I could have asked for help, and I’m sure anyone I met would have offered it to me.  I was the Champion and everyone knew me, after all, but for that same reason I was terrified to be seen.  Nobody could know what I’d done, and the first person who recognized me as anything more than a trampled, disheveled and bloody mess would surely tell everyone they knew, and from there I could just imagine Malva’s laughing grin as she shared the pictures of me scurrying through the streets on the weekend’s Holo Cast.

But who was even going to watch?  Who would even be there to see me?  Was there anyone besides Team Flare left?  I thought of the percentages and progress Chloe had been monitoring and what Malva had said about the tiny resistance that she’d so brutally and literally crushed, and realized why I didn’t pass anyone out on Route 16.  Still, I stuck to the bushes and trees, staying off the side of the path and then slipping back through the side streets to Chloe’s building.

I slipped inside without any problems and punched the button for the main elevator over and over and over again until the doors parted and let me dash inside.  As I started to ascend I realized how far up it was to Chloe’s apartment, and with each passing floor I was left to pray that I’d be allowed to make my trip in solitude, so of course the elevator slowed to a stop a half dozen floors before I wanted.

I backed into a corner as the doors slid open, trying to look away and hide my face as they revealed a slender woman with short, shocking red hair that used to be the norm for every member of Team Flare.  She was dressed for the office in a blouse and wide-legged trousers that mostly hid her matching red heels, but as they clacked onto the elevator I couldn’t help but notice them.

She didn’t seem to catch me glancing down at her feet, or at least didn’t react to it in the least despite my momentary shame at staring.  Instead, as I turned my head I could still feel her eyes looking me over, surely staring at the relatively clear imprint of Malva’s boot on my chest or what was left of the wretched grime that same boot had ground into my face.

I was seized by this urge to turn on her, to rush straight at her and throw her to the floor and just kick her… just kick her and kick her and kick her until she shut her stupid eyes and just stopped staring, but instead I seethed silently for the last few floors, and once the doors opened I was dashing away down the hall towards salvation and safety.

To Chloe.

I wanted to hammer the door with my fist, but I managed to just press the bell once, though I pressed it firmly and at length, listening for the chimes on the other side.  When I didn’t hear the customary sonorous impacts of her fashionable footwear approaching I started to panic.  What if she wasn’t home?  Of course she had better things to do, especially now.  Why would she be here just waiting for little, useless me to drag myself back to her door?

Tears started to fill my eyes, but the click of her latch instantly ended their production.  I sniffled as the door began to open, and when I saw her, resplendent even in nothing more than a short and silken belted black gown, I leaped forward with my arms outstretched, desperate to embrace her, to feel her supple, superior body against mine and to press my cheek to her chest as I let out my sobs and waited for the moment when she showed me that it was okay, that everything was going to be okay.

Instead I was left wailing as my arms wrapped around empty air.  Chloe took a swift step back and watched with a furrowed brow and a frown as I tumbled to the floor, landing in a heap at her feet.  What had I been thinking?  Trying to hug her, to force myself on the most majestic creature I’d ever encountered in my life when I was nothing, nothing but a worthless failure…

“Ugh.  You’re filthy,” was all she had to say, but I didn’t even bother or dare to look up.  My eyes stayed locked on her knit crimson boots before me, those same ones that I’d watched Shauna wriggle around beneath, nuzzling and kissing and licking for hours on end the first night I’d spent in this place.  Maybe she’d simply crush me… just shrink me down with my Ball and erase me with one good stomp, smearing me around on the floor beneath one of those inch-thick rubber soles.  I hoped she would, hoped she’d see what I deserved and just end my misery for me.

No, not what I deserved.  I could never deserve her perfect and powerful foot, even if it was just for the briefest instant before it squished me into oblivion. I wanted it, though. I was ready to beg for it, too, but then I heard a faint, friendly chuckle from above.

More than at any time in my life, Chloe's radiant smile filled me with a world of warmth. "Come on, Lucy. Get out of that sweater and those messy boots and we'll get you cleaned up."

I took a deep and shaky breath, sniffling again as I brushed my tears away from my eyes and pushed myself up off of the floor. I didn't have any reservations about undressing in front of her by this point, but I definitely didn't feel like I deserved to sit on any of her fancy furniture in the state I was in. I sat on the floor to unlace and pull off my boots, then pulled my shirt off over my head once I stood up

My boots went by the front door, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with my soiled shirt. I didn't want to just toss it somewhere in Chloe's immaculate apartment, so I just clutched it in my hands as I followed after her into the kitchen.

I followed closely, padding after her in nothing but my tall striped socks and my little skirt. When we got to the sink she turned on the rushing water with a flick of her hand and grabbed my shirt from me, thoroughly soaking it under the stream. I was surprised and a little confused to think she would make the effort to clean my sweater herself, but I quickly realized that was never her intent. She turned back to me and took me by the chin, using my favorite sweater like nothing more than a rag to scrub the smeared traces of smashed people from my face, and when she had finished and given me a scrutinizing glance, she tossed it into the trash and patted my head, leaving me too distracted by the minor gesture of affection to worry about my clothes being thrown away.

"Much better," she declared, and with her approval I just faintly started to believe in myself once again. I hadn't seen her quite so warm as she was being with me right now, and when she gently touched my shoulder and moved back towards the couch, I actually managed a smile as she spoke. "Come here, dearest. I have something to show you."

She settled on the plush couch and I plopped down on the floor, curling up against her legs with my chin resting on her knee. Chloe had picked up her tablet and was tapping and sliding her finger across it, and in the moment of silence I felt some of my recently suppressed nausea and dread rising back to the surface.

"The... the people at the Lost Hotel--" I began, but Chloe didn't let me get any further than that.

"Shhh," she broke in, not bothering to look up from whatever it was she was doing. "It's okay, I know."

She knew? She knew what? Did she know everything, even the way Malva had tortured them and me and the fact that every single one of those people had been squashed like so many bugs beneath her boots? I wasn't going to question her, and if there was anyone who would know what I'd seen it would be her.  I didn't say a thing; I couldn't say a thing, but fortunately she turned her tablet to the side and gave me a simple direction and something else to think about.

"Watch," she softly demanded, and we both watched the image on the screen. It was a room of some sort, well-lit and spacious and seemingly devoid of any furniture. I recognized the woman sitting on the floor almost instantly by her jet black hair and exceedingly huge black boots, but it took me longer to recognize the small shapes spread out on the floor next to her.

"Megan?" I murmured, the sight of her helping me recognize the dozens of structures like the one she'd displayed for us a few days ago.

"Shhh," Chloe repeated, though I felt her polished nails grazing along the back of my head, removing any concern I had for how I'd spoken out of turn. "Listen, dear," she directed, and we both did while she tapped the screen and zoomed the camera in closer.

"...And I think you'll be the perfect little postman!" Megan decreed with delight to the tiny man she held between her fingers. I leaned in closer and managed to make out easily more than a dozen more tiny things on the floor at her side in varying degrees of costume.  None of them seemed to take issue with their current condition, but the one in her hand was violently shaking his head.

Chloe slid her finger along the tablet and increased the volume so we could hear.

"...Crazy!" the tiny man shrieked. "We're not your freaking toys, we're not your dolls! You can't do this to us, take us away and shove us in these boxes and--"

"Whoa, wait wait wait." Megan pulled her hand up to her face, narrowing her already huge eyes as she looked the protesting tiny man over. "Are you saying you don't want to be the postman?"

I looked up at Chloe for a moment, catching her grin as she continued to watch the scene unfold on the screen. Was she really so amused by the little man's terror? Or was it Megan's game or the fact that she seemed to have the little town she wanted?  Either way, I couldn't help but watch as well.

The tiny thing she held seemed totally flustered for a long moment before he responded. "No! No, I'm not your damn mailman! I'm not--"

"Nobody else has a problem with their new jobs," she interrupted again. "See how happy and cute they all are?"

Megan lowered the man back to the ground in front of the gathered crowd of doctors and firemen and teachers and all other manner of professionals dressed in their doll clothes. True to her statement, all of them seemed to be relatively content aside from the confusion a few seemed to show at watching the man rave and rant.

We couldn't clearly make out what he was saying anymore, but Megan just talked over him anyhow.

"You've got this brand new house and plenty of food, right?  The system only works if everyone does their fair share," she chided the tiny man as she slowly pushed herself up to her full height. "I assume you're sure about this?"

Chloe pulled the camera back so we could see all of her. Megan towered over the costumed specks on the floor and the pale blue monochrome village spread out at her feet. There was a long pause while I imagined Megan must have been listening for his response, and it was frightfully clear when she’d heard all she needed to.

After a little shrug, we watched her colossal black boot rise into the air.  I gasped, my fingers digging into Chloe’s leg while I heard her little intrigued chuckle, and within an instant that heavy boot was smashing down on one of those little cookie-cutter structures, the thick platform sole crushing it to splinters with such tremendous and terrifying ease.

Chloe’s laugh became a little more full-fledged now, shifting in her seat as she zoomed the camera in on Ashley’s boot, affording us both a much better view of the destruction she’d caused with a single step.

“Well, congratulations to our town’s first homeless beggar,” the Governess announced with a smirk, grinding her boot atop the shattered remnants of what would have been the man’s house, the noisy crunches drowning out his shouts as he rushed towards her towering boot and began to hammer his fists against the side of her skyscraping sole.

“Oh?” Megan muttered before dragging her boot back.  We both saw it at the same time that she did, a little smear of reddishness amidst the pulverized rubble.  “Be generous with our little hobo, villagers. It looks like he’s a widower, too.”

Chloe chuckled softly once again but I just shook my head in shock.  “She just killed that man’s wife!” I cried in protest, but she totally shut me out, not even giving me a glance as she pulled back the camera to watch Megan settle back down to the ground and converse with her villagers, as she called them.

“I bet you could pull off boots like those,” she idly commented, leaving me to just shake my head again.  I was going to make my point a second time about the way one of those boots had just ended a woman’s life, but she continued to talk while starting to tap at her tablet’s screen.  “Remind me to have that man transferred to Malva, though. Megan should know she can’t keep a Resistant.”

That phrase and Malva’s name dredged up a number of new questions, but I still couldn’t get past my first one.  “She killed someone!” I squealed while she brought up a display with several other feeds, apparently uninterested in seeing who Megan’s new postman would be.

“These things happen, dear,” she sighed, taking a moment to decide what we were going to watch next.  “The world didn’t stop for every ant you’ve ever stepped on, did it?”

I didn’t even have time to ponder the absurdity of her comparison before the image that Chloe called up on her screen stopped my thoughts cold.  Two men were standing and facing each other atop a smooth wooden surface, and off to their side were an immense pair of pretty feet shod in an instantly recognizable pair of comparably colossal platform crimson stilettos.

Chloe zoomed the camera out so we could get a more complete look at Helen leaning back in a plush, high-backed chair with her shoes propped up on her desk near her two tiny companions.  “You heard correctly,” she purred in that same unnervingly sexual voice that lowered even more as she made her firm demand.  “Fight for me.”

All three of us stared in fascinated silence for a moment longer until one of the young men lunged at the other, and from there they were rolling about on the ground, scuffling and smashing their fists into one another while Helen laughed in cruel delight.  “That’s it,” she happily sighed while encouraging them, but after one drove his knee into the other’s groin and then dove on top of him, she clicked her tongue and uncrossed her ankles, jabbing at him with her heel and sending the man tumbling several feet away.

“Bad form, little man.  Come on, show me what you can do,” she entreated the two battered and wheezing men while wearing a wild and eager grin, and all three of us were captivated by the way they both struggled to do as she asked and were quickly back at each other, throwing punches as they tumbled back to the surface of the desk.

It was all so fast and unsettling, but Chloe was stroking my hair again as we watched these two brutalize each other for seemingly nothing more than Helen’s amusement and that was more than enough to keep me mostly calm.  It wasn’t long until the blonde one had gained a distinct advantage, though, straddling the dark-haired one’s waist and raining down blows while the one on the ground could do little besides just try to cover up.

“Okay, okay,” she sighed, leaning forward and reaching out towards the two men, the one on top not letting up until she’d plucked him up off of the man he was pummeling.  She let him dangle by his shirt, holding him in front of her huge and gleaming eyes.  “Not bad, my pet.  Not bad at all,” she murmured before giving a little twist of her fingers to shred his shirt with her nails and let him tumble through the air, landing inside an open Flare Ball that she held in her other hand.

There was a flash of light and once it cleared that same man was standing at Helen’s side, full sized and showcasing his shirtless, athletic frame far more clearly now that he was more than just a speck on her desk.  I turned to Chloe with a questioning look, and I noticed the faintest bit of concern creeping into her general sense of amusement before we both returned our focus to her screen.

“It takes a strong man to satisfy me,” she commented as her chair turned to face her suddenly tall companion.  “I think you might do the trick tonight,” she continued, letting out a short and throaty purr while her foot stretched out, the toe of her towering shoe teasing along the inside of his thigh.  “What do you think?”

His reply was mostly wordless, consisting primarily of a long groan and a nod.

“Yes, Miss Helen,” she instructed her flustered and quivering man, and he swiftly repeated the words himself, gasping a little as her shoe slid a bit higher.

I blushed a little as i watched, feeling the need to look away.  Everything that Helen did just seemed so… lewd.  Chloe seemed to have returned to being wholly entertained, though, so I let myself continue to watch in silence as well.

“You’re clearly good with your hands, gorgeous,” she mused while continuing to tease him with her shifting and sliding shoe.  “Are you as talented with that pretty little mouth of yours?”

His eyes were closed now and he was simply groaning with every motion she made, but then Helen’s foot pulled back from his crotch, leaving the man to stand there moaning with his unfulfilled longing for a moment before it swung upward, gently but firmly smacking into him between his legs.  

She chuckled as he groaned a very different groan and sunk to his knees, her foot already pushing towards his face while he struggled to catch his breath.   “Start with my shoe,” she purred as her platform sole grazed his lips, eliciting a pleasurably reflexive kiss from the tall and athletic man.  “We’ll see if you’re good for anything more.”

I curled a little closer to Chloe’s legs, wrapping my arms around one and nestling my cheek against her outer thigh as we watched the man cradle her ankle in his hands, supporting her leg as he started to feather soft kisses along her sole.

“No, no,” Helen sighed, shifting her foot to guide the tip of her stiletto towards the man’s impressively adoring lips.  He grunted briefly as she forced her heel against his mouth, but he quickly got the hint and took it past his lips, wrapping them around the shaft and letting his eyes drift shut as he suckled at it.

“Ooh,” she purred, letting her heel slip deep into the man’s mouth and slowly, seductively pumping it in and out, laughing softly as she did.  “I bet you had a few happy girlfriends, didn’t you?  Or maybe a very happy boyfriend, hmm?”

Chloe chuckled at that herself, which put me a little more at ease.  When Helen reached over to pluck up the battered tiny man that was still lying stretched out on her desk, though, I felt my queasiness swiftly returning.

“That’s it, my little warrior,” she murmured, pushing her heel into his throat all the way to the base, then slowly, slowly drawing it back out until the tip popped free from his lips.  “So strong, and so completely mine, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Miss Helen,” he proudly replied, just as she’d taught him.  His blue eyes smoldered with an eager intensity, clearly hungry for whatever this devilish woman would give him next.  She moved forward to the edge of her chair, settling one foot down on either side of her strapping plaything.

“Unlike this useless little weakling, huh?”  She turned the tiny man over, letting him spill into her other hand as a bit of a sneer overtook her self-satisfied smirk.

“Yeah,” he responded automatically, his breath quickening to have his goddess so tantalizingly near.  I even leaned forward, so captivated by the palpable passionate energy playing out on the screen.

“Such a turn off,” she muttered, stretching out her free hand to run it through her new pet’s luxurious wavy blonde hair.  “We don’t need him around, do we?”

Before he even had time to shake his head, she was already closing her fingers around the tiny man.  It took me far too long to realize what was happening, but her fingers just kept tightening and then the tiny man started to scream, though he was barely audible through the all-encompassing walls of flesh.  Even that was brief, as that faint scream was quickly silenced, and before long a faint trickle of redness appeared along the side of her palm.

Chloe made this little sound of admiration as she watched Helen work, but the way these people just continued to casually kill innocent men and women churned my stomach.  I watched as Helen slipped from her chair, planting her messy hand on her man’s chest and pushing him to the floor beneath her, pinning him to the ground as she straddled his waist.  She made a show of wiping her palm on his bare skin, seeming to relish the feel of his muscular chest beneath her hand and the way the crushed remains mingled with his sweat

“Oh yeah, I can use you,” she huskily declared, brushing his cheek with her now mostly clean hand.  He looked back up at her with this undisguised animal longing that almost startled me, but I didn’t have to see it for long.

“I’ll use you up, sweet boy,” she declared while sliding forward, adjusting her skirt as she settled onto his waiting face, seizing a fistful of his pretty hair and letting out a jarring moan as he presumably went to work satisfying her.  I could feel my cheeks absolutely blazing and I started to look away, but Chloe was already tapping the screen, blissfully cutting off the sounds coming from the tablet’s speakers.

The sound that replaced it turned the blood in my veins to ice.  A cold and cruel voice that I’d heard all too many times, that I had somehow hoped I wouldn’t have to hear again, at least for today.

“Pick someone,” Malva demanded, standing over a gathered group of tiny people. She'd cleaned up a little bit since I'd seen her last, but her outfit hadn't changed. I imagined that her collection of people might even still be able to smell the blood on the soles of her huge boots, and after what I'd seen her do just hours ago I wouldn't be surprised if some or all of them were close to becoming something messy on the undersides of her shoes as well.

These people had there own collection of shelters, though these somehow seemed even more sparse than the ones I'd seen before. More noticeably, though, was the fact that they seemed totally different than the people we'd gone out to capture earlier in the day.

They were afraid.  There was no confusion or stupor; they trembled with real and absolute terror in Malva’s shadow.

"Come on," she sighed.  "You're the disobedient ones. You're here to be punished, so you can either pick someone to take the punishment for you, or I can just take an extra minute or two and stomp the guts out of every last one of you. So, what's it going to be?"

Her wicked smirk was just as terrifying as it had always been, and I could only be thankful that I was on the other side of the screen from her. I don't think I could have bared witnessing whatever she was about to do in person after all the things I'd seen already.

There was some discussion among the shuddering mass of humanity, but after a moment an old man emerged from the group and shuffled forward, his eyes cast toward the ground as he approached Malva's tall black boots.

"What, this old thing?" she sneered, her nose crinkling as she regarded the elderly individual standing before her. In one swift, fluid motion her boot rose into the air and slammed down where he stood, utterly obliterating him in one firm and thunderous stomp, bits of the man spraying over the rest of the crowd in a wide radius from beneath her foot.

The people shrieked and screamed, panic ripping through them, but Malva's firm, powerful voice kept them from devolving into chaos.  "You've got ten seconds to make a fitting sacrifice to my feet, or you're all dead," she bellowed with the broadest of grins.

We watched as the fearful pile of people collectively pulled themselves together a bit, and eventually a young man emerged, looking far more determined and resolved than the older man that came before him. He stared upwards and Malva gave a little nod of appreciation as she returned his stare with her own playful gaze.

"Mm, that's more like it," she murmured. "Now come here, little guy."

He approached cautiously, losing a bit of his nerve as he had to move across the blood spattered portions of the floor towards the cruel, colossal woman's murderous feet.  "I want you to kiss my boot,” Malva declared, sliding her foot towards the man just enough that its heavy tread, slick with the other man’s gory remains, noisily squeaked against the hard floor beneath it.

The man didn’t react instantaneously enough for her, I guess, since she quickly followed her statement with a sharp snap of her fingers, drawing his attention up from the demanding boot before him to her tremendous, narrowed eyes.  “Hey, stupid,” she addressed the tiny man.  “You realize they gave all of you to me because you’re too freaking dumb to listen to us like you should, right?”

He seemed totally perplexed and frustrated and confused.  She was going to step on him, wasn’t she?  In fact, all of them seemed somewhere between baffled and horrified, wavering between the two with each passing moment.

Malva’s foot shifted forward just the faintest bit more, nudging the miniscule man enough to knock him to the ground.  “It’s my job to prove that you little idiots can learn obedience, so to start with, you’re going to do exactly as you’re told from this moment on.  Got it, little guy?”

She was absolutely glowing with that terribly familiar, cruel and dark delight that I’d seen in her again and again by this point.  “Now, show some respect and get down on your knees,” she murmured with a devilish smirk, “and once you’ve taken a moment to appreciate all that I am in comparison to the nothing that you are, you can start licking my boot.”

I shouldn’t have been, but I was still partially dumbfounded by her callous cruelty and also by the startlingly absolute authority she so easily wielded over the dozen or so odd people at her feet.  I couldn’t believe that they weren’t scrambling to every corner of the room, fleeing in total panic for their lives.  

I briefly wondered if I would do the same in their position.  I’d been tiny and helpless at Malva’s feet before, too, but that was before I’d seen how brutal and ruthless and bloodthirsty she could be… before I’d gotten to really know the beautiful monster that she was.

The monster that she was.  “Come on, stupid,” Malva growled.  “Start licking or I’m going to take one good, firm step into the middle of that pile of friends you’ve got over there instead of just stepping on you.  I doubt I'll get them all, but I bet I could crush six or seven easily enough.  You want them all smashed because you're too good to do what you're told?”

As Chloe zoomed the camera in closer, letting us see the tiny man grinding his teeth and shaking his head as he dropped down to his knees, I realized that I was really starting to like Malva’s boots.  I found it surprisingly cool that the kneeling man was barely taller than thick, lugged sole of the boot he was stretching his tongue towards.

The same sole that had smashed down on my face that afternoon, leaving me staring upward in horrified terror, catching glimpses of Malva’s menacing, lust-tinged grin as she ground the filthy crushed remains of thirty-some innocent people into my flesh.

My thoughts were interrupted by a sweet, soft giggle from Chloe as we watched the tiny fearful man drag his tongue along the surface of Malva’s massive black boot again and again.  Her leg shifted against my body, sending an unexpected wave of warmth through me as her soft boot brushed against my inner thighs, and it was enough to wrench my eyes away from the screen and turn to watch her warm and wonderful smile.

“When I told her to do what she wanted with them, I thought she’d just squish them all,” she sighed through her subsiding chuckles.  “I didn’t expect her to be so creative.”

Not only had Chloe made all this happen, but she approved of it as well?  But of course she’d set everything up.  She was at the top, the one in charge and the one with all the power in this bizarre organization.  She probably knew exactly what had happened to all of the people at the Lost Hotel and she might even approve of what became of them. Did she know that Malva was Resistant, or anything about how she'd treated me? Maybe it was all part of one big plan. Maybe…

“Don’t you want to watch him squish?” Chloe idly inquired, her eyes remaining focused on the tablet’s screen.  I wanted to shake my head and make some statement about how shocked I was, or maybe protest the way she could so calmly and casually watch her subordinates seemingly murder these innocent people just for fun, but that's not what I did.

I turned back to the screen and watched in what I told myself must have been morbid fascination as Malva's toes lifted and slid forward, completely covering the wretched tiny man. We could hear him scream once he was in the shadow of her blood caked sole, but at her firm command his screams quickly ceased.

"Keep licking!" she loudly demanded, and even though there was no possible way she could see him beneath her foot or verify the man's fearful obedience, Chloe and I were both able to watch as he softly wailed and stretched out his tongue, lapping at the merciless, messy descending sole until the very moment when it's thick tread started to smash through him.

Malva's textured sole slowly ripped the man apart, giving him just enough time to let out a final shriek before she twisted her massive boot and made a spectacle of smearing bits of him across the floor for the rest of her possessions, her prisoners to witness.  Chloe pulled the camera back so we could see all of Malva and her long sigh and smile of satisfaction as she finished rubbing out the little life beneath her foot.

"Model citizen," she muttered after taking a long breath. "Take some inspiration from that guy, you little jerks.  He knew his place, and because of that the rest of you get the night off. I've had a long day already, so it's a shower and silky clean sheets for me."

She braced the heel of one of her boots against the side of the other, shifting her foot free while she spoke and then, without warning, she kicked it off of her foot in the direction of her people, smirking a bit more as they tried to scatter from its path.  A few were sent tumbling across the floor and one woman found her arm totally smashed as the heavy boot crashed to the ground on top of her, with another totally trapped and pinned beneath the side.

"All you've got to do is make sure these are all nice and cleaned up by tomorrow," she informed her pets with a smile. They were more prepared this time, avoiding the second boot as it bounced and crashed to the ground next to the first. "They're my favorite pair, after all."

We continued to watch after that, with Malva just standing over the scattered crowd and the people at her feet staring back, paralyzed by their fear and their horror.  A moment later, Malva swiftly raised her foot generally over the middle of the group, and I stared as the soft, white cotton-wrapped appendage easily threatened all of their little lives, staring at the spots where her sweat and the friction of rubbing against the inside of her boot, likely increased by all of the brutal, lethal stomping she'd done that day, had left the sock blackish or grey.

I found myself wondering how the hot, clearly visible curves of her sole would feel against my face, how the warm, heady scent would overwhelm me if I buried myself in the bottom of her sock and let myself kiss it again and again. Her foot's shape was so perfect, so pleasing and I could see every detail from the way her surely damp sock tightly clung to it...

"Move!" Malva shouted, and as the tiny people in the shadow of her foot started to scramble towards her filthy boots she let out a short, sharp laugh and turned away, stomping off out of the camera's view as they set to work pulling and scraping at the bits of muck that mostly consisted of tiny crushed people.

The screen went dark after a brief moment more, and I found myself catching my breath and shaking my head as I looked back to Chloe and watched her set the tablet aside.  I must have seemed to still be thoroughly bewildered, because the excitement in her eyes softened a little as she looked at me.  Her legs shifted and settled on either side of me as she leaned forward and took my head in her hands, and after I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the warmth of her palms on my cheeks and taking in the faint, sweet scent of her expensive lotions, I looked back at her and only managed a single word.

"Why?" I timidly whispered, and she only offered a warm, affectionate smile like she was regarding a curious and confused child.