It all made terrible, savage, crystal-clear sense now.  Kyle wasn’t going to have anything to do with him, and the best he could expect from his mother would be occasional oxygen breaks when tucked under her toes in the tip of a leather pump.  There was only one outlet left.

                In that moment, the three-inch-tall Scott realized his only salvation was in this young girl who had spent over half a decade joyfully stripping him down and stuffing him inside the dark cavern of her shoes, and had only just now jammed him inside half a dress and snapped selfies with him without wasting a single moment of her valuable time to weigh his pathetic and irrelevant feelings on the matter.

                She was a monster and his last hope, and he was in her feminine, manicured talons.  As her fingers finally squeezed back around him, twirling between his legs and flicking his arms back and forth as easily as leaves in the breeze, he was reminded with muscle-straining rawness that there was no escape unless she wanted and allowed it.

                With each passing moment, Scott felt himself becoming more and more afraid of his little sister like never before.  In years past, he’d always had reason to be wary of her fingers, her toes, her socks, as he so often found himself pinched amongst them at her will, but this was entirely different.

                Now, he was afraid of her mind.  She was sixteen, not even halfway through high school yet, and yet she held absolute power over the life of a young adult man in the palm of her hand, and she chose to toy with it endlessly for her own amusement, when the complete emotional destruction of her brother just wasn’t enough.  Though only five foot four tall and capable of achieving no higher than B’s in school, she held more authority and more might than most people her age and even many adults.  The cute little blue-eyed, blonde-haired, soccer-loving high school sophomore was omnipotent now.  In her room right now, with the door closed, and the blessing of her own mother and society itself, she was a goddess.

                Yet Scott knew he had to try to get through to her.

                What other choice did he have?

                “Maggie,” Scott piped when he’d finally gained enough oxygen back after being squeezed so aggressively in his sister’s fingers, knowing it was only a matter of time before she did it again and stole his ability to speak.  “Maggie.  Please.”

                “What’s up, little boy?” Maggie asked calmly, not slowing her pace at all as she continued working her brother over between her palms like a piece of putty.  Her fingers took turns wrapping themselves around his frail limbs and binding him more tightly to the warm, creased flesh of her expansive palm as if pinning an insect to a display.  “Not being gentle enough for your weak little arms?”

                “N-N-No…” Scott sputtered, the full brunt of his newfound terror in the hand of his sister settling in with hopeless potency.  “T-That’s not it.  I… I just wanted to… to…”

                Before he could stammer through another awkward beginning, Scott’s mouth was immediately covered up by his sister’s cool pointer fingertip, splaying itself like a fleshy punching bag squarely onto his face, only tilting up just enough for him to breath little gasps of air under the duct of skin.

                “To-to-to what?” Maggie mocked, hardly able to hold back her laughter, as she pressed her miniscule brother’s head harder down against the squishy surface of her hand.  “To-to-to-to drop the bass?”

                Undeterred by his sister’s ensuing laughter, Scott pressed his fists into her colossal finger and began pushing upward as hard as he could in order to free his lips and begin what he was certain would be a tenuous but necessary process of redeeming himself in the eyes of his sister.

                Clearly, he was off to a rough start.

                “Oh!  Push, little brother, you’ve almost got it!” Maggie cheered disingenuously as she continued applying pressure from her finger onto Scott’s little face.  “Can he do it?  Can the tiny little strong guy beat up his baby sister’s finger?  I don’t know, folks!”

                With a determined growl, Scott spent his final burst of strength in pushing Maggie’s finger away.  Of course, it wasn’t really enough to actually succeed, but luckily the towering teen girl had become bored with this game and released her finger from his face, though her triumphant gaze on him was unbroken.

                Scott opened his mouth to speak, psyching himself out for the desperate apology and plea he was prepared to make to his sister over whatever extended time period was required.

                Unfortunately, any sound he made was covered up almost immediately as Maggie’s cell phone began to rumble on the desktop and echo with the latest over-sugared pop song rocking the airwaves. 

                It was almost like Maggie had been slapped back into consciousness with a wet fish.  She had become so focused on overcoming Scott’s feeble attempts to speak that her eyes were barely taking breaks to blink, and her lips were curled into such an intoxicated smile that Scott doubted she would be able to frown at anything short of being stabbed in the chest.

                At the sound of the second and third rumbles from the phone, her milky eyes darted over to it, with her fingers still tangled around her tiny brother’s dangling limbs, and she bit her lip.  It was obviously a tough debate for her to answer at all, giving how much fun she was having.

                The caller wasn’t giving up, and with an irritated groan and a roll of her eyes, she released one hand from Scott, instantly cupping him into her other palm and caging her fingers around him before he could even move a muscle, squeezing him across the middle with a powerful thumb.  Her other hand quickly snatched up the phone and brought it to her ear.

                “Hey, Sarah,” she huffed dryly, clearly trying to fight off inherent hostility at her friend for interrupting her activities.  “Yeah, I’m still here at the house.  What?  Oh, sure,” she cooed, her tone abruptly changing at the mention of whatever had been suggested.  “Yeah, I’m totally down.  Absolutely, girlie.  Sounds fun.”

                She snapped the phone shut and slid it back into her pocket before leaning back in the chair, trying to suppress another grin.  Slowly, with Scott still balled into her fist, she brought him up toward her right eye, close enough that it was all he could see through the small opening of his sister’s curled fingers.  “Good news, little princess,” she said brightly, lapping her powerful tongue back across her lips.

                “What?” Scott peeped, now inhabiting his own little world entirely for the moment.

                “My friends aren’t coming here.  They want me to go meet them at the park.”

                “Oh.”

                “And you’re coming with us, with your little beeper thing,” she declared proudly before frowning and tilting her head in puzzlement.  “Although I guess that means no more dress-up time for my little princess.  After all, I don’t want to get it wet if there are any puddles out there today…”

                “M-Maggie, please, just… just let me say something…” Scott chimed fearfully as he was plucked back up again by the itchy hem of the doll dress and squirmed out by the practiced motions of his sister’s doughy thumbs.

                “What already?” she blurted, discarding the dress and plopping her newly stripped prize back onto the desk next to her computer.

                “I…”

                “You may want to turn around, bro,” Maggie suggested as she hopped spryly from her desk chair and skipped over toward her closet, her hair bouncing merrily behind her as she interrupted Scott again.  “Things are about to get PG-13, or maybe R, depending on how my bra goes with this shirt.”

                Ducking and covering, Scott turned himself around to face the wall just as his sister threw her pants to the ground around her ankles and stepped out of them to change.  For a few uncomfortable moments, he listened to drawers slamming and clothes rustling up and down the expanse of her toned teenage body, until he was startled again by the feeling of her warm fingers snaking back around his unsuspecting form.

                As he found himself turning to face his sister again in a fresh blue top and revealing cut-offs, Scott had to at least be mildly thankful that she had chosen to fully garb herself again before scooping him up.  Though she had no problem, it seemed, incidentally groping his bare doll-sized body, he hoped she never got to the stage where she was comfortable stripping herself down in front of him, too.

                Somehow, though, with a baseball-sized pit in his stomach, he had an overwhelming sense of foreboding that such a time would arrive sooner than he was expecting.

                “Now, try it again, but without stuttering like a stupid little boy,” Maggie whispered softly, lifting her brother from the desk and cupping him close to her chin.

                “I just wish… wish I could make you understand…” Scott meandered, knowing almost anything he said would fall on deaf ears.  “I wish I could make you understand how bad I feel.”

                “Yeah?  Well, I wish I had you in my shoe,” she butted in again before he could get the rest out, savoring each word.  Her phone was already sliding back into her pocket, and her fingers unfurling around Scott’s little body as her other hand reached toward the carpet below for something Scott couldn’t quite make out from his position, though he knew what it was before his sister even opened her mouth.

                “Maggie.”

                “And guess which one of us gets her wish, short stuff?” she snickered, lowering her arm closer and closer to the ground below.

                Maggie’s fingers tipped over to deposit her brother into his transportation for their morning out.  Scott grasped instinctively for the soft flesh of his sister’s palm to save himself, but the decline was far too steep, and he tumbled head over heels into the waiting opening of the shoe below.

                Time was running out.  The familiar blackness and rank stench of sweat soaked like clockwork into the fibers of the insole greeted and swallowed Scott up again like something from a childhood nightmare.  As he rolled down into the darkest corner of the flat from the momentum of his fall, Scott immediately pulled himself onto his haunches and launched back toward the mouth of the shoe in hopes of climbing out and making a new appeal to Maggie.

                Just as he reached the lip of the shoe, though, the sight of his sister’s fingers pinching the edge of the shoe caught his eye, and he had just enough time to flatten himself for balance against the inscribed felt base of the shoe before he was rocketing upward back toward the desk.

                “If you were planning on asking me something, little brother,” Maggie said, clearing her throat, as she peered victoriously into the open mouth of her shoe clasped against her palm, her eyes restless and yet still unfeelingly frigid, like something off of a totalitarian propaganda billboard.  “Now would be the time.”

                “I just wanted you to… know,” Scott grimaced, swallowing hard, not so much from the difficulty of the words, but in fear that they weren’t going to be nearly enough to save him.

                “Know what?” Maggie chuckled.  “That you don’t like this shoe?  Count your blessings, I could’ve worn the flats that I got like 5 years ago and don’t really fit anymore.”

                “I just want you to know… how sorry I am,” Scott wheezed at last, releasing all the tension in one fell swoop.  “I’ve been… a jerk to you, all your life.  From the time we were little kids, and I don’t know why.  But I truly am sorry.  For everything.”

                Maggie paused and frowned, clearly trying to discern any sarcasm or falsehood in her diminutive toy brother’s words.  When she didn’t seem to find any, her expression softened, and for the briefest moment, Scott’s heart rate managed to descend to a healthy level.

                Maybe he’d done it.

                Maybe he’d gotten through to her.

                “That’s really nice to hear.  I’m glad you at least realize what kind of person you are,” Maggie acknowledged with a nod as her hand descended back toward the ground.

                “Please, just… just give me a second chance.  That’s all I’m asking, Maggie, I-”

                “But we’ve got a loooooong way to go before you’ve made it all up to me, little Scott,” Maggie interrupted matter-of-factly, crossing her arms and bouncing her golden locks over her shoulders which practically twinkled in the sunlight of the window’s rays.  “You’ve got lots of sorries to say.”

                “I’ll say them all.  Right now.  Really.  I will, watch me!” Scott cried so earnestly that he sounded on the verge of total intoxication.  Hoping to gain a few extra seconds to plead his case, he threw his arms over the lip of the flat to begin pulling himself out to safety.  “Please, I-”

                “If you get out of my shoe right now, Scott, I swear to God I will tape you to the bottom,” Maggie spat with so much feral ferocity that the room itself seemed to swim in a haze of unsteady rage.

                “I’m sorry!” Scott croaked more pathetically than he meant to, scrambling back into the stagnant insole of her flat so fast that he almost toppled over backwards.  An instant after he did, his sister’s foot arched majestically above the edge, her thick toes alighting weightily where he had tried to escape just a second before.  “I’ll say sorry as many times as you want, for as long as you want.”

                “Yeah, umm… about that,” Maggie drawled, rolling her eyes as her toes danced merrily at the rubbery mouth of the shoe, clearly eager to dive in and overtake their new roommate.  “That’s gonna be kinda pointless, seeing as how you’re about to be under my cute lil’ toesies, where I can’t hear you.”  Her eyes flashed with inspiration.  “You can go ahead and practice saying sorry to my toes, though!  Then you’ll be all ready for whenever I decide I care what you have to say.”

                With that, all the towering titaness of a teenager did was grin smugly and daintily wave her fingers goodbye to her brother.

                Evidently, he had not gotten through to her.

                Scott opened his mouth to speak again, unsure of what he might possibly say to remedy things at this point, but was silenced inevitably as the sadistic shadow engulfed him, like it always did. The wriggling toes juggling light from above between the fleshy crevices of each one, until the entire cleat-swollen foot was squeezed against every corner of the shoe.  The heavy heel, flecked with dry skin and sock fuzz, settling down with a soft thump into the base, followed by the meaty feminine sole sliding fluidly into place and arching rhythmically.

                Then came the last part, what Scott referred to with all the cynicism in his mind he could conjure as “the lowering of the casket.”  He instinctively crawled further back into the darkness of shoe’s tip, hoping to prolong these last few moments of freedom.

                The monstrous toes flicked against the roof of the shoe and then unceremoniously flopped down, burying him under squirming animalistic layers of smelly flesh and speckled toejam.  They shuffled him for a moment, arranging the position of his body to Maggie’s liking, until he was poised horizontally under the arch of the stubby digits.  In the darkness, under the back of his head, Scott could feel a deep imprint exactly where his sister’s big toe always laid, and in an instant he knew why she was setting him in this exact way.

                He sputtered powerlessly as his face was smushed squarely into the marshmallowy flesh of Maggie’s big toe print like an air bag in a car crash.  In his gasps for air, his wet lips brushed the oily flesh of his sixteen-year-old sister’s unwashed foot, still glazed with fresh night sweat from her recent slumber and sour ardor from her exploits at the party the night before.  He coughed as the inescapable taste of his sister’s foot against his mouth only slipped further down his throat, causing him to gag.  This only made breathing faster and more labored as his lungs silently begged the dead air for relief that simply was not going to come as each inhalation pumped in more gaseous odor leaked from between his sister’s toes like toxic fumes.

                Satisfied with his position, the big toe began bouncing up and down against Scott’s face, intermittently giving him a few seconds to gasp up the poisonously stale oxygen tainted with moist salt from the girl’s wrinkled sole, before again having his features cushioned into the pillowy force of nature that was his sister’s biggest toe.

                Gasping quietly from equal parts defeat and equal parts disgust at the putrescent flavors being teased aggressively against his lips like a drunken kiss, Scott frowned bitterly and bit his tongue to prevent the tears from flowing.  Even though there was no one to see them, he didn’t think he could stand to remain conscious and still let himself cry while this happened.

                Instead, keeping his eyes closed and his breathing to a measured minimum, he began whispering, over and over again, without irony or malice: “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.” 

                Not only to his sister, his brother, his mother, the victim of his violent idiocy, or the law, but to the old Scott that had been overtaken by wild rebellion in his youth.  Clenching his teeth and balling his hands into fists, though he continued writhing in the hell of being his sister’s toe toy, from deep within himself, Scott could feel a flame of resolve intently kindling like he’d never experienced before.