Chapter 1: Rise and Oof!

My eyelids were disputing with me. In my vision, a red glow suggested daylight was shining on my face, but trying to lift my eyelids simply raised an argument. And then, suddenly, the argument was over.

“Oof! Sparkle, get off me! Meanie butt!”

Sparkle was my host’s three year old daughter. Her real name, Stephanie, was too difficult for her younger self. Some idiot had exposed her to the “My Little Pony” series, where a main character is “Twilight Sparkle.” From that day, she was Sparkle, instead of Stephanie, and her mother Ellie went along with it.

Along with being a unicorn, Sparkle contributed to the household by being my alarm clock, using her tiny bottom to impact my stomach at high velocity.

“Mom says breakfast is coming, and she gave me this.”

The girl climbed up on the bed with a butt wipe and slowly cleaned my face, a job she took seriously. A butt wipe is a lotion infused little disposable cloth, but that’s probably not the question you might be asking.

My name is Daniel Lyon. The quick answer is, I was temporarily disabled and staying in Ellie’s home being cared for by her. Ellie is not a nurse by profession, but she felt she owed me after I was injured.

Why? Because I was badly hurt while rescuing her and her little daughter from a terrible flaming car wreck. I saved Sparkle at the cost of burning my hands and smashing my knee, leaving me unable to care for myself until the burns would heal.

It seemed like every day I learned a new way my useless hands caused problems. My arms looked like Q-Tip cotton swabs, with football-shaped bandages covering over each hand from forearm to fingertips, including the thumbs. I couldn’t grasp things, I couldn’t go to the bathroom on my own, and I couldn’t use crutches. But wait, there’s more!

TV Remotes, computers, tablets, phones, even e-readers; all of them were impossible. Of course, people who have permanently lost these functions had choices. But, for someone like me whose disabilities were temporary and didn’t have a lot of money, my only option was to wait things out for weeks while my hands healed.

“Thank you, Sparkle; here comes your Mom.”

“Hey sleepyhead, I brought you scrambled eggs and toast.”

“Mom! Mom! Can I feed Daniel?”

“Shh! Don’t shout, I’m this close. No, go eat at the table so I can help him.”

“But I can...”

“Not right now; not with this. I made you raisin toast, now go!”

“Thanks, Ellie. You read my mind.”

“More like, I read your body. I didn’t want you poking her with your wood. Here, let me get the thing and ... Oh! And a pleasant good morning to you, Danielito.”

It’s her favorite name for my erection. I tried to apologize as usual but she wasn’t interested.

“Don’t be stupid, I enjoy,” she dropped to a whisper, “seeing him come out to play in the mornings. He’s always so perky and glad to see me. Now close your eyes and think of flowing streams of Rocky Mountain spring water.”

My pee started streaming into the plastic urinal she was holding. I stole a look at her beautiful blue-gray eyes, as she focused on keeping my dick fully inside the mouth of it. When we began, she had to learn. If she didn’t keep her fingertip on me, the fluid pressure would cause Danielito to want to spray around in different directions, making a mess.

As the flow ended, she glanced into my face. I tried to clench my internal muscles to be sure I wasn’t going to dribble. Then, she gave the little guy a wiggle, pulled him out, and covered the end of the urinal and put it aside. To finish up, she cleaned me with another baby wipe.

“You take care of me so well; it’s as if you had one of those yourself, Ellie.”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? Um, Daniel, well, ah, it’s like this—I’m trans.”

My eyes got huge, but she couldn’t keep up the show and started to giggle.

“I ought to spank you, brat girl.”

“Go ahead. With all those bandages, it would feel like being battered with a down pillow.”

“Hmph! Just like Sparkle, you are a meanie butt.”

“I sure am, that’s why you love me. Now kiss me, I’m going to work. Mnph!”

She was 100% correct, and I put as much as I could into kissing her back. Was she leaving me to babysit her toddler with all my issues? Well, yes, and no. Her commute was about 30 steps, to a tiny bedroom she called a den. Ellie worked remotely as a customer service representative for one major airline and its smaller affiliates.

You could hear her constantly taking calls and helping passengers with all their issues. The queue of incoming calls would automatically rotate among Ellie and dozens of her peers all over the country. In times of bad weather, the poor woman would be gray-faced with fatigue. And yet, I was impressed at her ability to remain positive and cheerful in spite of the stress.

About a week after I came to Ellie’s house, I needed to stop and question her.

“Ellie, you should put me on a small bed or a cot in there, so you can be out in the house relaxing and have the master bedroom to yourself.”

“But, why?”

“Simple. You’d have Daniel Lyon in your den.”

She laughed and laughed with me, while poor Sparkle didn’t understand.

“Mom! What’s so funny? TELL ME!”

“OK, wise guy, this is entirely your fault. You’re going to explain it to her.”

Sparkle took her hands off her hips and climbed into the bed with me.

“This is a very long time ago in a place far away.”

“Like Star Wars?”

“No, silly, in Asia. Let me tell you the story. There was a king named Nebbuck, and he had a special chamber or pit where he kept his lions. You know what lions are, don’t you?”

“Sure, they are big cats with lots of hair around their faces.”

“Yeah, these were very big lions, each of them too big to even fit on this bed. And these mean lions were very hungry. So, when you are king, you have lots of enemies, and people who sell secrets or steal from you. For his really bad enemies, the king would throw them into the pit and the mean lions would eat them.”

“That’s silly. Cats eat food out of little cans. Big cats would eat food from big cans, not people.”

“Hmm. You’re very smart, Sparkle, but these cats were different. The natural food for lions was to chase down and eat animals, like deer and even horses.”

Her eyes got really big.

“And these lions were extra mean and kept very hungry, so if an enemy of the king was thrown into the pit, they would go ahead and eat him. Remember, these are really big meat-eating cats, they have teeth the size of my finger, see?”

“Daniel, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m almost finished. The king’s top minister was a man named Daniel (just like me), and the other ministers were jealous of him. They got together and convinced the king that Daniel was secretly trying to take over and put the king in prison. So Nebbuck told his soldiers to grab Daniel and throw him into the lions’ pit.

“But he didn’t get eaten, because he prayed, he asked God to protect him. Since the lions didn’t eat Daniel, the king realized he had been lied to, and Daniel was set free and all his accusers became lion food. This story from long ago has been told again and again ever since, because it comforts people who believe in God.”

“OK, but why are you telling me this story?”

“Because the place where the lions were kept was called a den, and my full name is Daniel Lyon. You asked what was funny to us. It was to have Daniel Lyon in the den.”

“And that’s funny?”

“It is, to grown-ups who know the story, I guess.”

“You guys are weird.”

“Let me just add one more thing, Sparkle. Another old story is when you explain a joke, it stops being funny. We just proved that. Tell you what, go get “The Cat in the Hat” from your pile, and I’ll read it to you while you turn the pages for me, OK? Go on.”

She scampered off. Books by Dr. Seuss were her favorites.

“OK, here we go.”

“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play...”

This sweet little girl was worming her way into my heart. I never had any siblings or cousins to play with, and no experience as a babysitter. With no father in her life, she glommed on to me almost instantly.

“OK, Sparkle, we finished your book. I have to ask Ellie if she has the other book.”

“What other book?”

“I think there’s a book called, ‘The Cat in the Hat Comes Back’ by the same guy. Would you like me to read that to you also?”