“When you say you ‘blacked out,’” I interrupted, “what do you mean? Suffocation?”

Alan blinked a few times, shook his head slowly from side to side.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Alan. This type of black-market abduction and training – well, let’s call it as it is: brainwashing – isn’t uncommon at all. I mean,” I added, following his wandering eyes, as they circled the room, settled on the mantelpiece, indecisively, and then rested on me. “I mean, you aren’t alone. I know how that sounds, but you really aren’t. As for the rest, if it isn’t too difficult to dig into the details, the day-by-day, I want to ask you a few questions. If you’re ready. Only if you’re ready. Alan?”

He was staring fixedly at my loafers. A light glinted in his eye, and he looked up. “I’m ready.”

“Was Henry a plant?”

He flinched. “No. There was some mystery at first, that first night I mean, but afterward it became clear he was there…there on loan.”

“Loan?”

“Or exchange, maybe. Anyway he never went back to Marina. Olivia was one of his former students, I think. I could be wrong.”

“I’m surprised…”

He cut in quickly. “Well, if Marina – or Olivia (and if Olivia hasn’t killed him or sold him by now, he’s probably still with her) – had asked him, he probably would have done it. He would have done anything for any price. I mean, and Charlotte sorry if I’m rambling, because I have to think back now, but Henry seemed immune to all their brainwashing techniques, and at the same time he was completely loyal…”

“He would have betrayed you, then, to get what he wanted…”

“He betrayed other men. Probably former owners, too. Girls who, he felt (and you’d be surprised how many slaves said this) weren’t good enough for him. So yes, probably. But our lines never got crossed. What happened was that he actually asked Marina to be Olivia’s slave, and there was some kind of tradeoff. I never looked into it.”

“I see.”

“Hope I’m being clear enough.”

“You are.” Though I felt somewhat less at ease in my mind. Everyone hides some things in some stories, loose details, a few words here and there, but Alan was still hiding something important. Despite how little I knew about them, I felt it wouldn’t have been out of the question for Sadie or Marina to play a game like that on Alan, on any new slave. It wasn’t criminal, but it was sadistic, and in keeping with the brainwashing techniques he’d already touched on (for example, the ocean waves circulating like blood through a body, the scent training, the other psychological and physical abuse). “Go on.”

“On? Where was I?”

I was sitting on one foot, and felt the jeans stretch tightly over my thighs. The other loafer, now loose, flapped up and down as I wiggled my toes inside it. “Suffocation.”

I noticed he was watching my shoe again. Thinking of Olivia? Or was I teasing him now? I pulled the second foot underneath me, and waited. “I didn’t suffocate, you know…”

“Well, wherever you want to start again. The next morning, a week later.” He didn’t respond at once, only pushed his hands underneath his thighs, as though they were cold. I didn’t want to hurry him, but I was growing impatient, both with the story he’d already told me and the story he still had to tell. “Tell me more about Olivia, then. Give me a day in the life.”

“I was with her a long time,” Alan said. “Before Sadie came back.”

“What do you remember?”

He shook his head, and met my eyes again. “It’s like, I don’t know, I was drunk, you know. Bits and pieces. Annabelle said that she, Olivia I mean, never ate her slaves, but I saw things… She didn’t, but you remember that room where Steve went? Well. Use your imagination.”

I used it. “Alan, my God.”

He sighed. “It gets worse. I said I was with Olivia a long time. I don’t even know how long it was. Six months, a year, I don’t know. I didn’t get…I didn’t get out much. Anyway it was much longer than a day, so....”

“She lied?”

“Of course!” he blurted out, almost defensively. He was getting more anxious by the second. It was time to stop asking questions. “Everyone did. I knew it the next day, when I saw…well…”

He flipped the recorder back on. I listened.

“Why not in the morning?” 

“Don’t you think it’s just a bit, I dunno, alcoholicish…?”

Olivia snorted, scratched an itch on the ball of her right foot, and then, resting it across her thigh, wiggled it back and forth at the ankle.“Alcoholicish? That’s not how you pronounce it. It’s really alcoholicious, Sadie, stress on the fourth syllable. And yeah, it is.”

Alan felt his world rocking up and down, and then heard laughter high above him. He groggily opened his eyes. His head pounded and throbbed with pain, as though he’d just woken up after a nightlong binge. Rubbing his eyelids with his fists, he found they were crusted over with some sort of moist substance. Suddenly, without warning, something warm, damp and living seized him from behind with overwhelming force and flung him face-forward and smothered his fear in a wet, smelly, rippling wall of flesh.

Olivia was wiggling her toes and laughing. She smiled and looked down, casually, at the sole of her right foot. She felt Alan tossing and struggling under her toes. “Aw, I think he just woke up.”

“Woke up? Who woke up?”

“Alan. Sadie, I’m gonna have to let you go.” Alan heard her voice now, and her name. Was that confusion in her voice?

“Can I see him?”

“You know,” Olivia said, as she stretched her legs under the desk, reaching for her indoor flats, “he was so good last night. Like a little chick under…under a mother hen, huddling for warmth. He was so…happy.”

“Liv, what are you talking about? We went over this like ten times.”

“What else could he be?” she hunched forward over the edge of the desk, and crossed her legs, left over right. Alan, wide awake and wriggling against  Olivia’s toes a moment ago, now found himself slowly drifting off to sleep again, as she applied more and more pressure to his body, and buried him, little by little, second by second, in the dark zone between her toes and the insole of her ballet flats. “The only reason you got a box full is because at the moment I needed someone new. That’s the only reason. Used for me isn’t used for the next girl, like Marina, for one. If you want to come over some time, I can show you what I mean, my ex-boyfriend from high school, for instance. He can still speak at least, and I wouldn’t trade him to anyone, except for a high price, a really fucking steep price. He still knows what he’s doing.”

“Olivia, calm down. I was just asking.”

“What if I told Alan you traded him for a box of delicacies or something. Told him what you like to do with them sometimes, like, I don’t know, tie one to the roof of your mouth while you eat, and leave him there for days. I know the sort of stuff you do.”

“Tell him, I don’t care.”

“He probably heard you. Anyway…” Both were silent for a moment, and in the silence Olivia slipped out of her flats, and crossed her legs again. Alan, who did hear everything – Olivia’s darker, deeper voice seemed to travel across her body, down her legs, and through her toes into Alan’s tiny body – pulled his face, with a wet, suction-like sound, from the underside of her fourth toe, and felt himself falling, head over heels, down toward the upper part of the sock, pressed loosely against the outer blade of her foot.

“Maybe I should come over.”

“Why not today?”
 
Sadie didn’t answer. “How long do they usually last, for you I mean?”

“Interested now? Usually a week – when I was just getting started, I mean. In L’s case – I still call him L, he seems to appreciate it – wow, going on four years now.”

“Congratulations,” Sadie said, a bit sarcastically. “How d’ya do it?”

Olivia smiled, and shook her head. She took another sip of her wine, and swallowed. “As far as foot slaves go, the grosser it is, the better they look, and the longer they live.”

“What?”

“Counterintuitive, right?” She burped softly, and then exhaled. “I found out with L that the longer I went without washing my foot, the less he complained, the longer he lasted, both by the day and month. I mean, he wore down eventually, I used him every day, and now he’s only good for cleaning and small tasks. But the savings are enormous.”

“I don’t understand. I have to go soon, Olivia. Maybe you can tell me later.”

“Come by after.” The screen fizzed out, and Olivia pushed her chair away from the desk.

She peeled off her old birthday cake sock, balled it up with Alan still inside, and stuffed her flat with it. Her footsteps receded and stopped. She shuffled about for a few seconds, perhaps poking around through something, and then traipsed back, lazily, across the floor, her bare feet making a sucking, slapping sound over the hardwood floor. The chair scraped again, and his body tensed, waiting for the girl’s fingers to close around him, or reach inside the warm, smelly sock and bring him out into the cold, clean air. Instead, her fingers gripped the toe of the sock, and simply shook him out onto the heel of the flat, darkly begrimed.

He didn’t know what to say: for almost two days, now, not once had he been asked, “Would you prefer…” or “What would you like instead…” Already it felt absurd for him to say something, to protest to Olivia: “I would prefer you dump me out of your sock more gently.” He submitted to these minor indignities, convincing himself that he was focused, really intent on stopping the larger one, which was the plain fact that Olivia wanted to make him something he was not. She was down on her hands and knees, under the desk, and gently cleaning his face with a spittle-covered pinky finger.

“Little Alan. If I dress you up, I could call you Lana, or maybe Nala…” She smiled. “No, little slave Alan, that sounds nice.”

She frowned, concerned. “How did you sleep last night? I slept wonderfully.”

He forced himself to look away from her eyes, and felt trapped. His headache was fading away, and then something emerged out of the fog, in between throbs. “Who is L?”

Olivia didn’t hear him, or pretended not to. She stood him up, raising his arms with her index finger and thumb, stretching them out to the side. “You have to a lose a few pounds, little slave Alan, but we’ll talk about that later.”

“Who is L?” He said it more loudly now. Protesting was futile, but he wanted to at least let her know that he was listening. That he knew something. That he wasn’t totally stupefied by….by the last two days of his life. He was becoming everything he’d dreaded, and felt himself frozen in disbelief, unable to accept that this dread had now become a very real, very immediate danger. Even escape would be an admission that he was a slave, a prisoner. And that one, that all-important fact still hadn’t penetrated his skull.

“You want to meet him?” she smiled, as though surprised and pleased by his interest. “You will, don’t worry. But I have to write an essay now, little Alan, and want you to pay attention to these five girls.”

Alan was just about to open his mouth again, and stupidly ask the same question, but Olivia had backed up from underneath the shadow of the desk, and was now pointing to one of its four wooden legs, where five girls, each almost double Alan’s own size, were standing in a row, waiting for some order. All of them were stripped down to their underwear, though one wore a flowing blue skirt, and seemed a bit busy adjusting one of her bra straps, and pulling up her panties.

The chair scraped again, and this time Olivia was sitting in it. Her bare feet lay before them, and the five women suddenly stood at attention, as though waiting for a signal. In that long, tense silence, broken only by Olivia’s finger on the computer mouse far above them, and the occasional snort and hair rearrangement, the girl with the blue dress turned around to Alan and smiled. She pulled up her dress, and revealed what was there. Steve, his mouth frozen and twisted in a perpetual moan, had been wedged up her hairy pussy like a tampon, only his head extended out into the sudden, cool breeze. He gulped, and said something, very scratchily. It could have been “Help me,” or “Hell,” or maybe even “Go to hell” – or maybe, as the girl said, it was simply “Hello.”

“He’s saying hello,” she whispered.

But there was no time to respond. Olivia had wiggled her black-painted toes, the blue dress had fallen back across the girl's pussy like a veil, and the girls started their work on their owner’s left foot. Out of nowhere appeared a nail file, a pair of scissors, polish, lotion, and other assorted foot-care accessories.

“While they’re working, Alan, I want you to study my other foot,” she said, silkily, a bit mechanically (because she’d already started typing her essay) from high above. “Study the top. I want you to slowly graze your fingers around my footprint, as though you were tracing it with a marker. Study the back, by the heel, and then move around to the arch, and finally to the toes. When I’m finished, I want you tell me about it. Describe it to me as best you can, in detail.”

Alan couldn’t move. He stared at the girls, and listened to his heart pound. He wasn’t who she thought he was. Didn’t she know how smart…what a waste…

“I’m sorry if you’re bored, but when I’m finished, we’ll have breakfast together. We’ll talk. Maybe we’ll meet L.” She stretched her toes out, as though searching for him, and then cracked them loudly. “Where are you?” She peered down underneath the desk, and looked around her right foot until their eyes met, or hers met his and his looked away. “Start at my heel, I said. What’s wrong with you?” She turned back to her computer, and when Alan walked around to her heel, and grazed it with his fingers, he felt her skin tremble in response. An heady odor surrounded him, like old overworn leather, something like cedar wood, and something very much like the sickening, cloying smell that overwhelmed him last night, and lingered over his hair and skin. Already his own pores smelled more like Olivia than him.

“I don’t want to overwhelm you all at once,” he heard her say. “I know there’s a transitional period, there’s a steep learning curve, and I know everyone has their limits, and I’ll try to respect yours.” She bent down and cupped her mouth in a whisper. “Some advice: stay as far away as you can from those five girls.”

What was she talking about? Was there an ironic smile on her face as she said these things, or was she being sincere? But, Alan muttered to himself, stupidly. But this is only temporary, only a day. It’s just a game, she said. Though he no longer knew who was meant by “she,” whether it was Olivia or Sadie or someone else. He was hungry, though, and the smell was affecting him again, so that he could no longer think clearly enough to disobey her. He needed a reason to say no. And somehow that reason was escaping him. He’d come this far, after all, and he’d been tricked by Sadie twice now. He was desperate to trust someone, at least, and Olivia, so far, hadn’t lied to him.

He began to circle her foot, studying it as she asked. For now, yes, he'd do as she suggested. He'd stay as far away as possible from those other five girls.

“You know what I liked about you, Alan??” She was muttering to herself, as she typed out her essay. Alan was touching her arch now, half-amazed by the way her flesh responded immediately to his fingers. “Your innocence. The moment I saw you, last night, I had to get you for myself. Don’t be afraid of me,” she said. Alan listened, and despite a sudden urge to run away, to hide among those loose piles of clothes, to find a hole in the wall, any hole, and scurry through it like a mouse or a spider, he decided it wasn’t the right time. Maybe later, when she let him alone for a few minutes, he’d have his chance. She must let him alone some time.

“I won’t kill you. Remember the thing I told you about the rotten apples? How one thing or another gets me in that creative mood? This is the one thing for me. I need you, so I don’t want to hurt you. Keep going.”

After a few minutes, Alan faced her toes again, and was waiting, indecisively, for another word. It came.

She stopped typing. "I want you to climb inside my flat -- the one right behind you -- and wait for me to put my shoe on. I’m almost finished now.”

Alan looked behind him, away from Olivia’s gigantic, shapely foot, and inched his way toward the flat. As he stood at the tip, facing the toe of the shoe, Olivia suddenly stamped her left foot and dismissed the girls. “That’s enough! I’m finished. Find your way back.” The girls scattered, dropping their implements and cotton wads here and there, and Olivia extended her feet toward the shoes, twirling them around with her toes at the heel, and pulling them on to her feet. She slipped the left shoe on, sloppily, and then prepared to put on the right. Her toes inside, and her heel propped up, she instructed Alan to push himself up into the shoe, and crawl underneath her arch, until he reached her toes.

Alan hesitated, again. He had to explain something, that he wasn’t supposed to be a foot slave, that he hadn’t marketed himself, that his mother... But it was too late, and Olivia had already scooped him up and dropped him inside. The heat and smell of the night before engulfed him. She put him in the spot most comfortable for her, and then started walking. The printer whirred, the laptop cover closed, and Alan, huddled in a tiny ball with his head underneath Olivia’s overpowering pinky toe, waited for what was coming to him.

The toes squeezed him warmly, and he gasped in pain. But what confused him was how quickly that pain became pleasure, how quickly his flesh responded to hers, even underneath her toes. It occurred to him, briefly, in a flash, that she wasn’t torturing him, controlling him – she was seducing him. And seducing him in the strangest way: by overwhelming him with the repulsive, sickening, sweaty odor and backbreaking weight of her feet. He wasn’t able to form this thought into words: it just occurred to him, suddenly. And he became aware, just as suddenly, as the weight lifted from his torso, as he was forced by the released pressure to inhale deeply and gratefully the corrupted, heavy odor permanently embedded into the skin at the base of her toes, and just as Olivia had seated herself somewhere, probably at the breakfast table –  that his lips were pressed against her pinky toe. He tore them away, and spat, mechanically, into the warm darkness. He closed his eyes and gasped for breath, almost in a panic.

When he opened them again, her foot was gone, and he was alone in the shoe. He stood up, and groped toward the light. Far above, he heard voices talking, laughing, and no one was mentioning his name.