*Picking up from page 48 of the comic*

Opening her mouth again, Ms. Fukasawa extended her tongue as far as it would go before peeling her tiny daughter off it. She dangled the girl by her fragile little leg, wiping a little bit of saliva from the corner of her mouth using her free hand.

Sam still tasted quite unpleasant. Stained by her time getting squashed beneath her mother’s sweaty feet, as well as picking up hints of any dust or grime tiny people like her tended to accumulate.

“Are you still sure you want me to kill you, Samantha?” Kim asked, raising the tiny, two-inch girl to her eyeline.

Sam’s bare chest was heaving frantically. She’d still not really recovered from the overwhelming experience of being trampled under the mature woman’s foot. Now coughing up bits of Ms. Fukasawa’s congealed spit containing flecks of food from whatever her mother had eaten on her lunch break hours earlier. Repulsive didn’t do it justice.

“Mom… please…” Sam’s voice was little more than an exhausted squeak now.

“That is what I thought. You do not want to die, do you? You lied to me, pretending that you did. You are pathetic, Samantha.”

Ms. Fukasawa's mixture of anger and disgust caused her fingers to tighten, very nearly breaking her daughter’s ankle in the process, assuming it wasn’t already shattered from the series of stomps she’d endured minutes earlier.

“But, I will do one thing for you. Not because an ant like you deserves it - far from it - but because it will require almost no effort from me to grant your wish.” She then lowered Sam right back to her frowning lips, washing warm air over the tiny girl as she spoke, reminding her of just how close she’d come to getting swallowed. “After everything I have done for you, and after the constant disrespect you have shown me in return, I should have eaten you. Even if you didn’t want to die. But… if you want to wish you were dead that much, Sam, then I think I know just what I can do to help with that. Now, come with me.”

She spoke as if the tiny girl had a choice in the matter. Closing her fist tightly around her daughter, Ms. Fukasawa gave the tiny pest a few firm squeezes as she marched out of the office. Her bare feet slapped against the floor as she walked out, heading back towards the room in which she’d seized Sam upon returning home.

Once back in the lounge, she tossed her daughter onto the coffee table and retrieved the items she needed. Paying little mind to the yelp that came from the tiny girl as she slammed into the surface of the table.

Whether or not Sam could still walk, Kim was confident the girl wouldn’t be going anywhere fast enough to disobey and escape her now.

And so, moments later, she returned to tower over the tiny, whimpering girl. Still coated in saliva, curled up on the tabletop and visibly traumatised by her time under her mother’s feet and behind her lips.

“Mom… I’m s-sor—“

“Be quiet,” Kim snapped, her frustrations with her daughter having truly boiled over as she walked past the table and took a seat at the end of the sofa beside it.

She hadn’t been a frivolous claim earlier. Sam meant nothing to her now.

“Now, listen carefully. I do not plan on repeating myself.”

Despite everything, fuelled by desperation, Sam did stay quiet. She’d more than learned the consequences for disobeying her mother, and so her willpower crumbled under the stern tone Kim had honed from years of teaching hundreds of students who were just as disobedient as her bug of a daughter.

And though it went unnoticed, the hint of a smile on the older woman’s face showed her satisfaction from her orders being obeyed. It was a smile without warmth, cold and callous.

Kim crossed one leg over the other, brushing her shin against the table’s edge, and leant in towards Sam’s form.

“How were my feet earlier? I hope you have not already forgotten.”

Sam groaned, not keen on relieving the fresh memories of being tenderised beneath her mother’s stinky feet. “They… they were big…”

“No, they were not. My feet are quite normal-sized. They just seem big because you are so insignificant now,” she snapped. “And you know that is not what I meant. How were my feet, Samantha?”

Below the table, Kim scrunched her toes. She wrinkled up her soles as she felt the slightly calloused skin on the ball of her foot compress and her digits sticking together from the perspiration still clinging to the gaps between them.

“They were… warm…”

“And?”

“A-And sweaty…”

“And did they smell?”

Sam nodded solemnly, grimacing to herself as she continued to wallow in the puddle of her parent’s fluids. Unable to meet her colossal mother’s watchful gaze.

“Of course they did. Fortunately for you and your brother, I work very hard to provide for this family. And all that hard work can make my feet a bit stinky, not that you would appreciate the responsibility of working hard or doing what is best for your family.”

It wasn’t like the tiny girl could get any physically smaller. But with how her mother now spoke to her and had begun to treat her, Sam felt smaller than ever. Even now, she was already wondering if maybe she wished that she’d been swallowed by the mouth that was now chastising her. To have ended it all then and there.

Kim continued to speak. “Do you know why my feet get sweaty?”

“Because feet… sweat..?”

Kim’s brow had furrowed. Her emerald eyes flashed dangerously. “Do not get clever with me, girl.”

The tiny girl shrivelled up. She was at a loss.

Despite not having an answer, Sam also had absolutely no desire to find out the reason. She was bruised, battered, stunk of sweat and saliva, and didn’t want to play these stupid games. Though she suspected her mother was talking rhetorically and didn’t anticipate her having an answer.

“Well, for your information, my feet have always been a bit sweatier than most. At least, compared to my friends and colleagues. It is something I cannot help. But that is not the only reason…”

And moments later, her daughter’s fear increased quite dramatically Ms. Fukasawa reached behind her and raised her left hand to the height of her ample bosom. Revealing the shoes she was clutching, her index and middle fingers hooked to hold them tightly by their backs.

A pair of black loafers, slightly scuffed around the toe and raised at the heel, with the polish they might’ve once had almost all worn away. They looked like leather but it wasn’t an easy distinction to make, although the soles were quite clearly rubberised in some way. As for the insides, from where Sam was sat, they were only visible up to around the space where Kim’s feet might transition from the arches to the balls. And even then, that was an unpleasant enough sight.

The stained imprint of her mother’s weighty sole was very clearly marked on the beige insole, which had never been replaced since purchase. Both of her feet had their shapes marked out in the dented impressions left by hundreds of thousands of steps as well as the blackened discolouring caused by long hours spent on her feet, almost certainly sweating all the while.

“Tell me. Do you recognise these?”

The tiny girl nodded again, a little more hesitant with every new question. “They’re your… work s-shoes.”

This time, Sam saw the hint of a smile crossing her mother’s lips, for the first time in what seemed like months. However, considering the situation, she was sure that didn’t mean anything good for her. Only now was the shock wearing off, cluing Sam into realising that her legs seemed permanently damaged from the battering she’d taken beneath Kim’s giant feet. Not only did her skin feel tender and sticky, but the impact had rendered her unable to stand unassisted.

“They are. These are the flats I wear to school most days during the week,” Kim said, a mixture of pride and matter-of-factness in her voice. “And do you know how long I have been wearing these flats now? You should. I think I remember you helping me choose them last year, didn’t you?”

It wasn’t something Sam could remember vividly, having been a fairly average day from what she could recall. Though now that stung all the more.

She’d taken all of her days for granted before she’d reduced to the size of an ant. And now the memories of all those lost days barely clung to the surface of her brain. Leaving her with little more than the images of her new place in life, staring up at her mother or at Daniel. Effectively robbed of her agency and needing other people to help her do anything at all.

Meanwhile, Kim just watched her daughter in silence for a few moments. Her gaze rested, then drifted over to the shoes in her hand. Even though she’d slipped out of them almost an hour earlier, the warm air exiting the inside was more than a little gross.

“Hmph, how fitting,” Kim said curtly, looking back and forth between the well-worn interior of the shoes, over to her pitiful daughter, and then back to her flats. “Well, even if you don’t remember, maybe this will jog your memory, Samantha.”

Sam looked back up, shaken from her trance by her mother’s musing. Only to be met with a sight and stench that turned her stomach.

The inside of Kim’s shoe, darkened and over-worn, was now inches from her tiny face. And with her mother’s voice thundering from out of view. “Smell it.”

Her command was curt, giving her daughter no room to disobey. And even if she could’ve run, that wouldn’t have helped anything. It would almost certainly have made Kim act even more callously towards her… if that was even possible.

From where she was trapped, there was nothing Sam could do but smell the shoe. Even if she dragged herself in any other direction, the wasn’t going to move her out of its range.

The scent clinging to the inside of her mother’s flat was appalling. Carrying the familiarly strong smell of worn leather and warm sweat that’d blanketed her earlier as Kim’s feet smothered her. It smelt like the shoe had spent entirely too long stuck to her mom’s foot, soaking up the day’s sweat and grime, and then being left to cook out in the oppressive heat. Now having developed a deeply disgusting, musty odor as a result.

On instinct, Sam brought her hands up to try and protect her face, fanning away the small amount of air she could reasonably try and move.

“Please, mom!” Sam protested. “It… it stinks… just…”

She might as well have been bargaining with a brick wall for all Kim considered her squeaks.

“It smells bad?” She huffed, drawing the shoe back as if contemplating taking a sniff for herself. “Hmph, then I think my flats should be just what you want then.”

“What 'I want'?”

“You wanted to wish you were dead, Samantha. Do not pretend like you have forgotten. You begged me to end your life, for your mother to kill you… until you begged me not to. Your attitude stinks even more than my old shoes do.” Kim was back to scowling now, having lost the hint of a smile she’d had before. “I think they will be perfect to give you exactly what you want.”

The tiny girl was at a complete loss.

Keeping up with her mother’s demands had proven hard enough, but now she felt like she was having her brain twisted and squashed. Clouded by the scent from her shoe and now ran in circles by the implications she was hinting towards.

“Mom, what are you—“ She started to say before she was cut off without even a glare from above.

“When you disobeyed me earlier, I was so… angry. All I could think of was ways to punish you. To make you actually do what I tell you to. Whatever the worst things I could possibly do to someone as small as you might be, just to try to make you appreciate how selfish your behaviour has been, Samantha. And I knew one of the things near the top of that list would be these old things,” Kim said, giving the leather flats a small shake, causing her daughter to recoil. “I did say it earlier, and I was not kidding. Putting you inside my flats and having you join me for an entire day of school would be terrible for you. And since you want to wish you were dead, clearly you don’t value the life I have given you, so neither should I.”

Sam was worn down. She was low on esteem and even lower on any form of hope. And now she had nothing.

There were no words she could gather up to respond to Kim. Nothing at all.

Above, the mature woman finally turned her head down towards the spec on her coffee table. Until then, she’d been speaking forwards, as if addressing a room full of her students. But now she spoke harshly towards the thing that used to be Sam.

“You are going to join me at school, little girl. And you will do so from inside my flats.”

Sam couldn’t do a thing to stop her mother’s free hand from swooping down and plucking her up by her hair. Dragging her towards the shoe still held in her other hand.

“But I do not think one day would be enough. If I simply wanted to teach you a lesson, one day in my flat would be adequate and I am sure you would not disobey me again without remembering the sweaty smell of my old shoes. But I am past that.”

With the tiny girl still pinned between the tips of her index and thumb, Kim Fukasawa slowly began to lower her into the mouth of her shoe. Ignoring the slow increase in warmth tickling her skin and batting away the girl’s useless attempts to break free. Her voice was so irritating.

“You wanted to die… so let me grant your wish. When I take off my flats at the end of the week, I expect you will do anything for me to kill you - assuming you are not already finished by then. I cannot say that I have worn an ant like you inside one of my shoes before, at least not intentionally, so I am not sure how you will cope… but frankly, that is not my problem.”

Kim’s fingers finally reached the worn insole of her flat and released. Letting Sam drop onto the grimy, fraying material before withdrawing quickly. She brushed her hand off against her cardigan, removing some of the moisture that clung to her fingers, then returned her emerald gaze to the figure that sat coughing inside her shoe.

She made quite sure to keep her footwear at enough of a distance where she didn’t have to smell it.

“You are going to stay inside there for the rest of the week. From tomorrow until Friday, I will wear this same pair every day. And do not even think of trying to escape, little girl. Or you can spend the foreseeable future inside your brother’s shoes instead of inside mine.”

Slowly being crushed under the oppressive scent inside the shoe, there was so much that Sam wanted to say. Some of it pleaded, most of it screamed. But the conditions were getting to her now and so all of it merely exited her mouth in the forms of stifled coughs as her eyes begged wordlessly.

The expression on Kim’s face had moved beyond frustration and onto some level of perverse satisfaction. It was harsh, occupying her wrinkled features as a dark snarl while she spoke down to the tiny girl cowering below her. “I do not enjoy tolerating that smell most days, especially not by the end of the week. So cannot imagine what that will be like for you down there inside my flats. If things get too much for you before then, I suppose you will get your wish sooner, and if not, then I will finish you off once I reach the weekend.”

"P-Ple—" Sam started to say, only to be silenced by her lungs as she inhaled a little too hard.

“That’s enough. I will put you somewhere out of sight so you can think about your actions down there until I leave for work tomorrow.”

Everything inside the musty flat when dark as the pair of shoes were stashed away in one of the nearby cupboards. Kim not looking twice as she closed the door on her daughter, turning towards the kitchen to sort some food for herself and Daniel. 

“K-Kill me! Please don’t do this! Just k-kill me! PLEA—“

The door snapped shut.

Following her first encounter with her mom’s feet, Sam’s legs had been permanently damaged. Now, lying on her back surrounded by the sweaty mist left by Kim’s foot, Sam could barely move any part of her lower body. If it weren’t for the added durability becoming a Mant seemed to offer her, she knew she’d become a stain on her mom’s sole or insole before lunchtime.

And so Sam spent the entire evening alone and in darkness. Unable to move from her position without pushing herself onto her chest and physically dragging herself along the insole beneath her.

It did little good. Only coating her in more dirty material and getting her no closer to escaping her predicament. The flats were already plenty unpleasant, so the idea of being entombed inside them while her mother wore them… was a dreadful prospect. She almost hoped she would burst the second Kim put her full weight down on her.

With nothing else going, Sam resorted to the only option left to her, scored by the sound of the TV blaring outside of the cabinet as her mother turned to watch her evening programmes. She curled up and cried.

***

By the next morning, Kim was back in her usual headspace. Any thoughts of the unpleasantness that tiny girl had caused her the night before had been pushed from her mind and all of her attention now refocused on the lesson plans she had laid out for the week ahead.

Once she was dressed and packed, the mature teacher made her way to the door and retrieved her flats from inside the wooden cabinet. Placing them down onto the floor and slipping each foot into its corresponding shoe. First the empty left shoe, then the slightly less empty right shoe.

Kim allowed herself a few steps, quite appreciating the extra support her right foot now had access to, then turned to the door and opened it.

 “I will be back a little later today, Daniel,” she called out in the direction of the kitchen. “Perhaps we could get a takeaway if you’d like?”

She waited for her son’s confirmation before withdrawing from the room and heading off to the school. Driving as she usually did, the accelerator got plenty of firm usage.

When Ms. Fukasawa walked into her classroom, greeting the students with a call and response as they’d become used to, none of them could’ve guessed that anything was any different. And that’s because they would be right. As far as Kim was concerned, having the speck that was once her daughter trapped under her foot made absolutely no difference to her routine or behaviour.

Not that she didn’t occasionally think of the girl beneath her, or infrequently pop out her heel to let her flat dangle whilst she was sat down, mixing some of the stuffy air surrounding her foot with the cooler air of the classroom, but it was more out of curiosity than any kind of sympathy.

Sometimes she felt the girl stick to her insole and sometimes to her sole. Sometimes the girl would thrash more, mainly after long periods without any clean air, and sometimes she was quite docile.

By the time she returned home, a little later than usual, as anticipated, Kim slipped her feet free by the door and left the flats where they were.

The cool wooden flooring felt delightful against her slightly swollen, sweaty feet as she stepped out of the shoes, allowing herself a little moment to herself. Closing her eyes with a sigh of contentment.

Originally, she had planned on checking in on the tiny girl following her return home each day until Friday. Just to make sure she was still alive down there, but after a bit of time to think on the return drive, Kim had decided against it. Whether or not she was still breathing before the end of the week made little practical difference to her, so there was no point wasting her time in doing so.

Turning around, she padded off, leaving a trail of slightly misty prints trailing back to her airing flats. A little cloud of humid air escaping from each one.

By the time Daniel and his mother relaxed to enjoy a movie together, the thought of her footwear had long since left her mind. And despite being informed of the situation, Sam’s brother seemed entirely unconcerned too.

The following day progressed in much the same way as the previous one had. Kim woke up, prepared for her day, slipped on her shoes, and then headed off to work. She arrived at the school in good time and her lessons went just as she’d planned the previous evening. The only difference was that her mind wandered towards her daughter a little less than before, and her heel slipped out of the shoe a little less too.

As a result, her flats felt a bit stuffier when she finally popped her feet free that evening - once again leaving them by the door to air out until she needed them again. And once again, Kim left her shoes without a word to their victim.

The next day progressed like the previous, and so did the one after that. However, by the midpoint of Thursday, Kim could hardly feel anything was still lodged inside her right flat. With no movement coming from beneath her sole and almost no lump pushing up against her steps.

The closest the mature teacher came to checking up on the thing that used to be her daughter was during the final class she had to teach on Thursday, wherein she slipped her right foot out to give her toes a little bit of a rub. As she did so, trying not to focus on just how warm and clammy her foot felt, Kim flicked her eyes down to the shoe but was unable to see anything remotely human looking inside. Just the heavily worn insole, printed and filthy, as it always was.

By the end of Friday, Ms. Fukasawa’s feet were hot and stinky. Even as she slipped them out of the toasty prisons her black flats had become, her nostrils flared and her nose wrinkled up.

Considering just how unpleasant the scent of her feet was at a distance, Kim didn’t particularly want to risk making it any worse than it already was. But, she’d said she would put the girl out of her misery after school on Friday, so that was exactly what she planned on doing. And fortunately, Daniel planned on staying at that layabout friend of his’ house for the evening, so she wouldn’t have to worry about him accidentally walking in on his sister’s demise.

She crouched down and hooked her index under the tongue of the right shoe. Grimacing, Kim walked over to the end of the sofa and perched upon it as she examined the interior of her shoe.

“Now, let us see where you are…” Kim said aloud, tipping the shoe towards the nearest light to get a better view.

She had expected to hear the usual chorus of begging and whimpering when she got near enough to the shoe, but strangely no sounds rose to meet her approach. And so, she peered a little deeper.

To begin with, all she saw was the inside of her shoe exactly as she remembered it. No signs of any life beyond whatever invisible bacteria had gathered after days of her feet sweating inside the leather confines. She looked down at her right sole, just making sure the tiny girl hadn’t gotten stuck to her foot or had possibly fallen out somewhere along the way.

Until the smallest of coughs crossed the threshold inside the shoe, and her eyes returned to it. Fixed on the space where the centre of her sole usually rested.

There, all but crushed into the insole of her flats, looking indistinguishable from the rest of the dried sweat and grime coating the rest of the material around her, hardly worth glancing at more than once, was Sam. The whites of her vacant, suffering eyes acted as the only distinguishing factor between her existence and the inanimate surface of the smelly shoe surrounding her. As far as camouflage went, it was an especially disgusting version.

For the briefest moment, Kim’s eyes widened a touch while her brow furrowed. Something approaching concern crossing her usually inscrutable face. But it lasted only a moment before her composure returned and her lip curled. “Ugh… you look vile.”

While Kim’s week hadn’t been too far from normal, Sam’s had been foul beyond belief.

Though she was still alive - barely - it hadn’t taken more than a day for her to wish she was dead. And to mean it this time.

“Wait! Mom, please don’t do this! You don’t h-have to… I don’t want— NO—“ Was just about all she’d managed on Tuesday morning before Kim’s foot had entered the shoe and put all of her mother’s weight down onto her minuscule body.

To begin with, the smell was bad but the pressure was a lot worse. However, it didn’t take long for that dynamic to flip. And by what Sam assumed had been lunchtime, the pressure was still grinding the young woman in the insole of the shoe while the increasingly stifling stink of sweaty feet had magnified immensely. Where she’d previously been able to breathe, the tiny girl now struggled to even inhale without her whole body convulsing under the oppressive dominion of Kim’s stinky foot.

Once home, after only a single day, Sam would’ve done anything to have her misery ended. Life under her mom’s foot could get so much worse than she’d thought imaginable the previous evening, and there seemed to be no sign of that experience stopping.

Kim’s foot was too soft to completely crush her without the giant woman meaning to, and the torrent of sweat and smell had effectively incapacitated Sam. Leaving her unable to move and hardly able to talk. So for the rest of the evening and subsequent night, during which she hardly slept, she just lay in the space she was being ground down into.

It was a small mercy, but Sam’s position had meant she got squashed under the ball of Kim’s sole. Whilst still deeply unpleasant, pressuring, and dehumanising, at least the smell had been less repulsive and the feeling of her skin less sticky than it might’ve been beneath her mom’s toes.

The next day was even worse. Despite Kim leaving the flats, and by association, her daughter, to air out for the whole evening, they still stank pretty unpleasantly. And it didn’t take long for things to get putrid for Sam.

Spending hours getting bruised and brutalised beneath her mom, the tiny girl was unable to do a single thing. The only thing moving across her entire body were her eyes blankly staring up into the meaty flesh of Kim’s increasingly sweaty foot and her fragile chest slowly pumping up and down, processing all of the smell surrounding her.

Wednesday evening was more dire than Tuesday since the shoes didn’t cool quite as much or expel as much of the sweaty smell either. And with her throat compressed and dried out from swallowing an inhumane amount of salty liquid, Sam could only manage a weak, “…m-mom…”, before she was left alone again.

By Thursday, Sam was spending more time unconscious than not. Truly overwhelmed in mind and body by the unimaginably cruel conditions within her mother’s flats when worn during her days at school. In her few lucid moments, the girl wondered if things were this bad for all tiny people who get trapped inside another person’s footwear.

Friday came and went in a blur of foot, stink, sweat, and darkness. Sam wasn’t afforded enough mercy to pass out even once during the entire day since the aroma had finally become too intense to even permit that. Every breath made her wretch uncontrollably and her eyes could hardly see even when a brief amount of light skipped inside the shoe for all the dried sweat nearly welding her eyelids shut.

Once her leather cell was removed from Kim’s foot, Sam didn’t register what had happened. She didn’t know what was occurring, hardly conscious of where she was, and all but having lost a grip on who she used to be. With no social contact and relentless torture under Kim Fukasawa’s foot, she was little more than a husk.

Sam’s eyes just about recognised the colossal green orbs staring back at her, but were past the point of communication. She just groaned, letting out a quiet whimper, lacking the strength to peel her body out of the dented shape it occupied in the insole of mother’s flat.

“Hmm, perhaps it would be better to just leave you inside there,” the voice spoke, to which Sam did nothing. “I doubt you will last much longer…”

If she had enough of anything to cry, maybe she would’ve. But she couldn’t.

It took a moment to weigh her options, but Kim eventually decided against doing that, even with how disgusting the thing inside her shoe looked. Her fingers entered and dug the body out with the same degree of relish as the teacher might’ve sifted through the trash.

She took hold of one of the thing’s legs and yanked the rest of it out of her shoe, bringing it up to her face. Kim’s nose wrinkled even as she lowered her flat since the grimy creature smelt just as bad as the shoe did.

“Well,” she said, eyes cold and voice dismissive. “Do I even need to ask? Considering how you look… I would guess you probably wish had died by now. I was hoping you might have been finished off by today too, which would have saved me needing to drag you out of my shoe. But you didn’t.”

With how the filth between her fingers swayed, calling it human seemed closer to a joke she might’ve shared with her friends than something that could have ever been truthful. Whatever might’ve happened to her daughter, this thing that’d spent four days being trampled flat inside her stinky shoe didn’t resemble Sam at all.

“Any last words, little thing?”

Sam’s mouth creaked open but nothing came out. Just a slightly longer-than-average exhale.

Kim frowned. “I did not think so.”

Hooking her free index finger around her cheek, the mature woman brought the speck to her mouth and prepared to squeeze it between her lips. And this time, it didn’t resist.

She pushed it onto her tongue and clamped her jaw shut. Driving the thing up into the roof of her mouth with a soft crunch and then instinctually spitting it back out into her palm.

“Eugh, I cannot do that. You taste like sweat and lint and… goodness knows what else lives in my shoes,” she said.

For a moment, Kim tried to force herself to do what she’d been planning on returning to all along. To place it back in her mouth and swallow the girl for good this time. However, with that awful flavour still tainting her tongue, she looked down at the form dangling between her fingers, motionless and pathetic, and she knew she couldn’t do it. Kim dreaded to think what kind of nasty gems she might infect herself with by putting such a disgusting thing into her mouth and what it might do to her digestive system. It looked more like a ragged piece of her insole than a human being.

She considered dumping it into the toilet and flushing it away, or maybe dropping it into the waste disposal, but none of those were a guarantee that it would die. And since it must have longed to be finished off, that left her with one easy option.

Repositioning it between her fingertips, taking hold of the thing’s head and applying a severe amount of force, Kim spoke one last time.

“Goodbye, Sa—“ She hesitated, before correcting herself. “Bug.”

The tiny girl tried to do something but failed. Not to resist, but almost to show she still existed. But by now, there was nothing she could do. Her throat was crushed, dried out with sweat. Her ears had bled out from the constant, deafening noise of Kim’s footsteps. Her eyes could scarcely open for long, let alone focus on anything. And her nose was broken, with her sense of smell obliterated from four days of funnelling Kim’s impressively sweaty foot smell through it.

Without ceremony, Kim pressed her fingertips together and crushed the remains of her daughter. Sam died instantly.

She walked over to the sink and washed the stains off her fingers, brushing the detritus into the plughole. Once her hands were clean, Kim dried them off and returned her shoes to the space they occupied by the door.

Thinking to herself as she reclined into the sofa, she decided she would give her flats a break next week. They’d seen far too much of her feet recently.

Maybe she could break in that new pair of sandals she’d bought instead? Oh, and she ought to tell Daniel about his sister when she next saw him.