Heat. Pressure. I gasp for air, but there’s little to be found. Fleshy walls compress around me, moving of their own will, sliding around, sliding around. Flick! Flick! Flick! The breath is knocked out of me repeatedly, as I hear stifled, muffled laughter from far away. Anna.
“…Worship me you worm…” I hear her mocking, very muffled, but audible nonetheless. “…LEEK my toes worm! Hurry up! If ya’ don’t, I’ll EETCHA!” she continues.
Come on Anna... I’m so exhausted. Why can’t you just flick me around between your toes and let me suffer down here in peace?
“LEEEEEEK! WORM!” she booms, as I quiver at the sound of her voice. Soon, the boot is unzipping, and I feel cool air rushing into the boot to meet me. My eyes slowly adjust to the brighter light… the sun is setting behind the custody tower in the distance, and Anna is balanced on horseback, holding her sweaty foot up by the ankle to see me. Her face is a crazed, sadistic grin, and her eyes are intense, huge, truly like an owl. “Wanna slide down my throat? DO YAAAA...?” she booms as she pulls her foot closer to her face, her gigantic mouth coming closer, nearly filling my vision.
I immediately summon what little strength I have and press my tongue to the wall of flesh nearest my face.
Salt, and grime, and sweat, by the mouthful. But I do it again, as her massive eyes are intensely bearing down on me.
“That’s more like it,” she grins, as I’m suddenly plummeting downward, and the boot pulled back on around me. Soon it is zipped back up, and I don’t dare stop licking, as much as it burns my mouth, my tongue, and every muscle in my tiny neck. “I’m proud of you, you’re learning!” she laughs. “You’re my toe-jam, so you’ve GOTTA DO EVERY LITTLE FUCKING THING I SAY!” She continually flicks me around, sliding me, grinding me, suffocating and pressing me between her sweaty-slick lower digits. I try my best to lick her toes the entire time, but occasionally she yells at me from above, threatening to eat me every so often.
When she finally gets off the horse, I find myself crushed, hard, under the mass of her body. Her boots don’t have much give, not nearly as much as Mom’s sneakers, and Anna’s feet are not nearly as soft. “How’s it fucking feel, worm?” she mocks, as her massive footfalls crush me. She’s walking out of the horse pasture and to her house, at least I figure. “You’re nothing but a lump under my foot, Alisa,” she continues. “We used to be BEST FRIENDS, remember?” she continues. She’s really rubbing salt in the wound now, as I feel tears start to stream down my cheeks.
“Help me…” I cry, but there is no helping me. Anna gets to torture me. She's my owner now, it's her right. BOOM! Her foot comes down, again, and again. BOOM! Carelessly. Cruelly. BOOM! No more… I cry… as I slowly black out….
____________________________________
It’s eleven in the morning.
“Think fast,” Anna says as she tosses me another pack of candy from her Halloween stash.
I sit cross-legged in her room with the game paused, simply observing my surroundings: Horseback riding trophies; pictures of family and friends; they are all around. I’m not personally in any of the pictures… she’d have a hard time explaining a picture of me… a shrinker… to her friends. And by friends, I mean her “normal” friends from school… the friends I see now, in her pictures, laughing with their arms around her. I’ve been welcomed into her room before, but rarely at normal size, and it feels strange for everything to not be miles away, out of reach. I feel honored to actually be sitting in her floor with candy in my mouth and a game controller in my hands. Smiling. Laughing. Having fun. Usually I only see this room while I’m smashed under the smelly sole of her foot, if she and her real friends have a slumber party, or decide to play video games together.
I glance over at Anna as she takes a seat on the floor next to me, her long flowing blonde hair falling gracefully as she sits. Mom’s violet jewel still dangles threateningly around her neck, but to my surprise she hadn’t decided to use it on me today… yet, anyway. Of course, she works it in the conversation, often threatening me with “toe-jam duty” with a devious grin on her pretty face. But toe-jam duty was yesterday. Today I seem to be her friend. She picks up her controller and we resume playing, shoving candy in our mouths whenever we get a spare hand.
And I can’t believe I’m genuinely having fun. It’s the morning, and I’m dressed in green pajamas. Anna bought them for me after I complained about Mom not letting me get them. She thought that much of me, so I try to fight the memories of Anna’s gigantic crushing feet from yesterday. And just look at me. I’m having fun. Laughing. Eating candy and playing games.
“Hey, sorry about yesterday,” Anna looks at me with a strange squint, like she's forcing herself to do something unnatural. “Your mom told me not to go easy on you, and I guess I just got carried away.”
“It’s… it’s… okay,” I say, cautiously. I’m not really okay with it, to be honest, but an apology isn’t something I usually hear. I’m actually quite surprised. We continue playing the game, and I find myself doing quite well. I’ve seen her playing this game quite a bit, although it was from between the cracks between her toes in the past. I’m managing to pick up on some of the more advanced moves, besides just jumping and dodging. We’ve been playing for over an hour now, and I’m having so much fun, laughing and just being normal with Anna, I just never want it to end.
“Oh come ON!” Anna suddenly booms, causing me to wince. I had just knocked her off the side of the screen, making her lose a life.
“That’s a fucking cheap-shot!” she yells in frustration, looking at me out of the corner of her eye as she angrily shoves a peanut-butter cup in her mouth, waiting for her character to respawn on the screen. It was a perfectly fair move, she’s done it to me twenty times. I feel my cheeks flush, irritated by her childish behavior. I was honestly thinking she might brag on me for picking up on her game so fast. I hardly ever get to play video games. I know Anna is no slouch at this game, and judging by how much she plays it, it must be her favorite. Me? I hardly ever get a chance to play it. Again, I’ve only caught onto the rules by catching glimpses from underneath her smelly foot as she kneaded me into the carpet while she and her friends played it.
So as I see her fuming in frustration, I try to figure out where exactly it’s coming from. I soon see another opportunity, and knock her off the side of the screen again using the same “unfair” tactic she complained about before. This leaves her with only one life, and me two. And the game pauses. I turn, looking her in her large blue eyes. She’s not okay with this. And that surprises me because I’ve never seen her be a poor loser. I’ve seen her play with her brothers, and her friends, and she usually handles losing just fine. And then I realize it. It’s not losing that’s bothering her, it’s losing to me. That should never happen.
“What the hell Alisa?” she says.
“…I’m trying to win,” I say, focusing hard on the screen, not her, trying to keep her from throwing me off. I know I haven’t done anything wrong. She wouldn’t get mad like this at one of her normal friends. But we’re not normal friends, not anymore. I'm not sure you could call us friends at all. I’m a shrinker, and she’s my owner.
She reappears on the screen and gets some good hits in before I can react. Before I can reorient my character, her character puts mine in a grapple and throws me straight down, over the edge of the battlefield. I fly off the bottom of the stage.
“That’s more like it,” she says. I see a sudden spark in her eyes, and that smug grin from yesterday starts to return. “Alisa, how about this,” she says looking at the screen intensely. “If you can beat me, I promise not to shrink you for the whole week. I’ll tell your mom that you’re staying over with me. We'll keep playing games, eating candy, horseback riding, the works,” she grins. “But if I beat you, you’re going back in my fucking boot... and I get to stomp you under my sweaty feet the whole fucking time,” she adds, reeking of smugness,
My lips tighten as I feel my pace quicken. I know I really don’t have the skills to beat her. I feel my eyes piercing the screen in semi-panic. What have I done? I remember myself crying yesterday for her to stop, as she continued walking on me, uncaring, superior, laughing down at me from high above in her world of normals. It's nothing for her to reduce me to that again.
No! No! No! Suddenly everything... EVERYTHING depends on me winning again. So as my character returns to the screen, I quickly turn my fighter to run the other way to try to get some distance. But it doesn’t work. Her fighter dashes and catches mine in another grapple, then sends my player flying up in the air, and starts kicking me up in the air again and again... without letting me touch the ground, never giving me a chance to regain control of my character. I see her squint at me. She's not even looking at the screen anymore, as she continues knocking my character helplessly into the air.
My character is finally sent flying off the screen.
“PLAYER ONE WINS!” flashes across the screen, My hands grip the controller tightly. My lips are tense. She squints, playing with the violet jewel dangling around her neck. “Poor... poor... TOE-jam,” she laughs. With that, she twirls around, rolling a bit onto her back and plastering the side of my face with her sweaty left bare foot. "Shouldn't have challenged me, now you're my bitch all week,” she smirks.
A strange thrill shoots through my midsection. What?
Yes. I'll do whatever she wants. I turn my face into her sole, allowing her to do as she pleases, to flatten her superior foot right onto my nose. I close my eyes, allowing the scent of her sweaty foot in... and find myself already imagining... Anna’s massive body...
...on top of me...
...flattening me...
...into the insole of her cruel, oppressive black boots...
Wait... what the hell? Why would I fantasize about this? To be lost... forgotten, reduced to nothing under Anna's foot? I watch Anna's sweaty toes flick around before my eyes. I can see her face from between them, smirking triumphantly, as she takes the jewel from around her neck and gives it a good twist.