Penny walked into the living room and winced at the strong cheesy smell in the air. The smell of her mom’s feet. They were propped up on the coffee table whilst she napped on the couch, head lulled back, snoring loudly. Those mature wrinkly soles were an intense shade of pink, littered with grime and tiny scraps of chewed-up insole.

“Good job I brought this,” Penny said, pinching her nostrils shut with a peg. It was uncomfortable, but preferable to breathing in that awful foot odour.

She approached with a pencil in one hand and a sewing kit in the other. On the end of the pencil her shrunken brother struggled, mummified to the wood-encased graphite with thin tape. The only parts of him left exposed were his tiny dangling feet and the upper-half of his face. Keeping the smile off her lips was difficult knowing that he had to breathe through his nose, enduring the pungent aroma of their mom’s feet with every necessary inhale.

The sewing kit was left on the floor beside their mom’s trainers for later use. Those tattered gardening shoes had seen plenty of abuse over the years, leaving them discoloured and dirty, a couple holes here and there, seams threatening to split at a moment’s notice. Previously they’d served as running shoes, becoming casual shoes once a suitable replacement had been bought, then relegated to garden-use only after one too many smell complaints from her friends. And, since they already reeked, the middle-aged woman had an excuse to wear them without socks, much to her kids’ dismay.

With a devious chuckle, Penny crouched down and positioned the pencil above the opening of a trainer, placing her brother directly in the path of the humid stench flowing out.

“Does that smell good, Pete?”

She pretended not to see him frantically shaking his little head. Instead she angled the pencil and entered the shoe, pushing Pete’s face against the insole itself, on the depression where their mom’s rough heel would sit. A greasy, pitch black footprint was seared into the tough, spongy material, and Penny knew the experience had to be hell for her brother.

“Geez, bro, I’d hate to be you right now.” She continued rubbing him against the sweat-stained surface. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice about tattling on me to Mom. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut and we’d both have been happy. Now I’m grounded for trying a cigarette. How unfair. How are you older than me and still don’t know not to be a snitch? I think it’s time to learn.”

Penny pulled the pencil out and faced her mom’s feet. Pete’s worming around stopped for a second after escaping the shoe, but started again the moment he saw what awaited him.

All those pitiful gagged protests he made were pointless. Regardless of how sorry he was now, he still had to be punished.

“Don’t worry, Mom’s a heavy sleeper. Especially after spending the morning in the garden. Last week I tried waking her up during her break and nothing worked. So I’m going to have plenty of time to torture you. Now, I gotta decide where to start. Let’s go from the bottom up.”

Penny pressed her brother against an unwrinkled, coarse heel—though it had been temporarily softened after soaking up sweat—and held him there for a minute, allowing him to scream and struggle against the lukewarm skin. She giggled when she started brushing him back and forth as if brushing teeth, changing angles to fully explore the heel.

“Snitches don’t get stitches, big brother. Or is little brother more accurate now? Snitches get feet. The giant stinky feet of their moms.”

The insignificant sounds of suffering that made it through the layer of tape covering Pete’s mouth did nothing to stop her moving him up to their mom’s arch.

Here the skin was severely wrinkled, paler and softer toward the insteps, where the sole was too high to normally touch the ground whilst standing. Though, it still looked moist after hours of hard work.

First Penny ran her bound brother up and down the gradual curve of the glistening arch, skimming along the tops of the wrinkles. Then she decided to force him into the creases of thick skin, prying apart the fleshy folds to get to the trapped sweat and filth inside. After repeating this process for each of the dozens of wrinkles lining the arch, his face and the tape wrapped around his diminished body was dirty.

“Now the ball. Oh man, I can’t wait to rub you against Mom’s nasty callous. She really should shave that thing down. The matching one on her other foot, too. Okay, let’s start far away and slowwwwwwwww-ly get closer and closer.”

The yellowed patch of tough skin was in the middle of the heat-swollen ball of their mom’s foot. Penny pushed Pete hard into the malleable skin and he sunk as deep as it would allow. Then she dragged him in circles around the callous, parting any shallow wrinkle he passed through. With each circle he got nearer until he face was skirting the edge of sickly yellowed skin.

Then, Penny lifted her brother away from the foot, letting him stare at the callous before she slammed him into it and massaged it using his shrunken body.

“So gross,” she murmured, torn between gagging and grinning.

The poor little guy looked broken by the time he was raised up to the looming toes, no longer fighting uselessly against the—at his size and strength—unbreakable tape.

Their mom’s toes were relaxed, lazily parted to give partially obstructed views of the pits between. Penny thought she heard Pete sobbing quietly as she guided the pencil between two toes. She brought him down, mashing him into the rank crevice and holding him in place.

“It’s like you’re a piece of Mom’s toe-jam!” Penny said delightedly. “I can’t even begin to imagine how nasty that stuff smells. I’m shuddering just thinking about it. But you don’t have a choice other than to sniff Mom’s toe-jam. You’re completely at my mercy and I can make you do whatever I want.”

Penny sawed the pencil back and forth between the toes. She paused only when her mom snorted in her sleep, though the slumbering gardener hadn’t roused, thankfully. Nor did she wake up when her toes twitched as the super sensitive skin was stimulated. Penny laughed as Pete touched a particularly ticklish nerve and the toes reflexively grabbed him, only letting go after a few firm tugs.

The sawing motion was repeated between each of the toes. By the time it was over Pete was caked in dried sweat and toe-jam, eyes found to be filled with despair when she met them.

“Have you learned your lesson?” she asked.

It took his foot-addled mind a couple seconds to register the question and nod.

“Okay. Prove it.”

Penny picked at the smoothed-down end of the tape with her fingernail and pulled it once there was enough to grab, peeling it around to uncover his mouth and nothing more.

“I don’t want to hear any pathetic squeals begging me to stop, little brother. The only reason I freed your mouth is to lick anything that comes within reach. And if you don’t lick…” She laughed. “Well, you don’t want to find out.”

Bringing him over to the big toe of the foot he’d just gotten very familiar with, she made him lick the pudgy pad. Then, inside of going straight down, she took the pencil up to the toenail and made him lick underneath it. Next, all down the stem, drawing more ticklish reactions from their mom. Finally he was returned to the toe-pit. After two licks that twisted his expression with disgust, he recoiled, coughing, and turned his head away.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Pete.”

Penny pulled the pencil free and stepped back. She sat on the floor crossed-legged, next to both the sewing kit and the stinky vacant trainers. She set the pencil down, ignoring the annoying, inaudible shouts coming from her brother.

Picking up a shoe, she grimaced as her fingers reached inside and dislodged the insole. It wasn’t the insole that had come with the shoes. This—and its twin—were custom made to be sturdy and comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that her mom hadn’t thrown them out with the previous pair of trainers that had literally rotted away from overuse. Whilst the unholy-scented, falling apart running shoes had been tossed out, the surviving insoles had been inheritated.

With the insole removed, the dark footprint was displayed in its entirety. The areas that weren’t turned completely black by sweat and pressure were discoloured in shades of yellow and grey, marred by clumps of foot-gunk and dead skin that had been stomped flat or pushed out from under the heavy sole and toes, becoming akin to rocks on a landscape.

“I’m going to be washing my hands for hours after this,” Penny said, cringing at the knowledge she’d have to touch the foul insole some more.

She opened up the sewing kit and withdrew a needle and thread.

“Don’t move. If you try and resist me I’ll just shrink you again, so that you’ll be just a speck. Then I’ll wipe you between mom’s toes instead. I think the sweat, toe-jam and natural skin-oils would be plenty to hold you in place. She wouldn’t have a clue you were there, living between her cheesy toes, spending every second breathing in the stink.”

That threat seemed to work. Pete was still whilst being unwrapped, aside from wincing in pain as the sticky tape was peeled off. Residual stickiness helped keep him in place as she moved him to the insole, laid in the space between the sole-print and the five toe-prints. His tiny eyes were filled with pleas as she got to work with the needle and thread, sewing him to the insole. This time he wasn’t mummified, only tied in key places to ensure immobility yet able to feel his naked body being molested by sweating toes and covered in sweat. The thread would have made a poor gag so she used more of the thin tape, only a small strip.

“Perfect,” Penny said, smiling down at her helpless brother. “When Mom eventually wakes up from her snooze, she’s going to put her trainers back on and go finish the garden. I’m going to tell her you’ve gone out to stay at friend’s house. It’s so funny that you’ll be in her shoes whilst she’s hard at work! You know how much she sweats, how bad her feet smell in those trainers without socks. Hell, I bet it’s gonna be awful even before she puts her foot in. This is what you deserve for snitching on me, bro, so I’ll enjoy every second you’re in there under your unknowing torturer: Mom!”

Carefully, she inserted the insole back into the trainer and ran her fingers around the edges, pressing it back into place. She screwed up her face and shivered in pure disgust from simply touching the vile thing.

The final step was to hide nearby and wait for her mom to wake up. First, however, she really wanted to scrub her hands clean. On the way out of the room, another evil idea came to mind, a finishing touch to Pete’s torment.

* * *

Pete cried inside his mom’s stinky trainer. His muscles were sore from trying to free himself. There was nothing he could do but wait, breathing in the residual warmth and humidity that remained in the shoes from the latest wearing, wishing his nose didn’t work.

The odour was cheesy like her sweaty bare feet, yet that cheesiness was second to the stale, vinegary stench of the ancient insole beneath. Over a decade of sweat was baked into the material.

Every noise from outside the trainer brought fresh fear to his mind, thinking it was his mom waking. It was like watching a horror movie and knowing a jump-scare was coming.

He narrowed his eyes upon hearing Penny once more, panting and grunting.

The hope that she’d changed her mind proved unfounded, unfortunately.

He realised she’d been carrying something heavy as she set it down with a dull slam and sighed loudly.

“Should have tricked him into brining this down before I shrunk him,” she muttered.

Terrified curiosity guessed blindly at what the heavy object might be. That question was answered after listening to his sister fiddle around then turn it on. The object came to life with a metallic rattling that quietened a few seconds later, yet didn’t fade completely. A humming sound confirmed the suspicions that he’d prayed to be wrong.

Those sounds were from the old heater his mom would bring out only during the coldest of winter nights, powerful enough to heat multiple rooms at once.

Within minutes he was sweating. And that was in a shoe, further away from the heater than his mom’s sleeping feet. Closing his eyes he could picture them, sweat beading on the rough skin and running down the wrinkles to form puddles around her heels on the coffee table. Slowly her feet would be roasted red, turned into the ultimate tools of smelly torture.

For the better part of half an hour Pete squirmed uncomfortably, suffering from stench and heat. He stilled upon hearing a rousing snort and the lazy movements of a drowsy person sitting up.

“What is this doing here?” his mom asked. “Pete! Penny! Which of you decided to prank me by getting this heater out? My t-shirt is drenched in sweat. And my feet…”

Two wet, fleshy slaps were heard as she stood. They continued in his direction, getting louder. The trainers trembled at her approach.

“Oh well. They were going to get sweaty anyway.”

The leather of her other trainer protested with subtle sounds as she wrangled her foot inside. Pete gulped. It was his turn next.

Pete’s entire world shook as his mom picked up her trainer. Her toes entered almost shyly, their pads now an angry shade of red with droplets of sweat literally dripping from them as if they were salivating in sight of their prey. The odour inside the shoe intensified and became unbearable. Cheesy and vinegary, hot and humid, every breath was a torture surpassing the last. The toes came closer in bursts as his mom forced the shoe on until they passed overhead and settled beyond where he lay. On one side her toes, on the other a wall of sole-flesh, bulging under her weight. If he were to wiggle, he’d be able to brush against either of the two.

His mom stood and headed back to the garden, leaving him with no choice other than to endure. The spectral giggling of his younger sister reached his ears, the same giggle she was likely making in whatever hiding place she’d chosen to watch.