Giantess World
“Stress ball?” Avis scoffed, though she still wore a smile. “I’m not sure that’d do the trick.”
“It takes a LOT more than squeezing a ball to get my stress squeezed out,” Nola remarked. “More like three glasses of wine, at least.”
“Maybe you’re just not using the right kind,” Lilina said.
Nola and Avis looked at one another, still disbelieving, then each shrugged and contemplatively stuck out their lower lip.
“Sorry,” Nola said. “I think we met once, but-”
“Lilina,” she replied, and the repetition of her name in that same sultry low register made Mitch shudder with pleasant memories. “And I didn’t mean to take over your conversation. It’s just that I happen to know exactly what you’re talking about. I used to have the same problem. Now, though… I could spend all day and night here and still walk out in total bliss.”
“No problem at all,” Avis chuckled, officially intrigued. “Do you wanna join us?”
“Please,” Nola insisted, equally curious.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Lilina took the third chair across the narrow table from her two newest acquaintances, which automatically meant she was facing Mitch’s seat not ten feet away. Glad as he was to have her nearby, he also felt a twinge of disappointment, since Lilina’s direction meant he had to be much more judicious now to avoid being noticed sneaking glimpses of Nola and Avis’s de-nyloned peds, which were still served up at table-height, a little worse for wear from their pinched shoes and net-imprinting stockings, and not to mention lightly glistening with moisture in places, but still so heavenly it almost hurt that Mitch couldn’t crawl over there and study them from up close without risking his job and dying of near-suicidal shame. Nevertheless, it was treat enough to stealthily bow his head and listen to Lilina’s deeply dulcet tone.
“Well, you’ve got our attention,” Nola said. “Let’s see how great your sales pitch is.”
“Frankly, I’m ready to try anything, so long as it works,” Avis added, then with a sardonic smirk: “Can you prove that a stress ball is the answer to all our problems?”
“Of course.” Lilina spoke only to the ladies, but even as Mitch kept his head down, he could perceive her bewitching expression still aimed squarely his way, making it too risky to steal another drunken glance at the others’ exposed feet. That inability became all the more vexing, then, when he heard a heel-drop, then stocking-fiber shuffling for the third wonderful time in this room today, only now operated by surer hands, quickly rolling and tugging layers of silky wrapping down perfect lower-leg sculpting, and finally the heart-stopping form of a foot which her biggest fan had yet to witness bare. Mitch’s heart rate leapt, and he had to actively keep from whiplashing himself to get a look as Lilina fully removed her own elegant legwear to match Nola and Avis’s. Unfortunately, even if he was brave enough to try, the table positioning would’ve blocked his view.
“Well,” Avis muttered.
“How… long have you worked here again?” Nola asked.
“Two months.”
“And… you wear these shoes?” Avis pressed, kneeling and snatching up one of Lilina’s backless pumps.
“When the mood strikes me, yes. But I have many like them.”
“But… your foot, it’s so smooth, it… looks like it’s never walked on anything!” Nola sputtered as she stared unblinkingly at Lilina’s upturned sole. “Sorry, sorry, that probably sounds… weird, but-”
“No, you’re right,” Avis dryly concurred, also leaning in for the kind of scrutiny of an unseen apparently-immaculate foot that Mitch would’ve given a week’s paycheck to trade her for a ten-second stare-down. She tapped her knuckles against the dark slant of Lilina’s pump insole, creating a note of hardy percussion. “How are these things NOT just beating your feet to hell? One hour in these, and I’d be limping. And on these floors, too? Is there some trick with these?”
“No trick,” Lilina said, even-keeled as ever. “Just the stress ball. Like I said.”
“Okay, okay, you win, sister. Let’s see this thing,” Avis demanded, amiable but still serious.
“Yes, I don’t think we’re going to see a better sales pitch than this,” Nola said, going so far as to pat her palm against Lilina’s sacred sole to make her point, which again gave Mitch a jealousy-based stomachache. The woman’s voice steadily dipped to a barely-audible whisper: “Stress ball, you’re saying? So, what, is that a euphemism for… you know… drugs?”
“Basically, what kind of anti-stress substance is the “stress ball” dispensing?” Avis snickered, less afraid of being heard. “Grass? Vicodin?”
“Nothing like that,” Lilina said. “Just lotion. Unfortunately, I don’t have it with me at this time to show off. But its entire purpose is to be rolled along the bottom of the foot, from toe to heel, in whatever patterns and degrees of pressure suit your needs at the time. It was made only for that, so you can be assured that when you finally have it under your foot, everything just seems to find harmony. Then, at your pleasure, it will pump out moisturizer, to keep the area soft, soothed, and revitalized.”
“I’d say you were like one of those girls out of an infomercial, from the way you talk, if I couldn’t see your freakin’ little angel foot right here in front of me,” Avis stated.
“Same here. Well, I might not say that out loud, but… goodness,” Nola said. “So, you just use this stress ball… roll it around and press and push and let it lotion you up… and your feet will stay like that? No blisters, no pain, no nothing?”
“Exactly,” Lilina vowed.
All this while, her dreamlike gaze had never deviated from Mitch’s side of the room, not quite staring at him, but through. This meant an even more imperious requirement for the silent spectator to keep himself genuflected while Lilina held court with Nola and Avis, terrified of being found out. He couldn’t be certain that she was actually aware of him, unlike the other two who may as well have regarded him as inanimate furniture. Yet when Lilina staked this final claim of certainty about her supposed miracle-cure “stress ball,” Mitch’s whole body bristled with adrenaline and paranoia when (despite a lack of evidence to explain his own feelings), he would’ve bet his life that she was looking directly upon him, and nothing else, for a significant moment between breaths.
Mere seconds later, the irritating artificial bell tolled through the overhead speakers, severing his concentration and announcing that lunch was nearly over for the current on-break group of callers. Regretfully, that gave all three ladies cause to slip their stockings and respective footwear back on. This left much to be desired for Mitch, though he couldn’t complain much at missing the chance to see Lilina’s bare foot, when he’d still have the memory of her beguiling voice and podiatric subject matter to replay in his memory for a long time to come, like when falling asleep and especially in the middle of some self-guided afternoon delight. He’d have gladly spent hours upon hours listening to Lilina talk about anything at all, so the fact that he’d been privileged to hear her spoken address of those same feet he’d admired behind the nylon veil for so many weeks now made him believe he had to be the luckiest guy to ever work in this corporate purgatorial sweatbox of a business.