The feet of the girls surrounded Brett, the size of double decker city buses, with heat radiating from them as though they themselves had exhaust pipes. Among most of the girls’ toes, he saw many formidably large packets of foot grime derived from hardcore workout sweat, sock lint, and whatever detritus was under their feet.
He had started, as she insisted, with Jenna, who exaggeratedly giggled and grinned as he savored the gushy matter between her toes, with her giddily vowing that he was going to stay in this position for as long as she had the power to coerce him thusly. She flexed her tanned feet menacingly around him.
But eventually, Ayla and Zoe grew tired of waiting and they settled on a system of expediting Brett’s efforts while keeping multiple girls engaged. The ladies lined up on the bench in the locker room and practically set their feet overlapping one another. They were seated in 1-3-5-4-2 order, with Jenna on the left, Ada in the middle, and Ayla on the right. He would cram a mouthful of toe jam in from the greasy foot of one girl, and then while masticating and swallowing it he would walk to the end of the row and take a glob from the girl on the other side, then work his way inwards.
It was torturously difficult and salty. He couldn’t keep it up. He was through Jenna and Ayla and was starting on Dominique and Zoe, working his way to the bigger toes which had more mass to consume. At that moment, staggering back from Zoe’s foot and standing in front of Dominique’s left big toe, he ran dry and simply couldn’t continue. Brett stepped back, and exaggeratedly waved his arms and pointed at his tongue. The girls were mostly quietly laughing and not paying quite as much attention to him, so it took a moment to be recognized. With his communication shut off, he prayed they would notice he needed water.
“It looks like he reaaaaally doesn’t like it.” Zoe said thoughtfully.
Dominique playfully said, “No he’s shaking his head after you said that! He must be saying it’s really yummy. He likes licking my toes.”
“Nuh uh girl, your big feet are foul!” Jenna retorted.
“They are! But he’s eating everything. I’m going to tell my grandma in Sudan that I had a shrunken white American boy lick my feet willingly and she is going to laugh in disbelief.”
All of the girls laughed. They were starting to get more comfortable, even the less outgoing ones, which started to terrify Brett.
Zoe, of all of them, seemed to recognize his gestures first. “Maybe he’s thirsty?”
Jenna started making a hocking sound, trying to work up some phlegm. “ ‘ere, lemme spi’ on ‘im!”
Ayla grinned. “Do it! I’ll join in.”
“Ewwww that is so gross Jenna! You’re both nuts!” Zoe replied, laughing.
“Hang on I have a little water.” Ada tried to quietly resolve the situation. She filled a bottle cap from her nearly empty water bottle. The water was two hours out of the tap, was now lukewarm and was maybe half of her backwash, but when she set it down in front of Brett, he greedily slurped it up and the other girls congratulated her on her quick thinking – after all, the goal was to get this boy punished and on with their day.
This gave Brett enough motivation to power through the rest. He resignedly returned to Dominique’s long, ebony black toes and resumed probing the gaps with his fingers for toe jam, showing handfuls in his mouth as he accumulated it.
And so it continued. Zoe’s giggliness was back and she seemed to be intensely ticklish to the actions of his hands and mouth as he worked between her toes, making his job take longer but making it no more palatable to him.
And finally he came upon the sour, salty toes of his all-time top crush. Ada had mercifully kneaded her toes around each other and into the floor and tried to tidy them as best she co uld, making his job far easier. He was liable to collapse at that point.
She looked down at him and sighed. This was about all he could take, but the awkward and highly public access to Brett in this highly personal and demeaning way was not pleasant for he either, despite how she might have imagined it in the first place. Ada simply felt embarrassment for him.
The remainder of the track team had finally departed. Ada had furtively washed him under the sink but had departed abruptly without wanting to be caught caring for him. Brett feverishly paced in a shallow plastic bin in the locker room awaiting Amber’s return.She hadn’t come back twenty minutes later, and he’d succumbed to his exhaustion and laid down. His stomach was bulging and he felt his stomach juices growling and protesting against the load of crud he’d ingested, but he didn’t want to vomit in his bucket and deal with the fallout. His mom was nowhere to be found. Finally, Brett dozed off.
He awoke what seemed like minutes later, but without his wrist control, he didn’t have access to any kind of timekeeping, so for all he knew it could have been hours. There were far off voices approaching closer. One of them sounded like his mom.
“Yeah, the girls sometimes need something, you know? I want to convince them that girls can do anything, and being masterful on the field is a great first step but they don’t always believe me. Your agency is amazing though, Yuan. How has it been growing recently?”
In a heavily accented voice, a woman Brett had never heard before was responding to his mom. “Many eh… business meetings. I still feel like an athlete but maybe more now a business lady hehe. We have some backers for growing the brand in China and, eh, it’s useful to get feedback on design you know, but doesn’t always lead to money. Sometimes I’ve been to Nike in Oregon but they, eh, don’t want partnership. I can not always convince them that, eh, the Chinese high-quality sports market is so vast and untapped and it could be popular here too. Easier to go direct to investors sometimes especially if you can do it through conferences and talks you know?”
The lady spoke somewhat tentatively and was definitely not fully at comfort with the English language, but he could tell she spoke with authority and some experience to which his mother was deferential. Rather uncharacteristically deferential, he thought – this woman must have some clout in Nancy’s mind.
As the two women rounded the corner into his line of sight, he saw a medium-height, muscular Chinese lady walking next to his mom. She was dressed in a long sleeved, oversized-neck tee with black yoga pants. She looked a bit younger than his mom, but from her features was clearly a knockout in her younger days. “Oh I believe it Yuan. Well, here’s Brett. Gosh, he’s been here for a few hours. Let me unshrink him so you can meet first.”
The woman replied “Of course.”
His container was gingerly upended and he rolled off the side onto the hard wood bench in the locker room, then was unceremoniously unshrunk with the control. He felt very self-conscious sitting there in the ridiculous shrink-proof leotard.
“Brett, this is Mrs. Gu – Yuan, the sister of your teacher Wendy Gu.”
The woman stepped forward and extended her hand. He shook it and she had a surprisingly strong grip.
“Please to meet you, Mrs. Gu.”
“Hi Brett, nice to meet you too. I hear that… you are getting a lot of experience shrinking.”
His mom spoke for him. “Yes, Brett has volunteered for a lot of the teachers.”
The woman smiled with some amusement and glow in her eyes. “You volunteered? It’s so upstanding of you Brett.”
Both of them looked to him to explain a bit. He felt the weight of the silence and just started talking.
“Yeah… I guess I just want to help out my teachers.”
“And of course Mrs. Gu too, right?” Nancy shot daggers from her eyes at Brett.
“Well-“
Interrupting with some constrained fury, Nancy continued. “He knew of your performance in 2012 and was amazed that you were part of our community here too. He heard you were in town and wanted to meet you.”
Yuan beamed. “Well…. I cannot stay here for long but I would be happy to take you with me. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
Brett looked toward Nancy, who again spoke for him. “Not at all! Brett is basically done for the school year and I am happy to give you my day with him. We haven’t done much today.” That last lie galled Brett. She spoke of him as fresh and ready for more torture when he was nearly wiped out earlier and had only just had a nap in a plastic bin.
Yuan looked at Brett to confirm. He felt under pressure and he was intimidated by the highly assured way that the woman spoke and the unbroken, confident eye contact she was giving him.
“Y-yes, I’m ready to go.”
Yuan then awkwardly added, “You are… experienced in being underfoot? Most of them that do it in athletics are very well trained and paid. This is kind of amazing.”
Brett nodded.
“Hehe okay. I do warn you that it may be a bit worse than other women here. My sister Wendy doesn’t have stinky feet, but I do.” Brett wondered silently. He could have disagreed with that last part, Wendy’s feet weren’t exactly odor-free.
Again Nancy wouldn’t let him talk. “OH it’s nothing for Brett. I warned him earlier but he said he was more than willing to serve your feet. The stinkier the better, haha!”
Yuan laughed. “Hehehe that’s fantastic! Would you believe, eh, it is really hard to get shrinkees willing to actually obey? I have shrunk my son sometime but he refused to clean my foot. I give him sponge but he still doesn’t want to. Not even to relax and honor his mother.”
“Oh no need for a sponge, Yuan. Brett’s experienced with tongue-cleaning feet. Oh, here’s your wrist communicator Brett, let me put it on you.” She squeezed his arm hard and whispered words of oblivion into his ear if he didn’t play along. Yuan never broke eye contact with Brett, which he found even more intimidating.
Brett swallowed. There was no way around this, though he was a little scared of being left with this stranger. ”Yes Mrs. Gu I’m a really big fan and I was sad to hear that you didn’t get to have a shrinkee of your own when you were an international athlete.” With some trepidation, as the woman’s beautiful face was starting to blush at his words, he added “Yes, I will lick your feet clean if you give me enough time.”
The woman gaped. She looked at Brett and touched his arm. “Wowwww! I can’t believe it. Such a kind offer. Amazing! Of course I will accept gladly. You do honor your family with your generosity. I can see Nancy has raised you as a good young man. I wonder if I can use you to show my son what good sons do.”
Nancy and Yuan both shared a laugh as Brett was shrunk back down. Whoooooooooooooooooosh!
Finally looking down at the feet he’d agreed to serve, he noted that they were quite large for her body. The eye catching neon pattern on her sneakers concealed size 9 feet, and he saw her sit down on the bench, remove two no-show socks, and then pause for a moment. Her soles were craggy and callused as though she did plenty of running barefoot. The bottom of the sneakers looked well-worn with patches of smoothed-out fabric and visibly damp regions.
“I think I will go without socks Brett. You will be there to do the absorbing, so that should be fine.”
Nancy agreed” Sure! That’s totally fine. You two have fun together! I’m gonna head home now Brett, Yuan will bring you back when you’re both ready.”
As Nancy left the room, Yuan looked at Brett calmly and said, “So I expect you to obey me now, OK? You are a shrinkee and this is how it works. I can not hear you speak anyway. You listen to me. You do as you are told. Otherwise it could be dangerous. OK?”
The strange woman extended her hand, picked him up by the shoulders of his leotard, and then set him down roughly in the shoe. He bounced on a moist, mildewy-smelling region of the sole and ran as the foot came back down in. Sprinting wildly he clambered for grip but was still hit by a rocky mass of the lady’s foot as far above he heard playful giggling.
The scent was already that of sour, cheesy, seawatery sweat, with the woman’s salty rough toes wrapping energetically around him.
He hadn’t been given a timeline. He could only hope that Yuan would tire of him quickly and not extend this further than it had to. Surely his mom wouldn’t give him up to her overnight? She had no training and nothing like the right attitude to undertake this, seeing it as a duty that he was to undertake unquestioningly as a good boy.