Scott laid huddled at the bottom of his sister’s duffel bag in pitch blackness, encased in a thick, woolen knee-high sock that she had tied at the top with a hair scrunchie to ensure he stayed locked inside it all day.
The sock had been worn earlier that week on Maggie’s right foot during a short walk around the grounds, but she hadn’t exercised in it, which was a definite plus for the mentally crippled eighteen-year-old high school grad.
“Bye-bye, big… I mean, little brother. We’re running a couple drills this morning, so I’ll be back to feed you at noonish, I guess,” Maggie shrugged, clutching her doll-like sibling in a fist, her thumb pressing into his lower abdomen dangerously close to his crotch. “I’m gonna give you your own little sleeping bag so you can take a nap and be alllllll ready so we can… hang out later. Deal?”
“Yeah,” Scott sighed lifelessly. As if that was really a question.
Maggie gave him an extra little squeeze with her fingers before grinning at him and lowering her fist down into the depths of the bag, past the pile of unfolded clothes and toward the waiting opening of his “sleeping bag.”
“Don’t try anything stupid, Scott,” she said with pursed lips and narrowed eyes, her tone suddenly tensing. “You better still be in there when I get back, or we’re gonna have problems. And… if you actually try and get OUT of the bag, well… let’s just say I’ll want some extra company in my cleats when we play a scrimmage tonight. Got that?”
“Yep.”
“Sweet. Seeya!” Maggie cooed, the joy returning to her tone.
When she had first plopped him inside and blown him a sarcastic kiss before tightening the top up and leaving him alone, Scott had felt his stomach stirring, begging for a clean breath of air that he knew wasn’t going to come for a number of hours. The smell wasn’t painfully strong, but it was everywhere. It was impossible to lay down for rest without burying his nose in a wooly fiber containing the very essence of the filthiest part of his sister’s body. His best hope was sitting up straight, although even this allowed the upper layer of sock fabric to cascade heavily down onto him. He eventually resorted in the first hour or so to remaining perfectly still in an upright seated position, with his arms heaved over his head so he could distance his abused nose as much as possible from the stale-smelling footwear.
After a while had passed and the stench wasn’t quite as sharp, Scott found his breathing coming easier, and he was able to let the sock fall, as his arms were becoming sore and he was running out of options.
After becoming bored, Scott climbed his way toward the opening of the sock until he hit the tightened end that was loosely sealed by the hair scrunchie. By pushing his arm through the hole, Scott found he was able to force his way through enough that he could probably get his entire body through by working the scrunchie slowly up the mouth of the sock until it was off. That, at least, would allow him the freedom to roam the limited, hilly environment of his sister’s shorts and underwear, a prospect that didn’t particularly appeal to Scott, but it was better than being cooped up in the itchy blackness of this knee sock for the next four hours or however the hell long was remaining.
To Scott, time seemed to be passing at an inordinately slow rate. It was only the third day of the camp, with still two more days of this hell before he got to return home, and already it felt like a month, at best. It dragged on even more hellishly when he was serving part of his in-shoe sentence, mashed up as hard as he could be against his little sister’s foot without bruising.
The nights had been sleepless. The previous one, Maggie had borrowed a small roll of Scotch tape from one of her friends and pressed it in layers all over Scott’s body until the only part of him not covered in it was his head and feet. From there, she had plastered him heavily against the ball of her foot and, after wriggling it a few times to ensure he was cemented in place, she had tugged a thick blue sock over top of him and hopped into her top bunk.
The entire night was spent with Scott struggling uselessly against the bonds holding him down, taking slow breaths so he had to endure the aroma as little as possible. For the most part, Maggie had bathed herself after the day’s hard work on the soccer field, but she had never been particularly thorough, and Scott could feel tiny flecks of dirt imprinted in her skin rubbing up against his back, itching, when he could do nothing about it.
In the morning, he was blinded by sunlight as Maggie tore the sock off and, in one swift motion, ripped the pieces of layered tape off of Scott’s body, a sensation he would’ve been willing to do without, particularly when the strip was pulled off of his member. The next several minutes after that were spent with him gasping for air and clutching his crotch in agony while his sister cackled at his misfortune before scooping him up into her palm and flicking idly at his hair with her thumb and forefinger.
Still lodged in the sock and considering forcing his way out, Scott decided against it. While getting out was a prospect, getting back in before his sister returned and managing somehow to replace the scrunchie while inside the sock was a tougher one. The range of the duffel bag wasn’t much larger than the length of the tube sock, and besides, Scott did not relish the idea of having to endure an additional punishment for breaking Maggie’s rule.
Sighing with temporary defeat, Scott flopped dejectedly back into the folds of the giant tube sock. Summer was almost over. Soon, he’d be headed off to his dream school, away from the controlling grasp of his mother and bratty sister. Away from goddamned machines that could render him a toe ornament for his soccer-holic kid sister. The very idea of such a reality was enticing enough to actually put a smile on Scott’s face and resolve into his heart.
Fuck her, Scott breathed to himself. Fuck her. I can handle this. I can handle anything she dishes out, the slimy bitch. Bring it on. Bring it on and I’ll laugh at you. Stick me in your sock, jam me between your toes, flick me in the face with your thumb and pretend it was an accident. I’ll still laugh.
Scott’s attention was returned to the present moment when he heard the sound of the duffel’s zipper slowly being undone just above him, through the filter of the sock fabric.
Huh. That hadn’t been very long at all. It felt to Scott like it had only been a couple hours, if that. Maggie wasn’t supposed to return until noon.
“Little guuuuuuy…” sang a soft voice happily from above.
It wasn’t Maggie.
Nervously, Scott huddled up into the sock. Maybe Maggie was on the other side of the room and had simply asked one of her friends to grab her favorite toy for the week out of the bag to put him in new footwear lodgings. Yeah, that had to be it. It had to.
“Are you sure he’s in there?” hissed another feminine whisper from above.
“Yeah! I asked her like five minutes ago, she’s out with Squad B running suicides around the East Field. I asked her if she was wearing him right then and she said no, that she left him in her bag,” answered the first voice.
“Why the heck wouldn’t she want to wear him all the time?” chuckled the other girl’s voice. “If my mom let ME shrink one of my brothers, I’d wear the same freakin’ shoe all week and not let them out at all. Like… at ALL.”
“I know, right?” laughed the other. “But she said he was in here somewhere, and it doesn’t look like the zipper’s open, so he probably didn’t get out… little guy? Little guuuuuy…” she called out again softly.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Scott froze in place. Was there even a plausible way out of this? Perhaps it was just delaying the inevitable, but by remaining as still as possible, Scott clung to some invisible hope that they’d give up after a couple minutes of searching underneath shirts and underwear and finding nothing.
As if he was that lucky.