Scott clutched the flowing bedspread beneath his back as he felt the rolling of weight in the earth. The sheets billowed above, flushing warm air scented of Judy’s leftover perfume into his dim airspace. When at last they settled, the young man bit his lip, preparing. He’d made a plan and he was sticking to it.

            The terrific mass of Judy’s size-twelve foot swooshed between the fabrics as she stretched. Meaty toes flexed, instep arched, the pale wall of skin flecked with lint and pump calluses. The hem of the woman’s summer nightgown clung to her mighty exposed thigh to its full extension. A yawn and a relaxed moan followed from beyond.

            Her sole located Scott in record time, molding itself above him. Even at his size of six inches, the sheer volume of her appendage swallowed him up beneath.

            For a moment, Judy merely utilized her son’s body as a massage tool, mashing him deeper into the mattress. And Scott took it. He’d spread his entire body out, making a face-forward snow angel into the expanse of his mother’s foot flesh. It was all but possible to feel the steam emanating between their pressed skins as her hot, weathered sole worked itself over his considerably colder form.

            Sickening as it was for him to admit, it wasn’t the worst thing he could’ve experienced. Her skin was soft enough after a day of cooking in her heels not to chafe. Her wrinkles were pronounced but malleable, allowing the doughy section of her sole to settle in softly against his entire front side without too much extra weight. The sour odor of her shoes was omnipresent, as always, but became less noticeable after Judy had a chance to rub the aroma thickly enough into her son’s body instead, oiling his skin. If anything, he could feel his own muscles relaxing just a bit beneath the calculated pressure of his mother’s bare foot.

            In very little time, Scott’s own body temperature was synchronized with Judy’s sole, sharing a comfortably warm equilibrium. When at last the woman seemed satisfied with the initial intensity of her massage, she straightened her leg out once more. Her foot peeled itself away from Scott, who automatically sat up in the woolly darkness of the sheets to follow its domineering shape without even thinking.

            It was hard to make out his own position amidst the undulating sheets as Judy rolled from side to side, getting comfortable. Every few seconds he could make out the geometry of her leg swaying one way, her toes dancing against the silhouette of the sheets. The lights in her bedroom had dimmed as she prepared to settle in for the night. Already, Scott could tell she wasn’t planning on giving him a lift back to his couch bed downstairs. Which more than likely meant she intended for him to spend the night in this exact location.

            “Mom…” Scott spoke up as he sat slumped in the muggy seat of bedsheets, unsure even if she could hear him. “Are you-”

            His words were cut off by a plump, wriggling big toe colliding playfully with his head. The motion nearly toppled him back, but he held firm, bracing himself back against the uneven surface of the mattress as Judy’s digit drilled softly against his face. Grumbling softly to himself, he allowed his mother to toy with his face and hair against the gridded curve of her toe, while he wrapped his hands around its juicy girth and began to rub.

            “Mmmm… that’s it, sweetie,” she sighed from above. Either he’d chosen a poor time to try talking, or she’d heard him start and decided she’d prefer he talk to the toe.

            Scott sighed, feeling his breath fog against the spongy pad of his mother’s toe that was just barely wider than his entire face. The appendage squirmed, seemingly reacting to the feeling of his exhalation against its peachy terrain, and pressed in again. The young man barely had time to gulp down a swallow of toejam-flavored air before Judy’s toe was making itself a mask for him again.

            So, back he went to the ridged shaft of the toe. The monstrous things wouldn’t pamper themselves, after all - which he knew well, given how many times in the past Judy had informed him. He dug his fingers as deep as he could into the supple flesh and the crevice between the digits, which had become a bit brinier after such a long day in shoes.

            After a few more minutes of personal attention paid to her big toe, Judy seemed content to let him move on. Taking the lead, she smoothed his legs down with the row of her bulbous digits, and then planted her thankfully smaller second toe into his lap.

            The bulk of it prodded uncomfortably into the area between his legs, causing him to flinch. He quickly took her meaning and propped the toe up in his own hands, bringing it up to his face like water drawn from a stream. He puckered his lips and blew cold air across each handful of toe. It wasn’t ideal having his mother’s giant toe brush coyly against his lips every few seconds, but it was far preferable to letting it rest a couple inches lower on his shrunken frame.

            The cycle continued down the rest of her toes. With each transition to the next digit, Judy’s foot itself would ride a little higher up on Scott’s body. By the time he was primping and cupping her pinky toe into his palms, the ball of her foot was effectively squashed down on his entire lower half, making itself comfortable and Scott decidedly the opposite.

            A flicker of light followed by a grateful gust of AC breezed under the blankets as Judy’s manicured fingers lifted them up. Her eyes weren’t quite visible to Scott as he was pinned beneath her foot near the bottom of her bed, but he could certainly make out her ever-broad smile sending him a clear message of customer satisfaction.

            “What was it you were going to say before, sweetie?” she questioned at last. “Sorry if I interrupted. I just really needed to break down some of the tension first.”

            “Oh. Yeah,” Scott gulped, carefully trying to unwedge his crotch from beneath the hefty ball of his mother’s naked foot. As he expected, it was entirely unsuccessful. He only hoped she didn’t move too much now.

            “Don’t let me stop you, though. You can talk and help me at the same time.”

            “Ah, yeah, you mean-”

            “You’re so cute. You do always forget, don’t you, that-”

            “-you have two feet,” he repeated back in the least patronizing way he possibly could, despite this being essentially a direct quote he’d had parroted to him many times over the years whenever he’d seemingly neglected his mother’s other appendage.

            Judy’s smile glistened into a pleased grin. Her hands clasped together, wringing in delight.

            “Exactly. But go ahead and talk, if you still want to?”

            “Sure, sure, yeah… it wasn’t anything important or anything…”

            “I can decide that for you, honey.”

            “Gotcha. Um, I was just curious what the thing today was for?”

            “You mean the meeting you helped me host today?”

            “Yes,” he said, trying not to snort at his mother’s definition of “host.”

            “You’re interested in my meetings?” Judy chuckled. Her hand released its grasp on the tucked sheet and instead folded the entire mess of blankets back, bringing Scott into the light, along with both of his bare bedmates. The one he’d just finished working over, considerably looser and less pink now, finally lurched off of his body, but the second was dragging across the sheets toward him.

            “I guess a little bit. Since it all kinda affects me, right? It just seems good to… you know, take an interest in how it all works,” Scott explained, selecting every phrase with the utmost precision. He could see the gears turning in his mother’s brain, despite her unmoving and gently derisive smirk.

            “Well, that’s very mature of you, honey,” she said. Her gaze narrowed as her tongue flicked at the corner of her lips, studying him as her unattended foot approached. “Mostly we were talking sponsors. Not just financial, of course, but people and groups that can make a difference by helping educate and spread our message.”

            “Gotcha.”

            “…which is part of why I love that you’re so cooperative during those meetings. It helps to let them see a great, living example of one of the most important programs. Especially people newer to the campaign who haven’t really had the chance.”

            “You mean that one lady? Si… Sidra?” Scott asked, purposefully forgoing the correct name. He ran his palm along the bell of his mother’s pinky toe, coaxing the words out like notes from a harp.

            “Sylvia. Yes, she’s a new partner. She’s got some wonderful connections to some citizen action groups, the kind of people that can get some ground swell going in places where I’m not… or, not as well-seen yet. People that not even Techilogic can…” Judy meandered dreamily, melting lower into the bed as Scott played her toes. On these final whispered words, though, her lips closed, forming back into the smile of before. “…well, there’s no need to bore you with the minutiae. The point is… I’m grateful to see so much progress in you, Scott.”

            He nodded, careful not to let the intent glow too brightly in his eyes.

            “Cool,” he droned, hands still moving methodically from nailbed to nailbed. “Thanks, Mommy.” He didn’t skip a beat.

            “Sleep well, sweetie.”

            The lights clicked off a few minutes later and the twenty-two-year-old settled in for a probably restless night of sleep snuggled against Judy’s even more restless naked size-twelves. Already her soles had made a warm sandwich of him a few times, indicating even a cat nap would be close to impossible, but for once, Scott didn’t care. Though he’d only received the barest snippet of information, he’d learned much more from the tone of his mother’s voice and her careful omission of explanation. There was more at stake here than she was letting on.

            And there had to be a way for him to use it.