For the second time today, David was thrust back into wakefulness with no perception of his surroundings or even his body. He staggered to his feet and discovered Nina, now just as naked as he, floating in an empty space without the aid of atmosphere or rising tides. They were simply hovering.
“Wake up, losers! C’mon, I don’t have all day. You have all day, obviously, but I don’t!” Ariel’s goddess voice taunted via magical transmission.
All it took was Ariel’s demanding, singsong voice to tug David fully back into depressing existence.
“What happened?” Nina uttered at last.
“Are… are we… d-”
“Of course you’re dead, stupid. You can’t go swimming in somebody’s sweat, not come up for air, and expect to not drown! Geez, I swear, I should’ve put you out of your misery a long time ago, “little” brother.”
“So… so this is… the…” Nina said, unwilling to believe they still weren’t free of the redhead’s bonds. She clawed her tiny fingers against her rosy cheeks. “…the… afterli-”
“Yeah, this is the afterlife!” Ariel said cheerfully. “Well, sort of. There’s a necromancy chapter in the back of this book, so I went ahead and tested out a few things. Basically, you’re not in actual hell, you’re just in… well, the one I made for you!”
“What does that mean?” Nina cried. She stretched out an arm, making an attempt to swim away in the silvery void. However, as per usual at this size, she could do nothing to affect her position in the world.
“What do you think it means? You drowned. Then you started to float to heaven, and I snatched you back up, like the toys you are, and brought you here instead,” Ariel explained. “I’d start getting used to it if I were you, cuz the spell I put on you? This whole place? It’s kind of permanent.”
“David…” Nina said helplessly, searching his eyes for answers. He couldn’t even meet her gaze. His attention was ensnared elsewhere in the necromantic vacuum.
“David, why won’t you look at me?”
“Nina, don’t turn around.”
“Why? What’s-”
The void dissipated like pea-soup fog as six foreign obelisk-like objects swum into view. David and Nina were slammed body-to-body, limbs entangled, as they were plowed toward a pinpoint in the darkness by the objects which dwarfed them so pathetically, though not so dramatically that they couldn’t name their identities.
Six feet. Giant, forceful, and wickedly soft as always, balanced on heels as the walls of those upturned soles acted as an impassible barrier for their two inch-high prisoners. Specifically, three distinct pairs of feet, and though the attached legs stretched back into the smoky indistinction of this new hell, David and Nina could tell each twin-set of peds belonged to a different, feminine owner.
Soles and heels rammed closer inch by claustrophobic inch. David and Nina huddled fetally together as they were cocooned in the encircling prison cell comprised of six unique horrors. With creepily soothing, self-assured poise, the enormous feet began a smearing, caressing dance in slow motion around the tumbling pair of unfortunate best friends.
The first pair of feet, and the smallest, held a pale, creamy hue, with shallower sole wrinkles. Stubby, cute toes bobbed merrily above. A stale, sweetly-buttery scent masked by musk steamed off the flesh and invaded David and Nina’s nostrils.
The second pair of middle size with roomy, expansive soles was also the darkest. Bronze-tan gleam adorned the radiant skin. A sharply specific note of herbal tea soap wafted from the skin like the very soles of Mother Nature herself, along with an earthier, dirtier aftertaste.
“W-Wait…” Nina murmured. “I… I think I recognize…”
The third and final, and largest, pair of lanky feet was the pinkest and peachiest with a complicated roadmap network of creases and wrinkles crisscrossing over the loping arch of the sole. That puffy flesh smacked of the cruel odors of aged milk and exotic cheese.
By their powers combined, the three pairs of feet were coalescing their textures and scents in a bitter, inescapable inner globe for their puny hosts. Simultaneously, David and Nina experienced the unique literal identity-footprint of each ped, while also suffering amidst the fog and effluvium far harsher than any one smell alone.
“If one of you thinks you can tell me who each of these poor, lovely feet belong to, I’ll delay the next spell by a minute,” Ariel promised. “Anybody?”
“T-This is yours,” David croaked as he was smothered into the nearest size-6 curve of the smallest, milky-white sole. His naked body plastered against the pale, moonlike terrain. “Ariel…”
“Correct!” his sister giggled. “And what makes this even better is that from now on, anytime you two rub up against that one, I get to feel like I’m getting a little massage in real life! Pretty cool, huh? Don’t be afraid to give me a lick now and again, just as a reminder that you existed once.”
“Mary!” Nina cried out. She slammed into the heat-swollen wall of their waitress friend’s size-10 high-arch, rolling helplessly up the massive gangplank until she was snatched by the long, moist shafts of its finger-toes gripping her body. “Why?”
“So you always have something to remember her by, silly!” Ariel chuckled. “That’s two for two. You guys really know feet, don’t you? Now who can tell me that last pair?”
Nina and David hurtled back together in the center of their cramped foot-hell. They careened in unison toward the golden-tanned sole of the middle, size-8 appendage. Each of their clammy bodies fondled with extreme prejudice over the rubbery, luxurious wrinkles; at the top, their faces squeezed between a happily spreading toe crevice.
Huffing in the rank air of the flushed flesh, Nina’s lips pried open by sheer pressure as a crystalline bead of sweat pearled upon the tender skin and passed into her tiny open mouth like an apricot from a tree. She wheezed and fought as the hot, oily liquid rolled down her gullet, and then with a nauseated start, Nina understood.
“Me…” she uttered without sound. If it was possible for her to vomit in this lawless afterlife, she might’ve done so for every waking moment from here on out. “This… is me… this is my… my f-”
“And that’s three for three! Too bad for you guys, I wasn’t actually going to delay the next spell, which I think you can tell has already begun,” Ariel announced. “The good news for you two is, it’s the last ever bit of magic I’m going to put on you. Isn’t that nice of me! The bad news? Those six feet are going to be the only things you ever see until the end of infinity. Every minute that passes, they get just a little bit smellier, a little bit sweatier, just for you two.”
David and Nina tumbled through nothingness beyond space and time, where only the titanic feet of David’s sister, their unknowing friend, and Nina herself controlled their undying fates. They rolled over heel hills, wrestled with grappling toes, bounced from balls of feet, splashed through sweat puddles, swallowed dripping sweat, sandwiched between clamping soles, and cloyed for air not poisoned by salty, cheesy, grassy, milky, malodorous skin.
At the unforgiving mercy of each perky personality inherent in every hungry giant foot.
“Oh, I almost forgot! In case you two get bored… I made sure your puny sex organs still work! Not on each other, of course, I wouldn’t have allowed that… but if you ever find it’s getting just a little too hot and heavy in there, well… you can show one of those feet some appreciation with those slutty little tongues of yours, and I’m sure they can arrange for a pretty, stinky “end” to your troubles!”
Ariel’s blissful laughter was the only damning chorus to meet David and Nina’s ears aside from the swishing of sweaty, smelly skin and their own desperate, magically-aroused screams so easily absorbed into the omnipotent inner walls of heavenly sole flesh which would be their eternal resting place in hell.