Ms. Chloe Winters:

I am writing to you as a councilwoman and society historian, but particularly as one private owner to another. There is a woman domestic in your possession, named Meredith, of whom I was once owner and caretaker. Through my daughter, Adela (I think you are acquainted), I understand that she has recently dictated to you a personal memoir, covering her experience as your slave since the Event, seven years ago, and that you are presently seeking to publish this memoir.

I am greatly interested in reading her story, and it would be my pleasure, as society historian, as councilwoman, and as a private citizen, to edit and publish her memoir in book form. You might have noticed that, in the past five years, such stories have enjoyed a certain vogue among our readers of non-fiction novels. I have hopes, and I am anxious that Meredith’s story will enjoy the readership and the recognition it assuredly deserves. 

Please consider my offer, and write back at a convenient time. If you change your mind or if you prefer that her papers not be published, they will not be published. Happily, I’ll oblige. I only ask that you allow me to read them. 

Enclosed you will also find an advance of five hundred for the receipt of M.’s memoirs. 

Yours,

H.


Dear Holly:

Thank you for your kind letter & request, which it will be my great honor to satisfy.  If you are pleased with the book, not only will I permit its publication but I will encourage you to publish it. (Also, Meredith showed rare enthusiasm when I told her about your letter & interest in her story. I almost feel jealous.)

Please find enclosed her manuscript. I look forward to your reply.

Cordially,

C. Winters

I'd like to say, “Here's where I begin, and here alone,” and then begin at the beginning. But where does a story start? Where does memory begin? There are a hundred equal, different places. 

I can start with Martin. As Adela drove north, no one could say where to, I held him in my hand and looked down on his tousled little head. And as I looked at him I also wondered, seriously and with a strange heaviness weighing on me in the pit of my stomach, if I could ever be to him what Holly was to me. Could I ever be his mistress or his owner? Could I wear him in my shoes for days on end, torment him according to my whims, or break his bones, or eat him whole? Could I make Martin my very own slave?

The answer was no. I couldn’t. I knew who I was, and more to the point I knew whose I was. I was Holly’s. It was a very new and frightening personal insight, and while I wanted to fight against it, I didn’t know how. Even though to Holly I sometimes felt like I was no better than a little toy, at best an insole for her foot, I still felt betrayed by her when she sold me. Why did you do it? I wanted to ask. What did I do wrong? At certain times, these feelings confused me: it seemed I was acting and thinking irrationally. I was a human being, and I shouldn’t be anyone’s slave or plaything.

But then there was something deep inside me, deeper than reason, that wanted her back, that wanted to be with her, even if it meant that I could only be her obedient slave, her personal foot slave, now and forever. Was I going crazy? Was I in love with her? It was both. I was crazily in love with a woman who only wanted me to be her slave. It hurt me to think that, maybe, she didn’t think very much of me. Just knowing that hurt like hell. And that hurt never faded away completely, even after I’d met Chloe.

While thinking these thoughts, I absent-mindedly squeezed Martin inside my fist, and only woke up again as I felt him struggling and trying, vainly, to punch my thumb. A tiny thrill shot up my spine, and I let him struggle for a few seconds more before releasing the pressure and apologizing. (Where did that sudden thrill come from? I thought.) Would Holly have kept Martin with her if it hadn’t been for Adela? No, that was a crazy thought. Could I be jealous of him? On my moist palm, like a little puppet, he tried to stand up, and tripped and fell over onto his ass. It was a little slapstick comedy routine.

“Why don’t you put me over there,” Martin suggested, pointing to the wide armrest between the driver and passenger seat.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m tired. And I just had a whiff of something.”

“Is it me?”

“You? Is what you?”

“Did you have a whiff of me?”

“No,” he said. “Or maybe. It’s not important.”

“No, it doesn’t matter,” I agreed. I was wearing a women’s business suit that Adela had found in the car, and lifted the neck of the suit up to my nose. It was definitely me.

“What do I smell like?" I asked him, innocently. I wanted to hear him say her name. But he paused, uncertain.

“Holly,” he finally answered. I breathed out in a long, low, half-contented sigh. “You smell like Holly, to be honest.” Another shiver of pleasure went up my spine. I loved hearing her name. I was besotted. How stupid and embarrassing it would have been, at that time, to admit my love to anyone, or for anyone to know, especially Holly. She would have hated me, as she did that one night at her house, during dinner.

“Well, there you go.” I gently set Martin down where he wanted.

Adela looked down at Martin, sitting between us on his little island of armrest.  She rested her elbow just beside him, and playfully tried to edge him out of his space.

“Martin, you’re shivering!” she said. He wasn’t shivering.

“You must be cold.” He didn’t look cold, either.

“Well, if you want,” Adela cooed in her quietly suggestive way, left hand on the wheel, “you can come and sit with me.” The little man nodded his head dubiously; and Adela picked him up and brought him over to her lap.

Then she took a long black fountain pen from her pocket. Hooking the pen-clasp down the side of the scrap of her old jeans she'd given him for clothes, she snapped open the hem of her skirt, and angled him down, slowly, like bait for deep-ocean fishing.  

“Now let go,” she ordered. Evidently he was able to free himself and drop down, because I heard a slight tear, and then the pen came back up without him. She snapped back her waistband, sealing him in. The deep had swallowed him up. Adela wriggled and writhed a little in her seat, making herself comfortable. 

When she turned to look at me, I realized that I had been staring. I blushed.

“Wow. He was cold,” she said, smiling. “How about you? Isn’t it a little chilly in here?”

I shook my head forcefully. Not chilly at all. In fact, I was feeling pretty hot at the moment.

We drove on in relative silence across the border and into the next city, and stopped only three times for food and gasoline at the abandoned service centers. We couldn’t use the bathrooms inside, because the lights were still off in the countryside, and along the highways. Finally we arrived at our destination, and Adela rented a hotel room for the night, where we stayed until noon the next morning. At that point, we drove out through the quiet, half-abandoned city, and eventually met a woman willing to rent out a room to us for the next month.  

Adela spent most of her time training Martin, and my contribution was generally along the lines of cleaning, laundering, and food preparation. While I did serve Adela on some occasions, she wasn’t my mistress, and I was eager to leave, to go away—as much as she and Martin and I had the same mind on most things, and each of us helped the other out when help was needed, I felt sad and alone, the proverbial third wheel, a barely tolerated guest in the house of a married couple.

So when Jennifer Green knocked on the door, after a week, I immediately agreed to leave, and I decided to accept Ms. Winters as my new mistress. I was tired of being a fugitive: this was Adela’s plan, and Martin’s, and not mine. And to be completely honest, I was tired of being unloved. My life as a slave wasn’t very bad, and at times it was even close to bliss. In certain ways, at least Holly was beautiful and intelligent. The day I gave in and chose to be her slave, at least, unhoped-for possibilities opened up to me, unknown happiness. Of course it hurt that all that was over now. But maybe Chloe would be different than Holly.

I sat beside Jennifer in the car, and she talked to me for a long time about my duties, about Chloe’s character, her personality, her appearance, and her house. I listened intently until we crossed the border again. Once we had crossed, Jennifer stopped the car, shrank me, and gave me a tiny cracker. It was freezing, and she handed me a change of clothes—a dress, a pair of shoes, and even a little wide-brimmed hat—which I put on. Jennifer explained: “Her old slave-girl sometimes wore this outfit. You’ll remind Chloe of her.” 

“Her old slave?” I was curious. “What happened to her?”

“The story is upsetting,” she said. “I’d rather not tell it.”

“She’s dead, then?”

“Oh, no. She’s alive.”

“Well, if she’s alive, then what do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

Jennifer Green didn’t talk to me much the rest of the way, but she treated me very decently. At two inches tall, I leaned my back against the huge, plushy chair of the passenger seat in this upscale car, wearing the dress of a living woman, and thinking about my future. I tried to gaze into it, but I stopped after a while because I couldn't see very far.

I was asleep for most of the long drive, and only woke up when the car began to slow down, and Jennifer turned off down a long, tree-lined avenue. While I slept, I dreamed, inevitably, of Holly. I woke up with a sharp pang, and then something tingled and tickled against my heart, like a soft paintbrush. I missed her.

A large crow flew across the road with something in its beak, and I looked above at the time on the digital clock. Red and gold leaves fell across the windows. It was late afternoon. There was a sharp, cold breeze filtering in through the crevices in the door. The car purred and hummed underneath me, all around me. After a few miles, Jennifer made a turnoff, and stopped the car by a stone gate. She flipped the engine off and, with a smile in my direction, stepped out. I heard the clack and ring of metal, and then the whining creak of the old gate opening. 

Once she had got back in the car and clapped the door shut against the wind, she brought the car down a long, semicircular entranceway. Then she reached across me with her right arm – which was clad in a loose, white, tight-sleeved blouse – and opened the glove compartment. Her hand rummaged around inside for a few seconds until it found what she wanted: a framed photograph, which she handed to me.  

The lower border of the frame read “CHLOE” in dark green print. It was a full-length miniature shot of her. I studied the picture for a few seconds: the dark hair, the coral-colored, lightweight dress, the mellow, down-to-earth, grace & beauty of a woman in her late-thirties or early-forties, the healthy figure (Rubenesque), the low-heeled, slip-on pumps. She was beautiful, too – very much so. I was very, very nervous all of a sudden, and my hands start to shake when I’m like that. The car stopped. Jennifer pushed the stick forward and flicked the key. There was silence for a few moments – just crows, the sound of the wind outside, and my own breathing. The picture was still in front of me.

“Okay then,” said Jennifer. “Let me take that back.” The picture went back in the compartment.

“Well,” I said, gulping, and doing my best to hide my trembling hands in the folds of my shirt. “Well, it’s cold out.” I was about a foot too short to see out the window, but now and then the sunlight peeked in through the glass – so I knew there were clouds in the sky. Probably a gray sky.

She nodded curtly, and took me up in her hand, arranging my hat and straightening out my printed dress. “There’s just one thing,” she said, reaching into her purse. I waited, standing there and trying to hold my balance over the surface of her soft palm, my legs spraddled out, my knees awkwardly knocked. I had to use all my energy just to keep from falling over onto my face.

“Ms. Winters – well, after all this time, she still likes a good surprise, “ Jennifer said, while pulling out an old ten-dollar coin and a purple (fuchsia) sock.

“I see,” I said, swallowing hard, while I followed her other hand below as it idly fingered her left, cherry-colored flat. “…and it’s getting more difficult for me to surprise her. You understand that I can’t simply show you to her – not as you are, in any case. Why? No point in explaining something you’ll find out soon enough. But for now, I’ll simply tell you this: we run a small, tight ship here. We’re efficient – we’re on time – we do our work well. We’re a small household: two people besides myself and your mistress. We have a cook, and Chloe has her protégé – Abigail. The nature of Chloe’s business means that she travels frequently – but wait for her to tell you what her business is. They will not –“ Jennifer paused, and smiled – it was a friendly, open, attractive smile, and for a moment (and this wasn’t to be the first time) I felt like she was speaking to me confidentially and off-the-record. “From what I’ve heard, from others and even from Chloe herself, you should expect better treatment here than you’re used to.”

“Holly was—“ I blurted out, and immediately felt stupid. But she shouldn’t have said anything – although I wasn’t completely sure what it was she’d said. A lump rose in my throat. “When you got to know her, I mean.”

“I don’t doubt it. I’m not even sure it was her I meant. But everything I’ve heard was hearsay, and in any event there’s no malice in my heart for those good people. Though there was Adela… but, of course, there were some things I wouldn’t have believed unless I’d seen them myself – Adela, for one. But you probably have better information.”

I kept my deafening silence.

And then, in the silence of the car, I heard a soft cheep from down below, by Jennifer’s feet. She had kicked off her left flat while we were talking.

“Hush that!” she hissed, and squeezed me tightly in her hand, while bending down and flicking something in the dark, by her shoes. Silence reigned again.

She stretched out her back, and cracked the joints, stiff after so many long hours in the car. I couldn’t move a muscle with her hand clenched around me. Then she turned to me, cracked a smile that was more like a smirk, and leaned in confidentially, whispering: “A little something for Abby. Be glad you’re not him.”

“Who?” And why should I be glad?

“There are slaves,” Jennifer said, still under her breath – “and then there are slaves.” I didn’t ask for more, and she didn’t offer.

There was a muffled shout as Jennifer slid her flat back on, roughly and inattentively, her mind elsewhere – then she turned the door-handle, and a blast of cold, autumnal air hit my face as she stepped with me out of the car. She shut the door again, and then stood outside the car, in the gravel drive, contemplatively.

“Unless Chloe doesn’t tell you this – I don’t even know if I should say this to you – you’re wearing Emma’s clothes. No,” she said, anticipating my question, “don’t worry about her. After the first month, Chloe – please call her Chloe, not Ms. or Mrs. Winters – recognized her promise and did her best to encourage it. Her athletic promise, that is…” She stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Meredith – oh, I’m sorry! – I just remembered that Chloe is out for the weekend.”

“Oh!”

“I forgot – I totally forgot! Oh – well, okay. You won’t mind being alone tonight, will you?”

“Alone?”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll find a place. You’re probably hungry, aren’t you?”

“Jennifer…” I said. (My eyes were beginning to tear up. Don’t cry, I told myself. Don’t cry.)

“…and tomorrow afternoon, maybe early evening, you’ll meet her. You’ll meet Chloe. But I should have remembered!”

“Jennifer?” I asked, more weakly.

“I just have one question for you,” she said, pulling out a couple keys at the door.

“A question?” I looked at my hair, which started to shine in the fading sunlight – titian hair. I remembered who I was, and felt almost courageous for a moment. The sunhat was ugly and hot, and I wanted to take it off.

“How would you like a tour of the house this evening – say, after dinner.”

“I would like that,” I answered.

“Good,” said Jennifer, pushing open the thick, veneered door. A complicated smell greeted my nostrils – old, charred wood, perfume, smoked meat, and something almost yellow and citric – and I took a deep breath involuntarily.

“Meredith,” said Jennifer, before stepping in. I remember these words very well. “I’m on your side – don’t forget that. This is the way things are – at least for now. You know that, and I know that. But you must be brave. No one – not even the people at the very top – no one knows what might happen in the next six months. Or in the next week. Brave – be brave. As long as you’re not some man on the bottom rung, you have something to be grateful for. Remember that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

“Well, let’s go upstairs and see your room.” She started to climb the stairs, very slowly, her hand grazing the bannister. Light poured through the window at the first landing, and I heard the crash of a pan somewhere below, on the first floor. From Jennifer’s closed fist, I could see a shaded garden path, and a leaf-covered lawn enclosed by an ancient-looking wall. The sun was still above the treeline, but it was beginning to set. When there was a break in the cloud-cover, the sun illuminated all the grains and details in the wood, all the dust motes, and even the tiny beads of sweat and delicate hairs of Jennifer’s warm hand. She paused on the landing. “Left or right?” she asked.

What? I wondered. I had only known Jennifer for a few hours – and it was still kind of difficult for me to read her mood correctly. The one time she was serious, she sounded playful – and up to that point much of her play sounded almost sinister to me. All her information was businesslike, but her manner was confidential, all-too-friendly for our first time together. I didn’t say anything.

“I’m just talking to myself,” she said. “You don’t have to answer.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Here’s why I asked: whenever Chloe buys Abby a new pair of socks or shoes, she slips a dime – or a 1- or 10-dollar piece – to surprise her – into the toe. But I have this other guy – you see?—”

“Left,” I said, quickly.

“Left it is,” said Jennifer. She pressed on into the upper hallway.

Abigail was the sweetest, kindest girl I ever met. Women two hundred years from now might look back on a girl like her, and point out her flaws and her errors – but whatever bad qualities she had, she learned from millions of her contemporaries – and shared with a few of the worst of them. On the other hand, her good qualities were all her own. There was no one else who compared. 

It took me about a year to see this with clear eyes. I forgave her a long time ago – and I hope that, one day, you’ll be able to love and esteem her as much as I always will. I can’t help but show my feelings so openly. On the one hand, yes, she kept male slaves. But so did every other society woman – that wasn’t her fault. It was the fault of the society she lived in. I know, because she told me, that she felt guilty keeping men as pets or slaves, but that she felt that there was nothing she could do about it – not until the last month or so. Even the best people made mistakes, and she was one of the best. I regret holding my tongue when she needed my help the most, even though I don’t know what I could have said.

This is the day I first met her. 

“Hold on,” Jennifer said, and knelt down – I remember noticing her legs for the first time that day, and that she was wearing faded blue jeans, scuffed at the knees and frayed about the ankles.

She peeled the large, cherry-colored flat from her left foot. There was the anonymous man, exposed. He lay half-awake (and lived maybe half-alive) under the toes of this giantess, and his whole bare body shivered as she slowly, daintily, lifted him off her sweaty, very red and very hot insole. All at once I had flashbacks of Holly, nightmarish in their intensity. I don’t know how long he was there. Longer than a week, and maybe longer than a month. 

“Why do you do this to them?” I asked her, as she dropped him down into the very heart of the sock.

“What did you say?” Absentmindedly, she curled the cotton sock in her hand, and put her other hand – the one that held me – closer to her ear.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you know? I’m a trainer.” She continued, under her breath, “Depending on the slave – how strong he is, what his diet is, whether or not I’m dealing with an aggressive personality – it takes from one day to about a month. Many women pay people – people like me – to train their slaves for them. They like their pets to be submissive and obedient – and who could blame them? Wasn’t Holly a trainer?”

“No,” I said, stung by the question. “It was different.”

“Of course, I know, I know,” Jennifer laughed to herself, coldly. “Sometimes the slave develops an unhealthy attraction, begins to feel attached, grow affectionate, starts to cling to the trainer. And when that happens – well, that’s not very good for the buyer, is it?”

What was she driving at?

“It happens oftener than you might think. Just the other week, there was a slave-in-training who fell in love with me, if you want to call it love. Some are naturally obedient, and others (though fewer) are naturally spirited, indomitable, and will never be trained. But then there are always a few who develop an unhealthy, unnatural, affectionate devotion for their trainer – this happens relatively fast, after the first five days or so. Not an obedient, but an adoring kind of devotion. You have to watch out for that. These weeds always spring up out of the ground, no matter how rocky and dry the soil is. When that happens, all further training is impossible. Those men must be sold at once – otherwise they build up their resolve and then one can get nowhere with them. They must be handed over at once to the prospective buyer, otherwise their value depreciates enormously, by leaps and bounds. 

 “Take care,” she winked at me, “not to mention anything. Chloe suspects nothing. You weren’t low-grade. I can tell you that. But Chloe expects you to serve her – not out of duty (this is the relationship between the trainer and the slave), but out of love. If you can’t love her, then she’ll send you back – but not to Holly. God knows there’s not a better mistress in the country than yours. You’re lucky.”

This was too much for me to take in all at once.

“Abby,” she looked in my eyes, “Abby is too lazy to do the training herself. So, sometimes – for instance, with this poor guy—” and as she said this, her fingers gently nudged, caressed, and toyed with the lump in the sock “—I have to do it myself, because otherwise no one else would. It’s a lot of work – she doesn’t appreciate it yet, but one day she will.”

 The fuchsia sock scrunched up in her one hand, and me burrowed into her other hand, lost somewhere in the space between her sweaty fingers and palm, Jennifer stood by the open door of Abby’s room and looked inside. By the west window of this broad, high, spacious, beautiful, and airy chamber, there was a girl with one bare leg hanging out into the dusk, and the other inside. Her arms reached for a thick, leafy branch that jutted out from an old beech tree, not far from the eaves above her head. Jennifer watched this little absurd drama play out for a moment, and then coughed. Abby (because she was the girl) flinched –  then looked over her shoulder, while a few blue-brown strands of frizzy hair seemed to catch fire in a dying sunbeam. Slowly, very slowly, she swung her leg back over the windowsill. 

“I surprised you,” said Jennifer. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“No, it’s okay. I was just going…”

“Where? Out the window?”

“To the car… I thought I heard... Chloe.”

Jennifer walked up to the window, and looked outside. Then she set me down on one of Abby’s books, by the computer desk, and closed the window.

“Chloe?”

“Well,” said Abby, shrugging, and smiling in my direction, “it might have been a crow.”

Jennifer frowned darkly, and then nodded in my direction. “That’s Meredith. She’ll be staying with Chloe.”

“Oh! That means Jennifer showed you the photograph,” said Abigail. “Did you like it?”

My throat caught for a moment, but made a sign that I did like it.

“How old was she,  Jennifer, when you took that photo? Fifteen?”

Jennifer cleared her throat loudly, and then made a move to pick me up. “Don’t listen to her. They really love each other very much.”

“…which means she must be at least 40 by this time. You should take a new photo, Jennifer. These days, she looks much... wiser.” Jennifer scooped me up in her hand again. “Oh, wait!” Abigail cried out, holding up her hand. “Wait a second. I was just joking – I want to meet her.” 

Jennifer hesitated for a moment, in thought, and then set me back on Abby’s book.

“I almost forgot,” she said. “There’s one more thing.”

The moment Abby saw the purple, cotton sock, she blushed deeply, thanked Jennifer, and told her to toss it on the bed. I was taken aback – after all I’d seen and experienced, I couldn’t have been more surprised.

Jennifer closed the door behind her, and her footsteps receded down the hallway, and echoed down the stairs. When they died out altogether, Abby approached me. Instinctively, I backed away. She froze in midstep about a yard away from the desk.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes,” I said. I was honest. Why did she want to be alone with me?

“Don’t be.” She came closer, up to the edge of the desk, and studied me for a few seconds – though it felt like an eternity.

“What is it?”

“Don’t listen to anything that silly, servant woman tells you. She doesn’t know what duty means when she’s not following orders.”

“She was nice to me.”

Abigail sighed, and looked toward the door again. She was thinking.

“I know where you’re coming from – I mean, I don’t know much. But enough. I know about Holly, for instance. Everything."

“Everything?”

“Everything and everyone.”

“And you have your own slaves?”

“Who doesn’t?” She thought for a moment, and then grimaced. “The only difference between me and some dumb, pious hands-off goody-girl like Emma, or Jennifer, is that I know I’m a part of the problem.” She paused to let that sink in. “It’s this system that’s changing everyone – changing everyone for the worse. That’s how I feel about it.”

“Who is Emma?” It was the second time I’d heard her name today.

“You want to see Emma? I’ll show you. Move over a little.” Before I knew what had happened, she swooped in and hooked me around the waist with her pinky finger, and sat down at the desk. With a roll like thunder, she pulled the desktop keyboard out of its compartment, and started typing.

“Is she important?”

“No, not really. Unless you’re really into sports, but I don’t know much about that stuff, so…”

“What kind of sports?”

“Oh. Jousting. She’s pretty much a murderer. Don’t believe me? Look at this –“

The lightbulb behind the monitor dazzled my eyes, but I could make out the image on the screen – a zoomed-in photo of a beautiful woman, mounted on a little mouse. In her left hand was a long blade, like a claymore, and in her right she held by the hair a decapitated human head. Judith gripping the head of Holofernes.

“That’s Emma? Chloe’s Emma?”

“Disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Really horrible!”

“Gladiatorial. A couple months ago, Chloe discovered Emma’s – talent, I guess – for fighting, and decided to introduce her into sports – or what they’re calling sports. Think of it as a mix between a medieval tournament – and a cockfight. But the idiots – the sadistic idiots, of which there are millions – seem to find it entertaining. So they continue to show it. She’ll be a little murdering one-eyed outlaw before you know it. But here’s the thing. There’s you, and,” she stopped, and looked over at me, “well, I’ve been waiting for you for the last month.”

“Me?”

“We can help each other. Next week, Emma leaves again, on tour, and I go with her.”

There were footsteps sounding on the stairs again. “Jennifer’s coming.”

“Then I’ll tell you more later. I know it’s confusing, but trust me –“

In my mind’s eye I saw her climbing out the window again, and something about this girl began to intrigue me. She couldn’t be putting me on – but she seemed more than capable of using me and then throwing me away. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you say.”

“Good. Anyway, remember your alternative. Your alternative is to spend the rest of your life as Chloe’s little pet. Her foot-pet, to be precise. Do you know how easy it is for her to find new slaves? Time is short… can I call you Meredith?”

“Yes.”

“Abby.”

“Yes… Abby.”

The door opened with a squeak, and Jennifer peered inside. “Meredith,” she announced, as she walked in, “let’s have that tour now.”

Abby quickly shut down her computer – and as I left the room with Jennifer, I looked behind me toward the bed. In the pale, sinking sunlight of the room, Abby sat down on the mattress, and said, “I’ll be right after you, Jennifer. Don’t wait up.” She started to get herself ready, put on a light jacket, and pushed the window shut with both hands (it was a large window, and she had to use her full bodyweight to close it).

The last thing I saw, before we left the room – just as Jennifer was closing the door – was Abby, pulling on her old pair of rolled-up purple socks. And there was someone wriggling inside them.

The pleasant odor of old wood rose out of the walls and up through the floorboards, and as I filled my lungs with the delicious, woody smell of the room, I remembered Jennifer telling me about the age of the house, and each of its previous inhabitants. Who lives here? I asked her. You mean who lived here, she replied. No, I went on, standing firm, I mean Who lives here now? Where is everyone else? Jennifer looked at me aslant, bemusedly, and then her face cleared up – she seemed to understand. Oh, she said. You must be asleep. And when she said that, I woke up.

When I opened my eyes in the darkness, I breathed in deeply again –  except, this time, instead of the sweet and woodsy spice of a room two centuries old, I tasted on my tongue the strange and overpowering smell that put me to sleep that night, for the first time. Before leaving me alone that night, Jennifer had dropped me into one of Chloe’s raunchy, unwashed socks. Since – Jennifer explained to me – since, in my new capacity as Chloe’s slave, it was my responsibility to please my new mistress in whatever way she desired, I ought to accustom myself to her smell.

“Dwelling on the past never helped anyone,” Jennifer told me, as she took me on the long tour of the house.

I nodded my head, wearily. Somehow, with every second I spent in this house with these new women, I worried that, somehow, I was betraying Holly. I didn’t want her to think I would submit or resign myself to my new situation, without some struggle. However irrational and lovesick it sounded – I wanted her to know this about me.

“We love out of force of habit,” said Jennifer.  Jenn (as Abby called her) thought she was much more intelligent than she really was – but maybe she was right about this. Maybe I only loved Holly because she was the only woman whose voice, preferences, thoughts, and private scents I’d become used to, as if they were my own. Perhaps I would come to appreciate Chloe in the same way. Still...

Anyway, that night I gagged and almost vomited inside Chloe’s sock, when Jennifer dropped me down, and rolled me up in one of her battered sneakers. The smell was horrible – well, to be fair, the stench of Holly’s sneakers was just as powerful and sometimes even worse, in its way – but Chloe was a stranger to me, completely foreign. I mean, I’d seen her photograph, but I had yet to meet her in person, face to f… – well, shoelace.

Imperceptibly, but decisively, I had moved far beyond the stage of feeling humiliated and abused by this kind of treatment. But it was very difficult for me to accept the fact that my destiny, my whole future, was about to change. I mean, to be honest about it, after I left her, I cried myself to sleep almost every night. And that first night in Chloe’s house, after I woke up from my dream, and remembered how Jennifer had tossed me into a balled-up, worn out sock, and how I was trapped in the toe of a strange woman’s tennis shoe – I started to sob quietly to myself, in the darkness.

But then everything changed. Suddenly, through a miniscule tear in the forefront of the sock, and an even smaller opening somewhere in the footbed of the shoe itself, there was a brilliant flash of light – and I saw my hands illuminated in the darkness, where I rested them on top of my knees. Five seconds of silence followed, and then there was a booming, earsplitting crash. Ten more seconds of silence followed this, and then I heard the quick but calming rattle of rain falling on a metal surface, far outside my place of confinement, maybe two floors above. A thunderstorm was brewing.

After the next lightning flash and peal of thunder, something else happened. I lost my balance and fell over onto my face, into the crusty, sweaty build-up along the underside of the sock. Once again, I almost threw up – the surprise jolt not only turned my stomach, but it almost gave me whiplash. As quickly as it started, it stopped, and then I felt something pulling or yanking on the fabric from outside. In a few seconds, I was outside Chloe’s shoe, and released from the musty, warm heart of her sock into the wide-open space of Chloe’s chamber. Before my eyes adjusted to the cool, rainy darkness – before I could see anything at all – I heard her voice.

It was Abby.

I sleepily rubbed my eyes. I think she said something to me, but I could only make out half-words and fragments of speech above the chaos of the storm. She swept me up in her hand before I could speak or pound my tiny fists in protest, or ask questions, and cautiously found her winding way back to the door of Chloe’s room. When the next thunderbolt flashed and lit up the dark, Abby made a quick darting movement off to the right, and soon enough we were back safely in her own room.

Abby’s room looked the same to me as it did earlier in the evening, except that the window was shut, and now there was a small oil lamp turned on beside her desk. She carried me over to her walk-in closet, across from her bed and diagonal from the door. Sliding open the pinewood divider, she then bent down to the floor and, brushing away some shoes and articles of clothing, opened up the trapdoor of a little aerated compartment, like an oubliette in an old medieval dungeon. 

Except, when she opened it up, there was a miniature, well-furnished, cozy little room inside, lit up by one tiny, flickering candle off in the corner.  And separated from the candle, by a few inches, there were also two made-up dollhouse beds, a couch, and an armchair. Slouched and snoring in the armchair, there was a tiny man, fast asleep.

Nodding to me, sneakily, Abby poked him with her right thumb. After shaking his head from side to side, he opened his eyes blearily. Seeing Abigail there, holding back her long, curly black hair over her shoulder, and looking down at him, he jumped up in a fright, and started trembling all over.

“Sorry!” she said. Even though she probably felt sorry, she still couldn’t hold back a grin. Then, when she started to lower me down to the little chamber, I took a fright, and started shouting and protesting.

“What are you doing?” I screamed. “I don’t want to go in there!” The man, now about twenty feet below me, was now saying something too – his hands were trembling like leaves, now, but he had gotten over the first scare.

Now it was Abby’s turn to look bewildered. “What?”

“What are you doing with me? Put me down!” I cried, close to tears.

“Jesus,” she said, “whatever you say.” Then she lowered her left hand to the little man (I remember some of the irrelevant facts too – for instance, that the moment she let go of her hair, it spilled over and eclipsed the little room for a short moment). He climbed onto Abby’s palm, and she carried him over to me.

“This is Jacob,” she explained. “I just wanted you to be introduced.”

 I recognized the man as the same one Jennifer presented to Abby earlier that evening. The half-living being she had quarantined under her sweaty foot for the past week. He still looked dazed (and still smelled sour, like the insole of a ballet flat, though not as strongly – there was another, more recent smell of soap, candle-wax, and maybe something like perfume).

“Oh, hello,” he said, straightening out the little piece of cloth he had on. “I’m Jacob.”

I didn’t know what to say – but my name. When I looked up, Abby was lying down on her side, leaning on her elbow.

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

Abby gave me a sly, conspiratorial smile. “You’ve just run away from Chloe, for good.”

I was dumbfounded. “No, I haven’t! And what if she finds out!?” At this time, I still wanted to return to Holly, and despite what Abby told me, earlier in the day – truly felt that my chances for returning to and reuniting with Holly were greater if I turned out to be an unsatisfactory slave for Chloe.

“So… what is wrong with you?” Abby wanted to know. “She’s probably like the last person who will help you. Weren’t you listening to what I said before? You don’t want to stay here, do you?”

I was conflicted. “What’s your plan?”

“Emma goes to hell, and you – and this guy – leave with me next week.”

“That’s it?”

“So far, yeah. So… What’s your problem?”

I could have told her that I didn’t trust her, but instead I said that it wasn’t for me, yet. I needed time to think it over.

“Oh,” she paused, significantly. “So… either you have something to lose – or you’re just a bird-in-the-hand girl.” She stood up, and offered me her hand again. “Even when the bird is biting and pecking at you.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely fair,” I responded, loudly, so that she could hear me. Jacob was falling asleep again, off to my right. “But it’s true that I don’t know what your plan is. And I haven’t even met Chloe yet.”

“Wow,” Abby said, as I climbed onto her warm hand. “So how do you think I’ll be able to talk to you once you meet Chloe? I can’t promise anything after tonight.”

“I know,” I said.

“Why should I trust you, now?”

For a few seconds there was an awkward silence, as the rain pattered on the roof and windows outside.

I did the only thing I could think of, in the moment. I gave her Adela’s address. Would I want anything to happen to her? Abby stared, and then shook her head, annoyed. There was a flame in her eye, but she took me up again. “Nothing ventured,” she whispered to me. “Nothing gained. At this point, I don’t care if I never see you again.”

Five minutes later, Abby’s fingers dropped me, and I plunged once again into the thick-smelling odorous darkness at the toe of Chloe’s sock. High above, I could see Abby’s face, briefly. She frowned at me, and then said “Goodbye.” She made a knot again at the mouth of the sock, and as I felt her fingers stuff and mold it into the sneaker, until once again the night became pitch black and strange – I realized, with a sharp, lingering pain in my gut, that I might have made the wrong decision. But now there was no turning back.

The rain had stopped. Morning was only a few hours away. I was heartsore and lost almost all hope after my midnight rendezvous with Abigail. Ten long and slow minutes of inhaling the foul yet womanly smell of Chloe’s socks confirmed my resolve to break free from my shoe prison before the night was up. Once free, I would find my way back to Abby’s room, wherever it was. Even if it took hours, even if it took days, I'd find her again and apologize; gradually, I'd work my way back into her good graces. She would accept my apology. She just had to forgive me. 

Here’s how I did it. At the big toe of the sock, I noticed that the threads were considerably more frayed and brittle than elsewhere. At some places, the fabric almost crumbled between my fingers. It was here that I’d first seen the flash of the thunderbolt, outside. So I applied all my energy to that one part of the sock, biting, clawing, ripping, and tearing through the fabric until, after what felt like an hour, I’d managed to gouge out a space wide enough for one of my legs to fit through. Now that I could see an exit, the end was in view, and the work went more quickly and easily. My heart beat more rapidly now, not so much because of the sheer exertion I was undergoing – although it would be an understatement in the extreme to call it warm, inside what smelled like a woman’s old workout sock, and I was sweating bullets – but because of the expectation, the joyful anticipation of my escape. Soon enough, in less than ten minutes, I had cleared a hole wide enough for my midsection to pass through. I was now sitting, or rather feeling my way, crawling and groping around, on the insole of the giantess’s shoe.

There were now two choices available. I could either climb my way between the scrunched-up sock and the inner wall up to the mouth of her sneaker, or I could try my luck with the smallish opening that I knew, (because of the lightning during the storm,) must be located somewhere near the deep hollow where she rested her big toe. 

Both presented difficulties. In the first case, even if I were able to force a path through the sock to the mouth of the sneaker, there would be no easy and simple way for me to scale the six-inch high, sheer canvas wall at the heel of the shoe.  And in the second, there was no telling how long it would take me to burrow and tunnel through the toe (assuming that all effort wasn’t totally futile).

Those of you who know only half of my history, or know of me through hearsay, might be surprised by my actions here. Is this singleminded woman the same pitiful specimen who gave up so easily and so completely, so willingly, to those other women? Yes and yes. You don’t know a person well until you’ve seen them yourself, around all kinds of different people.

To be honest, there is one memory that still rankles. (I’ll never be able to forget that horrible night she forced me and him – together – inside her slipper.) It wasn’t my heart but my eyes that burned, that night, in Chloe’s shoe. My throat also – I must have vomited because of the heat and smell at least three times while making my escape.

And the longer I worked and worked at my getaway, the more my heart pounded with anticipation. At last, just as the room began to pale, and the first bird began to sing, and the light outside the shoe took on a soft yellowish tinge, I was free.

I touched ground on a rug beside the bed, about two-thirds the length of a football field, or just over 200 feet long. The aluminum frame of the mattress gleamed in the sun about two stories high above me. Under the bed, dust bunnies, dust mice, and dust kittens danced around in the breeze that blew through the window-screen. The dawn chorus grew in volume and power, until all the birds were awake and calling to one another, outside, from tree to tree. For the first time in my life, I felt as free as they did.

I ran headlong, almost head-over-heels, tripping at certain points in my excitement, toward the door of the room, which was cracked open about ten feet. Totally exhausted, in body and mind, I sat in the corner at the room's edge by the door, and looked back with a feeling of relief over the wide, wooden plain I had just crossed. I took time, while catching my breath, to straighten my now ragged little clothes, and groom my hair, combing out the knots with my fingers. As I turned my eyes back to the bed and Chloe’s tennis shoes, I could make out long, yellow and brownish hairs, sunlit over the surface of the floor, along with tiny bundles of dust, grit, and dead insects, blown and tossed about in the morning breeze over the floor. It was close to 7 o’clock, I guessed.

Far in the back of the room, the glint of metal held my eye. Withdrawn into a well-lit corner, by the window, was a painter’s easel. A palette hung on a shiny nail off one side of the easel-frame. In a shady and cosy little part of the room, across from the painter’s corner, a stack of finished and unfinished sketches, studies, and finished paintings were lined up in a row behind a few paintbrushes and blank canvases. Chloe painted! What other explanation was there?

At any other time, in any normal situation, my curiosity would have put a wrench in the best of my plans, and all my devices would have been overthrown. I resisted the sudden, irrational urge to cross the room and inspect some of her finished paintings and drawings. There was no time left to waste – I had to leave the room before Jennifer, or someone who wasn’t Jennifer, arrived.

After one last keen look behind me, I poked my head through the door-space, and peered out into the hallway. All was clear, and all was quiet– except for the loud beating of my heart, and the sound of my pulse beating fast and hard around my temples. I took my first tentative step outside the door, and ran my hand over the wood-grains in the wall. Not even a spider scuttled over the hall-carpet. The house itself, like a living thing, seemed to be asleep.

The hallway was narrow (about a hundred feet across) and branched out in two directions, to the right and left of the door. To the left, about nine hundred feet away, there was a large, gleaming bay window, with a cushioned seat for two people removed into a little alcove. To my right, about five hundred feet away, there was another window, a small casement about ninety feet  above the ground, its glass brushed red and yellow by the leaves of a tall tree outside. I yawned, anxiously. If I could only remember the whereabouts of Abigail’s room, I thought.

After a moment’s indecision, I turned right.

Through a field littered with pebbles the size of car tires, thick brown hairs the length of jump-ropes, tangled threads, rubber shoe-stains, bits of leaves, and one very dead and very large old spider, I reached the window. My heart sank as I turned the corner, and instead of a room or a doorway, found only a door-less hallway, at the far end of which was a staircase, leading up. A dead end.

More anxious and uncertain now, I turned back down the way I’d come, and kept going forward, across the field of debris, past Chloe’s door, onward to the other end of the corridor by the bay window. Making a right turn at the ninety-degree crossing here, I gazed down the full and dreadful length of another hallway, at the end of which was another staircase, this time leading down. At this point I had no other choice. There was no other way open to me. Maybe if I could find the staircase leading to the foyer where Jennifer and I first came in, yesterday, I’d be able to navigate my way through the house to Abigail’s room. So this was the way I chose to go.  

I broke into a run – and was brought to a screeching, sudden halt by the distant, shattering sound of thunder. I waited, and five seconds later I heard it again. It was the loud boom of a door shutting, or of someone shutting a door – a car door. Someone was in the driveway.

Soon enough, the entranceway creaked open, and the unfamiliar voice of one woman came to my ears, a woman talking slowly and sonorously, at a regular tempo. But there wasn’t a second voice – or if there was, it was inaudible. To whom was she speaking? My limbs were paralyzed, and my heart skipped a beat, as I thought of the possibilities.

I was shaken out of my paralysis by another door that slammed shut somewhere behind and above me. Who could that be? I darted to the shadows under the window seat, my back pressed hard against the wall, my chest heaving and panting with fear. Footsteps pounded by the casement window at the other end of the corridor, and a shadow lengthened, stretched, and contracted again to a few hundred feet, until she herself came into view. It was Abigail! I wanted to cry out and run to her, but then she started to sprint toward me. It was no use trying to make myself known: she was oblivious to everything at shoe-level. Each of her footfalls boomed like a cannon shot, and the earth shook and seemed to protest after each of her steps, seemed to beg her to have pity, not to injure it, not to trample it into annihilation.

So I kept to my two-inch self, for the moment, in the shadows. And as she ran past me at about three hundred miles an hour in her blue flats, twenty-five feet long, I hugged the wall, and half-prayed to whatever new goddess might have power in this world that she’d take pity on me and fuse whatever was left of this pitiful little body of mine with the wooden panels behind me, or melt me down into the floor boards below me. I was never so terrified for my own life, not even with Holly – and not even with Adela. I put my hands over my closed eyes, and soon enough it was over.  Abby had disappeared down the stairs.

Now there was only one way to go. As fast as my burnt-out legs would carry me, I hurried back toward the other end of the corridor.  The seconds  collected into minutes impossibly long– like the stalagmite eons old on the floor of a cavern, the physical representation of the billions upon uncountable billions of water-drops. It seemed to me, as I ran, that I’d accumulated enough water-dripping seconds to fill the whole floor of a cave system. Fear makes me think of these things. I had only one object in view – to get to Abby’s room before all was lost. 

All was lost. I was just past Chloe’s door, when I heard the sharp click of a woman’s shoe behind me. Anyone coming around the corner just then would certainly see me. I was utterly exposed. The pulse in my temple was beating so quickly now, I thought I would die then and there. Then she turned the corner, a giantess two hundred feet above my head. A woman came into view. She was a very good-looking woman, in early middle age, with chestnut hair tied back in a blue ribbon, wearing black sunglasses, and toting a traveling canvas bag in her right hand. Her left hand held a set of keys, which jingled as she walked. She had on a close-fitting blue suit, and wore dark blue pumps with a low heel of about six or seven feet. Slowly, and as stealthily as possible, I backed up against the wall. 

She rested her hand on the door, and stood there in silence for several seconds. And for a brief, passing moment, I thought she might go through. I thought I might be safe. But she turned around, and looked right at me. I couldn’t see her eyes through her sunglasses, but I knew I was discovered. She smiled, and I came forward.

There was a long silence, as Chloe popped off her blue shoes and hooked up the heels with the index and middle finger of her right hand. She bent down on one knee, and laid her left hand palm upwards, beckoning me with her finger to come closer. This one signal – her index finger with its dark blue nail polish, signaling to me across the hallway –  worked a strangely hypnotic effect on me, and my heart-rate slowed to a crawl. I looked up into her face, and as we made eye-contact, she smiled at me in a friendly way. In a dream, the distance narrowed between us, and I willingly clambered onto her warm hand, which closed around me as it rose, higher and higher, into the sky.

“Well. I have to admit, this isn’t at all how I expected we’d be introduced,” said Chloe. “You must be Meredith.”

“….Chloe…” I swallowed. “I’m h – I’m very happy to meet you,” I said, as she squeezed me tightly, a little too tightly.

“How did you come to be out here?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. While she smiled, she removed her black sunglasses, and her eyes examined me closely. I tried to look away from the sly, detective-like gaze behind the shades, experienced, impossible to fool, and even betraying a kind of cynical charm. She might not have known anything, but all the same it seemed as though she knew everything. 

“You don’t know?” Her smile, the unchanging affability of her voice began to unnerve me. “Well, maybe you can tell me later.”

“Okay,” I said, lost in her big, dark eyes, which devoured me—and almost losing the thread of the conversation. 

“I’m very hungry at the moment. You?” she asked, getting to her feet. I nodded, instinctively, though Chloe didn’t look down. She had stopped  just in front of the door, which was ajar, and seemed to be thinking about something.

Entering the room, the blue heels fell from her fingers with a loud thump against the bedside rug. Setting me down gently on one of her goosedown pillows, she hoisted the traveling canvas bag onto the bed, and began to undress and unpack. After two or three minutes of laying out her work clothes, in silence, without a word of conversation to me or the faintest sign that she was conscious of my presence, she stopped, let out a huge, lusty sigh with her whole body, and looked across the bedroom.

“What a beautiful morning it turned out to be.” Walking over to the window, she breathed in the cool, clean air, still redolent of the storm rain and wind during the night. Raindrops dripped from the trees, and the early morning sunlight poured in through the window, casting green shadows over the floor of the room.

She turned around, eyes facing down, her chin touching her collar-bone. Halfway between the window and the bed, she stopped short and let out a half-muted cry.

“Spider!” she snarled, a wave of loathing and repulsion crashing across her face. Her naked right foot lifted up high, she slammed it down heavily into the floorboards. If it was a spider, or anything else, it wasn’t any longer. Chloe squatted down, and peeled the remains of (what might have been) a fairly large spider off her heel – or the remains of something which now no longer resembled a spider or anything else, dead or alive, on the face of the earth. She flicked it outside, closed and latched the window, and dropped the sash. Shuddering to herself, and stepping gingerly, the room creaking audibly with each step, she came back to the bed.

With a quick and surprisingly agile jump onto the mattress, she landed  back-first on her laid-out clothes, her chest heaving under her white undershirt. The jolt of this giantess’s massive body landing not less than a hundred feet from where I sat – clutching for dear life to the threads and stray feather-fronds that poked out of the pillow – caused the bedsprings to scream in a kind of end-of-world death agony. Anyone who’s lived through an earthquake will understand. There's a feeling of utter helplessness, of un-avertible catastrophe, no matter how short it lasts. 

Chloe wriggled backwards, until her head rested by the foot of the bed, and then kicked her tired feet up, crossed at the ankles, on the pillow beside me.

“Oh, brother,” she said, stretching her neck and rubbing her left eye. “Such a long week.”

I waited through the long, all-too-long pause, unsure how to respond. Finally, she looked up at me, and gave me a little wink.

“So, Mer—uh – dith,” she enunciated the syllables as though reading a difficult, magic spell. “Jennifer tells me you’ve been trained as a foot slave. Do you know anything else?”

In my peripheral vision, I could see her re-crossing her ankles, heavily, and grinding her heels into the pillow.

“Ye— I mean, yes…”

“I can’t hear you,” she said, raising her head. “Did you say yes? Yes? Then jump up and down for me.”

I jumped up and down twice, slipping and skidding on the pillowy surface.

“Good,” she yawned. “Versatility is good. Not necessary, but very good.”

By jumping up and down, I’d formed a little indentation, or nest, in the pillow. I sat myself down there, slowly, so as not to slip. Meanwhile, out of the corner of my right eye, guardedly, I continued to follow Chloe’s immense, faintly pungent feet, flushed with exertion and, for the moment, totally still. At the other end of the bed, she pushed herself up onto her elbows. 

“What was your line of work, again, before we took you on?”

I answered her. She cocked her head to one side, and cupped an ear with a  hand, her eyes squinting a few dozen feet to my right. “No,” she finally said. “This isn’t working at all. Let me move up there.”

The bed creaked and shook once more as she rotated her body around, spinning it around on the axle of her hips like a two hundred foot pinwheel. In the same position (head resting on hand), she dug her left elbow into the pillow, and smiled at me, her eyes lazily, carelessly passing over me. With an involuntary motion, I backed up, feeling for a grip.

“So, you’re actually very cute – Meredith.” She showed her teeth to me, passing her tongue lightly over her lower lip, grinning. 

I was scared, but mostly because I couldn’t see the joke. “Oh. So are – thank you, Miss Winters.”

“Oh, don't be scared. I won't do anything to you. I heard you were a curator, from Jennifer.” Her warm, scented, slightly sour breath on my face, enveloping me in radiating waves, was putting me to sleep. I tried to stay sharp – but I was so, so tired.

“Yes. That was a long time ago.”

“I do some painting of my own. It’s a nice hobby. It relaxes me – you know,  just one of those things.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” I said, the sound of her voice beginning to mesmerize me, and the warmth of her breath.

“I’m sure you do.”

“You know,” I said, my muscles unwinding underneath me. “This morning, when I escaped from your sh –”

“My what?” Her lips were parted slightly, and she was looking at me keenly now, searchingly.

“Nothing. I mean, I knew that you painted. Before.”

“And? – Well, come on. – What did you think?”

“I wasn’t able to see what you did. That’s all.”

“Do you want to?”

I nodded my head tensely but obediently, feeling like a little child.

“Then we’ll do that – after breakfast.”

There was silence for a moment, as she continued to study me, and as I did all I could to avoid meeting her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t ask you any more questions. Believe me, I didn’t sleep well last night either.”

“I’m not very tired.”

“Don’t lie,” Chloe whispered, smiling pleasantly at me. “Abigail told me everything.”

“Abigail?” I started to shake a little. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do,” she pursued.

I stammered, nervously. “She tried to convince me to… but I wouldn’t listen to her.”

“Yes, I know all that,” Chloe went on. “I wouldn’t have put you in that shoe, either, at least not on the first night. Between you and me, Jennifer should be down in the city, somewhere, tutoring high schoolers. So unsubtle. So where did you end up sleeping instead?”

“Well, I—,” my mind ground to a full stop, as I tried to think. Was this a trick question? What did she really know? “Abigail, I mean, she was very nice.”

“Okay.”

“And she brought me to her room, to sleep, instead, but then I couldn’t fall asleep, so I tried to find my way back here.”

“At night?”

“No,” I squeaked. “In the morning.”

“Oh, now I see. So that’s why you were in the hallway. Why didn’t you come out in the beginning? I wasn’t going to hurt you for that.”

“Well, I was afraid. So I hid.”

Chloe nodded a few times, pushing the hair behind her ears and looking across the room at the wall-clock.

“Well, Meredith, I hope we’ll make a good team, you and me. But it’s time for breakfast already. Ready?”

“I’m very hungry, Miss Winters.”

She laughed a little under her breath, and her eyes brightened. I still couldn’t see the joke. “Chloe! Not Miss Winters, please. And that's good: because I’m hungry too. But, there’s just one thing.”

“What is it?”

“Abigail made a mistake bringing you to her room, last night. She did it because she was worried about you, I’m sure – but I’m worried about you too. And I want you to be comfortable, as you transition. So I’m going to give you an option today, because you look very tired – an option that stands for one day. Don’t expect me to be lenient with you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said. I should have waited. Abigail, I should have taken the risk.

“There’s a trade-off involved here. Either we can start your new training this morning, or we can start this evening. Either you sleep now and stay awake for me this evening, or you stay awake now and sleep this evening.” She waited, and yawned again, mouth closed.

“I – Chloe – I’ll sleep this evening.” One was as good as the other (or so I thought, because I was too afraid to ask for details).

Without a word, Chloe sat up on the bed, and stretched her body crosswise over the other side, searching for something beside the bed-stand. It was a pair of slip-on house shoes she’d dug out of her traveling bag. As she set them down on the bed in front of me, and as I walked, slowly, oh so slowly, toward them, as though on my way to the scaffold, I remembered that Jennifer told me I was lucky. Chloe was kinder, more thoughtful than any mistress a slave could hope for. I looked up at her face, and tried to smile.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll feed you downstairs.” I nodded to her, in thanks, and tried to hold back a sob. I was on the verge of tears. I didn’t want her to see this – but maybe she knew all along. I scrambled across the faded logo at the heel, through the dark, deep cavern, to the end, where I curled myself up into a little ball and waited for the inevitable.

But, for about five minutes, nothing happened. Chloe was undressing and preparing herself for the day, humming a little song to herself, and stomping around the room. She’d probably worn this pair at least a thousand times – and it smelled like it. But at least I would get to sleep, later. At least there was that to look forward to.

Then, at last, came the moment. Chloe’s blue toenails paused, gripping the heel of the shoe. Then she raised it, delicately, higher and higher, into the sky. A little dizzy spell washed over me, and then I saw her face. Her lips frowned at me, and her eyes glared.

“You’re lucky I’m only punishing you, Meredith. Because, if I didn't like you or care about you, you'd be gone after a stunt like the one you pulled last night. Don’t pretend that you don’t know. I’m not an idiot. But if you try anything like that again, you’re out. I’ll sell you – and not to someone who’ll take good care of you, like I will. I hope I’m making myself understood.”

I was so terrified, I could hardly think, much less speak. But some kind of soft, wordless utterance must have escaped my lips, and reached Chloe’s ears because, like a vision of fate, of a fate that I would never fully understand, her vast foot suddenly blocked out the sun and covered me like a mountain. So this was my punishment, I thought.

Pressed somewhere underneath and between her second and third toes, I tried to put myself in Chloe’s place. And over breakfast, which fell down from the sky to the wet, awfully wet and scent-crammed insole of her shoe, and which I nevertheless greedily stuffed into my mouth (I was so famished) – I realized that I probably would have done the same. If I were in Chloe’s position, I think I would have done as Chloe did, and no better.

Before Adela broke Martin’s mind, about a year after I left them together, he was still optimistic about his future, though unhappy. He was probably never meant to be a slave, and he certainly, at least at his deepest and most private level, loathed and dreaded the tasks that Adela assigned him. Whereas with Holly, I got the feeling that she brought me into a truer relationship with myself and what I wanted and needed, that she drew desires out of me that had been latent and asleep my whole life until I met her – with Adela, Martin was constantly fighting, pitting his desires against hers, though he might not have known it. He failed, of course – there was no possible way he could have beaten her. But now I feel like I won, I feel like there’s a reason for everything in this world, and everything is beginning to make sense for me in a way I never would have expected before I met Holly and Chloe and everyone else. I feel like I was meant to be here, like I belong.

Anyway, before Adela broke him, and just before Jennifer took me away, he said something to me (he had a philosophical bent, and maybe in another life he would have come to something). He said that the prospect of a year, much less a lifetime, underfoot inspires even the most well-adjusted of slaves with horror, were he or she to think of it once or twice, in the dark, close, dank confines of their prison. So don’t think about it! he said. Before you know it, a day has passed, and then a month, the springtime, the year, the decade, and your (or, less likely, her) life. Don’t think at all! Or, think only of what you can do for your mistress, and you’ll find plenty, more than enough, to occupy all your spare time. People are always discontent (Adela was, particularly) – after one pain or sorrow is cured, we find another one hiding below it. It’s not our incapacity for absolute happiness that makes us discontent, but a faulty and imprecise understanding of the complex nature of our state of unhappiness. Once the most urgent cause of worry or stress is removed, to our amazement we always find another lying just beneath.

I thought of this, in Chloe’s shoe. It was very true. After my hunger was satisfied with the half-chewed pieces Chloe laid out for me in the sweaty, rubbery smudge at the heel of her house flats, I began to feel another kind of emptiness and discontent. It’s incredible how many desires seem to sleep inside us dormant, until someone draws them out. Like Holly, and her feet, and being her slave. Embarrassing as it is to admit, even now, I missed her, and everything.

But there wasn’t time for me to dwell on this: Chloe nudged me back under her toes, still pungent from her heels, warm and rather sweaty from the shoe’s heat, and played with me for a while. She wriggled her toes, squeezing me absently, as her muffled voice talked with Jennifer and Abigail above. It was a friendly kind of play, a friendliness that made me feel guilty for my deception earlier. I felt the need to apologize to her, to make it up to her somehow, and little by little began to lick her flushed skin, in the little hollow between her first and second toe. After the first several licks, I tasted her toejam and sweat on my tongue, and felt the bile rise abruptly in my throat. But I kept it down, and continued to lick until she stood up and walked away from the table.



Chloe gently wiped the film from my eyes, and smiled at me: “Who taught you that, Meredith?”

“Holly did,” I said. I gagged again, thinking of the smell and taste and dampness and heat of Chloe’s feet.

“It’s okay. Let it out, if you have to. Take it slowly.” She eyed me keenly, and then sat down next to me on the bed. I slipped down the little declivity formed between us by her weight, and collided into her panties – feeling very awkward and helpless. She stood up, and I fell farther down, into the vacant space she’d just left. Stripping off her panties and bra, she hunted around the room for a towel, and then prepared herself in front of the mirror, tossing up her hair in the back, and binding it with a pin.

“I’ll be back in a minute, my little girl,” she said to me, turning around. “Wait for me.”

I was restless. Did I “come on too strong”? I should have struggled and refused to oblige her. I shouldn’t have fought against my disgust – I shouldn’t have tried to overcome my nausea. I thought, “She’ll despise me for being overeager, overanxious to make her happy, just like Holly did.” For the five minutes, while the shower ran, I curled myself up into a ball, in the deep hollow in the comforter where Chloe had just taken a seat, and rubbed my hands against my cold legs, up and down. All of a sudden I felt exposed, unsafe in the open air and sunlight. Chloe was loudly humming some melody. I listened to her sing.

“Meredith,” Chloe called to me, as she slid back the shower door. “Meredith, how would you like to meet someone new today?” Her wet feet pattered about on the floor, and then she started to towel herself. “Her name is Emma.” She turned on the water, and I heard her brushing her teeth.

She spat, and then walked back in the room, wearing only her smile, and maybe a hairpin or two (she had it pulled up in a loose, braided bun).  “Well?” she asked.

I swallowed. “Emma?”

She turned to her dresser, an old hardwood piece, and rummaged around until she found a pair of panties. The intimacy of the moment, and her nonchalance, threw me off my guard. She slipped on the panties, and then picked up her used bra, and quickly snapped it in place.

“What time is it? Nine?” I nodded, though I wasn’t sure. “Then we’ll meet her at twelve, for lunch.”

I nodded again, and waited for instructions.

“Meredith, I’m going to paint until twelve, and then we’ll join Abigail and Emma together. Where are my shoes?”

I looked around the room. In the closet, my eye caught a pair of paint-encrusted ballet flats, tossed devil-may-care in a pile of other shoes. She found them at the same time.

“Remember your promise,” she said, as she snatched up in her right hand. “And if you’re very good, we might have some fun later.”
 
Chloe seemed genuinely pleased with me, and I for one trusted her. Crafty and intelligent she might be, but she seemed to me, at bottom, remarkably sane and well-adjusted to the world, and in total control not only of her household but her body. (Compared to Adela – with whom I never knew how I stood, because she was a girl who’d change demands and moods on the turn of a dime, perhaps impossible to satisfy. I didn’t envy Martin.) I only wondered: was she married once? What did this woman do?

“Okay,” I said. “I just want to make you happy.”

“I know you do. You're a little doll, aren't you? Very interesting.” There was hard little glint in her eye, that suggested there was something else, something more, behind the infantilizing speech and friendly tone of voice. Maybe she was genuinely interested in my reaction, in how much I could take. I wouldn’t disappoint her. I was determined not only not to let her down, but to exceed her expectations (though not too much, that inner voice said, again – you must not do too much – or she’ll hate you, she’ll really hate you).

So there was for the next two hours, underneath her foot one more. Her flat reeked with a sharp, mind-altering stench beyond all description. Crushed under her toes, dewy at first from the shower, and smelling like spring grass, I had little air to breathe in that asphyxial space, and found myself going light-headed. A half-hour passed, and her curling, fidgeting toes began to heat up and sweat. Every time her toes curled over my head, I made some movement in response. What was she thinking about, I wondered. Was she biting her lip, her brush suspended in her hand, as she considered where and how to apply it, or pondered over the expression on a face, the movement of a wing, or a leg? I felt very close to her, almost as close as one person can be to another – and was very happy, despite the fact I felt myself passing out.

After an hour, the sharp vinegary odor began to dissipate, and soon I no longer smelled it at all. Time passed more quickly, and I continued to lick, and swallow – and there were times, in my delirium, I went too far and hugged one of her toes, or tried to play with her by trying to push them off me, to roll myself under them or in between them, punching them half-roughly. But this kind of play quickly exhausted me, and I went back to rubbing, licking, and swallowing. Life underfoot, in the dark heat of a woman’s shoe, always seems to move in cycles. I always knew what Holly or Adela were doing, and could almost determine what they were thinking, how they were feeling, by the way their feet moved and felt, smelled or tasted, inside their shoes: whether they were nervous, angry, horny, sleepy, thoughtful, moody, and so on. There was a special kind of closeness, of oneness with a woman that I could never find elsewhere. I cherished it, and wanted more than anything to have it with Chloe.

I don’t know exactly when it ended. But I heard a loud, wet sound like a suction cup, and felt Chloe’s fingers around me, bringing me back into the bright, late morning sunshine. Little by little, my eyes opened up, adjusting to the brightness. I was on the bed again, and Chloe was sifting out clothes again in her dresser. The painting was covered, and the shoes were still underneath the wooden easel, shucked off until next time.

“What’s your destiny?” Chloe asked me, while twisting her way into a close-fitting blouse. “What are you here for?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.

“I didn’t think so. Then I’ll tell you what I think.” She turned around and faced me. “You’re a domestic. You don’t leave the house alone. You’re a survivor, but only because you’re a slave to someone who can lead you – you found me, and you’ll stay with me now. I know that. And that’s why Holly sold you to me. Do you know that?”

“I’ll stay with you, Chloe,” I heard myself say.

“Good. And I want you to stay with me. You’ll make a splendid foot-slave, Meredith. I know you will.”



Abigail was seated at the table, in the dining room. And I will never forget what I saw there, seated in the head place. A tiny woman, about six inches tall, was stretched out on a miniature chaise longue, in full armor. Two women my own height, two inches high each, waited on her with warm dishes. And, if it can be believed, on one of those dishes , I counted four miniscule men, each one as large as my hand.

“’Bout time, bimbos. I’m starving.” One of the men approached her, and her bejeweled hand swept across the tray with indifference, and snatched up two of the little men. One she popped into her mouth immediately, and the other she fingered for a while, watching him curiously as she chewed open-mouthed.

Quickly, I glanced over at Abigail – who returned my look – and vomited. 

I expected Chloe to flick Emma in the ribs. Instead, she called Jennifer over to the table and told her to bring in the food from the kitchen. All was still and silent again, except for the crunch and munch of Emma’s jaws. She swallowed.  

“We indulge our Emma, Meredith,” said Chloe, folding her hands together and looking across her plate at Abigail. “Just this morning she’s come back from the interior. We’ve had another victory.”

Emma cleaned her teeth with a steel toothpick, and suppressed a burp. Our eyes met, and she seemed to notice me for the first time. Enclosing the rest of her squirming food in darkness under a tiny silver, domed plate cover, she pointed me out with her gleaming toothpick.

“Who’s that?”  

“Emma, this is Meredith. Meredith, Emma.” Chloe’s hand disappeared into her pocket, and then reappeared with the sunhat Jennifer had given me on the car-ride. I stood patiently by, like a doll, as my new owner fastened it under my chin, and stroked my back up and down with her cold pinky finger. Emma lost interest, and asked Abigail something.

“Meredith,” Chloe continued, “Emma is becoming quite the little star. We’re very proud of her, aren’t we, Abigail?”

Abigail cleared her throat. “I watched her every night from the computer,” she said, mutedly.

“Abigail,” Chloe said, pausing, and turning to me with a smile, “wanted to come with us. But I told her ‘no.’ Maybe next time.”

“Go where?” I shouted up to her.

“What did she say?” Emma broke in. She’d been reclining on the couch, one boot-shod foot resting over the back, eyes closed. 

“Tell Meredith where you’ve been, Emma.”

Emma signaled to her knee-high attendant to bring the platter back to her lap. She carefully selected one of the remaining, super-small men, and gave him a diabolical grin. I recognized in her, for the first time, the armored, sheathed, sword-swinging, mouse-riding Amazon from Abigail’s computer. She slowly closed her palm around the tiny, shivering man, until only his mussed-up head could be seen, poking out from between her curled fingers and her thumb.

“Same place he’s been,” Emma answered, darkly, and then looked up at me with curious eyes. “She’s wearing my hat.”

“Yes,” Chloe said. “I’m glad you noticed. Except Meredith’s going to be my shoe-slave. On probation, but I’m sure she’ll be a good fit.”

“Who sold her?” Emma asked.

“I bought her off Pearl. She didn’t tell me about the trainer.”

“That’s strange,” Emma said, and there was a muffled scream, as though from a distant room in the house, as she tightened her fisthold on the tiny man and popped him like a raisin into her hungry mouth.

“It was Holly,” I blurted out, sick to my stomach.

Emma sat up, and stared at me in some surprise. Chloe pursed her lips tightly, and winked quickly at Abigail. I shouldn’t have spoken.

“Who?” Emma asked. “What did she say?”

“Holly,” Chloe answered. “I think she said ‘Holly’ – didn’t you, Meredith?”

“Yes.”

“There’s your answer, Emma.”

Emma bent down over her heavy boots, as though to pull them off.  But then she seemed to have second thoughts: she pushed a few strands of black hair behind her ears, and her eyes settled on me. Though only six inches tall, she was three times my height, and by the looks of her could have snapped my spine in half had she wished.

“Meredith,” Chloe whispered loudly, behind me. “Help Emma with her boots.”

“But—“ I said, and stopped. I felt my cheeks burning up. I didn’t know what to say. Slowly, like a little kid moving toward the end of the high dive, I saw myself as though from a great height, moving forward in the direction of Emma’s dirty boots, crossed at the ankles.

“Hurry up! I thought you were a foot slave,” Emma yelled to me. I hurried, and then stood in front of her. The silence behind me was deafening. “Get down and take my boots off.” I knelt down, mechanically, and fumbled over her laces, my hands shaking with shame and fear. Finally, I untied them, and waited for my next instructions, too afraid to meet the eyes of this six-inch, fifteen-foot tall woman. A few minutes passed, and somewhere behind me, she and Chloe and Abigail, unconcerned, oblivious, chatted casually. While I, submissively, knelt down with my head bowed at this wild, strange woman’s feet. There was an abrupt pause in the conversation, and I felt Emma’s eyes on me. She kicked me lightly with the left toe of her boot. I flinched.

“Take them off, you dumb skank. I’m waiting.” After a minor struggle, Emma’s left foot, about two and a half feet long, came out of the boot with an audible squeak. A ragged, discolored sock emerged, filthy and damp with sweat. I turned to the right boot. Chloe and Abigail began to talk behind me, again.

“You know,” said Emma, high above me, “I know what you’re thinking. But just a year ago I was the one in your place. Chin up, and deal with it."

The right boot slid off more easily, but as her foot emerged I heard a faint groan. Through a hole in her socks, between the first and second toes, I saw a man’s face. Small enough to fit in the palm of my own hand, his eyes opened up and met mine. He tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear him. Emma felt me hesitate, and guessed the reason.

“Throw him back in the boot,” she ordered. “He was a good fight. A first-rounder.”

I reached out, in disgust, into the little hole, and took him by his shoulders into my hand. His eyes opened again. “Help me,” he said, weakly.

“Put him back,” Emma whispered. I looked up, startled. “I don’t care what you do with him. But if you're not going to kill him,” she said, more loudly, “throw him back in the boot.”

As I held him in my hand, about to drop him back into Emma’s foul-smelling boot, his prison, I knew I couldn’t do it. I waited, and then quickly made my decision. When Emma’s bangs fell back over her eyes, and she pushed them behind her ears, I quickly stashed him away under my arm, drowning out his little pathetic voice somewhere in a pocket of my dress. (What would Chloe say, if she found him? But she wouldn’t, I told myself. She would never find him.)

“Now get down under my feet,” shouted Emma. “Just lie there, dumbass, and don’t do anything.”

So there I lay, underneath her, breathing in her socks, until she peeled them off and used my face as a footstool for her bare feet. They eclipsed my face, both in their sheer size and their overpowering, mind-numbing smell. I felt my brain shutting down, and little, calming ripples shoot up and down my spine, as I listened to my own breathing, to the muffled sounds of women’s laughter somewhere in the distance, and waited for Emma to stroke my hair and cheeks with her smelly peds, whenever I obeyed her commands, and sniffed, kissed, licked, and cleaned her tired feet.

And until she called me up again, and sent me back to Chloe, I’d forgotten that there was something I’d stolen from those feet, from Emma. But there he was, and I felt him now, waking up, wriggling in my pocket.

Chloe was sitting at the head, and Abigail on the side, across from Jennifer, who was making hand-signs to someone in the inner rooms. They were all eating now, and Chloe’s plate steamed with what looked like steak, along with soup and vegetables. She tied my hat back on, and then studied me for a second in silence, her tongue between her lips.

“Meredith, we were just talking about Holly – Abigail and I.”

I heard Abigail’s voice behind me. “Jacob was telling us about her. About Adela, I mean.”

“Jacob?” I turned around. There he was, standing unsteadily, wearing a little cut-out rag, beside Abigail’s plate.

There was silence. Jennifer spoke up: “You didn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Jacob was Adela’s third slave. The other one. She sold him to us to keep Martin, before she flew to France.”

My mind, still lost in the fog of Emma’s feet, wasn’t functioning. Holly, Jacob, Adela, Martin, France?

“Not now,” said Chloe. “My little girl’s probably hungry.” She picked me up, and then set me down on her plate, between the steak and soup. Cleaning off her spoon with her tongue, she asked me what I wanted.

“Some soup, please,” I said. I looked back at Jacob, but he’d collapsed on Abby’s plate, in a stupor. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Chloe, her expression becoming more stern and wooden. “Just exhausted.” Just exhausted. And, I thought to myself, as the wheels in my brain began to turn again, I was just starving.

I turned my eyes back to Emma. She was stretched out, asleep, on the couch. Her knee-high platter-carrying slave was in my place, waiting there patiently for her to wake up. With a little thrill, I felt Emma’s super-tiny man squiggle under my clothes again. (She would never notice his disappearance, or if she did, I doubted she’d look for him.) After dinner, when night fell, I’d ask him questions. Who was he? Who was Emma? I wondered.

“Here’s your soup,” Chloe said, holding her spoon out to me. “Drink it slowly. It’s very hot.”

Suddenly, in the background, Jacob stood up and started shouting. “Not now, Jacob,” Abigail said, and scooped him up in her hands.

“Put him away,” Chloe suggested, “until he calms down. Explain to him that that’s not good behavior at the table.”

“I know, I know,” Abby said. “It won’t happen again.”

Chloe eyed her carefully, and then turned back to me. “I’m beginning to think this was the wrong present, Abigail.” 

There was a muffled shriek, somewhere far under the table, and Abigail wiggled back and forth in her seat a few times. “It wasn’t, really. I promise. I’ll try to do a better job.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and then hunched her shoulders over her plate.

Emma woke up, and swung her legs over the couch to her footrest, Jennifer began to eat again, I swallowed another mouthful of delicious soup, and the dinner went on.

The dinner went on, though I’ve forgotten what happened after Emma sent me back. When it was time to leave, Chloe dropped a few breadcrumbs down my dress. “For later,” she smiled, kindly. “In case you get hungry before morning.”

In my eagerness to say goodnight and climb back up the stairs with Chloe, Abigail must have wondered about the change in me. She might have felt snubbed, obscurely, because I didn’t speak to her again the following week, not until she left with Emma and the trouble started.

Before bed that night, when Chloe raised me up to her  lips and gave me a long, wet kiss, I even returned it. Watching her thick red lips curve up in a smile sent a warm shiver up my spine, and left me with gooseflesh. She parted them, and stroked the inside of her bottom lip with her tongue, back and forth, thoughtfully.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said. “I have a long day planned for you, so try not to stay up too late.”

“Yes, Chloe,” I murmured, face to face with those lips, and following their motions with my eyes. She couldn’t hear me, but paused for a moment, as though listening, waiting for me to finish.

“Ready?”

“Yes, Chloe.”

She knelt down beside her bed, and lowered me gently into her house-flats, the same old and smelly pair she’d worn during and after breakfast.

“Be a good girl,” she urged me, in a hushed tone, “and maybe tomorrow night I’ll let you sleep with me.”

“Yes, Chloe,” I repeated. She dropped me toward the arm, and nudged me down toward the toe with her fingers, knocking the wind out of me. Inhaling deeply, when I came to a stop, I gagged on the foul-smelling funk rising from the insole. (I’d forgotten how pungent her sneakers were, the night before.) While I was underneath Chloe’s foot, the reek was partially obscured, in effect if not in fact, by her foot’s overwhelming pressure, heat, and hot, trickling sweat. But now that I was alone with this smell again, it seemed to penetrate my whole being and consciousness.

“Goodnight.” She blew me a kiss, and blanketed me in darkness with the other flat, which she then hitched around the top, mouth to mouth, with a shoelace. (I could walk by way of the heel of my shoe into the heel of the other, with ease and perfect freedom.) Placing both shoes on their sides, she left me there, in her closet. I listened to her socked feet, as she padded around the room, and prepared for bed.

Now my heart pounded violently. I reached into my dress-pocket, and dug around for a few seconds, my hands trembling. At first I couldn’t find him, and panicked. My breath caught in my throat. Oh no! Where is he?

But then something warm responded to my touch, and my fingers closed around a smooth, wriggling object.

Drawing him up into the heat and dankness of the empty shoe, where Chloe seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, I looked around. A tremulous spear of light gleamed in from the toe of the shoe, near the black, stained indentation of her big toe. I crept quickly over there, curled myself up in the hollow of her toe-print, and bent my face down low, beside the little rip between the polyester fabric and rubber insole. I then shuffled back a pace, and squatted up on my knees – I wanted my face hid in the darkness, when I opened my palm. No need to frighten the little man, and risk his screaming. My hair kept falling around my ears (like Emma’s, I thought), so it was better to hold him at a distance from me, an armslength away, near the light-hole. If the light was coming from Chloe’s bedside lamp, we had only a short time, perhaps a few minutes. I needed to hurry.

Little by little, I relaxed the pressure on him, and held him out on my open  palm, toward the light. When I was a little girl, I used to go back to the brook behind our house, and catch newts, salamanders and frogs. I remembered how quickly they lost the urge to escape, after only a few moments in my hand. The same frog that had bounded away from me for a quarter of an hour, seemed to lose its instinct to escape, its need to be free, after a single second in my hand. I would place him on the ground, on a damp spot near the river, and then have to prod him back toward the water with my finger, pulling on his motionless and unresponsive legs, trying to baby or cajole him back to life. He’d been too close to me too long.

My palm was warm and just a little sweaty, from holding him so tightly in the close, confined space of her shoe – but I was surprised, after seeing him for the first time in two hours, at how dead-still he was, his thin, naked form curled up in a fetal position on my hot skin, his eyelids half-raised, giving him a very stupid and vacant appearance. I prodded him lightly, with the thumb of my right hand. No response. I paused, counted to ten, and then drew up my left hand from between my knees. I ran the nail of my left pinky softly down the length of his spine – he shivered visibly, and the hair on his head stood on end. Even his little member stirred to attention a few times, before going back at ease. I smiled.

“Wake up,” I cooed. He groaned, and sat up. My face was still in the shadows.

“Where am I?” he asked. Trying to stand up, he tickled my skin with his tiny, awkward movements, and I almost dropped him. He froze, following my long arm to my shoulder, and then squinting up through the darkness at my face.

“Are you afraid of me?” I whispered, not knowing exactly what to say.

“Who are you?” he asked. When he heard my voice, he put his arms up before his face, as though in self-defense. He cowered against my thumb, and seemed unable to speak. Though he didn’t know he had nothing to fear from me, that I was harmless, it gave me a delicious, temporary pleasure to know that he thought I was dangerous. I knew he was safe, but he – terrified perhaps because of Emma, Emma, whom he associated with me, until I chose to reveal myself – didn’t know anything yet. I decided to keep this small psychological advantage for as long as I could. Maybe I’d even wait till the morning to properly introduce myself. In the meantime, though, I wanted answers from him. And his fear of me would draw those answers out of him.

He collapsed onto my palm again, on his hands and knees. He seemed to think he could just crawl away and hide. I felt sorry for him, but decided to press him. Now or never, Meredith, while he’s still yours.

“What’s your name? Quickly.”

He shaded his eyes against the spear of lamp-light, piercing through the crack in Chloe’s insole. “Actaeon,” he answered.

“Actaeon,” I repeated. “Are you sure?”

“Sure of what?” he snapped, raising his voice. He was talking back to me, testing me. I pinched his arm lightly, and then flicked him backwards.

“You answer -- I ask,” I told him. “Understood?”

“Yes,” he squeaked, after a tense pause.

“Where are you from – Actaeon?” The name didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. A Greek mythological figure, transformed into a stag by Diana, and torn apart by hounds. Perhaps he was born a slave.

“The Midwest,” he quickly replied. “Region Five, Erie Basin.”

“Why did you leave?” I chose to keep silent about Emma, and my standing in the house.

“I was beaten in the games,” Actaeon said. “By Emma. In the first round.”

“Emma?”

“Region Four, New England Basin.” He rattled it off, promptly. “There were nine others with me, all men, one from each region.”

“And this woman, Emma, beat all of you?”

“All but one, a man named Hector, who forced a draw on the last day.”

“When did this happen?”

“I don’t know. I was condemned and lost track of time.”

“Have you eaten since your defeat?” His ribs were poking out. The fight, and his sentencing, might have happened a week ago, maybe longer.

“No,” he said, and began to move forward, tentatively, to my thumb. I was feeling helpful, and offered it to him. He stood up, and then nodded over his shoulder to a blank space in the darkness where he might have guessed my face was concealed. I took my left hand from between my thighs, again, and produced a few of Chloe’s breadcrumbs from my dress. I tasted one: it was staling quickly.

“Try this,” I said, offering him one. He took it from between my thumb and forefinger, a crumb as large as a loaf to him, and tore it apart ravenously.

“Slow down,” I warned him, alarmed by the rate he was eating. “You haven’t eaten in days. Be careful you don’t vomit it back up.”

Gradually, bit by bit, I leaned my face into the yellow lamp-light, still streaming in through the crevice. The next time he turned to me, he looked up and saw my face. He dropped the rest of the bread, staggered back, eyes wide open, mouth agape.

“You— who are you? You’re a slave!” he gasped, and his face paled. Frightened by his confusion, I nodded my head, and then, pulling my feet up underneath me, I held him out toward the light, like a little girl reading a book.

“I’m no one,” I said. And then the spear of light withdrew, suddenly, and plunged us both into the dark, smelly, silent world of Chloe’s flat. In the pitch-black interior, my sense of smell sharpened, and his also. I felt him crawling around on my palm, feeling my birth and death lines, and brushing his tiny fingers over each of mine, one after another.

“Where are we?” I heard his voice ask, quietly. I closed my hand around him, and then brought him up my lips.

“Emma is owned by a woman named Chloe, who also owns me. We’re in Chloe’s shoe.”

There was silence, and then I felt his little head poke out from the space between my thumb and forefinger. “Where did you find me?”

“Emma’s boot,” I said. “You were dying.”

There was another pause, longer than the last one. “So what now?”

“I don’t know yet.” I was honest about this, at least.

“You should have let me die.”

I smiled, thinking of some old television melodrama, or action film. “Well, you’re safer with me than with Emma.”

Another pause. The shoe seemed to heat up, and my skull felt heavier and heavier by the minute. I lay down and rested my head in the hollow of one of Chloe’s toes, the second one probably.

“Why am I safer with you?” he finally asked, though more softly now. Was he falling asleep? I felt his breath on my lips, and it tickled my nose-hairs. I scratched my nose with the hand he was in, and then set him back down beside my mouth.

“Because,” I smiled. “I’ll be a better mistress to you than Emma could ever have been. It will be nice to have someone to talk to, someone to keep me sane, someone to pet and feed now and then. Don’t you want someone to take care of you – Actaeon?” I decided to change his name, maybe in the morning.

He didn’t answer me. Yawning, I went on. “Anyway,” I sighed, sleepily, “if you ever want to be tall again, or whatever you were, I figure I’m your best hope, your best shot.”

There was another long gap in the conversation, and then a snore split the silence. He was out like a baby, nestled against my thumb. I drew him in, between my breasts, and for the first time in two months, fell asleep with a smile on my face. He was mine.