At the very least, the girl's ankle-high boot hadn't spent a whole school day marinating her tired feet, so the aroma of starch and felt instead overpowered Ted rather than gooey perspiration and toejam, but this was the smallest and only mercy available. In all other ways, the boy was utterly shattered. Every other step, he wondered if it wouldn't just be simpler if the girl crushed him outright. It would likely be preferable to forever spent under her humongous foot. He'd only spent a day imprisoned in her shoe so far, and already those long hours had packed in the equivalent of a lifetime of mind-rending suffering and sexual over-satisfaction.

            The redhead had arrived at church for the recital, as suggested by the muffled sound of girlish jibber-jabber and thundering footsteps trickling through the clenched zipper teeth to Ted's shrunken ears. As before, there were dozens of other humans just beyond these fuzzy cell walls: probably girls with less self-centered systems of morality than Larissa and her clique, perhaps even a few who would feel sorry for Ted and deliver him to safety at last. All it would take was a good scream in listening range, and they'd find him. But alas, the church was crowded with bustling bodies, the dull roar of joking and singing warm-ups wholly drowning out his meager cries. And that wasn't even taking into account the black hole of noise and matter which existed inside Larissa's shoe at the mushy intersection between her stale nylons and boot insole flap: the singularity where Ted was trapped under her totalitarian foot, and hadn't a prayer of escaping until she snipped his bindings loose.

            But then, a small miracle was bestowed on Ted. He didn't notice it for more than half an hour as Larissa milled around the cathedral's backstage, conversing with friends and even practicing her solo verse with a surprisingly invigorating siren song that shook her body all the way to her arch, and Ted along with her. However, when at last the redhead took a rest on a folding chair, and relieved the pressure on her boot-clad peds by temporarily unzipping them, enough sensation returned to Ted's numbed limbs for him to realize.

            The stocking tethers had come unstitched. He was free.

            Maybe it was the increased pounding employed by these tight ankle-boots, or the slow-burn result of Larissa's nylons baking in lukewarm sweat all day, or perhaps even divine intervention. Either way, Ted found he could snake his arms and legs out from under the strings.

            Then, all but confirming this was a gift from the heavens, Larissa's foot started to lift away. Her sole came unpeeled from the boy's sticky, beleaguered body and abandoned him in the soft black expanse. Stocking fibers around her toes snagged and crackled with micro-bursts of static electricity up along the felt-lined boot tunnel. Her heel crested over the bendable upper lip of the footwear, followed by her elegant sole with its dime-sized porthole of milky skin-bearing exposure, then at last her dexterous toes. Larissa didn't completely remove her foot from the boot, but perched it on the ovular roof, creating just enough of a gap to the side of her plush instep that a tiny inch-tall man might crawl through unmolested. As it was, the redhead didn't seem to have noticed at all that Ted had broken out of solitary confinement beneath her foot, due to the fact that she hadn't unleashed righteous fury upon him yet. Whenever she did notice, Ted was quite certain it would be curtains for him, which was why this was now or never.

            The boy's energy was all but sapped from a day of being beaten and masturbated, but when a flicker of newfound hope lit in his heart, he found the gumption to get moving. This was it. He had to crawl at first, until strength returned to his legs, and then he stumbled to the curving wall of the felt boot leading up the side toward the light. Still Larissa's nude foot merely balanced on the boot's maw, occasionally shining with the feminine starlight of either congealed sweat or nylon shimmer; Ted couldn't say. Even better, he didn't hear the telltale criss-cross of squawking voices belonging to the redhead's trio of popular underlings above. In fact, he heard no voices at all, except those squealing in soprano from a far distance. The commotion of the recital set-up would actually serve to offer greater cover during his escape, and confirmed to Ted that his one and only window of opportunity was opened now, emblazoned with glowing neon.

            The rolling barricade of charcoaly material itself was sheer and slippery, impossible to climb, but luckily for Ted, Larissa had chosen a zip-up pair. The metal teeth weren't separated all the way down, but they offered a convenient ladder for the boy's miniscule fingers. Quaking from fatigue and thirst, Ted swallowed his fears and took hold of the zipper track. He could do this. He had to.

            Hand over hand, he ascended, until the metal tangs parted, not yet wide enough for him to squeeze through, but enough that the upper flaps of the boot parted like black flower petals. Stained-glass light and fresh air greeted Ted as he victoriously took hold of the boot's edge a single inch away from Larissa's resting foot. Any instant now, she'd shove her ped back inside, and discover he was missing, but by then, the boy would hopefully be long gone, hiding and awaiting the first giantess who might not make him her foot-pet.

            As Ted clung to the lip of the boot and scanned the horizon for a route, his eyes boggled when his gaze was reciprocated by a nearby woman. Not even a yard away, seated behind Larissa's backstage chair, was a golden-haired titaness in a form-fitting business-casual skirt ensemble, with leather pumps encasing her spandex-tubbed feet and dark-rimmed glasses framing her luminous eyes. She blinked when she saw Ted, her pupils dilating slightly, but the calm in her smiling lips relayed a complex volume of information to the shrunken lad with just a look. Unlike the pious shock he'd witnessed in Larissa just this morning, this woman wasn't perturbed by the sight of a miniature human being. In fact, she looked perfectly comfortable, not malicious or conniving in the least. Even benevolent.

            Then he recognized her. It was hard to place the woman at first, but she was none other than August Turner, a twenty-four-year-old law student and part-time bookstore clerk who always dropped by for major holidays and concert nights. She also happened to be Blair's older sister, as their exceptional beauty and striking fashion choices apparently ran in the family. Ted had never gotten such a close look at her. Right now, however, in his moment of ultimate need, he was just grateful to have been sent this gorgeous blonde bookworm as a guardian angel. A law student, who understood the balance of justice and right versus wrong, would surely be more amenable to aiding him than the bratty redheaded mistress he was currently serving under. He couldn't have asked for a better God-send.