It was a beautiful, bright Sunday afternoon, and Danielle was riding along with her friend Jezebel on the way to a state park. Jezebel had magic powers too, and was just as cruel, so the two of them loved to go out hunting together and capture new people to torture in their shoes. But today was more special than most of their weekend outings. For one, it was over 90 degrees outside, so while the cool AC was blasting in her face, Danielle had stuck her boots out the window so the hot sun could heat her feet up through the scorching black leather. But besides the weather, the two were excited because they were on their way to a hiking meetup where a lot of people were supposed to be gathered. Every time they shrunk people they ran the risk of someone seeing what they did, so trying to gather up dozens of people in a single outing usually meant using their powers over and over. But being able to find a group of 20 or so people in an area where not many others were around wasn’t an opportunity that happened very often.
They pulled into the parking area at the base of the mountain, just minutes before the group was about to depart. “Oh, looks like we have some last-minute arrivals!” a bubbly, woman in her 30s announced as a few heads turned towards the newcomers. Jezebel smiled at the woman as she got out of the car, while Danielle walked around and headed towards the back of the group, looking around as well to make sure there wasn’t anyone who might be watching them from far away.
An elderly man who was still somewhat in-shape looked at the girls’ choice of shoes: skate shoes and leather boots. “I don’t think they’re with us Darlene,” he said. “Are you guys from the Facebook group?”
Danielle laughed, “Definitely not,” and then flashed Jezebel a look to let her know they were good to go. With the two girls on either side of the unsuspecting group of hikers, they nodded at each other with smirks and then raised their hands, making wiping gestures in the direction of the crowd. One by one, the various hikers began to dwindle down, their clothes falling on top of them and many of them lying stranded on their sandals or in their own shoes, which always made for easy picking. Just as quickly as the screams and yells had started, they died down again once their voices became too tiny to be noticed, and Danielle and Jezebel went around to all the piles of clothes so they could snatch up the victims writhing around inside before they could run away. And every time they picked up someone new, they’d shrink their clothes as well and stuff them in their pockets to throw away later.
“I’ve got 11, what about you?” Jezebel asked once the two had met in the middle of the clearing where the people had once stood.
“14, I win!” Danielle smiled mischievously, as they both ignored the tiny pleas for mercy from the cup that was carrying the tiny people. Jezebel had taken off her shoes as soon as everyone had shrunk, and alternated between dropping the victims in each one as she went along. But Danielle was different—if she’d taken off her shoes, she would’ve gotten dirt and gravel and other debris on her soles, but she wanted them to be nice and smooth for when she dumped the people inside her boots. Without any special fanfare, Jezebel stuck her shoes back inside her Vans, taking in a deep breath as she enjoyed the feeling of her prey struggling against her hot, sweaty feet. Feeling excited, Danielle sat on the ground and unzipped her own shoes, taking her hot, reddened feet out for the first time in several hours. She coughed and had to recoil from how pungent her own stench was, but it made her heart race as she thought about how up close and personal all her little toys would be. One by one she dropped 7 of her two-inch-tall prey into her left shoe, and then dumped the remaining 7 into her right. Both Jezebel and Danielle laughed as they noticed the screams died down, as many of the people started vomiting from the sudden momentum into the dark, humid dungeon of the evil giant’s boots. “Lucky for you guys, I’m a size 11 and a half, so my feet are nice and big,” Danielle calmly explained to her newest bunch of slaves, “which should mean plenty of room for you guys to crawl around, or do whatever else you little worms wanna do.” Then she lifted her foot and began to slowly descend it into her first boot, teasing her victims with their oncoming fate. One by one, she began to feel all the naked, scrambling bodies make contact with her moist, bare sole, and she shook her boot about to try and evenly disperse them around to various areas of her shoe, before firmly planting her foot down and tying the boot back up. The sounds of panic and helplessness were completely silenced, muffled by the thick leather that absorbed the summer’s heat. After hours of her boots sitting in the sun on the way to the mountain, they were already well past 100 degrees, and her feet were already wet with sweat. There was so much stinking, murky moisture in Danielle’s shoes, that the little shrunken bodies were literally slipping about beneath her massive soles, becoming bathed in her unholy perspiration that they desperately licked up in hopes of quenching their crackling thirst. But that was just the first shoe; Danielle soon turned her attention to her right foot, where her foot repeated the same process. She relished in the anguished cries of the tortured souls as they began cooking like a sauna, struggling just to breathe in some amount of oxygen through the miasma of Danielle’s unwashed grime and stale leather. She zipped up the second boot and stood up, wiggling her toes around inside their hot, stuffy home, as she started sweating so much that she could feel the squishing and squelching of their fidgeting bodies against her insole.
“Ready to go?” Jezebel asked, and Danielle nodded contentedly with a smile on her face, as the two of them made their way back to the car to speed away from the scene of the crime.