Indiana Jack and the Boot of Doom

By

Asukafan

            I awoke on a damp cold surface. My eyes stung of rancid sweat. The kind of smell you get if you forget to wash your gym socks for a couple weeks. I knew already that this couldn’t be my room. I kept a tidy room and I never remember it smelling like this.

“Britney! Wake up! You have a shoot to do today”

”Ugh, this is suppose to be my vacation mom”

“I know dear, but it’s just for today”

“Alright”

            The voices were booming. I could hardly comprehend what the voices were saying let alone realize it was an intelligible conversation happening. I heard and felt a loud rapturous boom. I ran up the tunnel towards the light and looked up the long shaft. Whatever cave I was in, it sure wasn’t easy to get out. The shaft extended upward at least a couple thousand feet. The rock walls felt smooth and flawless. I had never seen a rock that was this smooth it was absolutely impossible to climb. My eyes struggled and I found that I couldn’t see up and out of the shaft. I could only see the light coming down into it.  I yelled for help a couple times but the constant shaking easily drown out my voice.

            Hours had passed as I stared at my watch. It was like torture. I had covered every square inch of this cave and there was just no way out.  The smell was beginning to drive me batty. It made my stomach clench and squeeze tightly together. I had to hold back the urge to vomit from the putrid stench.

            I felt the cave begin to once again shake from side to side. The light at the top of the shaft was shut off like a light switch. I looked up at the shaft trying to figure out what was happening. I could hear a soft grinding noise getting closer and closer. I continued to look up until five gigantic wiggling toes were staring me right in the face. I took off running down the shaft but they were on me too quick. I dove to the ground just to avoid missing getting my head tore off. I crawled a short distance further down but then I found myself pressed into the floor of this cave by tons upon tons of weight. I could feel my back sinking into the floor via the intense pressure and that is when I realized it wasn’t a cave at all. The toes, the long shaft, at the end of the tunnel I was in a shoe or a boot to be more exact.

            My mind was in absolute horror as claustrophobia set in. I was under the arch of this girl’s foot. Sealed in a tomb of flesh, what did her mom say her name was? Oh yea Britney. I tried to move my arms up hoping maybe if I scratched her foot I could get her attention but my arms were pinned to my side.

“Britney your limo is here”

“Okay Mom”

            I felt all the pressure around me lift up and off of me. I found myself able to move. I couldn’t stand up but I could crawl on my back and shimmy up and down. I was debating whether or not to move when a thousand tons of weight slammed back down onto my body. Her foot pressed harder and harder onto my face. The bottom of her foot smelled peachy. Like that peach scented lotion you can get at bath and body works. As the weight of Britney pressed harder and harder down upon me the peach smell intensified more and more. I found myself breathing in the peach scent as opposed to air. I welcomed her foot rising up and off of me and I took in mouthfuls of the air around me. This time as her foot began to come down towards me. My instincts told me too put my arms out in front of me like I could possibly hold off her foot.  As my hands hit her soft silky smooth skin they sunk into it her foot flesh. Her foot was so very warm. I found that the boot around me was quickly heating up making the once frozen cold surroundings a distant memory.

            Her foot began too sweat intensely as she continued to walk.  Her sweat rolled over my body. As she took step after step I began to forget about everything else but just trying to stay alive. I had to breathe on her up step and then hold my breath as she stepped down on top of me. This is how it went again and again, and again. Finally I heard a door open and close and all the weight was off of me. It was hot and steamy but there was nothing on top of me.

“What is in my boot? It is just killing my foot”

            I felt her toes retreat off of me. As her foot left I could once again see light but only for a moment as I found myself rolling up the walls of the cave and crashing onto the leather seat of the limo. I was shocked as I saw the face of Britney Spears staring down at me.

“Well, well, well what do we have here?”

            I tried to say something but I found that I couldn’t breathe. I was like a fish out of water. I flopped around on the seat trying to breathe and figure out what is going on when I saw Britney pull a metallic looking gun out of her purse. I had no time to react before the light engulfed me and I dwindled once again getting smaller and smaller. I could no longer see her face. Her foot now looked like it must have been the sears tower to me.

“If you want to live you better stay nice and close to my foot. You can only breathe air that has my sweat molecules in it, and your eyes have been rebuilt so they are only comfortable in the dark areas. Now show my foot how much you love and need it to survive.”

             I knew I would never say that, however as the minutes past by and I was running out of the air I ran to her foot as fast as I could and I found that I could once again breathe. I took mouthfuls of the putrid air relishing the fact that I was able to breathe and stay alive.

“Britney we are here”

“Alright”

            She knocked me into her boot using her pinky toe. I never even saw it coming. I fell for what seemed like ever. Before I had even hit the ground her foot was sliding into the boot after. I impacted the sole of her boot. Her heel landed just above. As I laid dazed on the ground I found her that the heel of Britney’s foot looked more like the sky than it did the bottom of her foot. The fibers of the insole have grown to look like tree’s A regular forest as they extend like California redwoods into the sky. I tried to reach out towards her foot but it was like trying to touch a star. I wondered just how small and I had gotten and just how long I could survive.

            This time when she started walking I could feel a slight shaking but after a few minutes I learned how to walk with it. In the distance I could see what looked to be ac clearing with buildings in the formation of a town. As I grew nearer and nearer to the town it started to rain. I had always loved the rain. The smell the air gets after it is done raining, the cool pure rain water hitting your body cooling you off. I turned my head up towards the sky and opened my mouth.  As the rain hit my mouth I gagged profusely. I coughed and hacked as the salty warm water slid down my throat. The rain tasted more like sweat then it did rain water. Then it dawned on me where I was and just why the rain was warm and salty. This downpour was merely the sweat rolling off of Britney’s foot.

            As I stood here for a few minutes perplexed and shocked by my realization I found my clothes were getting wetter and wetter. My clothes felt glued to my body. The air in here was stale and ripe. It was like hell. I started to run towards the buildings I saw in the distance to get out from this sweat shower. I thought it was odd that Britney was right. I could barely see at all earlier when I was outside her boot and now I can see as clear as day.

            I had finally reached the town. Once I got there I was shocked to find a city much like my own only minus cars.  People were walking around and working like this was normal. I ran into the first building I came upon. It looked to be a bar. As I ran I was greeted by a man about the same height as I.

“You look new”

“How can you tell?”

“You have a lost look on your face. Let me pour you a glass of water and explain a few things”

“Thanks sir”

I sat down where he had directed me. There was already a glass full of water where I sat down.. As I grabbed it my throat was dry and that nasty sweat taste was still in my mouth. I went to down the entire glass in a single gulp but the second it hit my tongue I gagged and spit it back out.

“what the hell is this?”

“Water”

“It tastes like sweat. Where the hell did you get this stuff?”

”From the ground, its well water, where do you get your water?”

“You mean the ground as in Britney’s insole?”

“Insole? What is this Insole you speak of?”

“The thing her foot rests on”

“Ahh yes now I remember calling these things Insoles once upon a time. You see in this land everything we get comes from the sky. Our food, our water, The sky is our salvation however, it is quite unpredictable. It comes and goes as it pleases on no schedule so we all work to harvest the bounty it provides.”

            As we continued to talk a plate was set down in front of me.  The guy across from me started eating right away but I merely looked at it in disgust. It was sock fuzz, and toe jam, and what looked to be a stale bread crumb set on the plate.

“eat up son, at least eat the crumb, those are valuable. It being your first day here it is our way of saying welcome but those are a rare treat. And worth a fortune if you find any.”

“How do they get here? The crumbs I mean”

“From the sky”

“You mean when she walks barefoot and a crumb or some other piece of food sticks her foot and flakes off?”

“If you say so. I know not what you talk about, but I have forgotten much. You will too, slowly, you will hardly realize it. We all do.”

            I grabbed the crumb as it was the only edible looking thing on my plate. As I took a bite I gagged but I forced it down. It was a bread crumb indeed but it was quite stale and it too was soaked with her sweat. I forced the rest of it down and took a couple swigs of this sweat water.

“You look tired, why don’t you go to the loft and rest. Tomorrow, come down and talk to the bartender here. He will set you up with a job. You don’t have to stay here but if you do, you will be expected to earn your keep like the rest of us here.

~Epilogue~

            That night I did go up too the loft and rested. I had trouble sleeping but I finally did. I was awoke by thea bright light. It hurt my eyes to even look at. I ran down the stairs and went outside. It looked up into the sky to see Britney’s foot gone.  As sweat poured down off my body I sighed in relief as it would at least cool down a bit.

            I went to talk to the bartender he told me to go to the outskirts of town where I would see a group of people gathering. They would show me what to do. I learned later that I was a sweat harvester. I would take the water from the ground pump it into tanks so we could survive when her foot was not providing bounty as they called it.

            As time passed I soon to forgot about my old life and began to settle into this new life. I never got use too the heat though. We were so low in the boot that whether her foot was on top of us or not it is equivalent to about 110 degrees.  I work by day, and dream by night. I dream of way out, a life outside this boot, but I know even if I could get out. I can no longer breathe air out there. I have grown dependant upon the sweat, sock fuzz, and toe jam to survive, but I still have hope. Hope is  the only thing that keeps me alive. Maybe someday I will be freed from this hell.

The End