasses on the bedrest. “How does it still smell so bad? The food I’m giving you is supposed to neutralize your poops, not enhance them!”

The answer to her question was Sauron’s little secret. Not that he would ever tell.

The lights went up, and the pale blue glare of twilight was chased away by the yellowish flash of light bulbs. The goblin’s eye slits narrowed and a wry smile swiftly passed on his blue-green face.

“Now, come here,” commanded Monica in her half-awake voice. “No way I’m getting back to sleep with that floating around. Time for changies, little man!”

The little green terror opened his arms wide, and the human hoisted him up by the armpits, resting him against her chest. Now that he was free to dangle his legs in the air, it was clear that even under his tight pajamas, gravity was particularly strong in the back of his diaper.

Things went surprisingly smooth from that point. It was like looking at a well rehearsed ballet, made even more impressive by the fact that the main actress was barely awake as she went through the motions.

Her little green baby holding onto her and supported by a single arm, Monica left the bedroom for the kitchen. She opened the fridge and grabbed a baby bottle on the top row, not caring to select one in particular. She had made a habit of preparing a day’s worth of milk bottles in advance so they could be consumed at a moment’s notice.

She opened the microwave’s door with two fingers and a thumb, slipped the bottle in and pressed the start button a couple of times. As the appliance lit up to life, she backtracked to the hallway and turned left, into Sauron’s room. Walking through the cramped room like she was on rails, she carefully dropped her smelly haul on a flat, soft and padded surface. She didn’t need to light up the room, as the clown-shaped night light in the corner was providing just enough light to not bump on the furniture. She knew the place inside-out, anyway.

She undressed, unwrapped and wiped Sauron’s little green bottom with blinding speed - despite the potent smell, there was actually very little to clean up. Monica has had the pleasure of enjoying the goblin’s company for six years now, which meant thousands of diaper changes; at this stage, she was a professional of the butt wipe.

Before Sauron could even get bored by the clean-up, she was done. A minute after that, they were both back in Monica’s room, a fresh new diaper taped around the goblin’s waist, and a warm bottle of milk in her other hand. Monica hadn’t bothered to dress him back up, so the small creature was naked save for his teal-and-white Pampers.

Gently, she laid down Sauron on the mattress before sliding onto her bed as well. “C’m’ere,” she mumbled, tapping the side of her belly to invite him to lay by her side. The goblin happily waddled next to her, flopping on her frame like she was just another pillow. After nestling himself in the crook of her arm, he opened his mouth impatiently, and Monica plopped the rubber nipple inside his toothy maw.

“Good boy… What a good baby you are…” she absentmindedly complimented as she held the bottle, her desire to sleep stronger than ever before. She watched as Sauron sucked intensely on the nipple, the milk flowing directly in his little gullet. She couldn’t help but find him adorable when he was feeding. She was her little baby boy, after all, and there was a spark of joy in his eyes that only ever shined when he snuggled with her for a snack.

She gave a glance at her bed rest. Her alarm clock indicated 5:49. She sighed.

“If I fall asleep right now,” she thought, “that means I can still get forty five minutes of sleep. Should I really get back to sleep, or is it just going to make things worse?”

There was no way she could sleep if she had to hold the milk bottle for her pet, so she asked: “Sauron, can you hold the bottle yourself?” The goblin looked at her with his strange eyes, then raised his arms and picked up the bottle by himself, balancing it precariously between his hands. Truth be told, it was a bit of a show. He knew perfectly how to hold a bottle, but it was always nicer when mommy did it for him.

“Good boy, good boy,” she cajoled him as she ruffled his hair. Her mind drifted back to the alarm clock arithmetics. “So, forty five minutes, let’s say forty. If I don’t check my socials when I wake up, that’s another twenty minutes of sleeping. And five more minutes if I wear the same clothes as yesterday. Maybe I can skip the shower, that’s another fifteen…? No, I can’t skip that, not if I’m using the same clothes. That makes… forty plus…”

Monica lost her train of thought as she drifted back to sleep, Sauron nestled against her body, sucking relentlessly on his breakfast milk bottle.

The Sun was now poking its shining head over the horizon, evaporating the precious twilight and lighting up the world. But the laziness of the night still lingered in Monica’s room, where the woman snoozed with her beloved goblin curled up at her side. It was a pretty adorable scene, seeing them together like that. The exhausted parent trying her best to reclaim some minutes of sleep to the night, and the perfectly awake green creature sipping on a bottle of warm milk. If there’s a certain softness to twilight, there is a different kind to lazy mornings.

It was a shame that Monica was buried so deep in her own dreams. If she wasn’t, she would have been able to hear the rarest of sounds. Sauron might never make a sound when he was awake, but right this instant, as the last few drops of milk disappeared from his bottle…

The goblin was purring.