- Text Size +

                Leaning against the bars of your new hamster cage, cloaked in the musty darkness underneath Chloe’s bed back at her house, you feel your arms trembling.  Cold?  Fright?  Anger?  All of the above?  It’s unknown to you, and what’s more, irrelevant.  Everything is irrelevant right now.

                You’ve been sitting in this cage in near-total darkness for what you’d estimate has been about five hours, with almost nothing to do.  You have a small dish of water you can scoop out of, and a few baby carrots to gnaw at that Chloe tossed in for you to eat, but other than that, you’ve got nothing to do but sulk painfully in the soft wood chips lining the base of the cage.

                You’ve only been in Chloe’s clutches for two days, and already you’re beginning to wonder whether or not things were better off with Carly.  Logically, you know this is a stupid thought, but you can’t help but think it.  Thus far, Chloe hasn’t necessarily threatened your life, beyond the warning that she’d crush you under a thundering heel if you neglect to call her “Princess Chloe,” but you can sense the same kind of off-balance mentality that you do so readily in your sister.  Your only hope is Chloe’s obvious disadvantage to Carly in terms of experience and age.  At this point, you can only pray that Chloe is operating more on overly curious and captivating exploration of an unreal situation, rather than the single-minded determination to emotionally and physically torture like Carly.

                On the other hand, “praying” hasn’t done jackshit for you in the last five years, so you doubt rather heavily that it’s going to start working now.

                Suddenly, your empty solitude is put to an end as you hear the slamming of the bedroom door and heavy footfalls on the carpet.  You can actually feel the wood chips jumping like popcorn kernels around you in response to the vibrating pulse of your new twelve-year-old tormentor’s crashing steps.

                “CHLOE!” comes the call of your Aunt Selina through a wall.  “I have to go outside for a few minutes to shovel snow off the driveway so your dad doesn’t get stuck trying to park the car when he gets home later.  Don’t walk around the house!  You need to take a shower!”

                “I WILL!” calls Chloe irritably, her response obviously much closer.  Clearly, she’s already in the room.  “In a few minutes!”

                You have a feeling what that means already.  You clamber to your feet, hoping to stand tall.  Not that this helps, but you figure anything to help your cause it good, and if that means standing up proudly at your helpless doll size rather than lying down meekly, that’s what you’re going to do.  Your blink a few times as the blinding light sheds on your darkness-adjusted pupils, and the familiar fingers slip between the bars of the cage, gripping it and sliding it across the surface of the carpet back into the light.

                You stare out into the expansive world of Chloe’s bedroom.  It looks like someone dropped a massive payload of pink paint on the place before sending down a torrent of glitter glue and sparkles, because the whole place is so sugary-sweet themed it might as well be made of candy.  A few posters of professional women soccer players adorn the walls, but aside from these, the rest of the room is drenched in pink, purple, sparkles, rainbows, and ponies.  It’s almost sickening to look at.

                Chloe crouches over your cage, still wearing her blue soccer practice uniform, staring down with an eager smile into the cage.  She seems to have noticed you eyeing her room, because she does the same with a proud grin before returning her gaze to you.

                “Like it, huh?  You probably think I’m a tomboy or something.  Nope!  I like pink stuff too.  Really.  I USED to only like the soccer stuff, but now I like it all.  I’m going to be thirteen in a month, you know.”

                Internally, you almost want to laugh.  The room seems more fitted for someone at the age of seven or so.  It seems Chloe, in her effort to establish herself as a sweet girly-girl rather than just the rough-and-tumble soccer player, got confused about how to play the situation and ended up believing she had to outfit the place with enough hot pink and glitter to make an elementary school drama queen blush.  Subconsciously, you wonder if this social confusion of hers has anything to do with her apparently twisted set of morals towards those beings weaker and less capable than herself, although at this moment, you’re not quite sure of how it all connects.

                “SO!” she sighs loudly, pinching her fingers around the cage latch.  “Wanna play?”

                All you can do is stare up at the ceiling of the cage as it opens up, making way for the fleshy tent of a firm hand to descend slowly and expectantly down to you, pressing you down slightly against the wood chips before gripping you comfortably into the slightly stubbier fingers.  Chloe is, on average, a bit shorter for her age than you would normally expect, and so naturally the rest of her somewhat follows suit.  Of course, when you yourself are small and insignificant enough for her to grasp up at her leisure with a single hand and toy with, her shortness makes little legitimate difference in the scheme of things.

                You are lifted slowly through the opening of the cage and brought before Chloe’s face.  She wrinkles her upper lip, frowning confusedly at you.  Running a fingers up and down your right leg, stroking you absentmindedly, Chloe ripples her fingers around your body to get your attention.  “Hey, Kenny.  Are you deaf?  I said, do you wanna play?”

                “No, Princess Chloe.  I’m tired,” you state as simply as possible, although you doubt that’s the correct answer.

                For a moment, she actually appears somewhat hurt.  “But I thought you liked me.”

                “I do.  It’s just that…”

                “Then why won’t you play with me?”

                “I’m really tired.  When I’m tired, I can’t play very well.  It would be boring for you,” you try to explain as reasonably as possible.

                She shakes her head at you, unconvinced.  “I don’t think so.  I could never get bored of you.  Ever,” she answers calmly.  Slowly, she brings you closer to her lips.  For a second, your spine tingles chillingly as you are reminded of the countless times Carly has popped you between her lips and sucked on you mercilessly, turning her muggy spit-reservoir of a mouth into your personal hell.  However, rather than open her smiling lips to make way for your helpless form, with a sigh of relief, you watch as Chloe simply puckers her pink lips together to kiss you.  She pecks you lightly directly on the face, which feels somewhat like having a damp pillow squeezed gently around your head, before pulling you back and smiling at you.  “I love you too much to get bored of you.”

                She’s got a funny way of showing it, you note bitterly to yourself, but you don’t show it in your face.

                “So.  We’re gonna play…” she says slowly, thinking deliberately about the possibilities.  “…tag.  I like tag.”

                You don’t even answer.  At this point, your fate is decided.

                “I’ll give you a head start.  And then I’ll come get you,” she giggles.  Great.  This already sounds like a barrel and a half of laughs.  You merely nod.  Lowering you toward the carpet, Chloe loosens her fingers around you, allowing you to drop gently to the ground, before bringing both hands to the laces of her cleats, which are still tautly tied from soccer practice.  She quickly sets about loosening and undoing the laces of the grass-stained footwear, the sleek black and silver design of the shoes long since scuffed into barely recognizable patterns from such frequent use.  Within seconds, she has the laces undone on both, and she’s slipping her fingers under the flaps and yanking them off.  Having removed them, then, she tosses them across the room carelessly into a random corner.  And you, unfortunately, are left to focus on an unpleasant new reality.

                You have a feeling Chloe’s been playing soccer for the past three hours at least at some kind of tournament with her school league.  Even when she lifted you out of your cage, you couldn’t ignore the musty dampness of the air surrounding her like a cloud of gaseous sweat, the microscopic particles of dirt and salt seeming to swirl all around and creep up your nostrils in an unwelcome fashion.  However, for appearance’s sake, you had managed to keep your cool.

                But not right now.  Your eyes fall over to the socked feet of Chloe, and it’s all you can do to not start gagging violently.  Her white striped knee-high uniform socks, while seeming well-worn around her ankles and shins, look beaten to a fabric pulp below this line.  Fuzz and bits of thread jut off in random directs, and tiny holes seem to be appearing in corners.  The sock looks like it was hand-crafted to be form-fitting to your cousin, because each one hugs the curves of her foot so well becomes clear the sweat has glued it almost permanently to her foot.  You can see the distinct outline of each rounded toenail and each crevice between each plump digit, a few loose grass blades trapped helplessly in these locations, the entire dingy sock absolutely soaked in her cold, grimy perspiration and flecked throughout with bits of sand and dirt.

                You can’t help but cover your nose and try to filter your breathing, although it does little good.  The rank stench of balmy excretion, sour flesh, sopping wet fabric, and slimy outdoor flavors hang so heavily in the air you almost feel the urge to crumble to your knees in weakness.  The heat from her overworked soles and heels is tangible, even from this distance, her foot acting like a radiator of both sweltering steam and unbearably murky, detestable body odor.  The starchy, spicy whiffs all combined into one singular broiling, grody atmosphere, and all you can do is stand as still as possible and hope with all your might that the walloping punch of the putrid stench from your cousin’s sweaty peds doesn’t knock you out cold.

                Chloe giggles, wriggling her toes playfully in their tight fabric prison, creating new taut wrinkles in the dungy gray sock, and wrinkles her nose.

                “P.U. Kenny, that is NOT good!” she laughs, drinking in your less-than-enthusiastic reaction.  “I’m sorry about that.  I don’t like stinky feet, either.  Especially MINE.  But it’s okay.  Run fast enough, and maybe you won’t have to worry about that anymore.”

                Already your heart is pounding in your chest.  You don’t like the sound of that.

                “Run, little guy!” she whispers intently, grinning wildly and widening her eyes almost hungrily with anticipation of the game to come.  “Run as fast as your tiny legs can carry you.  I’m gonna come get you.”

                You don’t need any more prompting to start dashing madly across the carpeted floor with all you’ve got, away from your crouching cousin and her cloud of oppressive BO.  You have a feeling this is partially futile on your part but, with a gleam of optimism, you make a mental note about one important difference between Carly and Chloe.  Carly would play games with you as well, but there was never an actual way to “win” the game.  The point wasn’t to have fun but simply to drain you of hope and humanity, hurting you and humiliating you in the process.  With Chloe, it’s a bit different.  For the time being, at least, she seems legitimately to enjoy “playing” with you, and as such, she’s not doing this for the sake of torturing you so much as amusing herself.  Therefore, you have a feeling that if you play your cards right, you might actually come out of this game with your dignity still intact.

                Of course, that doesn’t mean Chloe’s going to make it easy on you in the slightest.

                “Okay, that’s a big enough head start,” concludes Chloe calmly after you’ve been running for ten seconds or so.  “Better go faster, because I’m coming to GETCHA.”

                You feel the telltale hulking thump of the ground, and you don’t even need to turn around to know Chloe has clambered to her feet, and suddenly the carpeted ground gets into a predictable, rattling vibration pattern as your cousin slowly but surely stomps her way towards you like a lumbering dinosaur.  She’s walking at a very slow pace, but even this probably isn’t enough to keep you in the lead for long.  All you can do is pick a point in front of you and single-mindedly sprint toward it, drowning out all noise so you can concentrate.

                As you run, the hefty thundering of your cousin’s footsteps behind you getting heavier and heavier as she gets closer, your mind begins wandering aimlessly.  You wonder and worry about Sophie.  No doubt, the poor girl is absolutely wracked with guilt and sorrow at this point.  She was barely able to hold it together when she heard of your pathetically tragic plight, but now that she’s lost you and the chances of immediate escape are at an end, she’s probably not taking it well, and you have a feeling she’s a bit emotionally crushed at the moment, wherever she is.

                One thing you know for certain is that Chloe, at least for the time being, is probably not a suspect.  After finding you hiding under her scarf in the guest room, rather than take the scarf with her, your crafty cousin had put the woolen article back onto the dresser in the exact position she had found it in to cover her tracks; then, after hiding you roughly in her sweatpants pocket, she had dashed downstairs to play with the younger cousins a bit and remove herself from the scene entirely.  You’re not sure what happened after that exactly, but it seems obvious Chloe succeeded in relieving herself of suspicion on her sister’s part.  After all, as Sophie had pointed out about Carly’s purse, you have a number of very young and mischievous cousins, and any one of them could have, more than likely, been the culprit rather than Chloe for your theft, and what’s worse, you know Sophie is well aware of this.

                The family Christmas festivities ended a day ago.  Now, you don’t have any more frequent opportunities to make contact with your parents in your own house.  You’re trapped in Sophie and Chloe’s house, and no one except your colossal twelve-year-old cousin is aware of your current lodging in an old hamster cage Chloe had found in the house’s attic.  For now, you’re completely on your own.

                “TAG!” cries out Chloe triumphantly as you are pounded directly into a spread-eagled position by the charging force of five wriggling, socked toes.  The falling weight of Chloe’s right foot was all that was needed to incapacitate you, and with you flat on the ground, your giggling cousin has you at her mercy to subdue.  Slowly, the squishy, soggy weight of her dingy sock lowers itself onto you, burying you alive in the wrinkled hills and valleys of her over-worn footwear, pressing into you hard enough that you can feel the cold, damp layers of foot flesh pressing you down cautiously, yet gleefully enough that you can feel your bones ready to snap if contorted incorrectly.

                For a few moments, your entire world becomes a rippling, writhing ceiling of damp, cool fabric, glued taut against the sea of your cousin’s sole, as Chloe twists her foot over your body just gently enough to not knock you unconscious.  The thick air is so clogged with nauseating transudation that it seems all the oxygen has been expunged, and what you’re breathing right now is pure sweat mist and flecked dirt.  You gasp weakly, moaning in soreness and desire for a single breath of fresh air, as Chloe’s foot continues kneading placidly over your helplessly naked body, all but making you a mold in the carpet.

                The ordeal comes to an end after twenty seconds or so, although it feels like far longer, as Chloe’s foot lifts itself off of your crumpled body, the shadow falling away as well.  For a moment, you don’t move.

                “C’mon, Kenny.  Get back up.  I’m coming to get you again!” she chuckles.  “And no more Mrs. Nice Guy this time.  So, you better start going a little faster.”

                Grimly, you nod to yourself, knowing she isn’t kidding about this last quasi-threat.  Coughing meekly as you catch your breath and filter the horrid, grassy scents of seeping sweat out of your nostrils, you clamber back into a standing position, and stare upward just in time to see Chloe’s right foot rising up into the air, casting a shadow over you.

                In the tight fabric of the sock, directly in the center of the sole, you can make out what looks like the unmistakable shape of a snow angel made in the dingy, sweaty fabric.  Your body was pressed so squarely into your cousin’s socked foot it left an imprint, and being reminded so visually of just how powerless you are against the awesome strength and size advantage of your young cousin is simply another unpleasant blow to your already dwindling hope.

                You shiver uncomfortably before dashing out of the circle of your cousins’ shadow as fast as you can, leaving your towering captor behind you, knowing she’ll probably have caught up to you again in less than a minute.

                “Ready or not, here I come!” she laughs after waiting only about half the time of before, and you can feel the heavy footfalls coming with greater frequency and strength.  The vibration is so intense, you are actually jostled from your feet after a few seconds, landing flat on your back.  You don’t even have time to look up before a dark shadow is looming pitifully over you.  You want to cry but you don’t have the tears at this moment.  All you can do is gasp.

                “TAG AGAIN!  I love you so much, my little Kenny,” coos Chloe as she gently lowers her sweat-soaked sock back over your body, drowning you again in hellishly damp fabric and the lingering salty, greasy stench of her unwashed flesh as it violently caresses your body.  “You’re soooo much fun!”

Chapter End Notes:

Comment!

You must login (register) to review.