Carly could sense the somberness in the house.  Somehow, despite her lack of need for it, she could feel the sadness even affecting her own mood.  She sat on the edge of her bed, her door closed, staring at the wall and sighing.  The fourteen-year-old knew things were going to change now.  She wasn’t sure how yet, but she knew they were.

                Her parents were both in their room, crying on each other’s shoulders as they prepared for a token funeral that was to be held in an hour in Jack’s memory.  After a few months of searching, with nothing turning up, no matter how far Mr. Arton’s contacts extended across the country in search of an answer to the whereabouts of Jack, it was decided to hold the event in honor of the lost seventeen-year-old and begin to move on.  The bright, sunny day of this hot July day belied the cold, painful feeling filling the Arton household this day.

                Carly sighed again, then looked down into her palm of her hand at her brother, curled up obediently and looking up at her blankly.

                “Mom and Dad are pretty sad,” she said quietly, a twinge of guilt filling her.

                “I know,” answered Jack hollowly, knowing his opinion wasn’t exactly being asked for.

                “That should make you feel good,” she shrugged slightly.  “All the people that cared about you when you were normal, you know?  I mean, think about it.  How many times do people say they wish they could see their own funeral so they could know who cried for them?”
                “I don’t know,” said Jack dryly.  “A lot.”

                “A lot of people are coming to this.  Most of the family, a lot of your friends, a lot of my friends… just for you.  All for you.  Doesn’t that make you feel important, little bro?” she said with an optimistic smile.

                “I don’t know.  I guess,” said Jack, breaking eye contact.

                “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you puny bug,” growled Carly, breaking the soft tone of voice for a moment by shaking her palm, jostling her tiny pet brother back to attention.  “I’m trying to say something nice for you, and all you can do is sit there and act stupid.  Don’t you know you’re going to get to see this all?”

                “Really?” asked Jack looking up at his sister with a raised eyebrow.  “How?”

                “Well… okay, let me rephrase that,” mumbled Carly with a smirk.  “You’ll be able to… hear it all.  But you’re used to not seeing a whole lot of what’s going on, anyway, aren’t you, little bro?”

                “What are you even talking about?” asked Jack, half-disinterestedly, so deep was his brokenness by this point.

                “What… you seriously can’t guess what that means at this point?  After all the fun we’ve had?  God, Jack, you’re stupider than I thought,” giggled Carly, bringing up her free hand, a long, tan stocking pinched in her fingers.  Before Jack could say another word, she had plopped him into the open fabric mouth, allowing him to tumble to the bottom like he was on a giant slide.

                “Honestly,” sighed Carly, raising up her right foot and sliding it lithely into the stocking, her leg filling the tight tube quickly, as she felt her brother pinned helplessly like a fly under her soft, smooth sole.  “What would he do if he didn’t have a sister like me?”

                Carly stared out over the wide expanse of the church hall, the pews stretching onward endlessly.  Despite the openness of the room and the fact that the lights were dimmed significantly, matters weren’t helped at all by the fact that the air conditioning had broken in the church, making things hot and sweltering for anyone there.  Carly wiped a hand across her glistening brow, breathing slowly and heavily in the muggy air.  She knew it must have been upwards of ninety degrees today.

                Slowly, a processional of family members, friends, and acquaintances, all dressed respectfully in black, strode up the aisle toward the front, where Carly and her parents were standing.  Some shook hands with them all, while closer family members wrapped their arms around them in a protective embrace, eyes welling with tears.

                God.  If only they knew.

                Mark, a friend of Jack’s, walked slowly past, nodding to Carly as he did so, receiving a solemn nod back from her.  It was all Carly could do not to grin at the beautiful irony of it all.  All of these people, so distraught and far-removed from the truth.  Thinking Jack was off somewhere far away, lying dead in a ditch or floating belly-up in a lake.

                When, in reality, he was a mere footstep away from each of them as they passed, fully alive and well. 

                Under new management. 

                And, incidentally, under his sister’s foot, snuggled against her warm flesh by the taut tug of the stocking, hidden deep within a glossy black buckle shoe Carly had picked up specifically for this event.  The shoe was a little tight on her, ensuring Jack was thoroughly plastered against her bare foot with a couple thick layers of fabric and rubbery material binding him tightly to his owner’s filthy foot.  With no room to move, all that Carly had as an indicator that Jack was still alive was the occasional quivering movement against her skin.

                Wiping her sweaty brow again, Carly sighed, again fighting back the giggles.  It was incredibly hot out here.  She couldn’t even imagine the hell her brother was in right now; the interior of her stocking had no-doubt exceeded one hundred degrees, and already, barely an hour into the proceedings, Carly could feel her foot beginning to sweat.  It wasn’t a lot: a light, sticky buttering of perspiration coating her flesh.  However, she knew this was all that was needed to increase the tortuousness her tiny brother was enduring.  The painful claustrophobia.  The sweltering heat.  The slick skin.  The no-doubt unbearably muggy, musty scent reeking from her pores at this moment.  She arched her sole, forcing her pathetic brother to readjust his position as he fought against an overwhelming mass of soft skin to avoid being squashed.

                Absentmindedly, Carly wondered whether Jack would prefer to actually be dead and in a coffin right now rather than this fate.  The thought of it was delightful to her.

                Carly’s grandmother, her eyes glistening, her chin quivering, hugged the teen tightly as she walked by, kissing her cheek lovingly.

                “It’s going to be okay, Carly,” whispered the elder Mrs. Arton.  “Don’t worry.  I’m here for you if you ever need to talk.”

                “I know, Grandma,” whispered Carly back, pretending to choke her words a little as if fighting back tears.

                “I love you, sweetie.”

                “Love you too, Grandma,” said Carly as they released each other from the hug.  She appreciated the gesture.  As she watched the people walk by, the teen again felt that same guilt beginning to sink into her at what all of these people seemed to be feeling for the boy she had hated so much before he was small enough to fit in her shoe.  So many people showing compassion and deep loss for such a selfish, unfeeling entity.  A boy many of them hadn’t even known that well.

                “What do they know?” thought Carly to herself.  “How could they understand this?  Any of it?  Why would they feel like this?  He’s my brother, and I did what had to be done to make it better for everyone.  They’ll forget him soon.  And then things will go on like they’re supposed to.”

                Wiping a slender hand over her forehead again from the heat, Carly’s gaze shifted steadily down to her shoes.  By now, the mugginess of the room was beginning to affect her a little more, as it was to everyone present, but she knew that no one here was suffering from it as much as Jack right now.  She could feel his squirming becoming more rapid, no doubt as he struggled violently for air under the unbelievable wall of her slick skin bearing down on him.  Clenching her toes against the sock, Carly could feel the perspiration between them and knew it had to be getting wetter down in that stocking prison.  Tipping her shoe forward on the front, she felt her brother’s body, slippery with her foot sweat, sliding out from under her sole, where he became nestled in her toes.  She wrapped her damp digits around any inch of her tiny sibling she could, feeling him fighting them uselessly.  She could feel his tiny, pathetic face becoming trapped between her toes.

                She could feel him shiver with disgust and agony.

                Excellent.

                An aunt walked up to Carly, her eyes also wet with tears, her arms extended to hug Carly.  Putting on her best acting face to grieve, the girl wrapped her arms around her aunt in a tight embrace.

                “He was a wonderful boy.  I know you miss him so much,” whispered the relative.

                “I do.  I do,” mumbled Carly through fake dry sobs.

                “We’re all here for you.  You’ll be all right, honey, I promise,” said the aunt before continuing onward.  Behind her came Carly’s cousin Sophie, a girl three years her junior who was constantly being compared to Carly due to their strikingly similar faces.  Her eyes welled up too, Sophie seemed not to be handling this moment quite as well.  Closing her eyes, her lip wrinkling, the tears began to flow.  Carly, a look of pity on her face, extended her arms, pulling the eleven-year-old cousin close to her, rocking side to side.

                “Shhh… shhhh… shhhh… It’s okay, Sophie, don’t cry,” whispered Carly.

                “I’m sorry,” whispered Sophie.  “I just… can’t do… this… very well.”

                “It’s all right, don’t worry about it,” said Carly maturely and protectively.

                “I was never really nice to him… I just wish I could… see him again,” sobbed Sophie, burying her face in her taller cousin’s shoulder to hide it.

                “I know.  Me too,” answered Carly, patting Sophie’ shoulder as they finished the embrace and moved on.

                “What a bunch of phonies,” thought Carly bitterly to herself.  “So much pain and suffering… I never saw any of this when they thought he was alive.  No, he only matters to them when he’s dead and they can’t do anything about it anymore.  No one appreciates him like me.  How useful he is.  How much good he can do for me.”

                Arching her sole again, Carly rubbed down hard into the stocking, which by now was fully soaked with sweat.  She could feel the puny body of her toy sibling practically stuck to the damp surface of her skin as she adjusted him, rolling him back to the center of her stocking under the ball of her foot.  While he wasn’t thrashing anymore, she could feel his chest rising and falling slowly, meaning he had passed out, probably from a combination of the extreme heat and the horrendous stench of her foot odor clouding each breath he took.  Fighting back a giggle, Carly knew that she was probably going to have to peel his sticky body right off of her sole once they finally got home.  The humiliation it would bring him to witness as he woke up to find himself glued to the bottom of his sister’s foot by her sweat would be absolutely thrilling, and the girl could hardly wait to see the look on his face.  To bask in the horror in his puny eyes as he dangled helplessly from her warm, smelly flesh, staring ahead at her wriggling toes just above his head, threatening to grab him again as soon as he freed himself. 

                With a sly smirk she managed to hide, Carly resolved to keep the damp stockings on even after they arrived back home and she removed her shoes, in order to continue her brother’s torment.  It was just too good a chance to pass up to imagine her pathetic sibling pinned against her sole, looking desperately through the fibers of his fabric prison at the floor as it came nearer and nearer with each step before he found himself mashed helplessly against the ground by the overbearing, hopelessly crushing weight of his fourteen-year-old sister’s foot.  The thought of putting him through this, chuckling loudly enough for him to hear it while walking casually through the house, would be all Carly needed to end the perfect day spent with her favorite toy brother.

                She had to admit to herself: he had brought her more joy in this brief time as her pet than in all the pointless years of the rest of his life as a normal person combined.

                Despite the fact that there was no body to bury and therefore no coffin, as Carly felt her older brother sleeping peacefully under her foot, concealed by the black shoe, she couldn’t help but feel like this was as close as it could get without him actually being dead.

                “And they’ll never take him away from me.  Ever,” vowed Carly silently and lovingly to herself, twisting her soft, muscular foot down even harder over the helpless, fragile body of her prize.