The pleasant odor of old wood rose out of the walls and up through the floorboards, and as I filled my lungs with the delicious, woody smell of the room, I remembered Jennifer telling me about the age of the house, and each of its previous inhabitants. Who lives here? I asked her. You mean who lived here, she replied. No, I went on, standing firm, I mean Who lives here now? Where is everyone else? Jennifer looked at me aslant, bemusedly, and then her face cleared up – she seemed to understand. Oh, she said. You must be asleep. And when she said that, I woke up.

When I opened my eyes in the darkness, I breathed in deeply again –  except, this time, instead of the sweet and woodsy spice of a room two centuries old, I tasted on my tongue the strange and overpowering smell that put me to sleep that night, for the first time. Before leaving me alone that night, Jennifer had dropped me into one of Chloe’s raunchy, unwashed socks. Since – Jennifer explained to me – since, in my new capacity as Chloe’s slave, it was my responsibility to please my new mistress in whatever way she desired, I ought to accustom myself to her smell.

“Dwelling on the past never helped anyone,” Jennifer told me, as she took me on the long tour of the house.

I nodded my head, wearily. Somehow, with every second I spent in this house with these new women, I worried that, somehow, I was betraying Holly. I didn’t want her to think I would submit or resign myself to my new situation, without some struggle. However irrational and lovesick it sounded – I wanted her to know this about me.

“We love out of force of habit,” said Jennifer.  Jenn (as Abby called her) thought she was much more intelligent than she really was – but maybe she was right about this. Maybe I only loved Holly because she was the only woman whose voice, preferences, thoughts, and private scents I’d become used to, as if they were my own. Perhaps I would come to appreciate Chloe in the same way. Still...

Anyway, that night I gagged and almost vomited inside Chloe’s sock, when Jennifer dropped me down, and rolled me up in one of her battered sneakers. The smell was horrible – well, to be fair, the stench of Holly’s sneakers was just as powerful and sometimes even worse, in its way – but Chloe was a stranger to me, completely foreign. I mean, I’d seen her photograph, but I had yet to meet her in person, face to f… – well, shoelace.

Imperceptibly, but decisively, I had moved far beyond the stage of feeling humiliated and abused by this kind of treatment. But it was very difficult for me to accept the fact that my destiny, my whole future, was about to change. I mean, to be honest about it, after I left her, I cried myself to sleep almost every night. And that first night in Chloe’s house, after I woke up from my dream, and remembered how Jennifer had tossed me into a balled-up, worn out sock, and how I was trapped in the toe of a strange woman’s tennis shoe – I started to sob quietly to myself, in the darkness.

But then everything changed. Suddenly, through a miniscule tear in the forefront of the sock, and an even smaller opening somewhere in the footbed of the shoe itself, there was a brilliant flash of light – and I saw my hands illuminated in the darkness, where I rested them on top of my knees. Five seconds of silence followed, and then there was a booming, earsplitting crash. Ten more seconds of silence followed this, and then I heard the quick but calming rattle of rain falling on a metal surface, far outside my place of confinement, maybe two floors above. A thunderstorm was brewing.

After the next lightning flash and peal of thunder, something else happened. I lost my balance and fell over onto my face, into the crusty, sweaty build-up along the underside of the sock. Once again, I almost threw up – the surprise jolt not only turned my stomach, but it almost gave me whiplash. As quickly as it started, it stopped, and then I felt something pulling or yanking on the fabric from outside. In a few seconds, I was outside Chloe’s shoe, and released from the musty, warm heart of her sock into the wide-open space of Chloe’s chamber. Before my eyes adjusted to the cool, rainy darkness – before I could see anything at all – I heard her voice.

It was Abby.

I sleepily rubbed my eyes. I think she said something to me, but I could only make out half-words and fragments of speech above the chaos of the storm. She swept me up in her hand before I could speak or pound my tiny fists in protest, or ask questions, and cautiously found her winding way back to the door of Chloe’s room. When the next thunderbolt flashed and lit up the dark, Abby made a quick darting movement off to the right, and soon enough we were back safely in her own room.

Abby’s room looked the same to me as it did earlier in the evening, except that the window was shut, and now there was a small oil lamp turned on beside her desk. She carried me over to her walk-in closet, across from her bed and diagonal from the door. Sliding open the pinewood divider, she then bent down to the floor and, brushing away some shoes and articles of clothing, opened up the trapdoor of a little aerated compartment, like an oubliette in an old medieval dungeon. 

Except, when she opened it up, there was a miniature, well-furnished, cozy little room inside, lit up by one tiny, flickering candle off in the corner.  And separated from the candle, by a few inches, there were also two made-up dollhouse beds, a couch, and an armchair. Slouched and snoring in the armchair, there was a tiny man, fast asleep.

Nodding to me, sneakily, Abby poked him with her right thumb. After shaking his head from side to side, he opened his eyes blearily. Seeing Abigail there, holding back her long, curly black hair over her shoulder, and looking down at him, he jumped up in a fright, and started trembling all over.

“Sorry!” she said. Even though she probably felt sorry, she still couldn’t hold back a grin. Then, when she started to lower me down to the little chamber, I took a fright, and started shouting and protesting.

“What are you doing?” I screamed. “I don’t want to go in there!” The man, now about twenty feet below me, was now saying something too – his hands were trembling like leaves, now, but he had gotten over the first scare.

Now it was Abby’s turn to look bewildered. “What?”

“What are you doing with me? Put me down!” I cried, close to tears.

“Jesus,” she said, “whatever you say.” Then she lowered her left hand to the little man (I remember some of the irrelevant facts too – for instance, that the moment she let go of her hair, it spilled over and eclipsed the little room for a short moment). He climbed onto Abby’s palm, and she carried him over to me.

“This is Jacob,” she explained. “I just wanted you to be introduced.”

 I recognized the man as the same one Jennifer presented to Abby earlier that evening. The half-living being she had quarantined under her sweaty foot for the past week. He still looked dazed (and still smelled sour, like the insole of a ballet flat, though not as strongly – there was another, more recent smell of soap, candle-wax, and maybe something like perfume).

“Oh, hello,” he said, straightening out the little piece of cloth he had on. “I’m Jacob.”

I didn’t know what to say – but my name. When I looked up, Abby was lying down on her side, leaning on her elbow.

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

Abby gave me a sly, conspiratorial smile. “You’ve just run away from Chloe, for good.”

I was dumbfounded. “No, I haven’t! And what if she finds out!?” At this time, I still wanted to return to Holly, and despite what Abby told me, earlier in the day – truly felt that my chances for returning to and reuniting with Holly were greater if I turned out to be an unsatisfactory slave for Chloe.

“So… what is wrong with you?” Abby wanted to know. “She’s probably like the last person who will help you. Weren’t you listening to what I said before? You don’t want to stay here, do you?”

I was conflicted. “What’s your plan?”

“Emma goes to hell, and you – and this guy – leave with me next week.”

“That’s it?”

“So far, yeah. So… What’s your problem?”

I could have told her that I didn’t trust her, but instead I said that it wasn’t for me, yet. I needed time to think it over.

“Oh,” she paused, significantly. “So… either you have something to lose – or you’re just a bird-in-the-hand girl.” She stood up, and offered me her hand again. “Even when the bird is biting and pecking at you.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely fair,” I responded, loudly, so that she could hear me. Jacob was falling asleep again, off to my right. “But it’s true that I don’t know what your plan is. And I haven’t even met Chloe yet.”

“Wow,” Abby said, as I climbed onto her warm hand. “So how do you think I’ll be able to talk to you once you meet Chloe? I can’t promise anything after tonight.”

“I know,” I said.

“Why should I trust you, now?”

For a few seconds there was an awkward silence, as the rain pattered on the roof and windows outside.

I did the only thing I could think of, in the moment. I gave her Adela’s address. Would I want anything to happen to her? Abby stared, and then shook her head, annoyed. There was a flame in her eye, but she took me up again. “Nothing ventured,” she whispered to me. “Nothing gained. At this point, I don’t care if I never see you again.”

Five minutes later, Abby’s fingers dropped me, and I plunged once again into the thick-smelling odorous darkness at the toe of Chloe’s sock. High above, I could see Abby’s face, briefly. She frowned at me, and then said “Goodbye.” She made a knot again at the mouth of the sock, and as I felt her fingers stuff and mold it into the sneaker, until once again the night became pitch black and strange – I realized, with a sharp, lingering pain in my gut, that I might have made the wrong decision. But now there was no turning back.