Farha drew a box on the paper, enveloping “X = -172”
with the utmost confidence. She shifted in her desk, and a loose bit
of dusty brown hair fell in front of her eyes in response. Farha blew
it out of her face, and then she tucked it back behind her headscarf
where hopefully it wouldn’t see the light of day for the remainder
of school hours.
Farha returned to
her math journal, slanted halfway across the wide-open textbook. Her
desk was small, and though usually Farha might drag another empty
desk next to hers to make room, she simply didn’t feel like
mustering the effort to do so alone. Farha was not a strong or tall
girl; what’s more, her simple sandals didn’t get the most
traction on the linoleum floors, and overexerting herself against an
immovable object was an accident waiting to happen.
Farha started
transcribing the next problem into her notebook. The sounds of
graphite scratching against paper were deafening in the empty
classroom, and Farha would be lying if she said she wasn’t annoyed.
But seeing as the library was currently closed for renovations, it
was either this, or join the lunchroom with the rest of her fellow
pupils. Sitting in a cafeteria, watching her peers munch down
delicious tantalizing edible school
lunchmeats while Farha herself was forced to sit in silence, never
eating a bite no matter how hungry she got… it was not a fun
proposition.
But that would be
her reality for the next twenty-nine days until the end of Ramadan.
So, until the library was open again… the classroom was her study
hall during the lunch period.
Farha reached into
her dress and scratched her armpit. Her fingers came back moist,
smudging the henna. It was hot.
“Nothing in this
school works…” Farha muttered to herself. She had given up
focusing on her work, and now all she could do was clutch her head in
frustration. The clock at the end of the room ticked, but the minute
hand was stuck. All Farha knew was that it was one o’something. She
assumed it was closer to two, but it was impossible to know for sure.
“Ahh… aaaghhhh…”
Farha groaned, kicking her legs out, throwing her sandals across the
room. She leaned back in the chair as far as she could; this desk was
the kind that was integrated with the chair itself. Her caramel-brown
toes splayed in the air, appreciating the breeze that was now allowed
to floss through the gaps and give her a bit of relief.
When it happened
again.
Farha noticed it.
Again. There, on the floor, beneath the table.
There on the unswept
classroom floor, stood a tiny, naked woman.
***
The novelty was lost
on Farha. This wasn’t the first time one of these creatures had
shown up. As a matter of fact, as she thought about it, she could
remember… she was in her room, watching Lord of the Rings… on a
Sunday… during eighth grade winter break. It was an extended break
because the power lines snapped from frost before they were able to
return to school. And there on her bed, she spotted it. Out of the
corner of her eye, a tiny… man. Yes, it was a man. A
young-looking man. A cute, young-looking man.
Farha had screamed,
then immediately lunged for the creature, taking a trail of her
bedspread with her. She covered it with her hands when her father and
brother burst into the room to ask Farha what had happened. Despite
her fear, she managed to make up something about the scene when Bilbo
turned into a monster asking for the One Ring. With some difficulty,
the two men accepted her excuse, and Farha was free to examine what
she had found.
It was the first
time Farha had seen a naked man before (though coincidentally Sex Ed
would happen that following semester, so it was a close run). The
creature spoke in a language that held snippets of what seemed like
English, but no dialect that Farha was familiar with. And he was
scared.
Once Farha got over
her initial suspicions that it was some sort of djinn, she cared for
the man, despite his numerous attempts to escape and the fear with
which he beheld her. She kept him secret, kept him safe; she
furnished an old shoebox for him with cotton balls for bedsheets and
a ramekin she made sure to fill with water every two days, she let
him sit on her shoulder while watching movies on her laptop, she even
sometimes stuffed him in her purse and took him on outings. The two
never managed to settle on a mutual system of exchange of
information, though not for lack of trying. None of this seemed to
erase his impenetrable fear of her, but it did alleviate some of the
initial stress for both of them just enough for the pair to sorta
become comfortable spending time together… at least until Farha
stepped on the box on accident one groggy morning while getting up
for Fajr, three weeks after his initial arrival. She spent an extra
long time making a du’a that night after burying the box outside.
She thought that
would be the end of it. But then, a month later, another tiny
appeared in her room. This time, Farha saw it happen; one moment he
wasn’t there, but the next, he was. No puff of smoke, no magic. He
had just appeared. This one seemed older, and the way he spoke seemed
to be a different language. His flowing syntax and brown, bearded
face suggested he was more “foreign” than the last one. Farha
tried to cultivate a new relationship, even if this full-on adult man
was slightly less appealing to her pubescent, undeveloped mind than
the hottie that she’d crushed by mistake. Perhaps as a result of
this disinterest, the relationship ended even quicker than the
previous one when Farha forgot she stuffed him in her back pocket
while rushing out the door to go bike riding with her friends.
Time passed, and
with time came more of these visitors. The third one was a girl. A
woman, more accurately. This one’s arrival sparked in Farha not a
sense of fear or excitement, but of annoyance. She was in the middle
of her morning routine and had just finished brushing her teeth when
she saw the new creature’s sudden appearance on the bathroom
counter. The woman looked left and then right, then tried to make a
leap off the edge but was caught midair by Farha, who looked at her
ominously. Farha’s family did not have a large yard; she couldn’t
keep burying these creatures in shoeboxes forever.
Farha was short on
time and short on patience. So, in one smooth movement, she stuffed
the one-inch woman into her mouth, and she gobbled her up. The bulge
in her jowls formed by her squirming body was difficult to down at
first, but the question of who would prevail between a spindly little
white woman and the peristaltic might of Farha’s throat was
foregone.
Belch…
“… Bismillah…”
Farha laughed a bit at the burp, then left to have a proper
breakfast.
That was about the
point Farha lost count. Over the years, the arrival of these tiny
creatures became more than simply accepted, but expected. The precise
timeframe of their arrival was erratic, but a few things always
proved true:
1) The longest gap
in between one tiny’s death and another tiny’s arrival was about
six months, though they’ve been known to respawn after as early as
a day.
2) They only seemed
to spawn at times when Farha was alone, though it wasn’t aware of
the difference in context between being alone in her room vs alone in
a public bathroom.
3) They only ever
arrived after the previous one met some sort of untimely end.
What this end looked
like varied; Farha grew more and more callous with each repetition.
She enjoyed eating them, and she even took a liking to chewing them
up before swallowing them down. Something about their flavor
exploding in her mouth made her absolutely flushed. Beyond that,
Farha had on more than one occasion crushed these bite-sized visitors
beneath her feet when she felt like mixing it up, and it was
especially fun when Farha set them outside to make a cat-and-mouse
game of it. She at first only did so while wearing shoes, but after
one of these tinies unexpectedly appeared in an empty mosque bathroom
while she was making wudu, Farha’s quick thinking compelled her to
stomp down and crush him between her barren foot and the shower tile.
Feeling the tiny splatter underneath her moist heel gave Farha a
euphoric high, and she immediately felt a pang of shame, but not
before those feelings were overshadowed by a desire to feel it again,
even as her toes scrunched in the wetness of viscera and running
water as they ran down the drain.
From then on, Farha
became even more aggressive. She seldom tried to talk to the tinies
when they arrived anymore. She was always more interested in figuring
out how best to cause their demise in a way that could maximize her
pleasure. She had curiously dug her nail underneath the neck of one
such visitor, humming over his screams as she plucked the head clean
off. She stuck them beneath the toe of her shoes and sandals,
carefully placed so they wouldn’t be detected by any observers.
Keeping the stowaways in her footwear all day was a fun reminder of
the power she held over their lives. One time, Farha was sleeping
over at the house of her best friend Nandini, and feeling especially
bold she plucked the tiny inside of the steaming biryani dish
made by Nandini’s mother for the two girls. The lady’s screams
were muffled amidst the food and spice and their laughter, and when
Nandini had finished eating her portion, she remarked with surprise,
“It’s never tasted this good before!”
Farha lost count
over the years how many tinies had met their demise at her hand. And
feet. And rear. Mouth. Other body parts. She had only a passing
interest in where they all came from, but she was more than content
to accept this boon as a blessing from Allah for being such a devout
young woman.
***
When Farha spotted
this newest young woman, she simply rolled her eyes.
The tiny froze as
she locked eyes with Farha. Then she turned tail and ran.
Farha gave a slight
chuckle and scooted out from her desk. The dress she wore was
carefully hemmed just above the ankle, allowing her to walk
comfortably without fear of the material dragging along the ground.
It only took a few sticky, barefoot strides for her to catch up with
the figure. Farha stood there for a few moments, tapping her foot
against the floor, its wet pads trapping the excess dust and paper
scraps that still littered the floor.
Farha lifted her
foot. “It’s been a while since I’ve crushed one of you…
especially in school…”
And she let it fall.
The miserable girl
raised her hands to the sky and cowered beneath Farha’s shadow
until… it stopped.
Farha stopped. Her
foot hovered in the air only an inch away from its target.
For the first time
in a long time… Farha began to feel a tinge of… guilt?
It was Ramadan
after all, the time to examine your behavior and dīn and make
changes to better yourself. Try as Farha might, she couldn’t
actively remember if one of these tinies had appeared before her in
Ramadan. She had yet to develop a protocol during the holy month.
“Hmm…” Farha
stepped back. She bent down to the frozen tiny on the ground and
cupped her in her hand. She peered at her scared face, blonde hair,
green eyes. Farha didn’t want to kill her… yet… but it had been
so long since she’d kept one of these for longer than two days.
Something about that
look in her eyes, though. That fear… it gave Farha an idea.
Farha walked back to
her desk. She slid into the seat, and she placed the tiny girl on the
desktop. The young woman trotted to the edge and looked down,
wavering visibly as a pang of vertigo overtook her.
Farha smiled, and
she reached down, hiking up her dress. Rolling it up into her lap,
Farha pulled her knees up, planting her feet on the seat. Then she
pulled those up, finally plopping her heels on each half of
the textbook with a thump! each. Her sweat steadily dripped
downward, and it created damp spots on the pages. Farha didn’t
really mind. This book was a loaner from the school anyway.
“You want to live?
Clean them.”
The tiny woman began
speaking in gibberish, flailing her arms around in fear.
THUMP.
Farha glared at her,
and Farha opened her mouth, pantomiming licking something for a nice,
long time. “Understand now?”
The creature nodded,
and she trotted over to the book, clambering onto the open page. From
here, Farha’s bare, beige soles loomed close by in their full
majesty. She walked up to one tentatively and began to lick.
“Oh…”
Farha was in love with the delicate pixie-kiss sensation of her
repeated licks, but more importantly she was in love with the
knowledge that she had the power to make this happen. Farha still had
no idea where these tinies came from or how they got here, but she
knew that everything happened as Allah willed it. If these creatures
were a gift from her, who was she to deny what her Creator had placed
specifically for her in her life? And if Farha wanted to use them to
worship her own feet…
“Yes…
Keep going…”
Farha scrunched her
toes, and a rogue droplet of sweat squeezed between the big and
second toe, splattering the tiny woman like a water balloon. She spat
out what she could of the salinated dew and then swallowed what was
left. As it ran down her throat, she shuddered, taking a break from
her licking, when suddenly Farha’s toes reached down, clenching
around her head.
Farha grabbed her
foot, dragging the heal back as she stared down at the struggling
tiny in its clutches. Her green eyes were intense. Powerful.
Dignified.
“You’ll stop
when I say you stop. Or else…”
Farha gave her toes
a slight squeeze, and she held them in that position. The tiny was
constrained, her breaths were faltering, her face was turning purple,
her flails became erratic. Her raw instinct produced a delicious bout
of shrieks, and Farha allowed the façade of her divinity to slip
just long enough to giggle.
Farha’s foot let
go, and the small woman fell back on the desk. She rolled around on
the wet paper before hobbling to her feet. She tripped over herself a
few times until she reach Farha’s foot, trying to scrape off the
rest of the dust that adhered to her heel. Farha angled her toes
closer to the desk; her ankle was close to 180 degrees with her leg,
and it was a straining position to keep herself in. Yet she managed,
and in response, the tiny wrapped her arms around Farha’s big toe,
plunging her own face into its doughy, blobby girth. Farha shuddered
as the tiny reached beneath the nail, scraping out the excess flakes,
taking on the sweat-stained bits of dried skin, clearing the toe of
the lint and sediment still stuck on it. Her work was mechanical; she
certainly could smell the rubbery scent of Farha’s feet,
exacerbated by the hot spring day. But she paid it no mind, knowing
that this work would be what determined her continued existence.
Farha chuckled, and
she untensed her ankle. The tiny was still grappling on the big toe,
so she was pulled upward suddenly, too scared to let go when faced
with a drop several times the height of her body at a minimum.
The bell rang. The
rackety metal chime told Farha that the classroom would be populated
soon.
“Tch, that was
quick… time really flies when you little folks are around, huh…”
Farha gripped the tiny into her fingers again and licked her lips as
she looked down at her scared, cowering expression. She planted her
inside her handbag, zipping up the container just as the first of
many students of many different colors started to stream inside the
room.
On normal days, it
was hard not to feel jealous that they were allowed to eat. But this
time, Farha didn’t feel jealous at all. The days were long during
Ramadan, but if this tiny was able to last long enough, Farha felt
confident the month would be over before she knew it.
Inshallah.