Despite initial difficulty falling asleep I eventually drifted off, only to be ripped out of slumber by an explosion followed by the ground shaking. Dim light filtered in through the shoe’s opening, illuminating the mottled gray floor and threadbare walls in the heel section. Alyssa’s titanic shadow blocked the light momentarily while she passed by, and I forced myself to stand in the deepest part of the cave where her toes would soon come to rest.
A door slammed, followed by a squeak and the sound of water flowing freely. I trudged forward, running my hand along the tongue of her shoe that formed my ceiling, forcing my sleep-deprived eyes to stay open. If I was going back to Fulda today, I’d need to be as aware as possible after she’s had an entire weekend to come up with new torments for me.
Her shower lasted ten minutes, and additional hygiene took another ten, during which I had nothing to do but stare up through the shoe’s hole for her foot and analyze the shadows cast by her lamp. When she was done she threw the door open, and her footfalls made the shoe and everything inside it tremble again. Wood brushed against wood while she opened and closed her drawers, and after a few more pounding thuds she came into my view again, fully dressed, then sat on the side of her bed.
I watched her bend down and pick up her left shoe, hoisting it up so that she could peer inside it. Satisfied she lowered it back down and slid it onto her socked foot, wrenching it back and forth to get the canvas around her skin. There were several seconds of straining before she felt satisfied with the shoe’s comfort, after which she grabbed the laces and looped them together tightly. She set it back on the ground with a resounding thud, then looked at the shoe I was in.
Alyssa spread her hand wide, blocking my vision outside of the show on its way down. Her slender fingers seized the shoe I was in, hoisting it up by the heel and creating a steep incline toward the toe which I quickly tumbled down. After I rolled into the end it evened out, my back curved to fit the space more comfortably. Deep in the shadows, I saw the bottom of a gray iris in the small sliver of the outside world I could still see, and hoped that Alyssa had spotted me as well.
The shoe dropped down, confirming that she hadn’t. I pressed myself as far into the canvas as I could: forget the pictures, this was now a matter of life and death. Alyssa turned the shoe sideways, throwing me from back onto the battered insole. A white behemoth slid into the cave, her toes subtly twitching inside the shoe. As it came toward me I struggled to get up, but Alyssa thwarted me when she tilted the shoe again and sent me rolling toward her encroaching toes. Soft cotton broke my fall, and I struggled to scoot away from her foot as it filled more of the shoe. My efforts were in vain, however, and her toes easily overtook me as she put her shoe on.
Her foot drove me along under her toes while it slid into her shoe, rolling me over as it went. Finally it came to a stop, leaving me at peace, while she flexed and stretched her toes. Luckily I had ended up in the arches beneath her toes, so I was subjected only to the piercing sound of her joints popping and some moderate pressure. That changed once she swung her foot down, setting it on the floor with a terrible impact that wedged me between the sole and her foot, causing my teeth to chatter to their very roots.
Before the storm could even pass Alyssa lifted her foot up again, driving it back into the floor. Pain surged through me again, and it became clear that she was aware something was inside her shoe, she just didn’t know what. Her foot shot up again, only to slam back down before I even got settled, causing me to cry out into the uncaring surface of Alyssa’s big toe. The pressure around me began to build, and I curled up into a ball for protection. When the pressure reached its peak she shoe began rotating back and forth, a sure sign that she was trying to grind whatever it was under her foot.
After a half dozen twists the pressure subsided, and Alyssa laid her heel back down. I decided to remain curled up so that she wouldn’t try to exterminate me again and she could move on. With her first step I almost wished I had been killed. A strong sensation of my insides falling downward ran through me, followed immediately by them getting forced up into the sock pressing down on me. Involuntarily I screamed from the shock, then screamed again when she slammed her foot back down to the floor. My eyes watered and the marrow of my bones itself shook under the force of her step, which made the subsequent build-up of pressure seem downright tolerable while she prepared to step off again.
The trip down may not have been very long, but to me it seemed to take hours. Each step was a repetition of that, the extreme discomfort caused by simply being moved mixed with the unshakable terror of being crushed. Fortunately she did not stop for breakfast, either grabbing something on her way out or skipping it entirely, since with nothing else to do her feet would have nothing to deal with but me. In short order she made her way out to her car, and after the engine roared to life a new, unforeseen torment began.
Alyssa’s foot pushed down against me, hard and long enough that it nearly formed around my body, before it suddenly relented. Seconds later, however, it came back with a vengeance, and I found myself being pushed into the cotton sock encompassing me while her foot threatened to crack my bones utterly. However that, too, soon relented, only to return a split second later.
I have no idea how long the punishment of Alyssa’s driving lasted, though in reality it couldn’t have been much longer than twenty minutes. Throughout the drive I wished only one thing, beyond never having been in her shoe to begin with: that she had learned some patience. Nevertheless I survived, though I didn’t expect that I would soon forget about each time she hit the brakes or nudged the gas.
After the immediate shock of her stepping out into the parking lot, which felt similar to a pneumatic press resting on my back, the familiar rhythm of her gait set in. I bit my lip while she walked, trying to take the mind off the pain from her steps, though she did not make it easy. Each time her foot came down with a great slap, as though she was entirely without grace or consideration, and the procedural roll of agony through my joints while she prepared to step off again only became worse. It was too long before I got another break, while she finally stood still long enough for me to catch my breath.
“So where is he?” Alyssa jumped so hard that I felt free for a moment before she settled down again. “You didn’t forget, right?”
“Uh, of course not!” Alyssa replied, vibrations from her voice shaking me even beneath her feet. “Just, give me a minute, and I’ll get him for you.” Much to my own – and her own future – relief, the terrible weight pressing down on me lessened when she undid her laces, and I was dragged back while she withdrew her foot from the shoe. Before her toes departed she shook her foot, forcing me from inside the crooks of her toes and dropping me back onto the dirty sole beneath. I rolled along the shoe’s heel while Alyssa turned it outward, spinning into the rigid walls which would normally be against her ankle.
An icy blue eye peered into the shoe and spotted my crumpled form beside the instep. “Oh, there he is!” Fulda declared, then upturned the shoe. I flopped onto the shoe’s tongue, then rolled along that until I spilled out onto her hand. She handed the shoe back to Alyssa, then placed a finger over me. “Thank you so much for bringing him back safely, I know he can be kind of a pest sometimes and you just want to step on him and be done with it.”
“Oh, not at all!” Alyssa replied. “He was great the whole time, didn’t have any problems with him and he was even enthusiastic about getting into my shoe.”
Fulda laughed so hard that she nearly dumped me onto the floor. “Bitch, you don’t have to lie! He’s my boyfriend, not my kid, isn’t that right?” She raised me up to her face to nuzzle me with her battering ram of a nose. “But now you’re back, so it’s just me and-“ she stopped and screwed up her face. “Ew, you smell like feet dude. Remind me not to do that again until I’ve rinsed you off.” Immediately after she recoiled, holding me down around her chest. Alyssa set about putting her shoe back on, and I laid helplessly in Fulda’s palm.
From Fulda’s waist I watched her navigate a crowd of her fellow students, pushing them aside with one arm before they could even get close enough to breathe on her. Most people gave her a wide enough berth that she didn’t have to, and in short order we had gotten to her first class. She held me steady while walking to her seat toward the back, keeping me out of view of any of our classmates with her sharply cupped hands.
Once she took her seat, Fulda began to address me in earnest - as in, what she was interested in. “So, you have the camera, right?” I held the camera up and nodded, making it clear. “Good! So, every time I put you somewhere today, I want you to get a picture of it, okay?” I nodded, and confirmed my taking a picture from right where I was laying. Fulda grinned and poked me with a finger. “It’s too bad you smell so bad right now, I would totally cuddle with you otherwise.” What a generous offer, I thought, after she had just given me away for a whole weekend.
Her thumb and forefinger shot in, pinching me between them, then she lifted me up. Carefully she set me down atop her shoulder, making sure she parted her hair so that there was an auburn wall behind and partially in front of me, making sure I was practically beneath her earlobe. The door slammed, and the broad shoulder I was on rumbled while Fulda intoned, “Oh, it’s really convenient you came back today, since it’s the world history final!” Convenient, indeed: it was probably the only subject I was clearly better at than her. “You wouldn’t mind helping me out a bit, would you?”
Standing on the wide, red plain of her shirt I looked up at her, not even taking a second to consider the question. “Fulda, my dear,” I began, “how could I even begin to turn down you, or anyone else capable of swatting me like a fly?” She smiled, and I took it as a good sign to continue. “As long as I can see the sheet I’ll tell you what to put in.” And hopefully she wouldn’t flatten me if she didn’t like my answer.
A few minutes passed in silence, neither of us wanting to attract too much attention to this extremely bizarre situation. When the teacher finally came in and announced that the students should come up to get their tests Fulda was one of the first out of her seat. I grabbed onto the collar of her shirt to keep from getting thrown sideways, holding on as though it were an infuriated bull the whole time she was walking. My feet bounced up and down on her shoulder, and my fingers felt the strain of their clutch before Fulda made the trek back to her seat.
Once the test began and Fulda opened her test booklet I peered past the waterfall of hair in front of me and got to reading. I began rattling off answers as they showed up. “Iran… Augustus… Merovingian… no really, trust me,” I went, and she proceeded to fill in the boxes accordingly. It was a hundred question exam, and I did my best the whole time despite my voice getting raspy toward the end. I made sure to stall appropriately so that she wouldn’t finish first so as to avoid any suspicion, then braced myself on her collar while she closed her exam book and stood.
When she was done Fulda stepped outside, looking to waste a few more minutes before her next class, and reached up to grab me. She easily caught me with her fingers splayed out, then held me a bit below her chin. “So, how’d we do, little guy?” she asked, fluttering her eyelashes. “We’re getting an A, right?”
“At least,” I replied confidently. “There’s no way you didn’t knock that out of the park. I mean, normally I would have just studied with you last night, but…”
“But right now you’re too small to even open a book,” Fulda interjected. “So, I’m really glad you helped me ace that, but I can’t just leave you on my shoulder all day, it’s too risky. You might fall off, or someone might grab you, or…” she trailed off before concluding, “and all I have left today is studying for finals later in the week, so I really don’t need you out anyway…” I could see where this was going.
A zipper opened in the distance, and with a glance down I saw that Fulda’s handbag was practically waiting for me. She drew me down her bright red shirt, past her high-waisted black skirt with an array of buttons in front, and held me above the zipper’s opening. “Try not to get into too much trouble in there, little guy,” she implored before dropping me in. “I’ll get you out when I get home, I promise, okay?” It hardly mattered what I said, since I was already dropping between the metal teeth and into the black velour bag.
The zipper closed, plunging me into total darkness and making it so I couldn’t even peek up at her. It was a fairly sparse bag, all things considered: her cell phone had acted as a landing platform for me, wedged up against a tube of lip gloss twice as wide and five times as long as me. A set of keys jingled when I landed, indicating they were probably beneath her cell phone, and I just got sight of some painkiller tablets before the lights went out.
Absent anything else to do and stuck in pitch darkness I laid myself out on the phone’s case and pulled the screen cleaner up as a blanket. The gentle swaying while she gripped the handbag while walking helped send me off to sleep, and in no time I forgot where I even was. Before she even set me down for the next class I was already snoozing, and fully asleep soon after.
I managed to stay resting for most of the day despite being jostled awake a few times, for which I was rather glad. At what I thought to be the end of the day, however, the air suddenly became much more humid and musty, and I felt the vessel I was in get set down roughly. The zipper was pulled open again, and after she widened the gap with her hands I could see Fulda’s face peering down at me.
“Hey, so, hope you don’t mind,” she began, “but I still have to do stuff for volleyball. I don’t really want to take you out there with me, so I’ll be leaving you in here. You’ll be okay, right?” I nodded; not like I had much say in the matter, anyway. She smiled genuinely and added, “Okay, don’t sweat little guy. I’ll be back before you know it.” Fulda stood, leaving me with one last image of her ass cupped by skin-tight volleyball shorts as she left.
A minute or so after she was out of sight something tapped her handbag, knocking it onto the floor. Several of the items on top clattered out, including her cellphone, which pushed out along with it. When the cellphone stopped I was thrown from atop it, landing on the concrete floor and rolling the rest of the way until I was stopped by a thin yet solid white wall of rubber.
It didn’t take much for me to realize I had run into an enormous cross-trainer, and if I needed any help an identical one a tremendous distance from me was proof enough. I looked up from the black Nikes, following the immaculately sculpted legs, until my eyes found a pair of dark blue short shorts clinging tightly enough to her skin that they made indentations at their base. Above that I saw a loose, plain gray shirt, its sleeves cut off to leave gaping arm holes, over an ample chest, and past that a set of dark brown, nearly black, eyes staring down at me, framed on either side by strands of black hair. A malicious smirk accented her face while she sized me up.
“Well, what do we have here?” Mary began boisterously. “Looks like Fulda’s tiny little boyfriend has been hiding in her bag all this time, and no one ever knew. How about I make sure no one else ever knows, too?” I gulped. Looked like my day was about to go from bad to worse.