It was morning, and for a long time that was all I knew. There was darkness amid the sounds of chittering birds, crickets, and the rising crescendo of the cicadas. And in this darkness I first heard, from high above, the sound of a woman’s voice, followed by thundering footsteps. I was soon on my feet, breathing heavily, and stumbled forward in the pitch black into the moistness and mesh of some fabric, which smelled heavily of feet. The footsteps neared, and I heard, high up, the sound of contact and the pressure of some living thing pushing against the black walls of my prison. The mesh was removed and I saw as though through a tunnel, far above, as my eyes adjusted, the face of a woman. She was a blonde, a blondie. That was the first thing I noticed about her. She looked 30-32, but I learned later that she was 38. She was also—and it’s strange to admit that I realized this last of all—at least 80 feet tall. A giantess.

It was her voice, though, that I heard first. She told me she was ‘Holly’ –that was her name—and I was hers. Ms. Holly, I thought. My English teacher, 10th grade. I couldn’t move; I was paralyzed with confusion. No, by her hand, which lifted me up to her face from—a large riding boot, 60 feet below.

She looked at me long, and then, slowly, a smirk spread across her face. “You don’t understand, but that’s fine. I’m sorry. Yes, I am your teacher, and No, this is not detention.” She smiled, and then frowned. “I’m afraid this is about my daughter, Adela.” On my face was written the hopeless confusion I felt, and she seemed to recognize this, because she clarified: “You know, your girlfriend.”

After I failed to respond again, she walked across the room, quickly, and set me on the dresser. Picking up a comb and perfume spray, and beginning to brush her hair before the great mirror in front of her, she explained, casually, “I don’t expect you to understand any of this today, and, of course, no explanation of my own would quite do. But there are plain facts here that I don’t want you to overlook.” She paused, and gave me a long, contemplative look. “Let me show you something,” she said, and dropping the comb where it had lay, scooped me up in her hand and brought me to her bed. With her hands, she lifted her left boot and tipped it over, like a water pitcher, and then spoke.

“Come on, you insect. Stand up and look at me.”  A pale, toothless man, with skin the shade of a white grub, tumbled out of her boot and circled his arms about, frantically, as if looking for a place to hide. Holly called to him, and tauntingly asked him, while showing him the bottom of her foot, “What do you say? What do you say to me?” He made a vain attempt at speech, moving his lips as if trying to form words, but failed. He could say nothing.  Slowly she leant over him, her hair cascading around him and her face, pushed the hair behind her ears, and let out a long string or thread of drool, then spit it violently into his face. “Get back where you belong, Worm,” she yelled. 

She then turned to me, “Do you recognize him?” I said nothing, paralyzed by all the terror and incomprehension I felt. “He was my husband,” she said. “He is my husband, I suppose.” Holly paused. “A number of years ago he threatened to leave Adela, leave me, and nothing I could do would change his mind or bend his course of action, he said. Of course, he didn’t know I could do this to him, to anyone. He knew very little about me, in fact, when he asked me for my hand.” She looked over at me, perhaps to gauge my reaction, whether I was horrified and, if so, how horrified I was. But I still said nothing, and she went on.

“I only do this to him because he disappoints me. If he cared only a little more, loved me a little more, I would be happy again. But he doesn’t. No--Just look at him.” She scowled. My neck bent down with an involuntary twitch, and I saw him trying to crawl back to the shoe. I seemed to be dreaming, or re-living these events. Or, as I thought, in stupefaction, I was seeing a vision. “…because he just doesn’t care enough. I don’t remember the last time I was able to let him out. I don’t remember the last time I washed my feet.” She looked with a mixture of sorrow and mischief at me, and I recognized Ms. Holly, as if for the first time. It was she, but she was 80 feet tall, and I was perhaps 3 inches, or less. How had this happened? And then I remembered Adela, who sat beside me in Chemistry. Adela, whom I had, in some remote or very recent time, asked “out” for some long-lost Friday, for dinner, for a night alone.

I looked down on the other man, the one she called her husband, as he finally found his way to the mouth of the boot, and disappeared inside. “So that’s that,” Holly said. “You aren’t the first who’s approached my daughter, and I doubt you’ll be the last. But I’m always interested about the little students I’ve brought home and, well, despite myself, I’m interested in you. Not you –Martin—the boy in English class. (I liked that Martin.) Not you—Martin—the boy who decided to court my daughter. (That Martin I don’t like so much.) But the Martin you are when you’re at home, or doing things alone. Tell me about yourself. We have an hour before school begins.” She swung her legs from the floor to the bed, and stretched herself out. To my right and left, her feet cast their shadows on me, and in the distance, past her thighs, I saw her exposed and uncovered womanhood. “Come closer,” she said, casually, and spread the palm of her right hand before her pussy. My legs decided it was time to move forward, and I walked, for thirty seconds or more, to her palm, and she brought me to the head of the bed and deposited me beside her pillow. She waited, and soon I found my voice, or a voice, deep within. It was true. I was Martin, and at some indefinite point in the past, I used to be someone else.  I started to speak.

“I’m 17 and starting 11th grade. I’ve had some girlfriends and I can’t decide whether I’m a jock, nerd, geek, or dweeb. I think the second, though I’ve played some sports. I’m somewhat unpopular…”

My English teacher raised her hand, and for an instant I was afraid she would swat me. But she opened her mouth, instead, with eyes smiling, “Don’t start your story like that. Here’s my tip for you: All children and young boys begin stories like that—I’m popular, I’m unpopular, or I’m neither, & I’m a jock or a nerd or I’m neither—and imagine they’re telling the reader something valuable. It’s not valuable to me, and it tells me nothing, because none of those categories exists in any important sense for me, or for anyone I respect. Go on, and start from the beginning, wherever you think that is. But don’t tell me what status you think you had among a group of idiot teenagers. (Why does every child seem to begin a story this way?) But I have half an hour. Go on.”

I felt her warm, slightly acrid morning breath pass over me as she talked. I stopped for a moment, and then thought of her husband, or that being she had enslaved several years before. Every day, during class, that man must have been in her shoes, slowly dying, being crushed to pieces, and we, the students, for nine long months, never perceived, at any moment, that anything in her behavior was unusual or amiss. Will, one day, I become like that? Would she torture me, and break me, and do to me what she did to her own husband? Before I could start again, I needed to know this. My knee-joints buckled, and I sank on my knees into the fragrant, cushiony surface at the edge of her pillow, and begged for my life.

When I opened my eyes again, it was through tears that I saw Ms. Holly. But something was different: she was my height or--by my reckoning--only several inches taller than I. She was relaxed and reclined as before, cozily, propping her upper body with her hands and crossing her legs at the ankles.

 “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable talking to me at this size,” she said, amiably. “Go on, I said.” She winked at me and, with her finger, pointed toward the pillow, and bid me to sit down and continue. “But don’t come near me. That’s a warning.”
 
I cleared my eyes of tears, stood up, and went on. “I wasn’t born in this area of the state,” I said. “I moved here when I was 13, four years ago. Before then I attended a private, Catholic school, where the children were required to wear uniforms, go to daily services in the school chapel, pray before and after classes, right, you know.” 
“What does your father do?”
“He was a mechanic.”
“Your mother?”
“A secretary in the local real estate office. We were middle-class, or lower middle-class, I suppose.”
“Do you have any siblings?”
“An older sister, but she died two years before I was born, a few hours after birth.”
“Well, keep going. How did you like high school here?”
“High school? I don’t know. Does anyone like school?”
“Some. Didn’t you like my class?”
“Your class? Yes, I think I did. I thought you liked me. I read everything…”
“You were okay, Martin. Not great, but good enough. Sure, you got an A, but that’s not everything.” She uncrossed her ankles, and curled in her legs ‘Indian style.’ “I give the scholars—the great students—and the others—the ‘good enough’ students—A’s. But I wouldn’t have recommended you for a good university or college. I’ll be honest with you. Not because I don’t like you: I loved having you in my class, and you were an ‘A’ student. But I’ll be frank with you: grades may mean something to you, but they mean nothing to me. If you were a teacher, you would know soon enough that there are degrees of excellence independent of grades. I might recommend a ‘B’ student to his or her school of choice over an ‘A’ student if they demonstrate, in my view, extraordinary potential or imaginative ability beyond the range of the ‘A’ student. You didn’t strike me as one who possessed that potential.” She paused for breath. 
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You’ll see. Close your eyes.” My eyes were immediately closed, it seemed, by a power that was not my own.
“Open them.” I opened them, and again my teacher was the size of a small mountain, spread out along the whole of the bed, with her head resting against the pillow. She pushed herself up on her elbows, lazily, and then plucked me up between her fingers.

Her words didn’t have time to penetrate far within me before I imagined, or remembered dimly (as of an event that happened long before my birth and read in a book, or heard from the lips of some long-dead ancestor), that one night in this suburban town the shadow of a hundred-foot tall woman suddenly appeared and disappeared in a backyard. The moon was blotted out for ten seconds, during which only the silhouette of a giant woman was visible—and then this vanished forever, and the moon returned. I had seen, a month later, when passing Adela’s backyard, between two trees, a fifteen-foot long depression in the grass of the lawn, in the shape of a giant footprint. There are clouds that look like elephants and eagles, and this too didn’t trouble me much at the time, if it ever happened. But I thought of it then, when looking at the beautiful, impossibly huge face of Ms. Holly, of my English teacher.

“Martin,” she cooed. “Why you? Why a good kid? Isn’t that what you want to know? Why do bad things happen to good people? Well, why is this a bad thing? Look at yourself!” But instead I looked up at her. “I can enlarge and reduce the proportions of any living organism, including myself. This is a talent, and it’s taken me years of honing and practice. Adela has inherited the gift, to a degree. But she does not have, and probably never will have, the self-command and mastery I’ve attained. Only I will be able to restore you to your former size—although I don’t believe there will ever any good reason for me to do this.

“I could give you to Adela, but she owns five men presently, and has owned countless others. She has never treated her pets well (though, because she had spoken well of you to me in the past, and hinted once or twice to me that she was keen on getting you as a mini-pet or some slave, I think she would handle you more gently than others). But I think I want to keep you for myself, Martin—at least for a little while.

“For one, I do need a cushion for my right sole, and it’s been months since I’ve walked right (the last one I hired for that rôle was something of a disappointment, and scrunched rather too quickly for my taste). Two, I need someone to clean this place during the day, while I’m gone, and my husband (as you saw) is entirely useless these days. For those household tasks I can enlarge you to about 12 inches, which should be sufficient—for the harder, monthly chores, maybe twenty-four inches would be more comfortable.

“Martin, you would have wasted your life in an office or a school. You might have been a minor government functionary, or a C-grade engineer. We have thousands of those, and any man can take a life like that; any man can replace you. But with me, you might be able to make something really useful of yourself. You have a chance to make yourself truly irreplaceable, Martin. I’m a busy woman, and need all the help I can find, these days.” She looked away, smiling, and with the shy air of one about to broach a delicate topic. “There are advantages to being my pet, also,” and she lowered me down to her unclad pussy, and pushed me gently forward into its folds.

“No!” I cried out. But the scent was intoxicating and overpowering, and she held me there, pressed against her lips, for what seemed like a full minute. Then she lifted me back to her face. “Adela, I think, is still somewhat too young for such games, or doesn’t understand the point of them. I know what she does with her pets, in any case, and I know she doesn’t…do...this…” I was in heaven, briefly.

“But it’s time to get ready for work, Martin. Today is your first day, so I’ll be easy on you. I do want you to get used to the kind of work you’ll be doing for, most likely, the rest of your life, so you’ll have to grow accustomed to me, get used to the way I am, think, work, smell, look, feel, etc. It’s 7 AM now. I’ll leave you in my purse until noon, and then give you some food, and we’ll have a short chat. Find out how it’s working. Then, during the afternoon, I may give you some minor tasks, to help me find out what you’re good at, where your aptitudes are, and where we need to work a little harder.”

I listened to all of this, and remembered all of it, but my rational mind still failed to rationalize it, and for the time I just accepted that all of this was “the case,” and that everything before it was no longer the case. It would be a long time, weeks even, before any of this began to make sense to me, as it does today. I was slipped into one of her well-worn, fragrant nylon stockings—the same one which imprisoned me in her leather riding boot which, I remember, she always wore to school (sometimes, during the spring, she brought in flats, heels, or flip-flops, and during field trips she wore a battered pair of old sneakers, but during the fall and the winter it seemed she wore the boots almost every day). She then dropped me in the purse, and I breathed in the leathery, cheesy scent of the fabric, lint, and small flakes of skin fallen from her foot, for the rest of the morning. I was hungry, and all I thought about was my raging, all-consuming hunger and thirst. But it had to wait. I waited and waited for noon.

Before I continue with the narrative: a short re-cap, and what I felt—but wasn’t really able to articulate—about Holly and Adela at the time, after the first five hours.

I had seen my English teacher, with my own eyes, shrink and grow larger by her own power. With equal terror and amazement, I had also seen her commit acts of outrageous cruelty against another human being, though she seemed to derive no sexual pleasure at all from her cruelty, and therefore her acts were not in the strict sense acts of a sadist. No, in her own eyes she was dispensing just punishment on a man who had wronged her—as far as I could tell, she suffered no twinges or pangs of conscience in breaking down her husband to a pale and muttering, shrunken subhuman who worshiped her—body and mind, life and soul. No, Holly was like a Megaera, the ancient Fury whose vengeance on adulterous and uncaring husbands was all too just. I didn’t agree with her unforgiving and unforgetting kind of justice—so primitive and hideous—but I think that I’ve come to understand it, and I’m now certain that, if Ms. Holly was anything (teacher, wife, Goddess, or maybe Fury), she was not sadistic.

But I realized that Holly had been wrong to tell me one thing: she should not have let slip that her daughter, Adela, possessed powers similar to her own. Apart from this oversight—if it was an oversight (and I had my doubts about that, as everything else)—I wondered, idly, about her characterization of Adela, which was suspect. I was expected to believe that Adela had imprisoned ‘countless’ men, and dispatched many of her pets through mistreatment or just plain indifference. She was a cruel, or negligent, mistress—that was her mother’s take on her. But maybe none of this was true: didn’t Ms. Holly have her reasons to scare me away from her daughter, Adela, and bind me closer, enslave me, to herself? Even after the events of our first day together, it was difficult for me to fully trust and resign myself to my new mistress.

Adela was a kind girl with long dark hair who kept to herself. In Chemistry, we completed math problems together, shared homework, dissected or vivisected the same animals, and read from the same textbook. Hell, if we split the same lunches and stopped at the same lockers, little would have changed. She seemed to be friendly toward me—compared to the other students, I mean—but there was an unbridgeable distance between us, which provoked and deterred me from making any serious attempts to get closer to her. But could this girl own miniature slaves, minions, and worshipers, and was she capable of mistreating these human beings, even murdering them? (In my mind’s eye, I saw the five men she owned ‘presently’, and a hundred others crushed and devoured, used as foot-slaves and masturbatory aids, butt-plugs and spices for her food—a chilling prospect, but probably an impossible one.)

I had entered a new foreign country and world, whose practices and customs were distinctly different from, though in some respects mirrored by, our own. Adela might have been the girl described by her mother (in any case, I doubted that most teenage girls would have possessed the moral equipment and experience needed in order to look with an equal, fair, and sane eye on both a 3” and 5’8” man—in almost every case, the first would be the one with hills to climb). But maybe not. I wanted to know the truth.

During those first hours, the only truth was the scent of my teacher’s nylon stockings. It was a scent so intense that every conscious thought was immediately blacked out and forgotten (I would not have thought it possible that a woman’s foot, or her used hosiery, could smell so strongly). I was in her purse, and several faint beams of sunlight shone through the gaps at the opening, between the clasps. I made out dimly, through the soiled toe-section of the mesh, some of her cosmetics, swabs, crackers, used tissues, dimes, a wristwatch, and a grubby handkerchief. In the beginning I found the air inside the stocking very difficult and unpleasant to breathe in. Over time, the potency of her foot odor—bitterly strong and eye-burning enough, at first, to draw tears—began to relent, and eventually I failed to notice it at all, except when I pressed my face hard against the material to get a better look around.

From the very beginning, I planned my escape. When the world had stopped shaking, and I began to hear other sounds on the background, the sounds of the classroom—the sounds of bells, talking, laughing, announcements, the pledge, Ms. Holly, and finally Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (“Her chariot is an empty hazelnut…her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film…”)—then I began to search for a way out. The shabby and unwashed stockings had been worn maybe dozens of times, and I didn’t look long before I found long runs, holes, and tears in the nylon casing. Ripping through one of these, I soon pulled myself out of confinement, and groped around for a foothold in the chaos of her purse.

After what seemed like hours, I stumbled upon what I was hunting for: the salt crackers. With my nails, I tore open the wrapping and attacked the food ravenously. I was close to finishing one cracker, when high above me the crack of yellow light in the sky began to part. Before I saw her face, I saw the red nail polish on Holly’s long fingers. She slipped her hand inside the purse and grazed her fingers lightly over the nylon stocking. She felt that I was missing, and then, pushing her blond hair back behind her ears, gazed long inside.

There was no hope for me, and after a couple very tense seconds, her fingers brushed over the crackers and found me. She pulled back, stared for a moment, and then quickly shut the purse, enclosing me again in darkness.

This was ominous, even on a full stomach. Why couldn’t I have waited two more hours—why did I risk it all for a single meal? I knew I was no longer on her good side. Just before she clapped the purse shut, there was a look on her face that said everything: “You will be punished for this—not now, but soon.” Naturally, to cut my losses, I staggered and tripped all the back to her stocking and pulled myself inside. There I stayed for the next two hours, until the light re-entered the dark place, and Ms. Holly’s soft and terrifying hand reached down into the stocking and wrapped around me in a sweaty fist. I heard muffled talking for a few seconds, and then I saw light again.

But it was not the light I was expecting. It was a tunnel of white cotton down which I fell and tumbled and tossed for an eternity. At the bottom I opened my eyes, and when I was greeted by a suffocating smell that made me gag, and which I identified—correctly—as unwashed feet, I knew where I was, though not why, or whose. I was in a sock, probably a long knee-high, which goes with a Mary Jane-style shoe.

And I wasn’t alone. There was another man here, who seemed dead until I prodded him with my finger. He was as gaunt and pallid as a ghost, covered in a sticky film of sweat and apparently unable to move anything but his eyelids. His legs were disfigured, as though broken long ago in twenty different places. His eyes were glazed over, and his chest trembled as it heaved up and down with his respiration. Goddamn, goddamn! What the hell was this! I said, inwardly. But then, from far above, I heard my name.

“Martin!” I looked up. “Martin, my mother said that I get to have you for the afternoon, because you’ve been bad. So you have to be punished a little this afternoon, and sit in the corner. This was my idea, by the way—it wasn’t hers. So if you’re uncomfortable just tell me, and I’ll make you a little bigger.” It was Adela, but it couldn’t be. Yet there was her face, and she was saying these words.

“There’s someone here! He's hurt!” I called up. 
“What?” She looked confused for a moment, then brightened. “Oh, that’s no one, just ignore him. I don’t remember where Mom found him. He was robbing a store or shot a cat somewhere. Rich?” The man’s eyelids fluttered briefly, and he almost turned his head. “Yes, Rich. Don’t worry about him.”
A combination of anger, bile, and pity began to rise up out of my stomach. “I’ll take care of you,” she said, as though reciting a fact, “because you’re Mom’s. Because you’re going with me in my shoes, you’re gonna want to get under my toes, where I’ll be sure not to crush you. It’s only until four, and after the first hour it gets easier. That’s what Mom tells me.”

I had no time to do what she asked, or even to open my mouth to speak. Adela pulled her sock over her toes, painted a deep shade of blue, and then over her wide, meaty foot, which overwhelmed me immediately. Outside of the sock, her fingers molded and nudged me into the groove under her toes, while what was left of Rich’s corpselike body she shrank down until it was able to fit within a wrinkle under her sole. I saw this happen, before the darkness came again, and my senses were filled and overbrimmed with her pungent scent.

But Adela was right. This didn’t last long. In the blackness, I soon lost track of time, and in the long, quiet, and largely sedentary class periods, during which Adela was learning something—maybe Chemistry or Physics or French—in the world inside her shoe, sweaty and dark, I continued to survive. This was not the Adela of my dreams, of (probably) anyone’s dreams, and I began to long for, to yearn for, the sight of a saner, quieter, or more compassionate face. The only face that came to mind—and it filled every corner of my mind—was the face of Ms. Holly. I needed answers, because I was miserable, and because Adela (of this I was very, very sure) would never help me.

The following anecdote can pass without comment. I have nothing to say about it, except that it happened to me:

Overhead I saw sunlight through tall trees. Adela’s pretty, happy face and glistening bare foot blocked my view of the blue sky. From where I lay in the heel of her shoe, I could see the maples changing from green to red, and hear their leaves rustling; in the distance, a dog barked. Adela picked up a leaf from the forest floor, and swayed its tickling edge over my face, like a palm frond. I saw the veins and cells, and the way the leaf seemed to bleed where the old green of spring and summer gradually melted into the autumn red. “Don’t worry—we’re alone,” Adela said.

She reached down with her left hand and snatched me up between her thumb and forefinger. Abruptly, the first shoe—a Mary Jane, as I guessed—dropped on the ground. She lowered me gently onto her right hand, and let me roll and somersault down into her open palm, where I stopped, waited, and tried to raise myself. The first time I tried, I slipped, and she gave a pretty laugh that knocked me over again. I settled on a crouch. 

Adela idly poked me a few times with her left forefinger, lightly flicking me in the stomach or grazing her dark blue fingernail down my back. The flick knocked my breath away, but the touch of her nail elicited a quick, involuntary shiver of pleasure from my body.

This response delighted her: “How are you doing, Martin?” I didn’t say anything. 
“I like you better at this size. Do you like being tiny?”
I didn’t think the question merited an answer, and I kept a proud silence—a mistake. I was amazed at how quickly this annoyed her, how easy it was to prick and needle her. Her face clouded over, and her brow ‘furrowed’ (probably the only time that expression’s been appropriate).
“Answer me, you bastard! Or I’ll leave you here!”
“…No, Adela, it’s me. It’s Martin. I don’t like being tiny. I don’t like being this size.”
 “Wrong answer, but I’ll let you off the hook because you’re new.” She stood up, and looked discreetly up and down the trail, to see if anyone else was around. A few crows cawed, and I saw a sparrow riffling in the dirt nearby. It was all peaceful here, but I was afraid. 

I was cautious and respectful this time. “May I ask you what time it is?”
With one breezy movement, she plucked her cellphone out of her pocket and flipped it open. “3:30,” she said. “Where do you have to be?”
“Please, Adela,” I hoped she would like my act. “I’m hungry. Can’t you bring me home, now? Or make me 6 inches at least and put me in your backpack? There are animals around, and what if you drop me?”
“Why do you need to eat?” She ignored the rest of my request. “I haven’t fed Rich in two months, and he’s still alive.”
“You haven’t fed him?” I was incredulous. Adela was a complete stranger to me. “How does he eat?”
“How? I dunno. I don’t clean my own feet, so he does it for me.” She was getting impatient. “Sometimes I give him water and crackers, and once I dropped a piece of candy. But he’s fine. Toejam, flakes of skin, sock lint, sweat, dirt... He eats what he finds. What do you call those people? Self-sufficient? Either that or parasites. Bacteria. Maybe he’s bacteria but he takes care of me.”
I could tell she was getting defensive, but I couldn’t help myself. “Adela, that’s disgusting, not to mention criminally inhumane. I feel like I don’t know…”
“You don’t know anything, and anyway who says you’re human?” She bristled, and for a second I was afraid that she was about to close her hand and crush me.

But that didn’t happen. “Please,” I said. “I’m sorry.  At least change my size a few inches. I feel so vulnerable out here. Five inches…or maybe four.”
In a tone of the utmost indifference, she said: “Sure, Martin. Close your eyes.” I closed my eyes. “Open them.” I opened them, but something was wrong. Her hand seemed twice as long as before. I could make out the small ridges, fingerprints and pores in her skin. Droplets and tiny beads of sweat dotted her palm like dew in the morning.
“No, no! What happened! I’m even smaller!” I fell on my knees, and prayed to her, wordlessly, with my fists.
She grinned as though she’d drawn a big laugh from a crowd after a successful joke. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.” She chuckled for a little bit, and then grew serious. After setting me onto the ground between her feet, she went through the old procedure. When asked to open my eyes, I opened them, and my heart beat like a fist against the doors of my chest: my head was between her knees. I was just over a foot in height—maybe 14 inches tall.
“Thank you! Oh, Adela, thank you so much. You don’t know what’s it’s like…” She interrupted me.
“Stop talking. I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
I tried to speak again, but she clamped my mouth shut with her sweaty palm and made another cursory glance up and down the trail. All clear.
“Martin,” said Adela, dropping her panties, “now let’s have some fun.”
 
Before I knew what was happening, she had thumbed off her left Mary Jane shoe, peeled off her sweaty sock, and stuffed me inside up to the head. Then she turned around, pulled apart her ass cheeks, and shoved me into the crack with my face pressed against her little rosebud, which shuddered at my touch in anticipation. She sat back on the wooden bench, and pulled in her legs and feet. 

“Lick, you little doll,” she ordered. “You little bastard, lick my asshole.” What could I do? I started licking. The moment I started, she began to rock and buck back and forth like a huge ship in choppy waters. I knew she was fingering herself, and trying to get off as quickly as possible.

Adela was hugely & immediately aroused by the whole experience: by a fourteen inch man, stuffed in her sweaty knee-high, licking her asshole. I had no idea how perverted she was until I recognized that this was really pushing her over the edge. “Circles, circles, yes…stop…good...now keep going…with the circles…” It only took about a minute and a half before she relaxed. My face was drenched in her sweat, and I smelled literally like shit. But she took me out of her sock and seemed very happy.

“Oh, Martin, I think we’ll get along. Let’s go home now.” I dropped down to four inches, and she stuffed me in her panties, against her pussy, for the rest of the walk. After suiting up again, and lifting her knapsack from where it fell in the leaves behind the bench, we set off.

“So you said you were hungry,” she cooed. “Clean me up.” I licked her clean all the way home, and in this way—humiliating as it was—I was able to satisfy my hunger and quench most of my thirst. More importantly, I was making her happy. And as long as Adela was happy, I was safe. Or so I thought.

She had five slaves. I had met only one, and he was as good as dead.

Adela lived with her mother in a spare two-story home, with a small backyard. On the first floor there was a kitchen, bathroom, and general living space. One staircase, visible from the front door, led up to the second floor, where Adela and Holly had separate bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, furnished with a sink and toilet. There was a bathtub in Adela’s bathroom, but only Holly’s and the one on the ground floor were equipped with shower stalls. (Later on, this information will come in handy.)

Just before Adela turned the latch to the front door with her key and stepped within, I heard the bells chime 4 o’clock from the bell-tower of the Catholic church across the street. Moments passed, and the loud pop and crack of a bag told me she was in the kitchen, or pantry, opening up some chips, and having a snack. While she was munching, her fingers pressed gently against my back; she was trying to knead my face into the sensitive flap of skin above her clitoris. When she let me go, and reached in the bag for another chip, or pretzel, or whatever she was eating, I took the initiative and stroked the spot vigorously, with my whole body, until it became erect, and her labia began to swell and grow moist. While she said nothing, Adela gave me an appreciative tap through the thin, damp cotton of her panties, walked in a leisurely way out of the kitchen, and ascended the stairs.

The stairs were uncarpeted, planked with old, dusty wood, and creaked under the weight of her body as she climbed. I remembered the man she called Rich, and thanked my stars I was no longer underneath and between Adela’s giant, grimy toes, or living off the scraps I could find inside her shoes. It was beyond belief—it was inconceivable—how different this girl treated me, and others, now that there was a five foot difference in size between us. There was no compassion. There would be no appeals.

I dreamed a little as I stroked the sensitive and erotic tissue around her pussy, and listened to the sounds of the outside world. Before I knew it, she had pried back the elastic border of her underpants, and picked me out.
She put her forefinger to her pursed lips, “Shhhh…”
“What is it?”
“Mom may be home.”
Holly! This was her door! “What’s the matter?” I said.
Adela looked at me very coyly, and then pretended—with a slight southern belle, Gone With the Wind, accent—to be slightly piqued by the question, “Goodness, Martin! My word, you ain’t thinkin’ straight this evenin’. I can’t jest shake you out onto the floor, and ‘spect nothing of it. What kinda woman you think I am! Now shush.”
Unbelievable. It seemed as though I would never understand this girl’s mind. At times she seemed scarcely human—maybe more monkey, or reptile, than homo sapiens. At times her behavior was comprehensible, and I knew what she wanted me to do. But most of the time she was inscrutable, and I felt instead the impulse, and the need, to placate rather than pleasure her. She was beyond the range of my understanding: perhaps at such times she could only be worshiped as a goddess.

Adela opened the door a few inches and looked around. Her mother wasn’t home yet, which meant only one thing. I looked up at the bottom of Adela’s chin, a little downy like her cheeks, and with a few scars and scratches from the years past: I knew I would have to stay with her for a few more minutes, maybe a couple hours at the most. My heart pounded with dread, as my imagination conjured up images of her room’s interior. But as she stepped back from the door, and closed it carefully, I didn’t even get a peek.

The house now seemed utterly silent. Adela glided over to her door, and then hesitated a moment before entering.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Want a chip?” she rooted through her right pocket and produced a single chip and a few dirty crumbs. “Don’t worry. It’s still fresh.”
“Sure.”
She ate the chip, and then offered me the crumbs. I ate them.
“Good boy.” I was grateful, but after all the strange objects my stomach had taken throughout the day, I started to feel slightly green and nauseous. She turned the doorknob, and we stepped inside.

Adela’s room was dark as night. She walked with me to the wall opposite the door, and pulled back the shades to let in the sunlight. The first thing I noticed was how clean the room was—for a seventeen year old girl. The furniture was polished to a sheen, the floor was well-swept, and the large open windows poured natural light into the room. Adela leaned out one of the windows, still holding me in her hand (which was growing sweaty), and filled her lungs with the crisp, delicious, early-autumn air. It was a beautiful late afternoon. Then she turned around and plopped herself on the bed. She dropped me on the coverlet, and told me to “Shut my mouth.” I obeyed. An eerie, uncanny feeling of trepidation crept over me.

There were two roll-out compartments, each with two handles, under the bed. Adela bent down and opened one, while slipping out of her shoes and socks. She tossed them down to the end of the bed, and then plopped her feet down on something fleshy, with a large slapping sound. I couldn’t see what was happening; Adela said one word, “Sniff,” and then opened the other compartment.

When she lifted her hands, I saw that she was holding a tiny little cage, made of copper wires. This she deposited on the bed, not too far from where I was resting. Inside the cage, two tiny naked men, each roughly my height, were asleep.
“Wake up!” she shouted. At that instant, they leapt to their feet.
“Where is Joel?” she demanded. The men pleaded with her. They didn’t know. He must have escaped. He couldn’t have gone far. Etc. Etc. I could see in Adela’s cold gray eyes that the wretched begging of these poor creatures was making her sick. I didn’t know what stronger or nobler force held her back from crushing the cage with her fist, but she restrained herself.
“How pathetic. You useless, wriggling little worms. You don’t have a shred of dignity left. I ought to kill you now .” She looked daggers at them—and the men were all but stabbed. “You don’t get dinner tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.” She stuffed them back in their cubbyhole, and rolled it back under the bed. Then she lifted her feet, and did the same with the other compartment (I never did see what lived inside the other). Adela sat still for a moment, cupping her chin in her hands, and then looked over at me. “Let’s go find Joel,” she said. “He’s around here, somewhere.”

Joel was indeed in the room, and Adela wasted only five minutes in locating him. The man was in his mid-thirties, naked, and about two inches tall. He was also petrified of his mistress, who wasted no time in arranging his demise. With an excited grin on her face, she ran down to the kitchen and raced back in fifteen seconds with an empty clay plate, a bowl of pasta, tomato sauce, and some orange juice. 
“I’m starved, Joel. How you doin’?”
 Joel watched these proceedings with a mournful look in his eye, but said nothing. Adela chirruped a lot of sweet nothings while she was working, peering at Joel now and again to study his reaction, and then finished preparing her food. A few strands of dark hair slipped from her ear and covered her eyes; in no hurry, she lazily pushed them back, and then yanked up Joel between two of her fingers. 
“So you’re not hungry, Joel?” Joel couldn’t speak. “You’re shaking!” Joel was indeed trembling all over, from head to foot. “Aww. Are you cold? Here’s a kiss-kiss.” Adela leaned in and, with a loud, murderous smacking sound, sucked him in between her bright red lips, and rolled her massive, wet tongue over his face. She pulled him farther in, slurped on him for a few seconds, and then pulled him back out by the legs, sloshed in her saliva, like a lollypop. She rolled her tongue over her lips very slowly, and then gave a satisfied grin. “Tasty!”

Joel’s stoic demeanor began to change. He started to panic, and mutter random syllables. No longer confused, paralyzed, or resigned to death, he trembled violently all over. I hoped for his sake that he was having a stroke, or a fit, but I doubted it. I was watching a normal man act in an abnormal way under extraordinary pressure. Adela didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. She picked Joel up and dangled him for a little over her plate of pasta, which smelled like heaven, and then over her glass of orange juice, which was just as beautiful to me (whatever it must have been for Joel). She released him, and he fell with a tiny ploop and swish into the bright orange liquid. Adela reached out her hand and touched the damp side of her glass. She raised it to me with a nod and a smile, and then began to tilt its contents toward her mouth. After a few sips, Adela opened her mouth, and I saw Joel again for the last time, lying belly-flat on her tongue. Long, silvery strands of saliva caged him in, and looked, somehow, both beautiful and terrifying in the natural light of the room—like the beginnings of a spider-web when the sun strikes it in the morning. I felt his fear, and knew what would happen.

Adela pushed his head between her lips, and then sucked on him playfully and wide-eyed for a few precious seconds. His eyes fluttered and I realized what she was doing to him—how completely she wanted to own him before she sent him down. She shut her eyes.

Suddenly a high, piercing cry filled the room, and Adela bit down on the two-inch man, and started to chew. His head disappeared into her cavernous mouth, as she shoveled in the first spoonful of pasta, finishing it off with one last gulp of cold orange juice. For a full minute she chewed on this crimson mash of flesh and pasta, and then swallowed. I watched as the little wad of food passed down her pretty throat.

I waited, terrified and astonished at what I’d just seen. Adela opened her eyes again, and patted her belly contentedly. She belched, took a deep breath, and then started to finish her meal. I realized she wasn’t going to say anything to me, so after a few moments I finally dared to speak.
“How could you do this?”
“I’ll tell you later. I had a very low opinion of Joel. At least he got to live through the first beautiful moments of his death. He may still be alive, actually. I only severed his legs. Only wish he didn’t cry so much. He doesn’t know how many men would take his place, willingly. How many have.” She munched on her food, and didn’t say anything more.

When she finished, she leant back in her chair and sighed with pleasure. At that point, the door opened, and I saw Holly’s face. Adela wheeled around quickly, and then relaxed and smiled.
“Hey mom.”
“Hey dear. How was school?”
“Fine.”
“Hey Martin.” 
“Hi.” 
“Let’s talk.”
I looked around at the room, at Adela, and finally at Holly.
“Okay,” I said. I was ready to talk.

I was on probation. This, after having been sentenced and punished—so I was led to believe—for giving Adela attention, and for feeling and showing mild interest in her, one night during the summer when she and I were seventeen together. I vaguely remember, these days, what we did that night. We ate somewhere and then walked somewhere else. We went home early. I hadn’t overstepped any boundaries, flouted normal protocol, or tried to cut between Adela and her mother. On a whim, we spent two or three hours together, and then separated. No offense committed, and a bland, friendly parting of ways before midnight.

But now that I knew the girl’s home-life, and how she spent her days away from school, Holly’s explanation began to make sense to me. I sat at the edge of a chessboard beside the window in Holly’s bedroom, at five o’clock that same afternoon. Holly had just stolen my first knight. I stood beside the wooden horseman, and listened to her talk. She was the judge, in afterhours—and I was nothing, the defendant long after the trial had concluded.

“For five years now, we’ve worked under very strict terms. As Adela is so far incapable of shrinking men or women I haven’t already tampered with, and since she can’t easily alter her own size, I’ve given her that task. She’s young, and in some ways still quite immature—you might have a harsher opinion of her, after what you’ve seen this afternoon. But maybe you didn’t realize, Martin, that she was cruel on my instructions.” Holly knocked over my second bishop with her queen, nabbed it up, and set it down beside me.

“I do the larger and more difficult work—finding the people, shrinking them, and breaking them down—and she the easier, final work. She finishes.”
“Why?”
“Why do I do it?”
“No, why me?”
“Ah. Now we’ve got to the central question, eh? Why you, Martin? When you come to that, you might wonder.” She knocked over my second knight with her own, and snatched it up between her long fingers. “Has anyone ever explained the game of chess to you? You’re probably the lousiest player I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t play often. Besides, it’s difficult to see the pieces when I’m this size.”
“Then let’s make you a little more cosy. A two-foot handicap? Yes.” She looked me over, closely, almost lovingly, and I grew nineteen or twenty inches in a moment. The game went on, and for a minute Holly was silent. After taking my rook, she winked, “Well, it’s not because of your chess-playing, Martin. I’m sorry. You’re still very bad.”
I began to understand. “This isn’t about Adela.” I moved my king.
She glanced at me for a moment, and then bent back over the game. “No, Martin, it’s not.” She moved. “But if you’re not careful, it will be. Checkmate.”

I felt a new spirit of exasperation welling up out of my heart’s core:  for the first time, I keenly felt the indignity, the unfairness of this woman, a woman I had come to trust during the course of our year together in school. But alongside this anger another feeling crept into me, almost without my being aware of it: pity. Pity for Ms. Holly who, despite what she did to me and probably would do to me, seemed somehow more lonely and isolated than before. To choose the most extreme example of her cruelty: Why did she shrink her husband? Answer: To keep him with her, at a time when he had wagged his threats through the air, like a flag, and swore that he would leave.

“Martin, I picked you because you are a good kid. Not because of Adela, and not because I disliked you. You’re exactly the kind of generous, healthy-minded person who learns to adjust to a destiny you never wanted for yourself. One by one, your childhood dreams will began to fade away, and you’ll drop them by the wayside, unrealized. You’re the boy who makes compromises with his life. Well, life has led you to me, Martin! What will you do?”
“But I don't know!” 
“I know. And this is the second reason you’re here: I need you.” She reached out her hand, and seductively stroked the hair on the back of my neck with her fingernails. “I said to you this morning, and I’ll say to you a second time, Martin. Be honest with yourself: this compromise is not difficult to make. I’m a woman who will make something out of herself, and very soon. You know this, and you’ve seen it with your own eyes." She waited for me, and then urged, more strongly than before -- "You must pick your side, Martin.”
 But I didn’t know what to say. There was no time to think while self-doubt and temptation began to do their work. “What if I don’t choose?”
“Then you don’t choose: you can take your luck with Adela, or with the world. But you have your warning, Martin: five years from now, the world will not be as it is today. I’m generous with you because, in your own foolish and---quiet---way, I like you. In any case, I need someone, and if you aren’t that someone, another will be. I treat my slaves well, when they obey. There have been certain men I’ve freed.” 

Whose voice spoke, when I answered for the last time? Was it mine, or hers? I said. “Then I’ll be your slave. I choose you.”
“Good. I’m happy, for your sake, that you said it.” She shrank me to four inches again, and then lifted me across the chessboard—gnats flying in the coppery sun of late afternoon, outside the window—to her bosom. “I’m afraid that I made a little bluff—which you certainly spotted—about the choices available to you. I would not have been able to release you again into the world, knowing what you know now about me and Adela. I know what my girl has done today, and in a general way I know what you saw and heard and felt. Let there be no doubt in your mind: that would have been you, one month from now, if you had chosen otherwise. But I’m happy that you chose me. I do need you—and not just for all the dirty and menial jobs—no, I’ll need you when all of this comes to a close, in the coming months. You and a few others. We’ll see which. You don’t understand any of this, yet, but you will.”
“I don’t know what I said. I’m terrified.”
“Well, who do you think I am, then?”
"Ms. Holly," I said.
"Who do you think I am?" she repeated, in a lower voice. 
“I don’t know..." I searched for comparisons. "Lakshmi... Kali," I confessed, dreamily, "wife of Shiva.”
She laughed from the heart when she heard that. “To be honest with you, Martin, that was quite a surprise. Out of character!" She laughed again. 
"If only you gave sharp answers like that in class, I'd have taken to you much, much sooner. But I’m not mocking you! No, I don't think you fully realize what you said. Not yet. But you’re close. You’re very close.” Holly petted my head a few times, took me into her hand, and stood up. We walked over to the bed, as the last rays of daylight pierced through the window onto the floor of her room. I noticed her tall, leather riding boots sitting by the door (her husband imprisoned, as an insole, in the left boot), and looked down at her bare feet. The forebodings of the morning came back to me. 

We sat down at her bedside.
“You must be hungry,” she said.
I didn’t reply.
“We’ll get you something to eat.”
“Famished,” I said.
“I know. I have to teach you a few things, first. Not teach: but train, prod, nudge in the right direction. Come here.” Holly set me down between her legs, right before her gorgeous, imposing flower.
“Let’s see what you can do.”
I stared and stared at the sight before me. Where should I begin? 
As if she read my thoughts, “Lick, to start.”
Tentatively, I approached her, and started to lick her dark outer lips.
“No, no. Higher, Martin.”
I licked higher, and after ten minutes of licking, punctuated now and again by an order or a word from Holly, she began to warm and swell, and a thick, rich, whitish juice began to seep out of her pussy. Her fingers wrapped around me, and her legs widened, and I realized she was about to insert me. She drove me all the way in like a dagger in her hand, deep, deep between her walls, and began to moan. I was immediately soaked in her love-juice; the violent, steady contractions of her inner walls began to overcome me. I was afraid of a bone-break: of my leg, or a rib, or clavicle snapping in five different pieces -- but nothing of the kind happened. Three minutes later, she was finished, and raised me up out of her tunnel, soaked to the bone in her gooey discharge. “Not bad,” she said, “for the first time."

“Let’s give you a little bath,” she purred, and dunked me between her lips. As she sucked on me, her tongue explored my lower body, and I felt myself spring to life. (One would think that serving, more or less, as the dildo to an 80 foot tall giantess would be in the slightest way erotic. But it wasn’t, at least for the first time. That first time, I was the laborer, and her womanhood the infernal machine it was my duty to master, for life or death.) Thirty seconds hadn’t elapsed before I had finished, and she plucked me out of her mouth and dropped me, utterly spent, exhausted, and dazed, onto her bedsheets.

Fifteen minutes passed, and she washed me in the sink, with soap. While she showered, I sat on her bed, waiting, half-asleep, and hungry. Night had fallen, and through the window-screen I could hear the crickets, making their measured reckoning of the night. It was peaceful, and I thought, vaguely, of something that happened long ago, when I was a child, or when someone else was.

Holly emerged from the shower wrapped in a bathrobe and wearing an old pair of warm cotton slippers. She sat on the bed beside me, and then shook off the right slipper from her foot, and rested her ankle over her left knee, with the sole facing me. Holly had a wide sole with a high arch, like Adela, with toes that were somewhat square at the ends, from years of wearing boots and heels. There were small calluses at the pressure points, and here and there tiny knots in her muscles, that she was trying to rub and massage out with her fingers. I would soon come to know this foot very well.

From years of use, the sole of her slipper kept the darkened print of her foot. There was a faint, distinctive odor, similar but different and less intense than that of her boot, or her sneakers or flats. Though, for the next few months, I spent a few hours each evening in these slippers, it was a smell I never grew fully accustomed to (though not unpleasant).

That first night, when she shuffled out to the hallway, I heard her open a door, and ask Adela if she was hungry. “Yes, Mom." Twenty minutes later, we ate dinner.

I could easily end my tale here. Many slaves, before me, have come to the end long before they got this far. But I have much more to say, and not much time to say it in.
 
To my surprise, Holly kept minute records of the lives and memoirs of all the men and women she had enslaved. I’ve leafed through five of these books myself, books which, presumably, she had had dictated to her, typed out on the computer, saved, and printed in clean white stacks. These she bound and alphabetized in her bedroom library. From time to time, she’d select a volume from the shelf, and thumb through it, wetting her finger before every new page. For some reason I was reminded, grotesquely, of a murderess who’d saved the skulls of her victims, and ordered them row on row under the floorboards of her house: these she looked at now and again, curiosities and souvenirs in her personal museum, most private sanctum.

But Holly would allow me, when duties permitted, to read through some of these memoirs, and I soon learned who her husband was, how he spent his life, and why she decided to mold him into her living bootslave, instead of ask him for a divorce. (Soon, like him -- like all of us -- nothing will be left of me but my name, and perhaps these words.) For now, I’ll turn to the last months before the Event.

Reader – if you were Holly’s footslave or sexslave, the months would pass like days, and morning would turn to noon and night in the space of a single second. And who knows? If you’re reading this, you may still be chosen for that privilege—that honor. When I sat in her English class, five years ago today, I could not have been more blind! I am grateful that she chose me; in our individual ways, all of us are grateful that she saved us (saved us each for different reasons) from the coming destruction.

Like the rest of the men and women she had chosen during those four months, we prepared. If it was my job simply to help her relax, before, during, and after a long day, I’m not ashamed of this. There are people, such as myself—Holly explained all this to me very clearly, in the beginning, but it took me some time to fully grasp—to whom this work is given. And without more people like me, the better Society could never have been formed, completed, and perfected. Like all slaves, I am careful not to underestimate my importance, either to Holly, or to her Society. In the future, we will need more men of my caliber and ambition. So she tells me, and so I truly believe.

For those first months, I was still very frightened, bewildered, uncertain, and dubious about what Holly intended to do with me. Why I was wanted (‘wanted’ in both senses – both ‘desired’ and ‘needed’). During the night of that first day, the first of school, in the year when I was seventeen (that long, difficult day – filled with Adela’s abuses and Holly’s seductions – which has taken me so long to describe in detail), I did my best work to persuade Holly that I would and could be her obedient slave. At first, I did this in the faint and obscure hope that, over time, she would take pity and release me—little did I know, then, that I would soon be envied by all people. 

But from the beginning no one could have denied that Holly was truly powerful, and that, however questionable her ethics and methods, the source of her abilities and talents and gifts was cloaked in mystery. I still don’t understand how she was able to, as she put it, “change the proportions” of living tissue, of women, men, and all plants and animals. Certainly some among us seemed to worship these powers more than we worshiped Holly herself—who, though intellectually pretty strong, and above average, was not very different from many women I've known throughout my life. Of course, she knew exactly how powerful she was, and precisely how she could use her knowledge about her powers to her benefit—and the benefit of the world, and mankind. And that was what was most important.

While, like everyone else, I came to worship her gifts, I also distinguished this love from a new affection, slow-growing and vast, I began to feel for the woman herself, my old teacher.

What was Adela’s part in all of this? By now, of course, you know what she has done, and all that I owe her, in particular. Then, I’m afraid to say, not all men and women Holly had chosen pleased her to her satisfaction. Many Adela took into her room, and many of those became, before long, a second, or a third, or a tenth Joel and Rich. Now, some of their stories are also preserved and shelved along with the others in Holly’s library: she knew what value later generations would put on these naysayers or slackers. We know the signs, and we know on what well-traveled, well-beaten paths their minds operate. In the new society, it's not the idlers but only the slaves, we know, who can be unpredictable, and who can think in new ways. Apart from this, Holly’s curiosity in history was unbounded. She kept everything. And so on and so on. 

Like I was saying: if you were Holly’s footslave during those autumn hours, the months would have passed like days for you. Every morning and every night, I ate my dinner under the table, while Holly and Adela talked above. Holly would slide her warm foot out of her slipper, drop a few crumbs beside the heel, and then motion to me to come forward. Then, her foot would wait, impatiently – her fidgety toes with blood-red nailpolish wiggling as she talked and laughed, at times propping herself upward on the balls of her foot, as she reached for something across the table – until I finished my meal. Or didn’t finish it (which happened often enough)—her foot never waited for me to finish, before it began to prod me roughly back into the smelly, cavernous toe of the slipper. Always the same slipper, too.

But this I grew used to, and Holly rarely had any excuse to complain about my behavior. I never failed to fulfill my responsibilities – and as I look back on those days, I begin to feel some pride and pleasure in what I accomplished. It is my firm belief that, if Holly didn’t own me as a sexslave, underfoot, she would not have been able to achieve what she has—at least, her achievements would not have been of a like, or equal, magnitude.

My story begins again one month to the day after I first woke up in Holly’s leather riding boot, and became her slave. She had taken her class into the city for a field trip, and wore her old beaten and grungy pair of sneakers. I, of course, came with her—in the sneakers. The scent was offensive, even to someone of my intimate experience—and as a two or four inch tall man, one sees and senses things that would be imperceptible to a normal-sized fellow; and of course all visions, scents, sounds, etc., are, in one way or another, grossly magnified. After the long, sweaty, sticky, and grueling day, it was a relief to finally be out of my mistress’s sneakers, and walk around the cool floorboards of her room. I waited for Holly to remove her left sneaker, but she waited, and signaled me to come a little closer.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said. I nodded, in a weary, bedraggled kind of way. I wondered about my appearance (I knew how I smelled—as though I spent a full day in Holly’s sneakers—but not how I looked).
She pulled off her left sneaker, peeled off her sock, and then raised it a little by the toe-end over the wooden floorboards. To my astonishment, out tumbled a miniature woman, my height. Holly watched her struggle for a little--rubbing her eyes, trying to stand up on tottering knees--and smiled out of the corners of her mouth, catlike.
“Meredith!” she said.
The girl was weak and disoriented, and wheeled her eyes around the room. Though I was only twenty feet  (by 3 inch man proportions)  away from her, she didn’t seem to notice I was there. But she answered, in a small, nervous voice, “Yes?”
“Meredith!” Holly said again. And Meredith looked up. She froze in absolute terror when she met Holly’s eyes. But she didn’t scream. Holly turned to me.
“Martin, this is Meredith. She works—worked—as a museum curator. And I want you two to become friends.”
I turned my eyes to Meredith again. And she was looking at me.

Meredith was thirty-two years old, with chestnut hair, pretty and slightly plump, well-dressed, and she had lost one of her heels in transit. Consequently she walked around with a mini hobble across the bare floor of Holly’s bedroom. In my teenage way, I wondered, with a mixture of disappointment and curiosity, why Ms. Holly wanted me to be friends with a woman nearly twice my age.

In a voice that was almost a whisper, she looked in my direction and asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Martin.”
“No—I mean, who are you?”
Holly heard this, and answered, “A stranger.”
“A stranger?” Nervously she tilted her neck, little by little, toward Holly’s face.
“A stranger. Why? Because in my experience a stranger will not ask to be immediately restored to their former size, and returned to their former life.”
Meredith didn’t seem to understand. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I added, somewhat lamely, that Holly used to be my English teacher. Innocent as it was, my remark had an unintended effect: immediately Meredith spun around, with eyes red and furious, and seemed ready to sock me in the jaw. I leapt back.
“Children, children,” said Holly, smirking a little, and poking me from behind with her toe. 
“Who the hell is he?”
“Meredith,” said Holly, poking her in the back with the big toe of her foot, and knocking her over, “I’m who he says I am. He’s who he says he is.”
She added, “Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see the two of you become friends.”
Meredith looked at me with distrust and loathing, as though I were some henchman or court adviser, a wormtongue for a queen. Behind her eyes, as yet unmixed with her anger, I saw fear. I knew that, at least on the surface, she was focusing all her attention and anger on me in order to prepare herself to face Holly, who seemed to terrify her.

Holly scooped us both up in her hands, and set us down together on her belly. She was dressed in the informal wear of the day, and I gripped on to her cotton undershirt, still rather moist, with my hands, and came to rest against the warm ocean of her body. I glanced at Meredith, who was making a valiant but hopeless effort to stand upright and walk around. She slipped and fell. I suppose Holly found the sight mildly amusing, in its own way, because beneath me her abdominal muscles made a short, happy kind of twitch—like she was holding in her laughter.

But it wasn’t so. Holly wasn’t laughing. Her stomach was grumbling and growling, and as it noised itself, again and again, she slipped her hand a short way underneath her shirt, and felt the tremors as they came and went, one after another. Late afternoon sunlight from the window played and dappled over the wide plain of her bare flesh. With her hand, she took up me and Meredith, set us down onto the blue, woolen coverlet, and stood up. She straightened her clothes out, took up her blouse, pulled on her old socks, and ran her hands through her hair.

“Sorry, doves,” she said. “I have to make a sandwich. Can I trust that you two little lovebirds will get along?” Holly turned her back and sailed out the door before I could answer. Her perfumed blouse, rippling in the still air of the bedroom, whipped up a cool, scented breeze that blew against our cheeks.

When she had left, Meredith turned to face me, and asked me upfront who I was, how I had come to this place, and who Holly was. I repeated what I said before, and added one or two disconnected details about my life with Holly and Adela thus far.

“If you’re here with me, then Holly wants you as her slave. I suggest you go along with it.”
“I won’t go along with it! I think you’re cracked, or you’re dishonest, or you’re on her side. Who the hell are you to tell me what I should do with my life. I didn’t want this for myself.”
“Neither did I! I am on her side, and I think you should be too, if she thinks it best. Anyway, I didn’t want this for myself either, at first—but I think that life is really too chaotic to plan from beginning to end. I chose Holly because, after analyzing the situation, it was the best option I had in order to go on. Tell me if you can think of anything better—but if you can’t, then have it your way.”
“You really think that this woman is going to destroy everything? You’re insane.”
“I don’t think she would destroy anything. I don’t know what she plans to do, because she only shares her plans with Adela and a few others. I think she has the power to destroy everything or change the way things are. And I think she also has the desire, not to destroy anything, but to improve the way we're running everything.”
 Meredith paused, and thought for a moment. “It sounds nuts to me, and you sound like some cult bozo with a complex of some kind. I don't want in.”
“Okay.” 
“I think I'm sick of talking with you.”
I didn’t respond, and after thirty seconds, I heard her begin to sniffle and cough a few times, behind me.
“Oh God,” she said. “Oh God.”
I wanted to say something to her, to comfort her, but I didn’t know what could be said. 

“Meredith.” Silence. “Here’s all that I know. In two or three months, Holly is going back to the museum, and will establish a kind of base there. For the next week, no one will come in, and very few will go out. Everyone inside the museum, at that time, will be shrunk down to your and my size, and all of them will be rounded up and taken care of. Their families will be contacted, they’ll be given food and clothing and shelter, new jobs, etc. Some may be returned to their original sizes, if Ms. Holly should find it necessary. Why your museum?

“Because it is one of the most important cultural institutions in the country. Because to bomb 5,000 years of human civilization would be an atrocity beyond even the dreams and ability of our present society. I think that Holly wants to use you to help her get inside: she also wants to know all the floor-plans, the offices, and the people in command.

“I don’t think you understand her. She doesn’t want to crush you, or extinguish your personality, or warp your mind. She wants to test your loyalty. And she does that by making you, me, and everyone else—what she calls—her slaves. It’s a temporary ordeal, she says. And I’m all for that, I'm all in favor that, to prove to her that at the very least I'm on her side and I'm for what she’s doing and about to do. Although I don’t know everything. Ask her to bring you up to the attic sometime, or the closet, or the living room. Other people are here, and they can tell you more. People that I don't see often, because of the kind of work that I do.

Meredith was still glum and silent, so I went on. I heard Holly’s heavy tread coming back up the stairs. “But if you try to escape, or if she distrusts you, then it’ll be hard, perhaps for a very long time. Adela is her daughter, and they are a strange pairing. But it’s easier and luckier than you think, right now, to be on Holly’s good side. Meredith, I’m telling you this so you can think about it. You’ll get 24 hours, maybe less. Good luck.”

Sandwich in hand, Holly re-entered the room and, pulling in her skirts, settled down on the bed. When she extended her legs lengthwise across the sheets, I knew what she was about to do, and I dreaded it.
“Meredith and Martin,” she said, leisurely munching on her sandwich, and peeling off her socks again, “as you can see,” wiggling her toes, “I need a new pedicure for tomorrow. Black will do.” She rested her massive feet down, side to side, in front of us, toes first. 
“But first: Martin”—I sprang to attention—“eat something. Here.” She handed me a large piece from her sandwich, which I ate. “And fix up the room a little while I rest.” Holly reached out her arm to the bedstand, and picked up a little container of black nail-polish, which she set down beside her toes. “And Meredith, paint my toes for me.” Meredith didn’t move, or seem to comprehend. Holly watched her closely, and repeated herself, with an undertone of warning. But there was still no answer from Meredith.

Holly bounded up out of bed and walked to her door. I heard a scuffle from across the hallway, and the door of Adela’s spotless room squeaked open. My friend and classmate, still dressed for school, and a bit unkempt and tired after a day of tests, of walking about, appeared at the door of her mother’s room and padded across the bare floors, to the bedside.

“Adela, you already know Martin.” Adela smiled at me, and winked.
“But I want you to meet Meredith. Talk to her for awhile and show her whatever you like. I’ll see you both in the morning.”
I was afraid, more than anything else, that Adela would try to snuff out the personality of this woman—a personality so fiery and interesting—before she even had chance to explain herself. I was apprehensive about and especially for Meredith. I wanted to see her again, and talk with her. But I knew that, whatever she would go through that night and for a hundred nights to come, she could see nothing worse than what I’d seen. And look, I had come through. I trusted Holly too much, but that was because I loved her. Meredith would come to love her, too. I looked forward to the day.

Instead of cleaning the room, I finished Meredith’s job. I painted Holly’s toenails to a shine, cleaned her feet and shoes, and served, as usual, as a human insole in her right slipper.

The evening went on as expected until around 8 PM, when there was a loud, authoritative rap at the front door, and the bell rang.

Holly was reading in an armchair, on the first floor, when the doorbell rang. She uncrossed her legs, set her glasses down beside the lamp, leaned over, and drew her slippers on to her feet. Before she had pulled me under her toes and sole, and made herself comfortable, I half wondered who could be at the door. This was the first house call in memory.

She knotted her bathrobe and shuffled across the room to the front door. There she paused, and in that moment of silence before the latch went, I noticed that the smell of her foot was unusually strong that evening. She should have washed it after the field trip. As I held my breath, the pressure of her foot pushed my head forward between her first and second toe. I started coughing, and then, in a long gasp, heavily inhaled the sourness inside her slipper.  I never really got accustomed to these things, these perks and quirks of staying around as Holly’s tiny slave. In this case, she was just sliding forward to open the door and, for a short moment, had put all her weight onto her right side.

“Trick or Treat!” The voices of two kids, between the ages of maybe 13 and 15, came in from the outside. Holly said something, shuffled again, and closed the door. Then she crossed the room to the armchair, undid her robe, drew off her slippers, sat down, recrossed her legs, put on her glasses, and started reading again. I stayed by the toe of her slipper, now slightly moist, and began to drowse. By the mouth of the slipper, the familiar sight of Holly’s toes, the soft, woolen material of the shoe, and the lulling sound of someone flipping from page to page of a book, put me to sleep.

Then, I was awake again. The high-pitched doorbell was shrilling over and over again, and someone was jiggling the doorknob, trying to get in. Before I could comprehend the situation, Holly’s smelly foot covered me, and she moved, more carefully this time, toward the door. My heart was pounding at my chest, and I didn’t know if I or she was sweating. But after 15 seconds or so, it became very hot and uncomfortable inside her slipper. I wanted out. Why was she waiting? What was going through her mind?

Finally the door opened. There was some shouting, back and forth, and a momentary scuffle. Then silence. The door closed, and instead of turning back to her chair, Holly climbed the stairs to her room, and knocked on Adela’s door.

She cracked the door open, said something, and Adela made some reply. Seconds later, she took off her slippers beside the bed. Shaking me out into her left hand, she raised me up to her face, and told me to get ready for dinner. 

“Ms. Holly, what happened?”
“What happened?”
“I mean, what happened just now, downstairs, by the door? I heard the bell ring.”
“Ah.” She looked at me closely. “Some kids."
“Kids?" I sounded skeptical. "But I heard voices—the bell was loud—someone was banging on the door—and then it sounded like there was a fight—and then there was nothing.”
“No. Trick-or-treaters, Martin. Just trick-or-treaters.”

I didn’t pursue it. And later that evening, when we were sitting at (or underneath) the table, eating dinner, my thoughts turned to Meredith, and the incident at the front door was pushed back to the borders of my consciousness. It was something of a mystery—those weren’t trick-or-treaters banging on the door and blaring the doorbell, and there was certainly some kind of physical contact between Holly and these people—but it was a mystery whose answer would have to wait.

Holly cracked her toes and played with me under the table while she ate and talked to Adela. A couple times, toward the end of the meal, she dropped scraps of rice and meat for me to pick up. And then dinner was over, and we went back upstairs. Holly went to bed, and I returned to her boot. The house was dark and silent for a while. Above the slow drone of the crickets, after midnight, I woke up to what I thought were voices and the sounds of some physical struggle going on not far from where I was sleeping. But soon these died down, and I fell back asleep.

It was a strange night altogether, but soon the sun and Ms. Holly, both, rose in time, and I began to hear again the usual sounds of the morning. When she had rolled me out of the boot and set me on the dresser, I happened to turn around and see myself in the mirror. I was shocked at what I saw: a white, shriveled, naked, hairless little man, with black shadows around the eyes, their raw, red, oversensitive orbs blinking like a mole into the morning light. Who was he? I was beginning to resemble—at the thought I staggered backwards—her husband.

Holly scooped me up in her hand from behind, and was about to slide me down the leg of her boot to the sole, when I turned around and hugged her thumb tightly with my body. She stopped, and looked me over for a second.
“What’s the matter?”
I cleared my throat. “Not today, please. Just not today.”
She smiled a little, flattened out her palm, and blew her hair out of my face. “I see.  Is anything wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired after last night.”
“Then you won’t go in the boot today, Martin.” She rubbed me a little with her finger. “But I think you chose the wrong day to be sick. I have one errand to run, and then we’re stopping at the library. No more.”
“I’m just tired.”
“You’ll have to make it up to me.”
“I know.”
“Okay.” She dropped me on the bed, and then walked over to the hamper for the pair of socks she wore the other day. After putting one on the right foot, I watched as she tilted her husband out of the other boot, and I watched as he plunged down the mouth of the second sock. Casually, she pulled up this sock, and drew on her tall leather boots. Then she turned back to me, and I immediately grew to 12 inches. There was an old but clean white knee-high sock in her dresser. She took it out, found a pair of knitting scissors, and cut out holes for my arms and head. She handed it to me, I pulled the ragged little thing on (what else could I do?), and she stood up, hands on hips, & looked down at me. 
“Try to clean the house while I’m gone,” she said. “I have a job for you tonight.”
I nodded. She left.

And so I was alone in the house with Adela and her slaves for the morning. Plus, there were the two great mysteries of what had happened at the front door the previous evening, and whose voices I heard on my teacher’s bedroom floor during the night. I decided to conduct a quick search of the room, and opened all the drawers, looked under the bed, in the closets, in the chests, and in the bathroom. I found no one. So I went on with my chores: I dusted and swept the room, ordered her clothes and shoes, made the bed, sanitized the bathroom (removing all the hair clogging the shower drain, and scrubbing the stains off the walls), and opened the windows. It was much nicer.

Then I left, passing quietly by Adela’s room—she was still sleeping—and descended the stairs. I was hungry, and wanted to see what there was to eat in the kitchen. I had to be quick, because although I wasn’t breaking any stated rules, it was against house protocol for a slave to find food for him-/herself. And there were, at that time, perhaps six or seven more slaves—besides Meredith and the doomed men living in Adela’s room—in the house. But at the time I didn’t know where they were. I was curious, and of course I wanted to find them. It wouldn’t be long.

Passing the armchair where Holly had sat, reading, about twelve hours before, I heard squeaks coming from one of the end table drawers. The reader can guess the rest. I ran to the end table and pressed my ear against the side. I opened the drawer by its brass knob, and pulled it out with all the strength an emaciated, one-foot tall man wearing rags can muster. It joggled out, and tumbled onto the ground, my back and head breaking its fall. After a moment of silence, I peered inside the box. There were two, tiny kids, a boy and a girl, dressed like puppets. Each may have been about two inches tall, because—from my perspective—they seemed about a foot tall. I didn’t know what to say, or ask, so for a moment we just sat there, staring at each other (they blinking unhappily into the slatted light from the blinds, the corners of their eyes red from crying). All at once I realized (or, as they say in movies, “it hit me”): these must be the “trick-or-treaters” who knocked on Holly’s door last night.

Then suddenly, from across the room, I heard a key twisting into a lock. The front door creaked, and opened. Daylight poured in.

Adela was at the door. Purse and keys in hand, she moved warily inside the room, looking behind her and, gently tapping her fingers on the newel post, peeked up the old flight of stairs. With head cocked to listen for any sounds on the second floor, her eyes passed a turn over the living room and froze when they met mine. For five seconds she stood there, facing me, the door open behind her with the mid-morning daylight flooding in. Then, as though with some end in mind, she backed her way to the front door, closed it, and in four strides crossed the room to where I stood, pathetically fitted out in my little sock rag, standing before the end table drawer where the two little kids stared up at both of us in fear and bewilderment. Adela took it all in for a few moments, with her lower lip pulled in, frowning.

“What happened here?”
“I know it looks strange, Adela, but I was cleaning this morning, came downstairs, and heard sounds coming from the table, here.”
“And you yanked out the drawer, and voilà.”
“More or less.”
“Who are they?”
“Um. I’m not sure. I think they visited the house last night, for Halloween.” I thought quickly, and didn’t want Adela to address them directly. It could turn out badly for both me and them.
“Kids.”
“Yes.”
Adela squatted down for a moment and studied them, their faces, their fear. Then she straightened her knees and told me to move back a few feet. 
“What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to put them back where you found them. I don’t know what Mom wanted from them.”
“Right. Just…”
“What?” She picked me up, and her lips tightened a little. Then she smiled, and I saw she understood. “Oh, okay.” Tossing me playfully back into the armchair, she lifted up the drawer. The two kids scuttled back over the wood surface to one of the corners, trying to get as far away from Adela’s hands and eyes as they could. When she saw this, an awful smile flickered around the edges of her mouth. I think this smile scared the two kids more than anything else.
“Oh don’t worry. I’m just putting you back where you were.” Back the drawer went into the end table, and the two kids with it—into darkness, into silence.

Then Adela’s eyes met mine. She had on a tight-fitting sweater, a long skirt, tights, and a pair of flats. My heart fluttered in fear, or perhaps desire.
“What are you doing down here, anyway?”
“Cleaning.”
“Cleaning. Where’s Mom?”
“Out, I think.”
“Oh, you think?” She teased me. Her eyes took a brief look around the room, and then came back to me. “Let’s go upstairs, slave.”
I had to fight this girl, somehow. “Where’s Meredith?” I asked.
“Who’s she?” Adela seemed confused. Then her expression changed: she smiled—she understood. “Oh, Meredith! I was going to ask you. I’ve been trying to find her all morning.”
“She’s not with you?”
“I was outside looking for her.”
“Do you want me to help you?” It was worth a shot. 
She brushed back my hair with her finger, and shook her head. “You wouldn’t be much help.”
“Not at my present size.”
“I can’t do it, Martin.” She had one foot on the bottom step.
“When did you last see her? Meredith.”
“Are we having this conversation?” She sat down on the stairs, and seemed willing to humor me. “All right, Marlowe. Before I fell asleep.”
“I heard something odd last night. I thought I heard voices in Holly’s room, people talking. It sounded like mice or crickets at first, but after a few minutes I was sure there were people talking—in hushed tones—somewhere in the room. I didn’t tell Holly—Ms. Holly—about it this morning. But I thought you should know.”
“Interesting.” A gale of wind nearly knocked me over as she reached down and picked me up in her hands. “I mean it’s interesting, but let’s discuss all this upstairs. I have to take a piss, Martin. Why don’t you join me?” I looked at myself, and could see that I was only five inches tall. Her fingers scooched me down between her grand tetons, and when it seemed I would stay, or fit, she jumped the stairs to the landing, marched into the den, and opened the bathroom door.

Before taking a seat on the toilet, she whispered down to me, “My pussy is so wet right now. My thighs are soaking. Here, feel.” She rubbed the side of her leg with her fingers, and wiped my face with the sweat. Once again, I was unable to make that very important distinction between fear and desire. My brain was petrified, and so was my dick. What could a person do?

But when Adela’s panties were off, I understood why she was so wet. Where the seam of the fabric had been scrunched up against her asscrack, I saw a miniature person, a woman—Meredith. Her neck twitched, and her limbs moved a little, but that was all. She had probably blacked out for a few hours, and was just coming to. Shame overwhelmed me.

Adela noticed that I had wilted somewhat at the sight of Meredith, and while she expected this to happen, she also seemed genuinely angry, and disappointed, with my reaction.
“You can’t take a fucking joke, Martin. You never could.” Her fingers hooked me up, and before I knew it, she was rubbing me against her wet, soiled pussy, trying to get me off. And now, as a contrast to all the shame and pity she had just aroused in me, she also got me aroused again. In less than a minute, I exploded, and almost blacked out because of the mental pain, and the physical pressure. But beyond all this, there was something like gratefulness, which I didn't understand well enough to feel shame for. 

Adela brought me up to her face again, and explained: “You can make me angry. Do you know why?”
I knew, but shook my head.
“Sometimes I think you could be a good slave, and then other times you behave in ways that almost make me think twice.”
“I’m sorry, Adela. I just felt sorry for her.”
“You shouldn’t feel sorry for her. And you know why. Don’t you?” I nodded, but Adela answered for me. “Because she’s a fucking slave, Martin. Because you’re a slave. Because it’s not your job to feel sorry for her. It’s your job to make Mom happy. It’s her job—right now—to learn the goddamn rules. Capiche?”
“I understand. Just—I’m not asking anything, please—just don’t be too hard on her. You weren’t so hard on me. She looks bad.”
Adela studied me for a little, and her expression softened. She looked down, cleaned herself up, and then notched her panties—and Meredith—back into place. “Okay, Martin. I’ll be easier on her.”
“I want to understand you, Adela. But all this cruelty makes it difficult for me.” She rose and walked over to the sink. Liquid soap seeped out of the container, and she washed her hands, contemplatively.  

She grew very serious and passionate. “I’ll tell you what I'm thinking, then. It’s all a game, Martin. All of this is in some sense a game to me, play. But the worth and the point of this game isn’t found in the game itself, but in the sum of everything that’s put at hazard. What’s at risk here, Martin? What’s in the pot? Life and death. The future of mankind. Nothing less.”
She paused. I waited.
“This game we’re playing—you’ll soon learn—is a game that rises to the rules of war. That much is at stake. Your life has brought you here, and maybe chaos has led you to this place, to me, to my mother. But what does that mean for you?”
I listened.
“It means that, whether you like it or not, you’ve selected one possible existence over another, and that until you’re able to finally and—in every way, and on every ground—stake this life against every other possible life, including your former one, the world, at least for you, won't make any sense, won't have any unity to it.” She looked over at me, and I must have seemed thoughtful, because she went on.
“I’m sadistic, Martin. Am I too cruel to people? Am I out for myself?”
“Don’t make me answer that.”
“I won’t. I just want you to think about it. Maybe I don’t understand this any more than you do. Maybe you should ask Holly."
Then I had an inspiration. “You love me.”
She picked me up, and smirked. I guessed it was true. Even so, my heart sank as I tried to comprehend the sum total of her atrocities, Adela’s own wild catalogue of infamies, of sadistic murders. I remembered Joel, Richard, and others.
But there wasn't time enough to reflect on any of this. Adela said, “I’ll have time to love you when this is all done.”
“Then, for my sake, be kind to Meredith for the next few hours.”
“Will do. What else?”
“Put me back in Holly’s room, and please bring me back to 12 inches.”

It was done. And, five minutes later, Holly marched loudly through the front door, and climbed the stairs to her room.

My mind still turned like a wind vane when I thought of the previous night. I decided to ask Holly about it.

When she entered the room, my teacher left the door open a quarter-way. A sudden wind blew through the window and slammed the door shut, alarming both of us, and whoever else might have been living in her bedroom at the time. Seeing me, she shrugged her shoulders, and set down her handbag and parcels on the bed. Now was the time to unburden myself of everything, and to vent some of the misgivings I had concerning Holly’s most recent exploits. I felt that, possibly, she was endangering herself and forcing the denouement before its time—although how great a judge I was of the proper time of the Event I couldn’t say, not being part of her inner circle, whoever and wherever they might be. 

From the dresser-top across the room, I called to her: “Holly," I said. "I want to ask you something.”
She looked at me, stopped, and then bent back over her things, arranging clothes and accessories. “Go on.”
“This morning, I was cleaning downstairs, and I heard a noise coming from the end table.” 
I waited for her answer, but she went on packing and arranging. “There were two kids, a boy and a girl, inside. They’re still there.”
“Good.” She circled around and met my gaze. “Do you know who they are?”
"No, I don't.” 
“You don’t? I do.” She pulled in her skirts and, facing me, sat down on the bed. The bed springs groaned under her weight.
“Who are they?”
“Did you hear anything else last night, slave?”
This caught me off-balance, and for a moment I even felt guilty—though there was no clear reason why I should have felt so, because I wasn’t hiding anything from her. I heard myself say “Yes.”
“You did? Then why didn’t you tell me when I woke up?”
I remembered my reflection in the mirror, and had to force myself not to turn around to face that ghastly figure. “I had something else on my mind.”
“You did?” She chewed this over for a moment. “I want to talk about that later. What did you hear?”
“Voices. Men, it sounded like.”
“Saying what?”
“I couldn’t make out. I only heard them for a few seconds. Then they left, or stopped talking.”
“You didn’t hear anything they said?”
“No.”
“And you wonder whether they’re still in the house.”
“That, and—honestly—I don’t know what happened last night. It’s not my job to know, but my conscience is uneasy about it.”

Holly sneered at the word "conscience," but she told me everything I wanted to know. The kids—they were the darling children of the mayor. It was in our interest to distract for a few days the television stations and media, and all the upright, honest, citizens of the village with the news of their kidnapping.

The beating on the door last night, a half-hour after the deed itself, was incidental to the shrinking and abduction. It wasn't meant to happen. Neighbors eating dinner that night across the street had witnessed the two kids enter the house, and just happened to notice that they never came back out. Already with some cause to be suspicious of Ms. Holly and her daughter, they decided—a little buzzed from drinking on Halloween night—to pay a visit on the lady. If the kids were unharmed, they could pass it off as a Halloween prank, a scare in jest. If they were in there against their will, the men would threaten to summon the police in earnest. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t know what sort of outfit they were getting involved in, and the plan blew up in their face. Holly shrunk all four of them, and bottled them in an old milkbottle, a liter in volume, and buried them under the floorboards. I had, most likely, heard them talking during the night.

To show me, Holly got a screwdriver from the bed, and walked over to the edge of the carpet beside the dresser. She turned the handle a few times, and pried up a loose plank. Inside the hole, four men blinked against the daylight, and one by one, as their eyes adjusted, scrambled back to safety at the bottom of the bottle. Holly raised the thing up, and walked back to the bed. She twisted off the top, and then joggled the four men out. The last two were smart and, holding hands, pulled each other back against the glass sides, wedging themselves in. But Holly only had to poke her finger inside and twirl it around a little, and soon they too were dislodged. When I saw those four men on the bedspread, I realized—more clearly than I ever had before in the month leading up to that moment—I was partnered in a work I couldn’t back out of. Regardless of who started the work, it was now something that had taken on its own momentum, something that was pushing itself, and all of us with it, toward the end. 

After Holly had dropped them back in the jar, and sealed the lid, I told her that I had a strange dream the night before. I confessed to the thoughts that were troubling me—and shaking my trust in her—as I worked around the house that morning. The sight of a worn, half-starved, bone-white man in the mirror had almost shattered my confidence (and even my hope and resolution) in the whole enterprise.

She walked over to the dresser and picked me up. I wanted her to say, “I know I’ve been hard on you, and I’m sorry,” and then promise to change some things in the way we lived, alter the routine here and there so that I would come to resemble my old self—but she didn’t say that. 

“I can’t do anything for you,” she said. “We’re at a stage, now, where there is no turning back, and I’ll need your cooperation every inch of the way.” She sounded just like a business executive, and I’m sure that I had a pretty glum and disappointed look on my face. The look was involuntary, and  it was contagious: she caught it even before I realized I had it. But then her own lips creaked out something exactly between a grimace and smile. I saw the vast effort it took her to move her jaw muscles into that position. But she did it. She cranked out that look, and said: “Martin.”
“Yes.”
“How would you like to walk to City Hall with Adela and Meredith next Tuesday morning?”
“City Hall?”
"Tomorrow and Monday we’ll move some of our possessions, money and effects to a safer location, nearby. I won’t need your help with the moving—we don’t want others trailing us, so it will be a three-step process—but on Tuesday we force the issue here.”
“Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do,” I said, although I’m sure that my confusion showed in my face.
“Good. Tonight we’ll talk further,” she said, stowing the glass jar under the bed. “Now, about your job this afternoon.”

I released all of my pent-up frustration, that afternoon, in pleasuring my old teacher. Holly lubricated me in her mouth while fingering herself, and then jammed me into her twat, where I twisted around until she had her first orgasm. Then she took me out, and for the next half hour I did my accustomed work with new vigor and gusto. 

I’ll admit that it was the first time I took real pleasure in the task through all the time I was living with Holly as her slave. In fact, I enjoyed myself so much, that halfway in I was disappointed she didn’t restore me to my full height. Perhaps I loved it that time because, in both of us (but especially in me, because I was never privy to Holly’s plans, and all this information was fresh in my mind), there was a thrilling sense that the task was nearing its end. That the story was drawing to a close. It wasn’t, but it felt like it was.

When we were finally done, Holly napped for a little, and I settled down against her stomach and soon fell asleep. She breathed, calmly, in and out, and the warmth of her body, the motion of her breath, like the wide ocean under a tiny raft of palmwood, took me with her. If I had any dreams, I don’t remember them.

It's strange (on reflection) how sex has the power to transform violent and destructive impulses into something totally different, harmless, unhurried, something that feels like the huge void at the beginning of life itself. Yes, we would wake up, and the illusion of being early and new to everything in life, like all the peace in the world, would pass. Knowledge and memory always come back, but I think that this illusion in life is probably the best illusion of all. Unless that dream is the only reality, stolen by knowledge, in a few brief and fleeting moments of contentment, for life. 
 
When we woke up, it was late afternoon, and Holly swiveled off the bed to find her slippers under the bed with her feet. She pulled on her robe and left the room, while I stayed there, gazing absently at the dark orange glow of the sinking sun, coming through the window. Then everything began to crowd back into my mind: the horrors I’d seen and experienced firsthand, the plan, the kids, Meredith, and the four men in the bottle under the bed. My old, familiar mood returned as all these thought surfaced, and I tried to control my feelings. I was like a man in hell who dreamt for a while of some other eternity that wasn’t everlasting torment. Heaven, maybe. But I was in this for the long haul. 

As I was mulling over these things, Adela stalked in and flipped on the light. She crossed the room to the bed and dropped Meredith down beside me. She got on her knees. Cupping my head between her hands, she whispered one word, “Tomorrow.” Her breath was humid, and its warm condensation formed tiny droplets on my skin. She stood up and snapped the elastic of her panties sharply against her ass. A loud ‘flick’ echoed in the room, and stirred Meredith from her sleep. When I looked up again, Adela was at the door. She pivoted around, and stretched out the fabric between her asscheeks, turned to me over her shoulder, and sauntered out of the room. One forefinger to her lips, she shut the door behind her, silently.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned around. Meredith had seen the end of the performance, and her eyes looked into mine with sympathy. We never even saw Holly come into the room.

We were both unclothed and naked, Meredith and I. Both of us were about the same size, each four inches tall. Exhausted, spent, miserable, and lonely, she found it easy to sympathize with me, and sympathy blossomed naturally in both of us into a rank craving for the other’s body. Adela had soaped Meredith off, and the unlikely combination of coconut and peach fruit wafted up from her bare stomach, plump breasts, and hard nipples. I think that I still smelled like Holly—in any case, we met at an equal point; and despite her tiredness, and my emptiness, we somehow ended up in each other’s arms. And then darkness passed over us.

Holly’s shadow spread over her pillow where Meredith and I were making love. I didn’t know how long she had been standing there. Maybe she watched for five minutes. Or, maybe, she saw everything.

We were embarrassed and separated instantly, patting each other on the upper shoulders, gently squeezing each other’s thighs and waists with our hands. I felt very silly, and when I looked at Meredith I saw that she felt the same. An absurd and uncanny feeling rested over the scene, as though stale manna had just fallen from heaven. Like we were an ill-drawn Adam and Eve from a children’s bible. Holly smiled in a friendly way, and sat down on the bed at a distance from us. The mattress redistributed her weight, and rolled under us like a wave. She took out some eyeshadow from her pocket, and studied herself in the flipped-up mirror.  Then she tilted her chin to us, and snapped her fingers in our direction.

“No, please continue. I’m sorry I interrupted.”
I looked at Meredith, and when she looked back at me, for a half-second the color rose in her cheeks. Then she controlled herself. I was at a loss. Holly snapped her case of eyeshadow and placed it in one of the purses hanging off the end of the bed. Finally she turned to us: “I said continue.”

Neither of us moved. Meredith spoke heatedly: “This is going too far, Holly—I won’t stand for it.” Now her cheeks burned brightly. “I won’t stand for it! Why am I here! Why do you want me! Tell me that, and spare me your stupid charades!” I felt proud of her, at that moment. (My heart warms when I bring it back to mind, after all these years, the way she looked, and the words she said.)

Methodically, with the most extreme care and attention, Holly removed her well-worn right slipper, and set it down on the floor. Then she reached out her hand, and closed it around Meredith. Her long, delicate fingers descended lower, lower, and lower, until they stopped at the innermost part of the slipper. I thought this was the end of it—but then Ms. Holly eyed me, also, and after a moment’s pause, reached a decision. Her face lit up with intelligence, and she grabbed me.

“I’m sorry, Martin. I would like you to know that all this is really for Meredith, and not for you. Grin and bear it.”

I might have said, “I’ve never been more tired in my life,” or something else, but I don’t think I had time to say anything. Before I could finish, Holly said, “Hush!” and roughly tossed me into the same slipper, almost on top of Meredith. My right arm was bruised, and my brains shook around inside my skull for a little bit, until I raised my head and smelled Holly’s feet in the semi-dark. Meredith seemed very nervous, and at first didn’t approach me. But Holly expected this. She picked up the slipper and held it level with her eye: “I told you to finish,” she said. “And I’m very serious. Do it.” That was really all it took to get Meredith to creep toward me. We embraced and began to fondle each other, halfheartedly. Satisfied with what she saw, Holly set the shoe back down on the floor beside her feet.

We went on like this for about two minutes, before the inevitable happened, and Holly stuck her foot inside and, with her toes, rolled us down underneath her sole which, on first contact, was cold as newfallen snow, and, after the exertions of the day, obnoxiously smelly. I was on top of Meredith, so she was taking in the best part and the full power of Holly’s odor.

When it was too late to stop, Meredith said, “Oh, I can’t.” She tried to withdraw. “This is too much.” Holly felt this, and pushed down on us lightly with the ball of her foot, and rocked me headforemost, backward and forward. To Meredith, I don’t know what it felt like. Perhaps it felt like some—at this point, to be honest, chapped and semi-flaccid—rudder moving this way and that, forcing itself against choppy waves. Or a blunt hatchet whacking away at the least vulnerable side of a tree. Or an ass pulling the ropes to a bladeless plow through the old furrows of a fallow field. I’m sure it was unpleasant, but Holly forced me onward to the utmost of repletion, that drunk who lives just down the street from “Oh God, I can’t do this shit anymore.” We finished.

Just before my teacher finally pulled away, and finished whatever it was she was doing, I had pulled out and flopped over beside Meredith. We were both underneath her foot, face upwards, though Meredith’s face was wedged just below Holly’s third and fourth toes. What struck me was that Meredith was breathing in deeply, taking huge draughts of Holly’s feet. At first she was short of breath, so I ignored it.

But a minute later, when she had some time to calm down in the few seconds after Holly had removed her foot, Meredith was still inhaling big lungfuls of the smell. I elbowed her, and wondered if she was crying. She stopped abruptly, and then turned onto her side, facing me. The wool of the slipper was dark and moist with sweat. “What did you say,” she asked. Her eyes were glazed and there was a huge smile plastered over her face. I just stared at her, letting it all sink in. Was it possible? Could she have enjoyed that? I didn’t have much of an edge, but if anyone took a groaning, Meredith took one that afternoon inside the slipper. Holly found that woman’s limits that day, and crossed them.

Before my teacher shook us out into the palm of her hand, Meredith whispered something to me: “I didn’t tell you,” she said. “I have a major foot fetish.” My mouth was agape so long that Meredith told me to shut it—she was afraid a bird was going to fly out and peck her in the face. I laughed—I mean I really laughed—for the first time in months. Whatever Adela’s crazed love wanted from me on Sunday, I was determined to be ready for it. I was ready for anything.

“But don’t tell that giantess, that madwoman”—I stopped her there. Curling her lip, Meredith accepted the correction: “Okay. Then don’t tell Holly about me. Do you understand?” She was anxious, for a moment, and quite unlike the woman I met yesterday afternoon. “She’ll take advantage of me, and I don’t trust her.” I said I wouldn’t say a thing, but guessed—and guessed rightly, it turned out—that Holly had already gathered this information, and had confirmed it after noting the unusual enthusiasm Meredith showed when she was inside her slipper.  Plus, this wasn’t something Meredith could hide from Holly for long. But she rubbed my shoulder and said, “Thanks.”

Before Holly descended the stairs for dinner, I asked her if it was true that I was to spend the next day with Adela. She look surprised, and said that that was the first she’d heard of it. Adela hadn’t spoken to you about it? I haven’t seen her all day, she said, while casually picking up Meredith between her toes and engulfing her little body underneath her foot, inside the slipper. I knew how her life would be, at least until Tuesday, and I didn’t envy her. (Inwardly I resolved to talk with Meredith about this after dinner.)

“We’ll talk with Adela, then. She should have come to me first.” Holly stuck me in the pocket of her robe. When we were halfway across the room, she stopped suddenly and stared at me. She murmured, with the trace of a chuckle, “I don’t believe it. She’s licking my toes.”

With that, she swept out of the room, and I heard Adela’s door open, and her higher, younger voice follow her mother’s down the stairs to the dining room. I remember that the smell of chicken and rice filled my nostrils. My heart fluttered with fear and elation, with that high certainty of a sure thing that one feels in the presence of love—of love, and a big tableful of food.

There were two Adelas, and there were two Hollies. I don’t mean that Adela was two people with respect to herself. In that sense she was entirely sane. I mean that, with respect to a shrunken man, Adela’s body was not just a single human body: it was a separate universe, and dizzyingly, overwhelmingly complex. If you were her slave, you adapted to her laws or you perished: she crushed you or ate you, without remorse. To be Holly’s slave had its separate challenges and, occasionally, rewards (for instance, remember two chapters ago, after Holly told me about Tuesday and City Hall).

To a man like Richard—living in a habitat like Adela’s shoe for weeks on end—it first became difficult, and then impossible, to remember that Adela was only a single person, and not a separate world unto herself. I suppose it’s partly to my credit that my self-awareness was never beaten down and fully bent to Adela’s or Holly’s whims. But then again, I was never underfoot long enough to forget that there were events, days, and months passing outside Holly’s shoe, and that Holly’s sole was only her sole—not all of her, and certainly not the world itself. Her husband was not so fortunate.

But I did my best to please them both, though I doubt that Holly cared much whether or not she broke my good judgment and senses of scale, place, and self in the process. Because that was the fate of most of Holly’s (and, of course, Adela’s) slaves: they succumbed to the illusion, to the power of the illusion, that a part of Holly’s or Adela’s body was the end-all and be-all of the universe. And once they held this belief, they never escaped or disavowed it. In fact, a man like Holly’s husband, or Adela’s Richard, actually became afraid whenever they left the insole of the shoe. That breath of fresh air alone was enough to shake their fragile worldviews. Those were utterly broken men, who were deluded enough to feel safe and content with their lives.

Meredith would suffer the same fate, if she wasn’t careful. I wanted to recall her to herself, after we returned to Holly’s room. Those passions of hers had to be controlled, or they would end up controlling her, and leading her down a path of no return.

At dinner, Holly attracted Adela’s interest by setting me on the table, next to her plate. After doling out her own portion, and handing the bowl of rice and chicken to her mother, Adela asked why I was there.

“Martin, why are you here?” Holly smiled, and seemed to ask herself.
“You put me here.”
“Yes, yes, I did. I forgot, didn’t I? Well, while you’re here, you might as well eat something.” She flicked me lightly from behind, and I fell facedown into the steaming, white rice on her plate. The scent and the taste were delicious. Holly laughed a little, and then glanced across the table at her daughter.
“Adela, did you want to use the slave tomorrow?”
Adela was alert, and looked up quickly. “Did Martin tell you that?”
“I’m asking you.”
Adela looked at me with some suspicion, and doubt, but there was also a wolfish, hungry glint in her eyes that meant—I knew this by experience—that she needed me. And that was how Adela came to have me the following day, the first Sunday in November.

After I had eaten my fill, Holly dropped me down inside her slipper beside Meredith. But before I left the table, I thought I saw—but couldn’t be sure—something very small wriggling around on Adela’s plate. The movement came in a flash, out of the corner of my eye, but that was enough to remind me of Joel, the pasta meal, and Adela’s long, satisfied belch. Yet the girl was right that many men willingly offered themselves to her, to be devoured. If that was a man on her plate—and I have good reason to think it was—perhaps he was a “willing sacrifice.” It was unusual for the girl to spice her dinner plate with shrunken men on an average day, unless that man truly wanted to be eaten. Either way, the sight was enough to make my skin creep. This was the Adela no man her size would ever see. I didn’t see it until I was four inches tall and lying under her that fresh and cold autumn day, on a park bench.

Meredith didn’t greet me when Holly took her foot outside her slipper. She seemed to be asleep, her eyes closed, her body still and straight-backed as a corpse, and her breathing measured and slow. I crawled over to her and gently nudged her in the ribs. “Meredith,” I said. She opened her eyes and looked at me. Then her expression altered, became scared.
“What happened?” she said. “Where is she?”
“Where is who?” I asked, genuinely confused. Holly’s foot odor was oppressive here. (Privately, I prayed that she would toss these old bacteria traps in the wash, at least once a year.)
But Meredith began to panic. She stood up and ran toward the mouth of the slipper. And there she saw Holly’s right foot wiggling a few yards off to the side, raised and bent straight up on the top of her toes. She was chatting with Adela, probably.

“No!” Meredith called out, and ran hard toward Holly’s foot. She tried to embrace and kiss it, and it seemed as though she were trying to bury herself in the soft flesh of Holly's foot. Holly felt her worship and jerked her ankle back, as though she’d felt some nasty insect crawling on her. When she saw it was only Meredith, she glowered down at her. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Her voice rose; she bared her teeth. Meredith seemed to wake up and snap out of her stupor, or spell, or whatever it was.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Get back in my slipper.” Holly ordered. “And never bother me again while I’m eating.”
“I’m sorry,” Meredith said, slinking away. “I’m sorry, Holly.”
“I said get back,” she snarled. With a vicious, malign edge to her voice, she added, “Slave.”

When Meredith crossed back to the slipper, her eyes were welling up with tears. I wanted to comfort her and say, “That was cruel of her. She should have been kinder.” After all, Meredith had been with us for only thirty hours, and in that short time her life had been turned on its head, shattered and reassembled. She was a slave now, but the stupefying reality of her new life hadn’t had time to sink in. She was tossed back and forth between two existences. She was transitioning from one world to another, and it was hard for her to realize which world she lived in, and which was lost to her forever. On occasion even I had trouble grasping this new life of mine, and I had been Holly’s slave for one month.

“She doesn’t love me.” Meredith whimpered, lying down, and burying her face in one of Holly’s toe-prints.
“Why do you think that?” I asked, wondering why it should even matter to the woman if Holly didn’t love her—and how she could suddenly be so enamored with my teacher. This was a very dangerous sign.
“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” she wailed.
“She's done that with me,” I lied. I had never dared to do what Meredith just did, so Holly’s reaction was without precedent. “But keep your voice down, Meredith,” I cautioned her. “She’ll hear you.” 

Holly definitely heard something, because at that moment she filled up the slip-on with her bare foot, and pushed us back and back underneath her dirty toes. I looked through a little gap in the seam, to the light outside. We were moving again. Holly was probably clearing the table and washing the dishes.

Suddenly the faucet turned off, and I heard some low moaning off to my right. It was Meredith, caught in the wide gap between Holly’s first and second toes, licking her lips, and bucking her hips up and down in ecstasy. “Meredith,” I hissed. The woman was wild. She didn’t hear me. If this was to be her fate, if she wanted to become that kind of slave, then she had begun rather too quickly. I knew from experience that Holly couldn’t care less about what kind of slaves she created: she appreciated good conversation, but demanded devotion. Meredith was, evidently, more than ready to give the second, in spades, but her special, intense kind of devotion would cost her dearly. She was on the path to utter, absolute foot slavery, and I was probably the only being alive who wanted to, or could, help her and teach moderation. She hadn’t seen the wreck Holly had made of her husband, yet—but if the sight of my own wasted flesh wasn’t enough to dampen her desire, maybe that would. I hoped.

I called her again, two minutes later, when she had calmed down. She heard me that time, and twisted her neck toward me. “You shouldn’t do that,” I said.
She gave me an ugly look, and refused to answer me for the rest of the evening. Fine, I thought. Go to hell.

But when Holly dropped me back into her leather boot, I hoped against hope that she would be kind and spare Meredith that night, and keep her in the dresser, or the closet, to recover from the day. It wasn’t to be. Meredith was unlucky, and Holly wore an old sock that night, and kept the poor woman pressed against her soles.

The last sound I heard that night was a shriek. When daylight came, one of the four men was missing from the empty bottle of milk. The day was Adela's.

If, last night, I met with the first Adela, in the morning I saw the second. The new day was sunny and crisp. I stood on top of Adela’s dresser, and watched as she got ready. A string quintet played in the background, softly. (Adela played piano, and loved classical music.) She put on a skirt and blouse, and then looked up.
“Martin, what do you want to do today?”
"Anything you want,” I said, playing safe.
“No, really, I’m serious. I'm going to be fair with you today. Anything you want to do, we’ll do. It’s your choice.”
“Anything?” I boggled.
She nodded, and sat down to fit on her socks and sneakers.
“How about going for a walk in town,” I said. "How does that sound?"
“Done.”
“And also,” I decided to see how far I could go with this—“Also, I want to be my original size on the walk.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I know. Done and done.”
“Really?”
"No. Really really. Let’s go.” She crossed the room and picked me up, and then passed through the door of her room into the hall.
“Mom,” she called out. Holly answered from inside, and sounded preoccupied and a little distracted. “Mom, we’re going out for the day.”
“Have fun,” she said. Picking up the car keys from the kitchen counter, Adela strolled out of the house and crossed the lawn to the car.
Unlocking and opening the driver’s side, she explained, patting her pocket, “First I have to pick up clothes for you. Then we can go wherever you want.” She revved up the engine, pulled out of the driveway in reverse. 
“Are you hungry?”
“Kind of.”
“We can stop for food.”
Adela backed up into the road, and then rolled down the street toward the stoplight.
“Music?” she said, while slipping in a CD. I recognized an early Mozart concerto, in D, and settled back into the bottom of Adela’s pocket. The next ten minutes passed in a warm, full silence, and before I knew it Adela was parked outside the clothing outlet, and locking the doors, dropping the keys into the pockets of her handbag. 

She stepped inside, and old 80s elevator jazz surrounded us. Adela whispered into her pocket, and told me she would pick out something quick, so we could move into the changing rooms. The lazy, soft drone of the music, and the heady perfume on Adela’s breast, made me feel strangely close to her. I was anxious to spend a day walking alongside her and with her, instead of inside her pocket, panties, or shoes.

Before long she had found a complete outfit for me to wear, purchased it, and walked off to find the women’s changing rooms. Once inside a stall, she set me down on the seat and spread out the change of clothes beside me. There was a pair of jeans, boxers, socks, shoes, and a t-shirt set out. The air in the stall was a little stuffy with the scent of old sweat and perfume. 
“Now shut your eyes,” she said.
“Why do I have to shut my eyes?”
She gave a slow, theatrical shrug. “You don’t. It just turns me on when you close your eyes. It's kind of cute.”
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I was 5’8” (my normal height), and somewhat embarrassed to be naked. 
“Ooh,” said Adela, blushing and holding her hands together. “Hurry up and get dressed so we can leave.”
I scrambled into the new clothes, and straightened out the creases in the jeans and t-shirt. Adela swung her left around my shoulder and rubbed her body against mine, possessively. “Don’t forget, Martin, this is going to be a fun day. But you’re still my slave. Remember.” On our way out the door, she pinched my side lightly between her fingers, and I drew back, stung. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, her expression somewhere between excitement and genuine apology. “I couldn’t help myself.”

When we were in the car, Adela asked me if I wanted to drive out to a diner and get some food and coffee. My head was spinning with all these new experiences, after my month as Holly’s shrunken slave: I agreed to everything, and answered all of her questions as best I could—partly because I was curious, and partly because I was just so happy to be outside the house, seeing the world and smelling the cold and balmy, leafblown air of late fall. This was my favorite time of the year, and almost anything would be better than being cooped up indoors, cleaning the house or serving my mistresses, and worrying myself too much about the other slaves, Holly’s plans, and Adela’s fantasies. 

Adela held the door for me as we passed inside the diner, and I asked the waiter for a window booth. We looked outside at the mid-morning highway traffic passing by, glinting under the sharp, cold blades of sunlight.
“I’ll have a coffee and a bagel,” I said, “with cream cheese.” I hated cream cheese. Adela ordered a coffee and a plate of waffles, and then leaned back in her chair to relax. We were going to talk.

But Adela just sat with her arms crossed on the rose, imitation-leather banquette, and now and then looked up from her placemat and smiled at me. When the coffees were delivered, she poured some cream into hers and stirred it pensively. I had nothing on my mind. At last she lifted the cup to her lips and took a long sip. Warming her cold hands on the side of the mug, she said, “Martin, I want us to be friends.”
“We aren’t friends?”
“No, I don’t think we are.”
I was strangely hurt. “Oh. I thought we were.”
“No, we weren’t, really. But I’ve always really liked you. Haven’t you always liked me?”
I gulped. The pause couldn’t last longer than two seconds, so I gave the only good answer. “Yes.”
“Uh huh.” She nodded toward my cup. “You aren’t drinking your coffee.”
“It’s still hot. I don’t like cream.”
“Ah.”
I opened up. “Adela, I like you. I did like you, I mean. Maybe I still do, but it’s different now.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I don’t think I fully understand what I mean.”
“I think I understand.” She blew over the rim of the mug, and took a long sip. “I don’t think the word ‘friend’ explains this very well.”
Adela’s socked foot was pressed against my crotch. I gave her an exasperated look, and she shot it back with a warning raise of the eyebrow.
“Just enjoy it,” she whispered across the table. “Chill the fuck out for once.”
I chilled out. She went back to her coffee, and continued rubbing.
“Where do you want to spent the afternoon? Do you just want to drive? Do you want to see a movie? Stop somewhere?”
I was close. “I…don’t know. Let’s just walk around together.”
“That sounds nice.” She grinned, stroked me smoothly, and found my dick between her toes.
The man arrived with our meal, and she stopped for a second. When he left, she started again where she left off. She started eating, and I waited for my plate to cool off, with my palms flat on the table.
“Is this humiliating for you?” she wondered.
“No,” I said. And it wasn’t. I was worried that someone else in the diner—I looked around, but couldn’t find anyone—was watching this. Someone, somewhere.
“Good. It shouldn’t be.” She redoubled the pressure, and soon I was very close.
“Not here,” I begged. “I don’t want to change.”
Adela considered for a moment with her big blue eyes, and then sighed. She passed me a napkin under the table, and I gratefully stuffed it inside my jeans. She curled her sock hard around my dick, and Wham—I exploded.
“God,” I said, and spread some cream cheese over the bagel. I wanted to smile, but held it in.
Adela was watching my face, waiting. When I finally had the courage to glance up and look at her, she was gazing out the window, with a disappointed expression. 
“Adela,” I said. She turned to me. “Thanks.”
“Not at all,” she said, and smiled. “I was serious when I said that I wanted us to be friends, Martin. I’m not a psycho.”
“I never said you were.”
“But you thought it.”
“Yes, I thought it.”
The waited brought the check, and she filled it out.
“Let’s go.” I stood up and got myself in order, sticking the tissue in my pocket, so I could toss it in the can outside. There was no way I was going to leave that shit on a plate.

Adela flung her arm around my shoulders as we walked out, and leaned in close. “That wasn’t a free lunch,” she said, and smiled puckishly. “Got it?”
"Let's get out of here," I said. 
"After you."

“Adela,” I asked, as we crossed the street together. “Tell me about Joel--the man you killed last month.”
“Joel?” She shot me a puzzled look, which I returned with a deadpan. “Okay, okay--sorry,” she said. “Joel,” she thought back. I wondered if she was playacting, or really struggling to remember him. “No--I remember.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Let’s find somewhere to talk,” she said. 
I suggested we buy two tickets to a crap film in its sixth week, and sit in the back of the theater alone. Adela liked the idea, so we got the seats and found our deserted theater. In the twentieth row, off in the corner against the wall, she started talking.

“There’s something you don’t know about men like Joel. Until last August, my mother ran what you might call a custom fantasy—well (let's call a spade a spade). they were services—for men with certain needs. She had several woman clients, but it’s true that the majority of the customers were men.”
“What do you mean--certain needs?”
The question was sincere, but Adela looked impatient. “Miniaturized slaves, mostly. What I mean is that all the clients had one thing in common: they wanted to shrink, or be shrunk down—some to the size of a doll, some to the size of a pinky-nail, and some even to the size of a pinhead, a mote of dust. Some even smaller than that." She shook her head, maybe to herself, or maybe to me. "Do you realize how insane men can be, in love? The insanity? The extravagance? All the games and charades? Well, mom took them all in--and satisfied each of them, I think, no matter how insane or extravagant the requests."
I was in disbelief. “How long was this going on? And why?”
“I'll answer the second question at another time. But it was going on for, oh, maybe two years. Joel had waited his whole life to be eaten by Holly, but by mid-September she found herself involved in other work, and asked me to fulfill the request instead. When Joel realized this, he was visibly upset, and started arguing. Holly was hearing none of it. I suppose that’s why he tried to run away. The thought of me devouring him, like a little oyster, revolted him.” She shivered, whether in her own pleasure or in imitation of Joel, pale with fear, I couldn’t say. “But fantasies will never happen in just the way we imagine, or hope. Something always--always--goes wrong.” 

The film seemed to be halfway done. Laughter, and a poorly written joke, briefly interrupted an extended chase scene. Was this a comedy? What were we watching? I didn’t bother to check the listings. We just picked an empty theater.

“Richard was the same?”
Adela smiled. “Oh. Do you want to ask him? He’s in my left shoe.”
“No. God, no.” But my heart skipped a beat, and I shuddered involuntarily.
“Don't worry--it's the other shoe," she said. "But no, he wasn’t the same. Richard was always mine. But I can tell you that story another time.”
Silently, I prayed to myself, “Don’t tell me. Please, please don’t.”
Aloud, I said, "You misled me."
"About Richard? No, he really killed a cat. Thought it was dead, and stuck it in his fridge. Wife couldn't forgive him. So he left."
"No. I mean you didn't tell me."
"I didn't have to tell you. Ask Holly, ask Mom."
I decided I would. Though it wasn't fully clear to me where I had been misled, I felt strangely, obscurely betrayed. 

There was that strange mixture of qualities in Adela’s character which both fascinated and repulsed me. Unlike Holly, she observed not only the responsibility but the right to dominate me and her other slaves. Sometimes she was like the wild daughter of some august ruler, in my mind: though in general she was a competent and fair mistress, she would, from time to time, binge and indulge herself in various cruelties and excesses.

I don’t think these comparisons go overboard: in fact, it’s my opinion that Holly and Adela compare favorably to many of the Roman emperors, strange though that sounds. Adela had the potential to abuse her power, and I wanted to curb—what I considered to be—this wayward tendency in her, as soon as possible, slave though I was.

“Do you want to leave?” she asked me.
I stood up. “Yeah. Let’s go back to your car.”
“My car?” she looked hurt, but stood up beside me, and started walking out.
“I’m ready to go back now.”
“Already? It’s only been an hour—if that!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m not used to being out like this.”
“Well, fine. Is there anything I can do—you know, to change your mind?”
“No. Well, yeah, there is," I confessed. "I wish you hadn’t told me about Richard. I can’t get that off my mind, now.”
“Richard? Really?” She stared.
“Yes, Adela, really.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about him," she leaned in close to me. "He’s definitely not worrying about you, or anyone. Are you, Richard? Are you?” She tapped her toe against the aisle, and walked on. 
“It isn’t that,” I said, horrified.
“No? Then what is it?” She suddenly turned to me, and challenged me. “What the hell is it, Martin?”
I didn’t know, and said so.
A sly grin spread across Adela’s face, and she leaned in close, “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”
“What?” I tried to push past her. “No. Don't be crazy.”
“No.” She blocked me. “I’m positive this time. You’re jealous. That’s why it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “I saw what he was like, and I know how you treat him.”
“Hah!” She let me walk by. “You know as well as I do that if Richard isn’t a human being it’s by his own choice--not mine. Isn’t that right Richard?” This time she really stripped off her shoe and sock, and pulled Richard out. “You think I want to kill him? I don’t want to kill him. I’ll leave him here—I’ll leave him right in this theater—and someone will find him again.

She was slightly crazy, but I wasn’t about to ask her to drop the semi-comatose little man back into her sock. My best option was to call her bluff. “Leave him here, then. Give him his old size back, and leave him here.”

Adela looked back and forth between me and Richard, and then turned and strolled down the center aisle to the first row, where she pulled down the first chair on the right and laid the little man on the old, torn, crimson cushion. The next time I blinked, he was six feet tall, naked, and slumped back in the chair. Adela slipped on her sock, retied her sneaker, and darted up the aisle to the front doors.
“Is he okay?” I wondered.
“Oh yes. But we should leave now.”  

Whatever the cause, whether it was because of jealousy, or horror at Adela’s inhumane treatment of Richard, or astonishment that any man could have wished such a fate for himself—my heart was easier after Adela left him there. One man, at least, would live, even after gaining the rare knowledge that his greatest dream was no different from his worst nightmare. Did he have a family? I asked. Adela already said he had a wife. A job? Yes, of course. Who would believe him, if he told? No one. Has he changed? Yes. How deeply? Depths upon depths. His wife would probably not recognize him. Probably not, but she might.

We walked back to the car, and there we sat for half an hour, talking, and making ourselves comfortable. I returned the favor, as she asked, and afterward Adela turned on the car. She told me that she wanted to show me something.
“Something?”
“Something somewhere.”
“How far away?”
“Just up the road. It won’t be long, and then we can drive back.”

She started the car, and drove off.

A new question has occurred to me, a question I’ve avoided asking myself until this point in the narrative, a glaring omission. Did I enjoy being Holly’s slave? Did I enjoy serving Adela? The answer, I’m afraid, is yes.

Fear and awe mingled when I woke up that morning in mid-September inside my teacher’s boot, and it wasn’t long before those mingled feelings combined into something like love. It was the unbelievable power she demonstrated, from day one, which bound me to her service. Holly could control at will the proportions of her, my, and everyone’s body. This was a talent that she wanted to take—for obvious reasons—beyond the circus tent, and even beyond the laboratory. (With a world in chaos, and maybe on the brink of global war and mutually assured destruction, she decided there was some use for these strange gifts. Perhaps she could do something.)

But it wasn’t power, for its own sake, that drew me to them, and finally bound me to Holly. I thought that Holly—if not Adela, exactly—deserved to hold some command over the world’s affairs, by virtue of her power. If I didn’t believe this, in my heart of hearts, Holly could never have made me into her slave. I wasn’t like Richard, Joel, or maybe even Meredith, in that desire and the objectification or fetishization of the beloved never blinded me to the task at hand. I think that is what Holly loved about me, more than anything else: I did the work because I enjoyed pleasing her, and not because it pleased me. But I’m rambling on and on, and thinking too much about the past.

As I was saying before, matter-of-factly, Adela drove me through town, and then up the mountain. For as long as I live—and I think it will be a long, long time—I will never forget what Adela showed me that afternoon, when we were alone.

But I’ve reached the end of another page. That story deserves a separate chapter.

She took the car down the wide suburban arcades where the leaves were falling. (Where did I hear the phrase “the perfumed arcades of autumn”—was it English class?)

I used to think the world was some strange and sheltered place, but now it just seems bizarre, cold, and full of interest. Maybe I just thought I was too complex for Adela, or maybe she felt this, and that’s what frustrated her for a few days, and drew her into my orbit, or me into hers—even to the extent that she was ready to show me this other side of her. Person to person, tête-à-tête, Adela to me, unfiltered. Or maybe this was a seduction.  

It wasn’t long before I realized where she was driving me.
“The high school?”
She looked over at me in the mirror. “Yeah. You don’t wanna?”
“I don’t care, actually.”
“Good.” She turned her eyes toward the road, and we were lost in our own thoughts until we arrived at the school. She left the car under a shade tree at the back of the parking lot. There were no other cars on the premises, not even the janitor’s. Because the doors were all locked and bolted from the inside, and neither Adela nor I (as far as I knew) had keys, I wondered how she expected to get inside the building.

But I shouldn’t have. When we were two feet from the door, Adela shrank me to a quarter-inch in size, and then told me to crawl underneath the door. My clothes fell away, and in my bare skin I felt strangely vulnerable.  (Even so, there was no reason for me to feel this way, because only Adela could see me.) The crevice was a tight squeeze—almost too tight—and I got some abrasions on the balls of my palms, from rubbing them against the gravel banked up by the wind against the door. One last flick with Adela’s shiny blue index finger dislodged me from the gap and knocked me through all the way to the other side. I stood up, and Adela whispered to me under the crevice, her warm, moist breath rich with the smell of coffee and maple syrup.

“Now walk down to the side-door of the gymnasium, and let me in,” she said. The sibilant “S” sound in “gymnasium” poured over me like a thick, Caribbean wind, and almost laid me low on the ninety-year old (c. 1920s) terrazzo floor. (The floor was gross to me when I was at my full height, but it was beyond disgusting to me at a quarter-inch—I won’t even attempt to describe it.)

Adela restored me to my original size. Even though I knew the school was empty, I instinctively covered my nakedness. (What if there were cameras around—and there weren’t. But how the hell would I explain a photograph or a news-story like that to my parents—or to the town?) I ran down the hall to the gym, feeling like a complete idiot. If this was Adela’s idea of a good time, then I had a few more questions for her.

The gym smelled like wax and ninety years of daily workouts, and the floor was as dusty and gross as ever. I was conscious of only one thought, during my run, and I repeated that thought to myself about a hundred times in a row: “I hate this goddamn school.”

I quickly ran to the side door and opened it, as instructed. The day was cold and breezy, and the smell of rotting leaves, and grass-clippings, filled the cavernous room. About twenty feet away, Adela was walking across the lawn at a leisured pace, watching the ground. She looked up as the door creaked open, and jogged the last few steps. She wasn’t carrying my outfit.
“Where are my clothes?” I asked, almost panicking.
Her eyes were wide, “Oh….Oh no. I’m so sorry, Martin.”
I was speechless, horrorstruck. There was a deafening silence—and then she cracked a smile and duly produced the little bundle from her backpack.
“You…little…you…well.” (I was so close to saying the word, but held it back.)
“Good one,” she smirked. “I couldn’t resist. Sorry.”

We walked the halls, past Adela’s locker, to the auditorium. I wondered to myself if she kept any slaves inside her locker, for use during school. It seemed possible—and maybe probable—but I didn’t ask. Our voices echoed in the dank and chilly air, as we walked down the center aisle. Adela sat down on the edge of the stage and dangled her legs. I settled down beside her. It was like the old times.

“So now you know,” Adela said.
“Yeah.” I looked around, thinking. “I know some things, but there are other things that confuse me.”
“Hm.” She mused for a minute, kicking her heels absently against the wooden panels. “Do you like being a slave?”
I remembered that Adela asked this question when I was writing the last chapter, and answered it there.
“Oh,” she said, stilling her heels and looking off toward one of the windows, where white light filtered through. “I wouldn’t tell Mom that you enjoy it.”
“Why not?”
“I just wouldn’t,” she paused in thought “You can tell me that you enjoy it, and I’d understand.” She gave me a seductive smile. “But not Mom. Holly wouldn’t understand.”

All at once, a little speech formed itself inside me. I had something to say. “I’ve spent the last month trying to live with you and Holly to the best of my ability, and trying to learn how to cope with the changes she’s inflicted and is planning to inflict on the world—mine and yours and everyone’s. I think she would want to hear that, because it’s true.”
"It may be true, but it’s irrational, I think.”
“Well, Joel liked it. Richard liked it. Have you seen Meredith lately?”
“Okay, and there are like a million others, Martin. But you don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?”
She sighed. “Holly. That was the service. She punished men by handing them what they desired most: Her.” 
I was silent.“Have you seen Dad, yet?” she asked.
“Yes. On the first day.”
“Well, that’s not what Holly wanted to happen. That’s what he wanted. But to give it to him, she had to take everything else away. That’s what happens to all the people who want to be slaves. They get what they want, and they find out that when they get satisfaction, when they get their greatest desire, all it really is is a big, lifelong punishment. I said that something always goes wrong. And it does.”
“Holly hates them?”
“No. She loathes them.”
“What about you?”
“Well, I’m not like that,” she said. “I don’t think all men should be slaves—only those that want to be. But if you get inside Mom’s head, that’s what she really thinks. And that’s why she gets angry and frustrated every time some dumb sap proves her right. And that anger leads her to seek out new slaves. It just goes on in a vicious circle.”
“Ah,” I said. “Keep talking. This is fascinating.”
“Fascinating, huh?” she grinned. “Wait till next week.”
“The truth is, I’m learning to live with my life.” And I thought to myself: But if what you’re telling me is true, then I won’t ever be happy if I stay with Holly. The moment I find myself happy, she’ll punish me for succumbing.
“I don’t think you should,” Adela said.
“What do you mean?”
She winked, and started kicking her heels again. “I think you should ditch Mom and come with me.”

The five or six competing narratives began to fall away in my mind, and for the first time I seemed to have the true story in front of me. The true story of Holly, Adela, Holly’s husband, and the rest of the slaves. My true story. Clarity came to me at last that afternoon, and I realized that I trusted Adela. Possibly she had led me around to the diner, theater, car, and school to seduce me—but it was obvious that she also wanted me to be seduced by her.

And if I rejected her this time, she would forever be against me. But if I accepted—then, maybe, she could offer me a security, or a lease on life, which Holly would never consent to. I believed Adela’s story. Holly punished devotion, and Adela rewarded it. It was that simple. I witnessed it firsthand, but just hadn’t really seen it until Adela fleshed it out for me in words.

In any case, here were my options: if I went with Adela, then Holly wouldn’t have to know about it immediately—so I might be able to change my mind, or finagle around it. But if I rejected her, then everything was over between us. I would have an enemy in her, and I knew that if she ever forgave me, it wouldn’t happen for a long time. The choice was easy, and I made it.

“Okay, Adela. I’ll go with you,” I said.
“Yay!” she clapped her hands. “I’m so glad.”
“But it can’t be out in the open, even though I have confidence in Holly—“
“So pessimistic,” she waved me off with her hand. “She won’t know until I tell her. Trust me.”
“All right. I trust you.” Did I?

We talked for a while on the stage, after that pact was concluded. She told me stories about school, dramas she’d acted in, parts she’d played. Then she told me stories about home, about her father and mother, her childhood, and the previous two years. We stopped talking, and then walked through the halls for an hour, stopping in front of her locker (there was no one inside), and mine (which was cleared of all the books and papers, and filled with letters and rotted roses and mums). We opened the library door and sat around in the aisles, reading and talking, until the late afternoon—and then heard a noise. Someone was opening the door of a classroom adjacent to the library. “That’s the janitor,” said Adela. “We should go.”

She took off her right sneaker and sock, and then gave me a look that said, “Play time’s over.”
“Now?” I was unsure.
“Yes. Now.” She shrank me down to three inches, and then picked me up underneath her smelly toes.
I said, “Adela—” but the rest was muffled inside her sock.
“Hush, now,” I heard her say, as she pounded me into the insole of her sneaker. “Don’t ruin the afternoon.”

As she began to walk, and the full scent and heat of her moist foot overmastered my senses, it dawned on me. I had fallen for her. Adela had actually convinced me to become her personal slave.

Adela has asked me to write a few words about the second time I was under her feet—the first time I realized, with total clarity, that she had won her first victory. Well, her will is my command. I don’t want to spare or overlook the details of anything that might, eventually, prove to be important. 

The darkness, and the overpowering smell. All of Adela’s slaves have mentioned those two things. Some nothing else. (What more—really—can you say when you’ve become the insole to a girl’s shoe?)

That late afternoon, the cold and fresh autumn was everywhere—everywhere but inside Adela’s shoe. The strong, pungent, yet somehow girlish, stench arising from the entrance to her sneaker turned aside everything and everyone, except those willing slaves whose bodies she had formed into her insoles. Under her soft heel, again and again, Adela effortlessly crushed out their spirits and minds. In the right shoe, it was my turn to lie down as calmly as possible beneath those same long, very happy toes—and I stayed there for the next several minutes--minutes like hours.

Barren, ever-changing minutes, rubbed out and re-written like chalk powder. I coughed on a piece of Adela’s sock-lint, and simultaneously inhaled the thick, multi-layered, cheesy scent between her toes. Was there something I could tell her, was there anything I could do—anything at all—to prove to her that, though some men perhaps wanted to be slaves, I wasn’t one of them? That there was still some shred, some fragment of my mind left that refused to accept Adela’s ownership of me? I could think of nothing, and went on breathing, breathing, and breathing. Oxygen was short, and it wasn’t long before I started to feel slightly delirious.

I said I enjoyed being a slave. Now, for the first time, I wondered and feared that I really meant what I said. It had escaped my mouth so simply: Yes, of course I enjoy it. And because of that simple statement—which, I now realized, was slowly becoming true—Adela had convinced me to become her personal slave. Under her foot, I was beginning to change into that slave, the slave Adela wanted me to become, her willing, lovesick slave. The lover that she rolled in and out between her toes, during the day, living in her flats, her sneakers, and her strap-on heels. The pet under her feet who calmed her nerves during tests, and massaged her after a long run, or before sleep. Was that my dream future? Was that all I would be?

Maybe Adela wanted me to be that, or maybe she wanted both, or maybe she was only playing with me and wasn’t aware of her own tremendous power to change my life for better or worse. Even I wasn’t aware of it, until I was engulfed in her socks, surrounded on all sides by sweaty, unwashed—Adela. There was no other word for the scent, texture, and taste of her toes but her name. Adela.

Under the spell of Adela’s soft toes—as unyielding as she was herself—for the first time I began to feel very pathetic.  As she moved, maybe walking or driving a vehicle, she pressed the delicate imprint of her large toe down against my chest, and as this pressure was gradually released, I rolled back and forth on my side in the valley between the ball of her foot and her toes, where most of the grit and slime accumulated. (She did not know how merciless she was.) 

She squeezed me with her toes, and distantly, boomingly, her musical, satiny voice came down with a question, mixed with the powerful scent of her feet, and the soggy insole that her toes pressed into with loud smooching and smacking sounds every time she raised them—ever so slightly. “Can you kiss them for me, Martin?” Her disembodied voice carried down to me as though heard from a television in the next room, its volume jacked up all the way, though the sound yet vague and half-heard. 

Could I? Her footsweat welled up continuously from her warm skin and, following the spiral pattern underneath her big toe, dripped down and splashed over my face, into my eyes and mouth, and over my naked body. No, I couldn’t. Holly never made me do this. I tried to pull myself forward, out of my confinement in the grimy place between her first and second toe. 

We were still in the car, and maybe at a stoplight. “C’mon, Martin. It’s me.” I failed to pull out. Her weight kept me down, and sucked me back underneath her foot. Casually, rocking her shoe from side to side, she nuzzled my face back into its slot. Then she pressed forward—perhaps into the gas pedal.

I stopped asking myself if Adela was a person worthy to be worshiped or even loved. Suddenly I realized that I had loved her, and had never stopped loving her. Lightheaded, bruised, and drenched in whatever secretions dripped from her feet and mingled with the matter in her sock, I started to passionately kiss and lick between her toes. It no longer tasted awful to me: or if it still tasted awful, it tasted like her. Adela.  

And then it happened. The pressure was released. Adela removed her shoe, and tore off her sock. Dizzily, I looked down and saw wet leaves and deep green grass under a cloudy sky. My mind started to clear again in the fresh air and I hugged and clung to her second toe in terror.

She smiled and lowered her bare foot toward the lawn. “Martin, you can let go.”
“What?” I looked up at her and down at the grass.
“Let go of me.”
I let go, and fell down and rolled over onto the dewy carpet of the grass. Adela pulled her skirts behind her, and sat down on her purse, with her bare feet before her in the grass, left leg curled back and right extended, with the sole facing me. I tried to get my bearings, spun around, and saw the school the distance. Adela had only driven to the park across the street! We weren’t anywhere near the house.

The scent of the leaves mixed with that of her foot. She was smiling at me and glancing up at the sky every now and again, and there was a certain anxiousness in her looks. Her toes wiggled a bit, and her fingers fussed a little with the wet blades of grass, restlessly. 
“Martin,” she turned to me. “I really like you…”
This is where the phrase was supposed to be repeated, but this time from me to her. But she didn’t wait to hear me say it. Her fingers fiddled a bit with the buttons on her blouse, and she yanked the elastic scrunchie out of her hair. Before I even knew what was happening, or could protest, I was full size (or almost full size—she still seemed huge—I couldn’t tell) and Adela had straddled over me, and was warming herself up. God it was quick.

Soon enough she was ready, and carefully touched down, encircling me. She was the captain of this boat, but where was she moving me, where was she sailing me off to? I would soon know.

She swiveled, and the outstretched soles of her feet, damp with dew, sought out my face.
“No!”
They found it. And as Adela grinded me, I inhaled deeper and deeper. (I was wrong. She knew exactly how merciless she was.)
“Let me hear you breathe,” she said. “C’mon, Martin.”
“Oh,” I said, completely muffled. Escape was impossible.
She was beginning to pant. “Don’t back out on me.”
“Wait.”
“I don’t care,” she said, with a hint of bitterness I hadn’t heard in her voice since the first day, one month ago. “You don’t like to do anything. This is what I want.” She stopped to breathe. “If we didn’t do what I wanted, we wouldn’t do anything at all.”
I was inhaling, gasping for air, trying to fight my way through her toes to the sky. “It can’t happen,” I thought. “It’s going to happen.” And then it happened.

My face was covered with tiny particles of leaves and grass that had stuck to her feet. She had rubbed off the autumn onto my face, along with the sweat from her soles. This was how she wanted it, and she got it from me for the first time. She pulled herself out and then sat on my chest for a while, looking around. A few flies buzzed around my face, and she considerately swatted them away. Her skirts tickled my sides, and my initial, confused feelings about what had just happened began to fade away. Something began to feel okay.

“That felt right,” she told me.
“It did?” I said. “Are you sure?”
“Completely.” She smiled, and I pulled my legs up. She leant back on them, and made herself comfortable.
“You know,” Adela said. “I’m ready for everything, now. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so,” I said. “Adela.”
“Yeah.”
“I really like you.”
She gave a tight-lipped grin, like the girl after the guy muffed up his lines during a performance. And then she sort of purred, like a wolf being stroked by a blind child. Maybe I said the right thing, or the only thing.
“It’s only,” I decided to qualify it. “It’s only your feet. It was so strong, I thought you’d walked or driven all the way home.”
“Hm. That bad?” she said. “You were in my shoe for ten minutes.”
“I don’t want to be your foot slave,” I said. “I have to be honest—Adela—I’m afraid.”
She was unpersuaded. “You were Holly’s foot slave for the last month. Don’t tell me you’re not used to it.”
But I wasn’t used to it. There was a difference between being under Holly’s foot, and under Adela’s. At least for me. I couldn’t understand it. I almost lost my head in ten minutes, whereas with Holly—whose feet were often just as filthy, in her leather boots—I could last a school-day.
“Look, Martin. I know you don’t like it now, but that’s not my problem. That’s yours.”
Was it? I couldn’t respond to that point, and as I thought she shifted around antsily on my chest.
“Let’s go back,” she said, and stood up.
“Home?”
“Yes. Holly is getting worried,” she said. And then added, with an insinuating undertone, “And you’ll want to see how Meredith is doing, of course.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” And that was it.

Adela shrank me again, and dried her feet off with her shirt, wiping off the tiny leaves and the lawn debris. As I watched her, an eighty foot tall giantess, perform this simple, humble act, my heart began to grow warm again. In that moment she was a goddess to me, but I couldn’t tell her that, because she wouldn’t believe I meant it. Did I mean it, really?

She plucked me up between her blue nails, walked back under the trees and over the field to the car, and deposited me back in the shoe. But this time her bare foot followed, and brought in the autumn with it. How would I explain these new feelings—or these old feelings, recently exposed like an old wound—to Holly? It was neither the time nor the place to think about that. I decided to kiss and lick. And then Adela started the car.

The long night under Adela’s foot lasted another fifteen minutes, until she heard the sirens and parked the car about three blocks away from the house. From inside her shoe, I could hear them wailing, faintly, as though the cats in a neighbor’s apartment hadn’t been fed for a full week. Using the firm surface of the carpet fibers under the driver’s seat for traction, as a shoehorn, Adela popped off her sneaker with a loud, wet squeak. Inside, I tried to stand and walk up the slick and slippery incline to her heel. But I lost my balance and fell over, face down, onto the moist pad of the insole. 

As a precaution, before leaving the car, she dumped me out into her waiting hand, stashed me roughly, like a wad of cash, into one of her frilly, ripe, well-worn socks—the one pair that always seemed to go with her sneakers—and then finally stuffed me, sock and all, into her inner coat pocket. No words were spoken because no explanation was needed. I had a good idea of what had happened, and so did she. She was also afraid to have that fear confirmed, and wasn’t ready to speak yet.

Adela hugged the jacket close to her t-shirt. As the seconds passed, and as she walked toward the house, I could hear her heart—much bigger and heavier than I was—beating faster and faster. The volume and pitch of the siren-sound grew. Through the hot and smelly fabric of her balled-up sock—which made me gag every time I breathed in through my nose—I started to make out the muffled voices of many men talking, the amplified voice of one man shouting orders through a megaphone. The voices of policemen and the growling engines of police cars.

She pivoted abruptly and started powerwalking back the way we had come. I felt that. Meanwhile, the odor of the sock blended with the potent, flowery perfume under her t-shirt, and the combination was making me feel pretty weak in the knees. (At my shrunken size, I often took in Adela’s cocktail of different smells, but that late afternoon the cocktail tasted like it was spiked with something strange and undefinable—it was very, very different from being with Holly. And, I admit, I was beginning to feel powerless against her.)

Her last few steps were a blur until I heard the door open. Adela sat there, her heart racing, her lungs gasping for air. She reached inside her coat and pulled out the balled sock, flattened it out, and shook me down into her hand. Her eyes were alert and scared. I’d never seen her like this.
“Martin, you’ll have to get your clothes on again.”
“What’s happening?” I knew, but I wanted to hear it from her.
Adela gently dropped me behind her, onto the seat cushion, and then picked up my little bundle and lobbed it into the backseat beside me. Not even a flash intervened before I regained my regular height. (There were never any intermediate steps: one moment I was two or three inches, and the next I was the old five nine. The change was faster than the fastest thought I’d ever had.)

I whipped out the pants and jumped into them, flapped out the shirt and tugged it over my face and arms. The only thing I was missing was a good, long bath. I really smelled, though Adela pretended not to notice anything. She had her neck partway out the window, and was gazing down the street, through the late shadows of that gray afternoon, toward the source of the siren-sound. It was coming from our house.

It was because of the two kids, I thought. It was either the two kids, or the missing drunks from the other night. Friday and Halloween. The police had got probable cause to act and had obtained a warrant. Possibly nothing indictable would be found inside the house, after a search—Holly would have taken care of that—but surely they would want to see Adela. And if they knew I still existed, they’d want to see me too—so in the beginning I couldn’t understand why Adela had given me again my original size and the change of clothes. Unless she knew something I didn’t.
“Sit up here,” she whispered back to me. She patted the passenger seat with her right hand, and then gripped the wheel again so tightly her knuckles turned white. I straddled the seat and plopped down beside her. She didn’t say anything.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet. Just wait.” She sighed, and seemed so nervous, that for a moment I imagined that her eye was moist with tears. It was some effect of the light.
We waited. The wail of the siren stopped, and we heard the megaphone again, but couldn’t make out the words.

I rolled down the window. Along the shoulder of the road, the crickets were beginning to chirp with their cold and agonizing late autumn slowness. The wind shook through the trees a few times, and a car drove past us, moving toward the scene of the action. A couple oglers were passing us on their way down, chatting one to the other, where a large crowd of spectators was beginning to gather. When I was just ready to turn to Adela and suggest that we drive to a safer distance, and talk about what ought to be done –I didn’t want anything to happen to Adela any more than she did—something happened.

A titanic shadow spread over the earth and sky and covered the car and all the neighboring houses. There was a thunderous, resounding boom, some terrified, high-pitched screaming, and then the unmistakable popping of gunfire. I looked ahead, and saw a billowing cloud of smoke advancing toward us down the street, under the high canopy of shade trees. Then, abruptly, the gunfire stopped, and there was total silence. No people ran toward us from that direction, and there was no one behind us either. The stillness was eerie, and I checked over at Adela to see her reaction. She returned the look—wide-eyed surprise, curiosity, apprehension—and then her hand reached for the ignition.
“No.”
“What?”
“Let’s get out and walk,” I said. She let out a huge sigh, and nodded.

When I exited the side-door and crossed around the hood of the car to meet Adela, she took my wrist and squeezed it.
“Don’t move,” she said. “Someone’s coming.”
She had sharp ears. It took me three seconds till I could make out the sound of footsteps coming toward us along the sidewalk. There were two people, and they were running.

Through the smoke, two children in costume appeared and then darted breathlessly past us, down the street. I don’t think they even noticed us standing there. We watched them go, and soon lost them in the shadows. They were dressed like ghosts, apparitions. Darkness was falling quickly.
“The two kids,” Adela murmured.
“Who?” I said, and then remembered.
“Let’s go.” The smoke began to rise and dissipate, and we passed through it fairly quickly. No one else passed us or disturbed us or held out bodiless hands through the fog to detain us. At the end of the block we saw her.

Holly was sitting on the stoop outside her house with a box over her knees. In the center of the front lawn were two gigantic footprints, each five yards long. An oak tree blocked the road, its wide trunk shredded at the base. Police cars, their revolving lights still turning and turning in red, white, and blue, seemed to huddle around the house in a silent semicircle, as though waiting for orders to disperse. They would wait forever. That order would never come, and after Holly turned off their lights and they blinked out, one after another, they would never turn from that place.

Adela and I approached her, and she greeted us with her usual sardonic smile. She was getting dressed.
“Well, it’s time,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“What about the upstairs?” Adela asked.
“Oh, it’s all taken care of. We can start tonight.”
Adela looked unsure for a moment. I thought she was still kind of scared. I hadn’t expected it to happen like this.
“Well, I guess I’m ready, then. Martin’s here.”
Holly noticed me. “Hi Martin,” she said. “How was your afternoon?”
I shrugged noncommittally, and Adela looked over and cracked a little smile. Her nerves were on edge. Holly saw it all, and scratched her cheek thoughtfully for a moment. 
“Yes,” she said. “Well, I’m in contact with the others. We’ll meet tonight in the country, the usual spot. The plants are shut down, and the rest is on its way.” She looked up. “Adela, where’s the car?”
“Down the street.”
“Get it. I want to try the radio.”
She ran up the street at a brisk pace. I followed her with my eyes. It was a pretty sight.
“Martin,” Holly sidled over to me, and took my shoulders in her hands. “You’re with us, aren’t you?”
Wasn’t I? “Yes. What can I do?”
The way Holly was gazing into my eyes was starting to make me nervous.
“Not much for now,” she said. “Get some food from the house, and pack up the car. I’ll pay a visit to the neighbors.” She picked up the megaphone, and walked across the street without looking back.

I walked up to the stoop. The cardboard box was still there in plain view, and there was a lid over it. I didn’t have to pry open the lid—I knew what was inside, and roughly how many. Some of them were restored to their original sizes, most of them because of their sex. The men generally stayed tiny, with only a few exceptions. 

The night was going to be a long one. The longest.

The sound of no airplanes in a clear sky, the stars and satellites coming out. We drove out of town and passed people stepping out of their darkened houses onto the unlit streets. Several cars were on the road, and just before we pulled out another crowd of people was beginning to migrate down the street to the house. Holly didn’t pay them any notice, and no one stopped us. When we passed the limits of the town, I began to realize, for the first time, just how dark the night was. All the lights had been put out in an instant, as though all at once a billion eyes figured it was a good time to go to sleep.

Adela and I sat in the back seat together while Holly drove. For two hours we cruised along the highway outside of town, the headlights piercing through the dark alone. During all that time, only a few cars passed us, speeding, and overloaded with baggage pressing against the windows, boxes of food and clothes, provisions and stuff. On the edge of the forest along the highway border, a few animals tentatively snuffed the air. Two wide black eyes would appear now and then in the glare of the headlights, and then disappear back into the forest, leaving behind a misty exhalation. I had plenty of time to think, and so did that girl beside me.

As we approached the city, Adela opened the window and looked out. A cool gust of air blew through the car and, reminded of Meredith and Holly’s husband, I glanced over at the old pair of riding boots on the floor of the passenger side. There were unpleasant facts here, too. I sometimes wondered what Adela thought of them.

I held my hands over my knees and looked back and forth between the window and the rear-view mirror. Holly was focused on the road. She hadn’t spoken a word since we left the town.

Then Adela tugged at my sleeve.
“Look—” she said, and pointed out into the night. I leaned over and followed her finger with my eyes, but at first it was hard to make anything out. Then, one by one, objects were defined along the highway borders: cars, hundreds or maybe thousands of them, stacked up like toy blocks in columns five stories high. There was a twenty foot wide corridor running through the center of the woods, as though someone had decided to bulldoze through it. The huge trees were leveled in one direction. We passed by quickly.
“What happened?” 
“And look over there,” she said to me, pointing up to the sky over the narrow row of trees just past the cars.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Stars,” she said.
“So?”
“When was the last time you saw stars near the city?”
I looked over in the direction of the city. I couldn’t find it.
“The city,” I said. “Adela. It’s gone.”
“No, it’s there,” said Holly, squinting into the mirror. She seemed to find something there and turned around to face us, with her right hand gripping the passenger seat. “We’re stopping there tonight, and then driving upriver tomorrow morning.”
Adela leaned back inside the car, and rolled up the window halfway. “Mom…” she said. The thought trailed off, and she didn’t finish her sentence. The car was quiet and tense for a minute, and then Holly turned back around.

“Let’s try the radio,” she suggested, turning it on. She flipped the dial from static, 60s rock, and what sounded like a pre-recorded talk radio show, to something different. Directions and instructions were being broadcast, and Holly took out a pad of paper and started to note them down. An address, a time, and a number of other things I couldn’t make out.

Not for the first time, I felt completely out of my depth. And Adela didn’t look too comfortable either, staring out the window, fidgeting with her clothes, and nervously tapping her shoes. Holly may have been home all day, working her brains out over the one big issue—but for Adela and me, the day had been groundbreaking in a much different kind of way. As I mulled this over, resting my eyes on her shoes, she caught me staring—and smiled. 
 
One thing occurred to me during the car ride, though. And it came upon me entirely by chance. It was about Adela. I realized that a good part of the reason there are girls like Adela is that there are mothers like Holly. In some sense, maybe this sounds obvious, but I think that the reason Adela treated love in such a dismissive or mocking way was probably because of Holly, and what Holly had done to her husband. Adela saw all this, took note of it, and buried it deep inside her. Holly distrusted her husband—maybe for a good reason, but it's not my place to judge that in this account—and then molded him into her personal foot-pet. Now, at a very young age Adela might have thought to herself: If that’s what happens to my father when he loves someone else, then how would Holly punish me if I ever fell in love and tried to get away from her?

I thought that Adela’s games masked a deeper uneasiness, and also an awareness and fear of love’s real power to change and control her. And if I loved her, then I was in for a real uphill battle. Still—for the moment—I had no choice but to agree to be her slave—in the long run, I probably ran a better chance with her than with Holly. And maybe somehow, eventually, I could show her that I didn’t have to be a slave for her to like me, and that there was something really transformative and mind-blowing in the way that love can bind you to another person. Or maybe I was thinking too much, too late, and she’d already figured this out. (In some version of the story, that meeting between us in the park had actually been consensual. I wasn’t even sure.)

Adela rummaged under the seat and produced an unopened box of cookies. “Hungry?” she asked. I was (and remembered, vaguely, eating a few crumbs from her hand, that first day, so long ago). 

At that moment I felt so bold, anxious, and alive that I started talking to Holly (she was off the radio). Some combination of guilt and exhilaration got ahold of me.
“Holly,” I said. “Why don’t you let Meredith out?” Or your husband, I was going to add, but held my tongue.
“No.” She was curt, but then seemed to soften a little. “She’s happy enough where she is. You’ll see her tonight.”
“Right.” I didn’t know what to say. Holly was implacable. She would never change.
“Oh, and Martin?”
“Yes?”
“When we get there you’ll have to, uh, shrink again. I don’t know why you’re this size, and I wasn’t going to say anything to Adela—but that’s the way things are going to be.”
“Again,” I thought. But this time it was different. There was something Holly didn’t know, and there was something I was sure—as I glanced over at Adela—that we would keep a secret from her, until the right time. I would do my best.

In the darkness, we crossed a long bridge over the river into the city (a bridge where the seabirds high up in the moonlight still dipped and pivoted between the three-foot wide suspension cables), and drove slowly down the long avenues where fires blazed in steel drums, and glass display windows were shattered along the sidewalk. We passed a few hundred women walking up the street, with packs slung over their shoulders, chatting together, and walking north, toward us, as though from a place prearranged. Some were weeping, and others laughing, but all carried a tiny little cage between their fingers. Here and there, we saw a woman running in the other direction, looking scared. Holly looked back at Adela and motioned with her chin.

“Martin,” she said. “It’s time.”
“Wait.”
“Sorry, I can’t. Adela…”
“Mom, just let him say something.” Holly froze, and stared in the rear-view mirror for a few seconds.
“Well,” she finally said. “I already know the question. And here’s the answer. Adela, listen if you want to.” She sighed deeply.
“Look around at those people,” she said. “Women, all of them. And each one holding a cage.”
I looked, and it was true.
“What’s inside the cages, you’ll ask. You already know. Men: husbands, sons, brothers, relatives, and friends.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why? Because ten years ago I got online and learned that there were hundreds of other women like me, women who had the power to shrink and grow, and women who could pass that power on to their daughters. We realized that we could use our power to re-order society and civilization, to begin again, anew. And we realized that if we didn’t use our gifts for the good of humanity” (she was waxing lyrical, here) “then we’d have failed ourselves, our country, and the human species.” 
I looked out the window. It was dark and cold.
“We’re going to the Museum tonight. If you want to meet some people, you can. The city isn’t ours yet—but it almost is. We have the Capital, the Government, the Military, and we almost have the major cities. And all this, Martin (and Adela), without a single shot fired—without a single casualty!”
“It’s hard to believe,” Adela said.
“Yes,” said Holly."It is."
“What about me?” I asked.
“You? Well, not much will change for you, I’m happy to say. We’re moving upstate tomorrow—we and a few others—but you’ll still be with me.”
“A slave?”
“Yes. But think of it this way, Martin,” she said, good-naturedly. “You’ve had a head-start on the rest of them.”

So Adela shrank me, and put me in her warm pocket. In this new world, I hoped that Holly was wrong about “not much changing for me”—and I forced myself to believe that Adela hoped it too. When we left the car, I had a brief glimpse of a pale figure inside Holly’s boot, raising his hands up in either protest or supplication: and then Holly zipped him in. The other boot went on, but I couldn’t see Meredith inside. Nothing would ever change for either of them, new society or old. It was strange that Holly didn’t ask for me, but I didn’t go out of my way to remind her. She was a woman I would never be able to influence.

On the other hand, with Adela I had a real chance at finding a favorable position, or getting a reasonable deal. Adela stepped out of the car and followed her mother into the Museum. At the huge doors they met a tall woman who waved them inside. A tall fire flickered and glowed against the walls of the central lobby.

Adela showed me her watch. It was about ten minutes before midnight.

The fire in the Museum court, a kind of echochamber, danced over the walls. Two or three men tossed beams and boards into the blaze, stoking it, nursing its warmth. Around the periphery of the hall, a few women walked around, resting paintings and sculptures against the walls, murmuring to each other now and then, but completely absorbed in their work. I counted about twenty women reclining around the flame and talking in low voices, with their legs stretched out toward the fire. Some raised their heads as Holly and Adela entered the room, and then turned back to their neighbor and continued talking.

As we entered that circle, I peeked out of Adela’s pocket and looked around. Lounging in the laps of these giantesses, or curled around their clad and unclad feet, worshiping piously, I saw a good number of men more or less my size, some larger, some smaller. On the whole it seemed that these women paid no attention to them—but every so often—talking all the while—one of them would suddenly start with some silent gesture: she would turn and set her foot on its blade, raise the heel of her shoe, lift her toes, drop her hand, wiggle around in her seat, or snap open her panties. And the man, urged on by this silent gesture, this unmistakable cue, moved on to his next task.

The room was full of laughter, the glassy clinks of winecups, and the slow, bright blaze of the bonfire. It was remarkably tranquil, and reminded me of some old St. Martin’s Day harvest festival. Anyway, these women had reaped something big. How far would it take them?

In the shadows of the flames I made out a few Italian baroques stacked and spotlit against American scenes, Hudson River School stuff: impossible people and impossible landscapes, beside which this new and gigantic reality was all the bigger, stranger, more encompassing and overwhelming. (Later, I learned that these works were brought up from storage, and were set to be moved the next day to one of the riverside mansions upstate.) The overall effect of these old, priceless artworks appearing in the background of this new scene was uncanny and almost spooky. Tall women, like the goddesses in some new—or old and till now secret—pantheon, talked in a circle casually, like they were at some salon or dinner party, and not at the beginning of a new and much different world.

The person who greeted Holly at the entrance was a slim, fine-boned, middle-aged woman. Behind her intelligent eyes one could see her thoughts flickering—rapidly, if not deeply, covering a large territory in a very short time. She was dressed in a black executive suit, and wore a pair of shiny black pumps over her somewhat large, shapely feet. Her shoes clacked and echoed over the white marble floor, her hand outstretched to Holly as she invited her inside.

“Holly,” she said, with a glint in her eyes and a kind of sharpness in her voice. “What a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Holly smiled and reached back to find Adela’s hand. “Pearl,” she said. “This is my daughter, Adela. Adela, Pearl.”
Pearl passed her eyes over my mistress somewhat indifferently, as though she were mentally adding up two very large numbers. The introduction was brisk and efficient, and they shook hands without a word.
“Come and sit down,” she said to Holly, taking her gently by the shoulder with those long, delicate fingers. “You must be tired. Adela? Yes, you too. Come along. We have a few things to run over before you leave.”
Pearl drew Holly to a candlelit alcove on the outskirts of the circle, just to the side of the Museum’s grand staircase. Adela tailed along behind and thus far remained silent.
“We haven’t been able to unlock the basement, yet,” said that slender, officious woman in an offhanded way. “And the curators haven’t been very helpful, yet, either.” She smiled tightly, as though excusing herself for starting the small talk. She was the kind of woman who deprecated and avoided small talk in principle.  
“Well,” said Holly, sitting down on the lowermost step and slowly unsealing the zipper on her right boot. “I’ll be helpful. I have a woman who’ll make the work easier for you, here.” When my teacher daintily reached in and plucked the little woman up from the insole of her boot, Meredith looked as dazed and drenched as a newt, suddenly exposed to the cold wind, after it’s hibernated during the winter under the slimy muck on the borders of some pond. Holly blew on her, and she woke up. 
“Meredith, wake up!” I poked my head out again, and saw her lazily open her eyes, and lift her hands to her face.
“Well,” said Pearl, waving aside the matter with her hand. “We can deal with that in a minute. Give her to me.”
Holly put her in Pearl’s cold, finely-chiseled hand, and Meredith promptly disappeared into one of her hundred pockets.

“For the moment,” Pearl went on, “we aren’t facing a shortage of food—there’s an overplenty if anything—but we’ll solve the problem of obtaining good food and drink, for good, tomorrow or the next day, when we lay down the law in the Midwestern cities. The Far West takeover is underway. I’ll give you Emily’s number.” She scribbled something down, handed it to Holly, and then leaned back against the cold marble of the bannister. 
“Even so, we’ve found that a number of women, for reasons we don't fully understand, yet, have been trapping, stealing and—although admittedly this is, for the most part, still a rumor—devouring all the men they can find unprotected. We planned for this, and the number is, at the moment, smaller than we expected, but it’s still very alarming. For obvious reasons we would like to nip this practice in the bud. It could otherwise turn common, and what’s common is only two or three steps away from acceptable, fashionable, and enforced. Already—and in only the last twelve hours—about three thousand men in the city are unaccounted for. So the predators shall be caught and punished accordingly. We’re presently working that out,” she said, and paused. “Overseas, we’re in communication with Mme. Lefèvre, Mlle Marchand, and Nora. You know Nora, I think.” 
“Right,” said Holly.
“But on the whole—let me be clear—we expected a much larger number of these women, these dissidents and troublemakers. The number as it stands is not significant. Tomorrow we restore power to the major centers, establish and appoint the new government, enter and fully secure the suburbs, and begin the next phase: work reassignment and general reconstruction.” She glanced over at Adela, and I thought, for a moment, her eye caught me too. If it did, her expression revealed nothing.
“How was your trip?”
“Smooth,” Holly said. “You have the box.”
“Yes. If no one claims them by tomorrow evening, I’ll transfer the refugees to some of the widows and orphans.”
“Perfect. Is that all?”
“For now,” Pearl said. “Except for this one, final point: I suggest that you leave the city by a different route. And take the usual precautions.”
“Good,” said Holly. As they shook hands, she bent close to Pearl’s ear, and whispered something. Pearl smiled, nodded, and with a turn as sharp as a whiplash, clacked across the blazing, shimmering room to a door in the east wing. She opened it with a key and then vanished inside. For a brief moment, before the door slammed shut, I might have seen or caught a glimpse of a spiral staircase going down.

At that instant there was a loud commotion around the fire. Adela turned to face the noise, and I saw a woman stand up, point, and swear at one or two objects around her feet. Some dispute between a mistress and her slave. They had evidently been together for a considerable time, and the issue was quickly settled: she dropped one of the men below the waistline, from behind, while the other climbed, hangdog, under her pointed finger and withering eyes, into the woman’s bright blue heel, which she immediately put on. The silence ended, and conversation resumed.

Holly took Adela by the wrist, and led her up the stairs a few steps.
“We’re leaving now.”
Adela stared. “Now? What about…”
“She can stay here. We have to go.”
“Mom, why don’t we wait for her to come back? What about the box? What about…” I felt her look around the room—maybe she was thinking of sleep.
“No,” said Holly. “It has to be now. Where’s Martin?”
“In my pocket, but…”
“Put him in my hand.”
Adela hesitated. The tension in the air rose slowly, and then became palpable.
“Put him in my hand.” Still nothing. Holly stood up, regally, and swept the room with her eyes one last time.
“You aren’t going to give him to me,” she said. “Here’s the heart of the matter, here’s when I need him, when Pearl needs him. It’s the worst possible time, Adela. What’s wrong with you— have you fallen in love with the little thing? You get one last chance, and then it’s done. Hand him to me.”
“I can’t,” Adela said. Her heart was pounding. “I’m sorry, Mom, I thought I could. I can’t…It’s not like…”
“I’ll stop you there. It’s not like that at all, you spoiled girl, and you shouldn’t compare the two cases. Your father wasn’t fit for you or me. If you won’t give me the kid, I’ll take him.”

As Holly approached Adela, a plunging, tumbling, dizzying wave washed over me, and I tossed over the spindrift in some wild ocean storm, far offshore. For a moment I was conscious of other eyes turning in our direction, and other women approaching us, and then, after what seemed hours, I landed on a plush, steamy, moist surface, and felt the pressure of hot, foul flesh cover and eclipse me in a wave. As the pressure was alternately applied and released, like some fearful machine, the image of a runner came into my mind, and I realized—very briefly, but with a shock of clarity—that I was under someone’s foot. But whose? Whoever she was, she was quickly, softly forming me into the voidlike hollow under her toes, and she was beginning to run—and running fast.

There was a loud metallic boom, like the sound of a huge door slamming shut. The echo rippled up from the floor through the shoes and feet of this woman I was under. The booming sound grew fainter and fainter—I felt the sound waves drift away, like the slow fading pulse after a heart attack. After the first few seconds, when the dark, full scent of this woman’s feet began to surround me, I knew that I was underneath Holly’s toes. To this day I don’t understand exactly how it happened, how I came to be in her boot after spending the evening with Adela—and Adela herself hasn’t been able, or perhaps hasn’t wanted, to answer that question sufficiently. As Holly ran, the throbbing impact of her footsteps against the hard surface wedged me deeper and deeper under her toes—I felt so far gone, that it seemed possible I might even disappear, crumple and crush, under her vast weight. Gripping the grimy fabric of her insole with both fists, I curled myself up like a pebble, and found a way, somehow, to take blow after blow, step after step. The familiar smell of her foot surrounded me, and as the seconds passed I yielded to it, or to her, like the familiar and welcome presence of some woman approaching me through a dense fog. It was she—it was Holly—but how? How did this happen?

Strange and desperate thoughts crowded over me, as I lay there in the blackness, sweltering. Whatever happened to me in this volatile, fast altering world, I had hoped that Adela would have been there with me, in a sense. Yet here I was under my teacher’s foot again, cushioning her sole and surrendering, for the hundredth time, to the foul, dank, leathery smell of her boot. Her toes squirmed across my slick body as she ran, and ground it down into the hollow space Meredith had just left. I was alive, once more, to make her foot comfortable. More than ever before, I felt utterly and hopelessly dominated by Holly. Something had gone awfully wrong. 

Those were bad times then, but now a smile crosses my face—as I breathe in deeply—when I think of what happened. Over thirty days and nights inside Adela’s mother’s slippers and shoes, under Holly’s right foot, had prepared me to become her daughter’s slave. There I was, but here—wherever here is—I’ll stay until the day I die.

The nightmare ended almost as suddenly as it started, and I soon heard the rasping of the zipper, and felt Holly’s broad, strong toes clench me from top to bottom, and lift me up out of the depths of her knee-high boots. She dropped me onto the cold stone floor of a cold chamber, somewhat like the inside of a mailroom. The walls were built squarely of cinder blocks, and a few naked light bulbs dangled precariously from the ceiling.

When my eyes had adjusted to the bright glare of this new place, a surprise greeted me. The room was windowless and a long countertop, about four and a half feet from the floor, pressed up against  the walls. On the counter, and over the many shelves bolted into the wall-blocks, I saw boxes and cages. Nearly all of them were filled with tiny men and, here and there among the men, the occasional shrunken woman.

At the desk in the back of the room, two office ladies sat with their heads bent over papers, their hands busily typing into a computer. A low hum kept up in the background, as though from some invisible machine. Three other ladies, dressed in office attire, worked silently and efficiently in the background: the first licked stamps, the second sealed the boxes, and the last dropped the full cartons, one after another, past a little opening in the wall with a rubber flap at the entrance. They slipped noiselessly through the hatch and disappeared down the chute to some deeper level of the building.

Then I looked up, and saw her. Two colossal feet stood in front of me, encased in a sleek pair of closed-toe black pumps, so deep, dark, and finely-polished that looking into them was like looking into another room, into another world. The shoes led up, past the immense, womanly legs, in black stockings, to a long, black, executive pencil skirt, to a white blouse, to the fine, delicate features of Pearl’s face. She looked surprised to see Holly.

Holly was behind, putting her boots back on. “Change of plans," she said. "We’ll do it now.”
“Oh,” said Pearl. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“That’s him? Martin, I think you said?”
“That’s right. Go ahead.” A huge shadow loomed over me from above, and one of Pearl’s lean, delicate hands descended and scooped me up like a doll. As she held me up to her face, her eyes, luminous and depthless blue eyes, seemed to sound me to the bottom and then some. I didn’t know eyes could be that deep. After a couple seconds, she looked at Holly, apparently satisfied, and dropped me into one of the front pockets of her skirt. Some exchange was made, the details of which were muffled to me, and I heard the heavy tread of Holly’s boots begin to recede into the background. Pearl swept back into some corner of the room, and my eyes began to adjust to the darkness of her pocket. I wasn’t alone. First, a complex smell—sharp, leathery, and feminine—reached my nostrils: Holly’s smell. Then, a voice a few feet off to my right. 

“Martin?” It was Meredith.
“Yeah.”
She moved closer to me, in the darkness. The pocket swayed back and forth, in rhythm with Pearl’s footsteps. “I’m happy you’re here.”
“What do you mean?”
She took my hand in hers, and leaned her back against mine for balance. Her breathing was a little labored, and her hands were trembling slightly, from nervousness and exhaustion. “She sold me.”
“Holly?”
“For ten thousand dollars.” Something caught in her voice—betrayal? “A woman up in B---- wanted an experienced slave, female. Pearl told me. That was the ring. That was the whole purpose. I didn’t know until today. Training us up to sell us.” 
“What?”
“It’s true,” she said, coughing a little.
“What about me?”
She sighed, and paused for a moment. After five seconds, I didn’t think she was going to say anything, but then she said, “I don’t know. I’m surprised you’re here.”
Pearl stopped moving. We heard voices chatting outside her pocket, and then, far behind, or above, or below, a huge metal door slammed shut again. Pearl reached into her deep pocket, and pulled Meredith out. Her hand came in a second time, lifted me up, and deposited me on one of the counters.

Far in the distance, another girl, in a green shirt, blue skirt and sneakers, gasping for breath and wildly waving her arms, ran headlong into the room. A very small, reddish-purplish spot colored her right cheek. “Pearl,” she said. “Wait.” It was Adela.

If Pearl was surprised to see Holly, she was dumbstruck to see Adela.
“Wait,” Adela said again.
“For what? How did you get down here?”
“A woman,” she said, stopping to catch her breath, holding her knee with one hand.
“What is it?”
“Him,” she said, pointing to me. “I have the money. I want him back.”
“Impossible.” Pearl nodded to a woman behind her. “He’s already bought. By one Chloe Winters of B----.” 
“For how much?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“I’ll pay five thousand more. That’s all I have.”
“No. This isn’t a bargain-table. I have a name to keep, and Ms. Winters is one of our biggest clients in the city.” She nodded to a girl behind her. “Get her out of here.” 
“Then I’ll go to B----.” 
“Where’s your mother?”
Adela was silent.
“You shouldn’t even be down here. Take her to her mother, upstairs.” A slim, secretarial type took Adela by the elbow, and tried to draw her back toward the stairwell.
“Wait,” said Adela. “Please. I have one more thing to say.” She shook off the girl, who stood by with arms akimbo, and a slightly piqued expression. 
“Hurry up,” said Pearl, who sounded preoccupied. She whispered to some of the other girls, and had her back turned to Adela.
“I’ll sell myself,” she said.
This got Pearl’s attention, though she only craned her head a few degrees toward Adela, and still didn’t condescend to look at her. “You’ll what?”
“I’ll sell myself. For twenty-five thousand.”
As she seemed to consider this proposal, Pearl’s turned her gaze back to the stairwell, as though Holly might come at any moment. “Your mother wouldn’t consent, clearly.”
“My mother is gone.”
“I don’t wish to intrude.” She lifted her chin to the girl standing by Adela, and told her not to put her name down on the sheet. “Your name will not be recorded. This was done without my explicit consent, without even my knowledge. But I’ll tell Ms. Winters. That is, if you’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Until he’s free.”
“She has Meredith for life. In his case, the specifics have still to be sorted out, but the minimum term for a slave, of his price, is one year.”
“Then one year.”

Meredith gripped my hand tightly, as one of the girls deposited us in a box (I didn’t know at the time that Adela was to be transported by the same vehicle). What happened during the next two hours was somewhat of a blur, even compared to the events just described. Holly had told me (but I had no way of verifying) that Adela wasn’t capable of shrinking or enlarging herself—and yet she had chosen to follow me and Meredith into this strange and frightening new world. She had chosen us even over her own mother. If I had ever had any doubts about her true feelings, I was absolutely certain then.

And, shortly afterwards, I was more certain than ever. One hour outside the city, the box burst open, and the starlight glimmered through the aluminum roof of the car. Once again, I found myself looking up into Adela’s eyes. As Meredith gasped, somewhere behind me, I thought I could see a faint, roguish smile cross her lips: a smile that seemed to extinguish not only my fear, but the whole confused and ill-matched bundle of all my feelings together. 

“Where to?” she asked, ten minutes later, as we—in this tiny subcompact it was only Meredith, Adela, and I—drove northwest along the highway. Meredith, once again her full height, sat in the passenger seat, and I, still shrunken, sat in her hand. Her normally rosy, healthy looking face was now lean and almost cadaverous: her cheeks were hollow, and her eyes were bright and deep-set behind her dark-red hair, still matted with Holly’s sweat. She looked out the window, and watched the landscape pass. I hadn’t known her for long, but something strange in her expression told me that Holly was on her mind. This made me nervous.

Adela guessed that we had about a ten hour start before anyone would know we were missing. And once they knew, they’d surely pursue us: Adela was Holly’s dependent, and Meredith and I were basically stolen property. So if anyone found us, we’d be sunk in pretty deep caca. And still, I thought (correctly, as it turned out), at that moment Holly might be asking around for Adela. She would stop at the upriver mansion that night, with her box from home. But who knew what could happen by morning?

Editor’s Note:

It was in 20—, one year after Holly shrank my father, two years before she shrank Martin, that the idea first occurred to me of keeping a tiny male slave. As a sophomore in high school, I used to daydream, doodle and, during classes and my free time at home, I sometimes took down little notes on this fantasy of mine. Eventually the odd and fragmentary ideas in my scattered notes began to group themselves together into a sort of narrative. In a sense, I wrote a story much like the one above, which I asked Martin to dictate to me for what Holly calls "posterity." Most of what I wanted to happen to me actually happened to me. 

One day during the summer I had left that story out on my desk, at home, and Holly had opened and read through it while looking for a blouse in my room. A few days later she approached me about the journal. To my surprise, she began to talk seriously about the thing, about my fantasies—as though they were ideas she would consider actually putting into practice. Coolly, she pointed out what she liked and what she disliked, and backed up her choices with arguments for and against. I agreed with her that it might be lucrative—but, until the September she brought Martin home, did not know or even suspect that the moneymaking came second for her, behind the sale, and perhaps the social status she'd gain after it all ended. 

The rest is history. The next week she had attracted her first clients. Richard was among them. (As a side note, I might add that I've heard from Richard’s wife, ten months after he was found in the theater and taken in by the police, that she and he are living happily together again--the necessary changes of height, marriage-role, etc., being made.) I was surprised to discover that there were men, countless men, who wanted for themselves what I wanted from them. Maybe, in the beginning, it was about my father, Mark. I wanted a world where that didn’t happen to him, but where men and women could act out their own fantasies, play their parts, and still live a good life together.  

Almost one year ago, I remember suggesting to Martin that he should consider writing a memoir. The idea didn’t seem to interest him, at the time, but I was very persistent, and after some time Holly herself (in an email) joined the chorus. I gently nagged him about it, day after day, and eventually he just sort of gave in and agreed to put this down for, as they say, future generations. And it wasn’t a moment too soon because, in the last month, Martin, at the age of only 25, has changed from what he was. He’s now decided that it’s just too hard for him to communicate to me through words. I do what I can, and I bring him out into the fresh air whenever he gets cabin fever (the intervals between those relapses are getting longer and longer, and soon, I’m afraid, he’ll refuse to leave at all). Martin will need to rest for the next two weeks, but the story can’t wait that long. Holly—who sent me and Martin a stack of other narratives dictated by her slaves, and other women’s slaves, as models to follow— has asked me to send her his account as soon as possible: so this will have to do for now. One has to learn how to be gentle with them, and  that takes years. Believe me: men can be immensely entertaining as pets, and a major pleasure to own, but every girl, every woman, has to learn how to take care of them as they deserve.

So, back to the story: what did he miss? He missed eight years of living together in relative peace. If I could put things as well as he could, I would write out our first five years together, sitting at the computer, while Martin himself squirms and wriggles around inside my fuzzy slippers. It is a delicious feeling (sometimes deliciously distracting), but just having him there may not, by itself, be enough to stimulate me to undertake, from  start to finish, some huge project like that. 

We met no one at the border crossing, and drove one hour north of the border to the nearest major city, whose lights were just beginning to blink back on in the morning sunlight. There Meredith and I rented a room, for a week, and passed the time well enough, except for the fact that she began to talk glumly about going back to the country. A week passed, and then we heard a rap at the door. I asked for the name. Ms. Jennifer Green, said the voice, for Ms. Chloe Winters. I opened the door, and she talked briefly to Meredith, who seemed eager to get out of our cramped quarters and follow this lady back south. Where is Ms. Winters? I asked. Outside, she answered, while opening a window and letting in the wintry mid-November air. Would you like her to come inside? I said no. She then asked me about Martin, and after a few seconds of silence, and a round of dodging, I admitted that he too was there (at that moment he was in one of my purple socks, hanging off a chair), but I refused to hand  him over. She mentioned the penalty, but after a personal exchange (there was the driver of the vehicle, the one slave of the remaining three that I decided to keep from home, and five thousand dollars unused) Ms. Green (incorruptible as she probably was, on her better days), left the room without him. I saw her on only several occasions, during the next 7 or 8 years, while she was with Chloe Winters. But that's all I really know. Holly is more interested in the personal narrative and memoir side of this than I am. So for anyone interested in this stuff, find her, because if you want to get Meredith's personal story, it's got to be stowed away somewhere with Holly's things.
 
As for Holly, I haven't seen her since the night it happened, and frankly I have no desire, wish, or need to see or talk with her again (this is for my own files, and not for Holly’s). If we do meet, it wouldn't be at my request; and, so far, she's given no sign that she wants to reconcile with me again. I’m sure that she’s doing fine enough, that her own people, and her husband (it hurts me still to say “Dad”) support her well enough, do what she needs, and I don’t know what she could possibly want from me or Martin. But through a letter I do know that, in that box we took from home, there were about ten people that the Departments of Health and Welfare didn’t donate to widows and orphans. And these she took into her house, freely. But all that Martin has written about her I can bear witness to, and back up. 

Martin. I haven’t fed him in two days (but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t eaten). Now I can feel him stirring and starting to wake up, under the blankets, as I write this editor’s note by the window, and reach out my legs for my shoes. Outdoors, the sky is blue and the grass is green, and I can hear two girls riding past on their bicycles this spring morning. They’re saying something in French, but I can just catch the last two words: "marvelous day." I look up at the cloudless sky, the way the sun’s coming up in the east, and my whole heart agrees with them.