Only a few seconds passed with Richard trapped under his daughter’s enormous toes before Julie got to work.  Her digits gripped her father’s body as best they could, fumbling with the shrinker in the damp darkness.  The flesh, greasy after a night out, ruffled his hair and clothes and pinched at his arms between the digits.  Yet even as Julie mashed him down into the foul-smelling insole, Richard could tell she was using restraint, if only subconsciously, like when she’d picked him up.

High above through the wall of leather and fabric he heard laughter and clapping from the trio as the stunt was completed.  Julie’s toes set about squirming awkwardly over his body,  as the entire act was obviously wildly foreign to her.  Frankly, the girl was in the minority to have never tried putting a shrinker in her shoe by this age, yet Richard could sense her newness with the concept.  He certainly had the experience to know when someone was handling him with authority in quite possibly the most dangerous location on their wardrobe.  His mother, his brother, his sister, several of his cousins and even a neighbor: all had tried wearing him several times in his youth, and each had picked up a style for corralling him under their filthy toes and grinding him into the insole until he was literally begging for mercy.

But not Julie.  Sweet Julie, who only wanted acceptance from a world that would never fully accept her just because of her inhuman father, couldn’t pull it off.  Her toes prodded at him curiously, unsure of what to do with themselves, and her entire foot was braced back to give him as much room as possible.

She wasn’t the dominating monster she wanted her friends to think she was.  She was a girl so desperate to be liked that she was blinded to what was most important.

Apparently this location had grown boring for the group, because suddenly Julie’s boot was lifting up, her toes suspended in midair for just a moment that caused Richard to nearly slide under the slick ball of her foot.  The living room, immediately attached to the kitchen, was the apparent destination.  The shrinker only experienced about fifteen compressions under the doughy, sweat-laced skin of his child, and he could sense the care with which Julie was walking on him.  Shuffling was heard as everyone took a seat in a chair, and weightlessness took over momentarily again as Julie crossed her boot over her opposite knee.

Meanwhile, the discussion up at normal eye level carried on.  Richard heard more laughter, and struggled to wedge himself as comfortably as possible under Julie’s toes.  He tried more than once to slither on top of her foot and try climbing toward the opening again, but given the angle she had crossed her leg, it was impossible.  Luckily, the girl noticed her tiny father’s attempts to reposition and quickly curled her digits around his limbs again, hugging him down against her foot and ensuring he couldn’t slip in another direction.

Richard, aware now that he wasn’t going anywhere, resolved to lie peacefully in the overheated hovel of salty feminine flesh and swampy air.  This was just the price he was promising he’d pay to help Julie find her way back home.

In the darkness, with his daughter’s toes resting gently on his back and tapping occasionally on his legs, Richard began to cry, not for himself, but for his child.  It was slow at first, but soon the man’s chest was heaving up against Julie’s toes, the pouring moisture of his tears intermingling with the sticky sweat caked over her skin.

At first, the toes only twitched as Richard’s liquid sorrow dribbled onto her, but soon it was almost overwhelming as the shrinker fought to choke back deep sobs.  Bowing his head, the downtrodden parent felt his neck slipping accidentally into the tender crevice between his daughter’s big and second toes, his tears filling in the soft wrinkles and cleansing her filthy flesh in some small measure.

“I can’t do this,” Julie’s voice boomed suddenly from far above as though awakening from a fever dream.  Richard halted, gasping for breath as Julie’s toe cradled the side of his face.

“Can’t do what?” laughed the voice of the boy.

“Can’t listen to you pieces of shit anymore,” she scowled back.  Already the boot was slipping off her foot, the toes at last releasing their sweaty grip on Richard’s body.  With relief, he tumbled freely against the tilted insole again.  The action outside was now more clearly heard.

“Uh, excuse me?” one of the girls squawked.  “Don’t be fucking rude.  We bought you vodka.”

“You’re just drunk, Julie,” the other girl commented.

“No,” Julie fired back, her voice cracking.  “I’m just not going to let a bunch of rich fuckers turn me into one of them.”  Richard turned around and saw his daughter’s hand sliding back into the opening of the boot, her fingers fishing for him in the darkness.  He reached out a hand, meeting the girl’s fingertip, and felt it shiver at his touch.  Soon her palm was gathering him up in the same way it normally did, cupping him carefully against her soft skin to ensure he was comfortable as she lifted him at last out of the boot.

Richard sputtered for fresh air as he emerged into the living room, guarded behind his daughter’s fingers.  He looked up, his face reddened and wet with tears, and realized Julie’s eyes were already welled deeply with glistening moisture.  She’d managed to hold it together for a few seconds while she told off her new friends, but at the sight of her father, roughed up by her own body and weeping bitterly, she broke down completely.

“Ugh.  I told you she was still a shrinker-lover,” the boy groaned as he rose with his girlfriend from the couch.  “C’mon.  Let’s get the hell out of here.  I’m sick of looking at them both already.”

“We thought you were cool, Julie,” the other girl said as she followed her friends.  “We thought you were different.”

Now ignoring the trio as they stumbled out the kitchen door and back to their car outside without closing the garage, Julie’s raw eyes were locked to her father, cribbed in both hands, as fat tears cascaded endlessly down her cheeks.  As soon as the door had closed behind the intruders, Julie’s quivering lips opened up and she screamed.

The scream rattled her entire body and shredded through the walls of the house, and Richard felt as though the sound was echoing inside his own chest too.  In spite of the pain his daughter was clearly in now as she fought to return to being the person he knew and loved, the shrinker managed to stop his own miniature floodgates and dry his eyes.

She was fighting.  She could make it back.

Julie drew in air for breath but carried right on, roaring with passionate sorrow and horror at what she’d done.  By now, her tears were spilling down the crook of her neck, staining spots onto her shirt and plopping onto her father, in turn rinsing his ravaged body.

“Julie,” Richard croaked, his small voice that somehow cut through the anguish bellowing from his child’s throat.  He lifted her limp thumb and hugged it tightly to his chest.  “Julie.”

Amidst her strife, the girl heard her father’s words and looked down at him, big blue eyes strained around the edges.  Her mouth hung open, unable to come up with a response, and her breaths came loud and heavy.

Richard was looking up at the titanic face of an eighteen-year-old girl with pink streaks in her hair and uncharacteristically heavy eye shadow that had spilled down her cheeks in silver cataracts, but this wasn’t what he saw.

Instead, he saw the tear-stained face of Julie at five years old on another night when Carol was out of town.  A thunderstorm was raging outside, and Richard had woken to the sound of his daughter crying into her pillow in the next room.  Minutes later he’d climbed down the makeshift ladder attached to his pillow and made his way into her bedroom, where he found her sitting up, eyes puffy and tired as tears descended into her sheets.

Once she’d scooped him up into the bed and cuddled him to her cheek, Julie had proceeded to describe the nightmare she’d just woken up from: the slimy, tentacled, hellbound creatures that had crawled over walls and up from vents to take her into the night.  She’d barely gotten through it before the sobbing continued.

The twenty-six-year-old Richard, soaked in Julie’s tears, had wasted no time in vowing to protect her from those beasts with his bare hands, and swore nothing would ever touch her as long as he was around.  And after a few minutes of reassurance, the girl had believed him whole-heartedly, agreeing to try sleeping again as long as he stayed.

Held gently in the warm dark between the child’s hands for his protection as well as hers, Richard had hugged himself to her finger then, too, humming a lullaby as loudly as he could until he heard her breathing slowed down at last.

“Julie,” Richard whispered as his vulnerable, grown-up little girl held him in trembling palms on the living room chair.  “It’s all right.  Don’t cry.  I love you.”

The tears continued flowing, but Julie managed to press her lips back together and cease the shouting.  She lowered her head, her long blonde locks passing over Richard in a silky jungle, until her cheek was pressed against her five-inch father’s body.

“I love you t-too, Daddy,” she sputtered weakly.  “I l-love you so m-much.  Oh my G-God, I’m s-so… I’m so s-sorry.”

“I know, honey,” he shushed, kissing his child’s wet cheek and stroking it delicately to soothe her.  “I won’t let the monsters get you.”