The comfort kit

The package arrived three days ago and you only opened it last night, as a joke — a 'comfort kit' from a website with no name, just a smiling sun and the words YOU DESERVE REST. You remember laughing at the receipt. You are not laughing now.

The soft grey onesie will not come off. You spent forty minutes with scissors that skidded off the fabric like it was wet glass, and when you finally sat down on the bathroom floor, shaking, the fabric seemed to... settle. Comfort you. The diapers beneath it are worse; you didn't put them on, and yet here they are, snug and warm and impossible, and every time you reach for the waistband your hands slow down halfway, like moving through honey, like your arms have opinions of their own.

Your phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number: Good morning, Mara. Day two. Remember — struggling only makes the softness stronger. Breakfast suggestion enclosed. Your stomach growls at the word breakfast, a low, eager sound that doesn't feel like yours. Outside, the city goes on being ordinary, and that is somehow the most frightening part.