This situation had been nothing but a death trap from the very start.  Already in the past afternoon, he’d been minimized to the size of a bug and nearly killed by Casey, her foot and toes no less, twice.  Were he not the athletic person he was, he would no longer be in one piece.  He would be a pool of blood, painted and splattered on her foot.  Fortunately, he was athletic and had narrowly escaped death two times in a row.  He could only pray that he had the luck of James T. Kirk when it came to having death thrown at him so often and managed to get through this.  Unfortunately for Marty, however, there was no starship hovering above to move him where he needed to go. 

The pressure of this situation was starting to get to Marty, quite literally.  When he’d laid himself down on the skin of the foot, just above the toes, a tremendous force shoved down on him, nearly gluing him to that skin.  It was incredibly powerful, almost like there were a thousand hands shoving on every portion of his body, forcing him to be immobile where he was.  His organs felt like they would pop at any moment from the pressure.  He tried to scream, but he couldn’t.  The moment his lips parted to let it out, the same force got thrown into his mouth, shoving on his tongue and throat.

After a few moments, the shift of this force changed.  He bounced slightly on the foot as he heard an immense clicking quake-like noise around him.  Casey must have been walking around with him in her shoe.  At this point, the force was no longer pushing down on his body, allowing him to cough for a second, relieved that there wasn’t any more pressure bearing down on him.  He, however, wasn’t so lucky with this situation.  He knew what would come next, and he dreaded every second of it.  He kept himself in a laying position, expecting the fear he just went through to happen again.

Just as he expected, it did happen again.  There was another quake-like sound, though further away and the force resurfaced, shoving down on his body again.  He had shifted his hands, clenching tightly onto the skin around him, ensuring that the force Casey was producing as she walked around wasn’t going to toss him back down to her toes.  It was a horrifying ride, but after the second one started, he began to realize that he would be able to make it through all of this.  It wouldn’t be easy, fighting the pressure and the heat of the pump, but it was possible.

After about 6 rounds of this “Step Torture”, everything was starting to have an effect on Marty.  His brain felt like it was melting and his entire body was craving water.  His eyelids were starting to get heavy as the heat was forcing fatigue into his body.  The environment around him was wearing down on his body, almost forcing him into a state of unconsciousness.  After the sixth round of stepping, however, everything stopped.  It had actually stopped in the middle of the sixth ascent.  Could Casey have been holding her foot in the air at the time?  Why would she be doing that?

Outside of the shoe, Casey had slowly walked into the kitchen.  Her plan was to come out and finish up dinner, while she waited for Marty to come back to wherever he had gone.  She needed something to do in the meantime.  Unfortunately for her, she was a good cook.  She’d seen the stove and oven on the way into the kitchen and saw that there was nothing she could really do.  Nothing needed to be stirred and nothing needed to be checked.  Everything was ready.  All she had to do was wait another 30 minutes for it to finish cooking.

She’d mentally sighed as she came out to the kitchen, realizing there was nothing for her to do out there.  This wasn’t good for her, at all.  She was worried about Marty, and she wanted a distraction, for that very reason.  She didn’t want to go find him.  She wanted him to find her and be surprised for the pumps and everything else she was doing for him.  The debate was taxing on her mind.  Instead of fixing something else in the kitchen, she’d sat herself in a wooden chair, by the table.  If anything, she would be able to relax for a few more minutes as she tried to get her mind off her worries.

As she sat at the table, she held her legs as still as she could.  She was tense, at the moment.  The longer she went without finding Marty, the more and more worried she had become.  Her feet were still, yet her arms clenched onto one another, trying to keep from shaking as she thought about her husband.  Where could he be?  This was too long for a bathroom visit, right?  Could he have gone to the spare bedroom?  Could he have gone to the Dining Room?  Maybe he was someplace else?  There were so many places he could be, but only one place he was, a lot closer to her than she could ever have imagined.

Marty had no idea why Casey had stopped, but planned to take this opportunity to get out of the prison that was her pump.  Although there was some slight fatigue running on him, he quickly got up and looked around for the light.  Luckily, Casey was pushing down on her toes, revealing a crack in her pumps that was more than big enough for him to fit through.  He even half-smiled when he saw it.  It was as if his wife could mentally know her husband’s plight and was trying to give him an opening.  He took this opportunity and ran up the slant of foot, towards the crack. 

He didn’t have to run very far to find the crack, or even to reach it.  He was running fast, and had just come under it when his feet caught onto one another and he tripped.  He yelped as his fell, face-first, into a warm mass of flesh, taking deep breaths.  He laid there for a few moments, completely unaware that one of his legs was still under the pump’s material.  He took deep breaths until something unexpected happened.

Casey, still sitting at the table, moved her toes a little after feeling a ticklish sensation on her foot.  As she did so, her foot and pump met, immediately bearing down and pinning against Marty’s left calve…