He woke to the sound of ocean waves lapping against a sandy, tropical beach. The hush between each wave seemed to last a minute, and then ten minutes, and then, as he felt himself falling back into a deep, wakeless sleep, the long silence spread upwards of an hour.

A blue light pierced his eyelids, and somewhere far away there was a woman’s shadow, parting the curtains of his room. “Wake up, Alan. Wake up!”

He rubbed his eyes a few times, clearing them of what felt like an unusual amount of sleep. Crud, scum, grit seemed to coat not only the insides of his eyes, but his hair, his throat, the membranes of his lungs, the walls of his arteries. He tasted the sides and roof of his mouth: it tasted like filth. He breathed in through his nose, deeply, and then choked and gagged on the smell: feet, mixed with minty antiperspirant and old coconut-scented body wash.

A few memories, here and there, trickled back. He squinted behind himself, and slipped on the warm, pillowy surface. “Alan! Oh good, you’re awake. Come on out for breakfast. Everybody’s waiting.”

He stumbled forward through the bluish darkness, toward a yellowish glow at what seemed the end of a tunnel, until the mesmeric sound of the ocean, and that smell, as strong and musty as a girl’s locker room, began to sink into the background. “Let me help you up. Come on over to the table. I’m Annabelle. Over here. Up we go!”

Two huge hands met him at the entrance, gripped him by his underarms, and heaved him up out of his dark prison into the bluish, glowing light. Somewhere far behind him, a door slammed shut, wood on wood. Groping about with his hands, he felt a chair just in front of him, and then the edge of a thick plastic table. Once his eyes adjusted, he made out a young woman, in her early twenties or late teens, seated at the head of the table. Around him five other men, all undressed – like himself – except for a strip of white cloth around the waist and pelvis, were already seated in their chairs and waiting, two of them smiling, and the other three not. Annabelle – to his surprise – he recognized. But this primly dressed girl, with curly brown hair and dark blue eyes, with a brown blouse and belted brown skirt, with brown loafers and stockings, was at least twice his own height. Perhaps even three times. He couldn’t be sure.

“Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty excited about this,” she started. “Some of you, like Jules here, I’ve known for a long time.” Jules, a look of utter terror zigzagging across his sad,  scarred face, before turning into a sickly grimace, flinched as though someone had cocked a pistol at his head, and then subsided again into his usual indifference.  “Others, like Alan over there,” she winked, “I’ve met only briefly.” She folded her hands, and then sighed, looking around, as though waiting for the other four men to volunteer themselves, hearts and minds, to her as new acquaintances.

“Alan,” she said. “Why don’t you start? And then we can go around the table. Each man stating his name, his owner, and why he’s here. So for example: Alan, you would say ‘Alan. I’m Sadie’s. I’m here to learn how to be a foot slave.’”

“I’m sorry, but – wh- what…”

“Speak up, Alan!”

“I—I—don’t…”

“Jules? Jules!” Annabelle flicked her eye at the other man, who woke up out of his trance, eyes wide open like a startled rabbit’s. “Why don’t you start?”

He jerked his lips open, and ran a dry tongue over dry lips. “Julesannabelle’sslave—ffootslave.”

“Try again.” Her eyes glinted. “Jules ran away from me today. He didn’t say that. And that’s why I’m here!”

“Ss…” Jules couldn’t form the words.

“Again!” She stood up, and her tight shoes clicked, fierce and sharp, against the hardwood floor, as she circled the table to Jules.

“Jules…Annabelle’s…” She was closer, and his muscles tightened, helplessly. “To…to…”

“To learn…” She was beside him, her finger stroking his matted hair, gently.

“To learn how to…”

“To learn how to be a good…”

“…a good…good…”

“Foot slave! Damn!” He flinched. “Say it! Say it now!” She was yelling at him, teasingly.

“…how to be a good foot slave.” His head collapsed against his hands on the table, and she gently ran her red fingernails over his tiny cheek.

“Okay! Who’s next? Let’s hurry it up so we can start our tour.”

One after another, one man excepted, each repeated the miserable formula, until it was Alan’s turn. To avoid conflict (all his life he had been averse to confrontations, perhaps too much so), he said what was expected of him. “I’m Alan. I’m Sadie’s. I’m here to learn how to be a good foot slave.”

“Now, I’m sure you’re all wondering where you are.” There was silence, and one man, Steve by name, one who was smiling when Alan entered and had never once stopped smiling since, began to fall into hysterics, laughing uncontrollably. Without a moment’s hesitation, Annabelle stood up and strode toward him. She gripped him by the collar, and held him up, dangling wildly, half his bodylength from the ground. She was really three, maybe four times Alan’s size. (But what size was that? he wondered.) Everywhere stared, as though entranced, at the sight before them.

“Now I’m going to show you something,” Annabelle announced, her teeth clenched together, her bottom lip curled in a scowl. On the far side of the high-ceilinged room, there was a door (the only door in the room – and thus the door through which Alan and all the others came in and out). Beside this door was a tiny black button. Toward this one door Annabelle walked, Steve slung over her right shoulder like a sack of potatoes, no longer laughing or smiling, but protesting, swearing, praying, begging, screaming. She pressed the button with one long black forefinger, and after a moment’s pause a buzzer sounded and the door clicked open. The other men heard her sharp, deliberate footsteps in the next room, clear against the hardwood, and listened as they receded. Distantly, another door opened, and closed. There was total silence, except for the low hum of the single blue lightbulb overhead.

A man who identified himself as “Neil, Hélène’s” nudged Alan with his elbow, and whispered. “You know where he’s going?”

“No.” He looked toward the door with a sort of dread. Suddenly, the clack-clacking of Annabelle’s shoes returned, and the inner door slammed shut again.

“Short of it is he’s doomed,” Neil said confidentially. “Olivia keeps about five or six – no one’s counted – women. Ex-convicts, cold, insane most of them. Those who do good work, now and then, get a slave.” Annabelle’s footsteps were close. She was almost at the outer door. Neil hurried. “Short of it is he’s not coming out, even if she says he is. He’s off the radar. He’s…he’s…”

Annabelle had returned. She closed the door behind her. Clasping her hands together, and smiling, she apologized, and asked everyone to please stand up. The tour was starting. They pushed their chairs in, somewhat shakily, and filed out the door past the young giantess, into the thick darkness, which smelled heavily of feet. Somewhere behind them, Annabelle flipped on a light switch, and the room lit up, from a height of about a half-thousand feet in the sky. As their eyes adjusted again, the five men looked out, some with surprise, and some – like Henry, the only one who hadn't yet named his owner-caretaker, and therefore the one Alan found himself watching most often – with time-hardened boredom, on the floor of a girl’s closet. All around them, or thrown haphazardly over the floor, were all her socks, her school and work flats, her stockings and slippers. Up on the rack were old sneakers and boots, heels and mules. At the far back was a row of six particularly battered, smelly ballet flats. Beside each was a small black bag, tied at the mouth with string.

“For the two days, at least,” Annabelle announced, “because some of you will be here a little bit longer – a day for Jules for orientation,  or actually one week if we’re counting in-shoe time with me, and we are, a month for David, and six months for Neal – this is going to be your home. “ Neil, an older man in his late 40s, bearded, thin and stoic, made no response, but Alan shuddered at the news, and rubbed his eyes again.

“I’ll bet you’re wondering what’s in the black bags. Well, tonight, each of your caretakers has left some personal item of hers, plus a photo. Olivia knows how much your owner cares about you, and thinks about you, so she’s personally seeing to it that each of you will be able to take some little remembrance with you during training. She wants to make this as comfortable as possible, transitionally speaking.”

Neil and David nodded, as though they understood exactly what she was talking about. “Neil, I know Mrs. Boucher misses you, and only wants the best for you. I talked with her yesterday during French.” Alan turned his head toward Neil, who had begun to tear up.  “And David, I know that Jessica thinks the world of you.” David, a chubby young man of about 19, began to sob in this throat. “She really does. She told me that personally.”

“Alan,” Annabelle said, walking back toward the other end of the single file line, her hands clasped behind her back like a drill sergeant. “I don’t know why you’re here, to be honest. I think you’d be,” and as she spoke, she reached out her hand and gripped his head like a softball, gently rocking it back and forth, and rubbing her thumb up and down his forehead, “I think you’d be very good. And Henry,” she continued, letting Alan go with a suggestive wink, “knowing Marina, you must be the best slave alive.” After Annabelle had passed to her little Jules, now convulsed with fear, shaking and shivering all over, Alan turned quickly to Henry, who just as quickly returned his look. Sadie. Marina. Had they talked? Henry read his look. The answer was yes. But why? What was happening? What?

Speech over, Annabelle switched off the light again, and they began to march, she behind and Neil in front, toward the entrance of the closet. Somewhere below them, behind and under the wall, a man wailed out.

“Stop here,” Annabelle said, and they were still. “It’s locked now, but behind that wall, in a metal box, Olivia keeps some of the other trainees.” She paused. “Be glad – be thankful – you’re not them.”

“Who—?“ Henry started.

“No questions, please,” she interrupted. “Who they are isn’t important. It’s what they are, dontcha think?” The five men heard her rap on the closet wall, three times, and the wailing stopped. “Ask them who they are,” she told Henry. He hesitated. “Go on,” she said, “I insist.”

Henry asked, and there was silence. Then, all at once, ten or twenty male voices, it was impossible to count them all, called out for help. “Save me!” one said. Another laughed. Another cried. Another yelled out, “I’m hungry!” Another said, “What time is it?” But no one answered his question.

Henry looked at Annabelle, and she looked back, a bit disgusted. “Toilet slaves, mostly. And most of them have only been inside the Zone – Olivia calls it ‘the Zone’ – for a few hours. She does it to test them. Some girls want that kind of slave – but maybe one out of a hundred is a real natural. The others just go crazy suicidal, or whatever. Or they get poisoned, because owners can be stupid sadistic and eat beef, or chicken, or their own slaves, or some other meat, and then feed them that kind of waste. Vegetarians only need apply, is what Olivia says. And she’s been doing this for years now, and so far no deaths. By poison.”

Alan decided to ask a question, “So, so she doesn’t eat them?”

“Olivia? God no. She only fattens them up. Maybe she’ll show you later. What do you think, Olivia?”

The closet door had cracked open, and through the darkness Alan made out a ring of lamp-light spreading across a well-worn rug on the floor. The immense shadow of a girl, barefoot, t-shirted and in saggy pajama bottoms, stood just in front of them, framed against the light. She wiggled her toes a few times, as though in anticipation.

“Where’s the other one?” she asked. Olivia. Alan gulped in fear, his dream coming back to him. Somehow, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her toes. Their smell, their power, their casual strength, as if he were submitting not to her will, but to her. It took nothing out of her to make him a slave: she being who she was, that was enough. This realization terrified him. And at the same time, he felt a budding longing to obey her, to submit to that casual power, which seem to come out of her without her even being aware of it. The smell, the way she had dominated him so easily just with the smell…

He looked sideways at the other men, and all but Jules seemed to share his feeling. Though Neil’s knees were trembling.

“He had to be dealt with,” Annabelle answered. “Do you want me to take Jules?”

“Sounds okay. You going out?”

“Soon.”

“Okay then. Head out the back. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Annabelle hoisted up Jules in a single motion, and ran out the closet door, past Olivia. No questions were asked. They waited, and soon Olivia bent down on one knee, and cupped her chin in her hand. By Alan’s reckoning, each of the four remaining men was about 2 inches tall, more or less. He felt his knees knocking, and didn’t dare to look at the others.

“Alan,” Olivia purred, finally. “I think I’ll start with you. The rest of you can go to bed. It’s late. You know the way, right?”

Henry turned around, and the other two men followed him closely. Alan almost heard one of them sigh in relief as he passed by. When they were gone, Olivia reached out in the darkness with one hand (her long dark, faintly greasy hair falling over and enveloping Alan’s tiny body), rummaged around for a few seconds, and pulled out a well-beloved moccasin for the left foot and an even more treasured sneaker for the right. She picked him up, abruptly, stood on her feet, and dangled him by the shoulders between the mouths of both shoes.

“Which one?” she asked, flinging her hair back over her shoulders and smiling.

Alan looked down, past Olivia’s sweaty fingers, past the two shoes she was holding up by her pinkies, all the way down to the floorboards, and froze.

“I know. Why don’t you inhale each one. Then tell me which you prefer.” She lowered him to the moccasin, first, and its crusty, vinegary, girlish odor knocked him back to life, like smelling salts. Then she carried him over to the sneaker, out of which a cheesier, raunchier, sweatier smell seemed to rise. He saw her wearing the first around school and home, and the second out the streets, running in the mornings before dawn, or at track meets, years ago in high school, on hikes, on long excursions with friends or family.

“The sneaker,” Alan said. “Please.”

“That’s a good choice,” Olivia grazed his head with her wet lips, and nuzzled his hair with her nose. She breathed in deeply, in and out. “Hear me breathing?” she whispered in his ear. He shivered with pleasure, against his will. “That’s how I want you breathing, every night, every morning, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Do you understand me?”

Alan nodded. He…he understood. Did he? “Yes.”

She sat down at the top of her bed, carefully. The springs creaked a few times, and then there was silence again, silence except for Olivia’s breathing, and Alan’s. “But tonight, because of the cold, and also because I want to sleep well, I’m going to put on socks.”

Alan looked up her, scared, curious, confused, hypnotized somehow by her words. He looked at her lips, her long nose, her dark eyes, her long dark hair, and for a moment thought she was the most perfect person he had ever set eyes on. She brought him close to her ear, and whispered again. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where will you be?”

“Inside,” he said.

“That’s right,” he saw her cheek crease, and knew she was happy with him. Or was she? Or was it amusement.

She scrounged about underneath the bed with her toes, until she came up with a  pair of yellowed, old, disgusting socks, with birthday cakes printed all over the heels and ankles in faded pink and blue shades. “Sadie told me you need help with history,” Olivia said, as she pulled on the first sock over her left foot. Alan noticed her toenail polish was chipped in places, and there was a thick callus under her second toe.

“History…” Alan, fascinated by Olivia’s voice, by the shape of her ear, and the way she put on her sock, heard himself mutter the word. Who was speaking?

“The revised history. Underneath every great woman is a greater man, they say. Have you heard that? Do you know about Catherine the Great?” Alan didn’t respond. “I’ll have to tell you about her sometime. Maybe tomorrow.”

She brought him down to toe-level, face-to-face with the mouth of her other sock. He noticed, even in the dim light of her lamp, and just before full force of her foot-smell hit him bodily like a wall of bricks, that she was still talking to him. He tumbled down to the soiled toe of her sock, and gripped the unwashed fabric, the tendrils, for dear life as he swayed from side to side, like a fly in a web. Soon enough the spider came, Olivia’s five toes, the pad of her sweaty foot, and her tough heel.

Just before she clamped down on him, and forced him underneath, deep, face-down into the dark crevice between her toes and the soft, sensitive mound of her foot, she spoke to him again. “Tonight it’s going to be all about the smell,” she said. “Tomorrow, we’ll start on the details.”

Her rank toes, warm and soft, scrunched around his body, and every time he gasped for air, he found that Olivia had been there before him. Judging by the smell, she must not have washed her feet in a week – perhaps longer, much longer. At a certain point one could no longer judge these things. In the back of his mind, as his breathing became more and more regular, and he became gradually more aware that her socked feet, bunched up against each other cozily in the darkness, were, despite the thin layer of sweat that was beginning to spread over them, over the lining of the socks, and over his own body, which he curled up into the gap underneath the ball of her foot, searching for room and comfort, that she and they were now asleep, he felt his mind was overcome by some force greater than his own (Olivia, Olivia, Olivia… crossed his mind, and the big toe of her left foot scratched an itch on her right sole, before withdrawing again). This felt permanent. Eternal. He couldn't escape this power. Her. He breathed, and reached out his arms, in a daze, into the foul darkness. And it was then he realized why she used the ocean recording. The waves. She curled her tired toes around his form, playing with him in her sleep, and then buried him alive. He inhaled deeply, gagged once more, and blacked out.