Tom wrinkled his nose in slight disgust as he helplessly watched his dinner being squeezed and ground between his sister’s muscular toes, then threw his hands up in defeat as he so often was forced to.

            Food always tasted the same, no matter what shape it was in.  Or at least, sort of the same, considering the number of questionably clean giant human feet that had just walked across it, not to mention the volume of dirt and carpet lint that was now mixed into the stuff courtesy of all the pounding pressure of those overbearing soles ensuring the tiny sinner couldn’t eat a single bite without being reminded of his place below them thanks to his egregious molestations of truth.  Apparently marinating his food in day-old foot sweat and flaked skin was just considered shorthand for divine comeuppance.  Convenient.

            Still, food was food, and Tom’s stomach was rumbling fiercely now.

            It wasn’t that the boy minded having to eat dinner like this, per se.  After all, the rules of dinner-soccer were perfectly equal, and everyone in the household stuck to them.  If you didn’t lie and managed to hang onto your size, you got to eat up in a chair like a civilized person using a fork and knife off a clean plate.  If you didn’t, you had to work a little bit for it.  And maybe put up with some added seasoning in the food provided courtesy of grass flecks and pebbles in the carpet and sweat greased on from the over-eager toes of your siblings.

            And at least Emma seemed placated for now, because she had parted her toes to make the job easier for Tom, even eagerly wriggling them around to help attract him toward them.  Not that it was a particularly attractive offer getting to eat his last meal of the day out of some toes that had been encased in sock fabric for eight hours and clomping around school in poorly air-conditioned classrooms.  But she knew well he’d be hungry by now, and wouldn’t have many qualms with being served this way.

            So he set to work, peeling off the easy to reach crumbles of the cornbread and wolfing them down without a second thought.  His stomach rumbled gratefully, not caring in the slightest how revolting a source he was getting the food from, so long as he was fed.  Emma’s toes squeezed gleefully together as Tom’s willingness, and he was pretty sure he could detect a delicate layer of goose bumps running along her skin to have him eating off the filthiest part of her body without complaint.

            She reveled in this, no matter how much she did genuinely care for him.  He couldn’t begrudge her that attitude, he supposed.  It probably had its charms feeling miniature human hands tickling at her toes and farming them for edibles like some midnight fairy visitor. He imagined it might be kind of fun if he ever maintained his size long enough to experience it for himself.

            It wasn’t so hard getting all the pieces that still littered the smooth top of Emma’s foot, but eventually Tom knew he’d have to venture between her playfully squirming digits: something she’d of course more than accounted for by compressing as much of the meal as she could into those fleshy pockets.  She splayed her toes again, knowing it was time, and inviting Tom’s tiny hands to make their way inside.

            Rolling his eyes, the boy got to work.  He slid his fingers into the mush, crossing his fingers that Emma wouldn’t choose to clamp her toes shut on his hands and drag out this dance even further, and began.  It was gritty work at first, and the bread was certainly flavored much more potently with the stale after-school flavor of Emma’s shoe-entrapped peds, that flowery lotion she sometimes used long-ago replaced with the pungent zest of her socks and the moistened ball of her foot.  He almost wished she had participated in a tennis practice today so she’d have an excuse to shower before happily using his dinner to wipe the grime and caked sweat off her slender feet.

            Gobbling up mouthful after mouthful, Tom settled into a pattern of plucking the lumpy crumbs that had become nestled in the tender crevices between Emma’s toes.  Unfortunately, so mechanical had he become in the pattern that he realized all too late as he shoved the next bite between his lips that he’d accidentally grabbed a plump wad of his sibling’s toejam.  It had a similar chewy texture to the carpet-dragged cornbread, and he was chomping and swallowing it all so fast that it didn’t occur to him he’d eaten a piece of soggy lint cooked between his sister’s toes all day until the acrid bite was halfway down his throat.  He gagged, hoping to retrieve the salty morsel, but the flavorful intruder was already halfway down his esophagus.  Shrugging, then, Tom continued scooping up the next piece after more thoroughly inspecting it to ensure it was intended to be eaten.

            At least it added some variety to his meal.

            Once he’d gotten all he could other than a few crumbs indistinguishable from sock fluff, Tom ceased laying his hands on the warm skin of Emma’s foot and stepped back to let her know he was down.  The toes curled dejectedly into the carpet to help smudge away the remaining sludgy lumps, probably disappointed he hadn’t willingly started licking away the leftovers directly off her skin.  Of course, there was an unspoken truce about this particularly demeaning and vile act that Tom would only engage in it if he was really, really hungry.

            He still had his pride, after all.

            Probably.

            “I guess you got most of it,” Emma sighed, her beaming countenance suddenly appearing above as she peered under the wooden high-rise of the tabletop to observe her tiny sibling’s handwork.  She tilted her foot on its side, arching her sole and flexing her toes to make sure all the major morsels were cleaned away.

            “Yep,” Tom said, wiping a wrist across his mouth and slurping up a final crumb that tasted much more like concentrated vinegar than his mother’s sweet cornbread recipe.

            “Want some more?”

            “Sure,” the boy said truthfully.

            Grinning ear-to-ear, Emma willingly reached back up to the tabletop and scooped up a fresh piece of cornbread, fresh from the oven and even with a few wisps of steam still rising from its delectable crumbs.  He could smell it from here.  Warm, wonderful, and completely untainted by the sour additions from the feet of his family.  Tom couldn’t help but salivate.

            That is, until he felt his heart sink a little as Emma’s hand descended, her pinched fingers around the bread rapidly nearing her foot again.  Parting her big and second toes, she easily wedged the food between her digits and set to work pulsing it with alternate long and short squeezes.  It was only a matter of seconds until the mushy meal was plastered back across her tender skin, molded around the rounded contours of her vigorously waggling toes and waiting to be peeled off and consumed by some lowly form of life.

            Unfortunately, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and Tom was most certainly a beggar.