“You know I don't like wrapping paper,” the muffled voice of a woman said. “It's so wasteful.”

“I know,” another woman apologized. “But, I couldn't resist!” I knew this voice; last week it had been a stranger, but now I hated it more than I’d ever hated anything before.

I covered my ears from the shriek of ripping paper. Enormous fingertips tore away the covering of my prison. The darkness above me was replaced with a giant face. Her nose and cheeks were small, soft, and freckled. Large hazel eyes devoid of makeup squinted at me in the half-light. Locks of dirty-blonde hair hung around them in a manner generously described as “unstyled.” Her eyebrows were thin, but their confused furrows were easily visible.

“A tiny man?”

“Happy birthday!” the other voice answered. When the face above me didn't respond, it added: “Don't you recognize him? The litterbug?”

It was a lie. My 'littering' had been an accident of the wind, but that hadn't stopped them from berating me for not caring about the planet. Regardless, the face above me lit up with recognition.

“Oh!” she said. “How?”

“My RA friends helped track down his dorm. I shrunk him when he left for class. I know you said you wanted a tiny person pet, so I thought, 'Two birds, one stone!'”

The face overhead smiled. “Good thinking! I love it!”

The little cage I was in shook as it changed hands. The rest of the paper was torn away, and I saw that I was in a living room dimly lit with candles. The two women sat on a couch that was faded, stained, torn, and misshapen, looking more like garbage than furniture. Colors danced across the walls from a muted television, and a patchouli-scented incense stick was failing in its attempt to conceal the stench of cheap weed. I was lifted up to a face I'd spent a week cowering under; it was thinner than the other, with a nose whose tip was longer than it was wide. Her hair was dyed black with golden highlights, and cut in a jagged manner so that it never fell evenly across her face. Her icy-gray eyes stared at me like a hungry cat.

“Let me show you how I've trained him.” She unlatched my cage and dumped me on the coffee table in front of them. One giant hand tossed the cage aside. The other flew over my head and swept aside empty energy drink cans, clearing some space. I cringed — the sound was like a car accident in my tiny ears — but I jumped when, not a second later, an enormous wall of black slammed onto the chipped wood in front of me. A sharp, acrid odor billowed out with impact. I didn’t have to look to know what it was, but I looked anyway. It was a foot: her foot, covered in the same black socks she wore everyday. Hours in a Converse sauna had imparted the appendage with a heat I felt even from inches away. I half expected to see the sweat radiating off as as a fog. I watched the wall of fabric warp, then stretch, warp again while a series of pops crackled from the joints above.

“You know what to do, Wormy. I was on my feet all day and they need some love.”

“Yes, Miss Cat,” I replied obediently, and ran to her sole. I didn’t love her feet, or course — I hated them. But, I did my best to make it look like I couldn’t live without them, because I probably couldn’t. I buried my face in the cloth, my body just large enough to hug the majority of her heel. It was as if she’d dipped her sock in vinegar; I could feel the stench in my nose, and I was being waterboarded with sweat. Still, I planted kiss after kiss on the reeking fabric. It tasted as good as it smelled. My lips feeling more and more tainted with every peck. Nevertheless, I did what she expected. Pushing in as deep as I could, as though I was attempting to reach right through to her skin, I made her foot into my whole world. She had to feel me. She had to know I was making an effort. I was relieved when the powerful muscles of her foot flexed, scrunching her toes in satisfaction.

“Miss Cat?” the blonde asked with a giggle.

“Well, he's your pet, so you're his mistress. I'm just the girl that trained him.” As she said that, her heel pulled away, and her toes clamped around my head. The smell here was even worse, but I fell into my work dutifully. I nuzzled into the space between her toes like a kitten desperate for mother’s milk.

“You're a little more than that,” the other woman said with a heavy air. Her attention turned back to me. “Let's see…. Mistress Belle? Or should I use a different name?”

I nearly fell on my face when Cat dropped her foot to the floor. She liked to do that: watching me stumble amused her. She lifted the other foot in front of me, tilting it forward and lifting her toes so I could hug the ball. She knew she didn’t have to command me. I shoved my face into the soaked fabric beneath her toes, and stretched my arms across the knot of muscle.

“Mistress Belle is fine, I guess” Cat said. “But if he were mine, I'd want him to call me 'Goddess'”

“Hmm…” Belle seemed to mull that over. “I guess I am his goddess now: a cruel goddess of nature, punishing him for his crimes against the Earth!” She giggled at that. “Now stop hogging him, he's my gift!”

The soaked, reeking socked foot moved away from me, and in its place slammed something far worse.

Caked with grime and dust, the calloused heel was more boulder than flesh. Long, sinewy toes squirmed and grasped above my head like a bundle of snakes. Their pads were just as worn as the heel, just as dry as the Sahara. Every twitch released a hail of dirt and dead skin; I had to look away to keep sand grains as big as pebbles from hitting my face. Mercifully, the odor was not so bad as Cat’s. Without socks or shoes to trap and ferment her brine, Belle’s most prominent stench was from floor dust and the general musk of someone that hadn’t bathed. Still, as I stared into the grimy ridges in front of me, my stomach churned.

“You called him ‘Wormy?’” Her toes fanned so that she could peer down at me through the gap. I lowered my head from her gaze.

“Yeah. He’s a worm beneath our feet, after all. A parasite on the world.” Laying her head on Belle’s shoulder as she spoke, Cat followed her gaze.

“You’re evil!” the blonde laughed. “Well, Wormy, you heard her! Your punishment begins now — start lickin’!”

“Yes, Mistress Belle,” I said as though I hadn’t had a week or torture already, as though I hadn’t just been huffing Cat’s sweat. My tongue poised, I shuffled to the grime-encrusted ridge.

“It’s ‘Goddess,’ twerp!” Cat said. “Don’t you listen?”

Sweaty fabric smashed into my back, the hard wall of a toenail beneath it. My face slammed into Belle’s foot. The taste of salt, dirt, and unwashed skin exploded across my tongue; I almost wished I’d bitten it off in the impact. I tried to take a reflexive step back, but Cat’s toe held me firmly in place. The best I could do was turn my head, scraping my cheek against the sharp skin jutting from the cracked and dry heel. Two scents clawed their ways into my nose with every breath I took; one a familiar damp, hot vinegar, the other dry, dusty, and new.

“Is he doing it?” Belle asked.

“You’ll know. Lick, worm!” Her toe pushed me even harder against the stony skin.

My tongue darted from my mouth and I forced it across the ridges in front of me. Their vile dryness sapped away all the moisture, but I knew Cat’s anger would be worse than cutting my tongue, so I did it again.

“Oh, I feel him now! It’s like a little tickle!” Giant muscles flexed beneath her skin as her toes wriggled in delight far overhead.

“What do you think? Going to keep him?”

“Fuck yeah! Serves the litterbug right!” While she giggled, I re-lubricated my tongue and lapped again. “Best gift ever! Thanks, babe!”

Again and again, I ran my tongue over her heel, only stopping to claim some moisture from my mouth. Their mingling odors surrounded me, and dirt gathered around my lips in a ring made muddy by my own saliva. Over the wet slapping of my work, similar sounds floated down from the women. While I licked and kissed the dirty ridges of Belle’s heel, their lips and tongues had at each other with far greater enthusiasm than I could ever muster. I delved into every crack in her skin and into crevices that were too small to come clean during bathing. My tongue revolted at their taste, but Cat had trained me too well to let a few gags and heaves cause me to disobey. Cat’s tongue delved into Belle’s mouth; instead of gagging, both of them moaned.

Their feet shifted. For a moment, I thought I’d be free, but a moment later Cat’s toe pressed me even harder into Belle’s heel. I heard fabric sighing in a way that could only mean their hands were slithering under each others’ clothes.

I kissed. I licked. I stretched my neck as far as I could. By the time their pants were unbuttoned, Belle’s dirty heel had a clean, moisturized circle that stood out from the rest of the dusty sole. The pressure on my back released as Cat’s toes curled, but neither woman acknowledged me; they were too distracted. In that moment, I was a footnote, a little side amusement for the main event happening upstairs.

I thought about running. I thought about hiding. I thought about throwing myself from the coffee table and hoping for the best. I thought about the punishment I would receive when they found me — my training had covered that scenario in gruesome detail. So, dirty, reeking, and broken, I continued worshiping my new goddess while she and Cat groped and fingerbanged each other.

“Wait,” the black-haired demon whispered into Belle’s lips.

“What?”

Cat’s toe pressed me into Belle’s heel once again. It was a nudge with the force of a landslide. “I taught him more than just foot stuff, y’know...”

The foot I’d been worshiping fell back to the floor, finally sending me sprawling to the table. Despite the fear creeping up my spine, I forced my head up to look at them. Their sex paused for the moment, the divine beings that ruled my life now were in each other’s arms. The blonde goddess sat with her shorts halfway down her thighs, the dew in her wiry, untamed forest glinting in the candlelight. The devil’s black jeans were unbuttoned and loose, and her heavy metal tee looked like it had been in a tornado.

“Like what?” Belle asked, breathless.

Cat smirked. “Let’s just say…” She leaned forward. Slimy, black-tipped fingers surrounded me like the mandibles of a monstrous spider. “He’s earned his spelunking badge.”

“Oh,” Belle breathed. “His goddess definitely has caves to explore.”

My heart raced as memories only a day or two old raced back to me — I’d hated that part of her training regimen the most. The mandibles closed. The fluids of a goddess smeared across my body as Cat lifted me in her grasp.

“But can he make it through all that wilderness? There might be monsters in that bush!”

Belle laughed. “Shut up!” she said. “Mother Nature goes au naturel. That’s not the cave I was thinking of, anyway.”

As my devil brought me to my goddess, the air on my face reminded me of the wind that had damned me. If there truly was a goddess of nature — a real one, not this hippie pretender or her emo cunt — she was a hateful, cruel bitch indeed. I’d never before littered in my life; now, I never will.