“Mom? I’m home!”

Daisy didn’t hear a response. She slipped out of her flip-flops, padding along the hardwood floor in bare feet. Weird. Her car’s here. How about…

“Sam?” Nothing. She grinned. “Sammy?”

Still nothing. Well, almost nothing. Faintly, very faintly, she heard mechanical whirring, rhythmic thumping and short, controlled panting. Her mom was on the treadmill again, explaining the lack of response, but it didn’t sound like her brother was home. He’d definitely have replied. He hates when I call him Sammy.

Sighing, Daisy headed for the couch. Before reaching it, she stopped, sniffing. A faint, unpleasant aroma hung in the air. Her eyes followed her nose and found socks on the coffee table. Four of them, two pink socks—her own—and two grey, visibly dirty ankle socks. She wrinkled her nose at the sight of her mom’s workout socks.

“Gross, Mom. Why leave them here? I could have brought friends home! That would have been so embarrassing.”

Then, the socks moved. She thought she was seeing things, dismissing the movement as an illusion until it happened again. She picked up her socks, and used them to move her mom’s socks without actually having to touch them. Underneath, she found the last thing she’d expect to find.

Sam.

Her brother was tiny, perhaps around a mere inch in height, stuck to the table with two strips of tape—one across his legs, the other across his arms and chest. A third strip was placed over his lips and the table beneath, holding his head in place. After being uncovered, he set his desperate gaze on her and wriggled to the best of his abilities.

“Bro, what happened?”

It took a few seconds of silence before she laughed at her question and carefully peeled away the tape gagging him. Whatever he immediately started blabbering about, it was inaudible.

“Hold on, Sam. I can’t hear you.”

She leaned down, face turned away from the bundle of smelly socks, and placed her ear directly above his tiny face.

“Daisy, you gotta help me.” His words were little more than a squeak, barely audible. “Mom’s gone crazy! I got home and sh-she used the shrink-ray on me. You know, the one she used back when we were moving house. She taped me to the coffee table and started putting your socks on me, calling me a pervert and disgusting. Then she kicked off her trainers, stripped off her sweaty socks, and started using them on me. It was horrible!”

“Using them? Like, forcing you to sniff them?”

He nodded, avoiding meeting her eye.

“Why?” Daisy asked, unable to keep the smile from her lips.

“She…” He looked away and blushed.

“Go on. Tell me!”

“Okay. Okay. She thinks I was sniffing your socks.”

Daisy followed her brother’s nod over at her socks and a bemused expression crossed her face.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know!” He blushed deeper. “Sh-she found them, apparently. Found them… under my pillow. I swear I didn’t steal your socks, Daisy! That’s disgusting. You know I hate feet. They stink. Please, help me. Please, tell Mom th—”

Remembering last night, when she tugged off her worn socks and left them under Sam’s pillow, Daisy burst into laughter. They were supposed to stink him out whilst he was sleeping. Their mom wasn’t supposed to find them.

“D-Daisy?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, dear brother. How’s mom planning to punish you for stealing my sweaty socks?”

“I d-didn’t steal them!”

“Alright. Fine. Let’s say she’s wrong and you didn’t steal them.” She suppressed the urge to smirk. “How’s she planning on punishing you?”

His struggles against the tape resumed with new energy.

“She’s going to make me smell her feet! Mom’s on the treadmill now, running, and she didn’t put on socks. Daisy, Mom’s gone without socks in those old gym shoes of hers, the ones that are all tattered and clear rooms with their stink. Daisy, I’ll do anything if you let me out and protect me from her. Her feet are going to reek and I don’t know if I can take it!”

Daisy proceeded to blow a raspberry over Sam’s tiny body, spraying him with spittle.

“I’ll be honest with you, Sammy. I put those socks under your pillow. It was a prank, to make you go to sleep wondering why you could smell my dirty socks. But, it looks like the prank turned out better than I could have hoped.”

“What? How could you?”

“Because it’s funny!” She laughed in his tiny face.

“Okay, okay. Great prank. Very funny. But it’s gone too far. You know I hate feet. This is going to be torture!”

Daisy pursed her lips and studied her desperate brother. He’s right, this is probably too mean, even for me. But he does also deserve for being such a brat. Always playing pranks on me, now crying after I finally get my own back. It’s my job as a big sister to show him that if he’s gonna give it, he’s gotta know how to take it.

“I’ll let you out, Sammy.” The misled relief in his expression made her want to howl with laughter. “On one condition.”

“Yes! Anything!”

Chuckling, Daisy lifted a leg and planted her bare foot beside him on the table, resting on its outstep. Dirty and slightly sweaty, it loomed over him, lightly wrinkling with a semi-scrunch. Her soft toes curled in his face, the pads nearly brushing against his skin. She had a back off a bit, after catching a whiff of her own foot. It was smellier than anticipated. He cringed at their proximity, turning away.

“Kiss my pretty toes. Sorry if they’re dirty. Wearing flip-flops tends to do that.”

“I-is there… anything else?” he asked, quieter than before now that she’d backed off.

“Nope. This is the only way you’re getting out of this mess. Kissy kissy!”

He glanced over to the door, where the sounds of their mother’s thumping footsteps on the treadmill were coming from. His expression was defeated upon turning back, nodding reluctantly.

“Okay. I’ll—”

“No need to talk. Just kiss!”

With a pre-emptive disgust painted across his features, Sam started kissing her giant toes. She giggled at the sensation. It was tickly, but nice. Seeing her annoying younger brother perform such a humiliating act at her feet was as empowering for her as it must be degrading for him.

They were both so caught up in the display—each for different reasons—that neither of them noticed that the faint whirring from the gym room had ceased. The panting was replaced by deep breaths. Those fast, thumping steps were now slow and getting louder on her approach.

Their mom was finished with her workout.

Daisy froze, grinned, then pulled her foot away. Before Sam could so much as squeak the tiny strip of tape was back over his mouth, pinning his miniscule head to the coffee table. Their mom entered the room a second later, appearing exhausted. Her forehead was moist with perspiration.

“Daisy! I didn’t hear you get back,” she said, not even glancing at Sam.

“I haven’t been back long. Looks like you had one hell of a workout.”

“Oh, yes. I was… motivated.”

Daisy couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yeah, I noticed. Hope you don’t mind, but I took his gag off to get an explanation.” She grinned devilishly. “What a little foot freak!”

Sam’s eyes went wide at the betrayal. The flash of anger was replaced by a hopeless despair as their mom stopped beside the coffee table, casting it in her shadow. A warm, post-workout aroma flowed from her sweaty, pink-hued skin and damp clothes, causing Daisy to wrinkle her nose in response.

“It’s hard to imagine him liking feet for much longer after what I have planned. Pinch your nostrils shut, sweetie. This is going to be intense.”

Daisy didn’t hesitate to obey. She had no desire to sample the horrendous stench that had likely built up in those gym shoes. Her mom’s trainers were tattered and almost completely worn-out. The fit, middle-aged woman had had those things for around two years. Two years of abuse, of soaking up an absurd amount of sweat, odour and filth.

Daisy’s mom sat on the couch, right in front of where Sam was trapped. He was in tears now, fighting the three measly strips of tape like a wild animal in a cage. She leant forward, reaching down to her shoes on the floor, and untied both sets of frayed laces. Off slipped a shoe, which she brought up to the coffee table and waved around over Sam.

“Oh, you’re in for a treat you pervert. What would your friends think if they knew you were stealing your sister’s smelly socks to get off with? They’d think you were disgusting. Today, we’re going to fix that. We’re going to fix you. And this,” the trainer jiggled, “will play a part. Brace yourself, Samuel, this will be stinky.”

Their mom slammed the trainer down onto Sam, the opening swallowing him up. The sides crumpled under pressure, causing the insole to get closer and closer to where he surely was. Daisy grinned imagining how horrible it had to smell in there—it was bad enough out here, with her nostrils pinched shut and her mom’s single bare foot at a reasonable distance away.

A minute later the running shoe was removed, revealing that Daisy’s shrunken brother had ceased his pointless struggles and was sobbing instead, limbs still.

“Think that was bad?” their mom asked. Down on the floor her bare foot helped its twin free from the other trainer. As the first was dropped to the floor, both now-bare feet raised and landed on the coffee table, heels resting mere inches away from Sam on either side. “Try my feet!”

Daisy stood and walked around the coffee table for a better look. Sam didn’t even notice her, his wide eyes were darting from foot to foot, forced to take tortured breaths.

The bottoms of their mom’s feet looked particularly nasty after that sockless workout. Her long, soles were a deep shade of red, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Thicker drops beaded in places—in the depths of wrinkles, in between fat-headed toes, eventually giving in to gravity and rolling down the rough, mature skin, dodging around lumps of grime and chewed-up pieces of old insole glued in place. The toes curled then stretched, spreading slightly, displaying fouler gunk hidden in their pits.

In a moment of curiosity that she immediately regretted, Daisy unplugged her nose and took a cautious sniff. The rush of stink caused her to physically stumble backward in response. That’s awful! she thought, half grossed out and half amused—now knowing what her brother had no choice but to endure. It was a hot, humid and cheesy odour, and she had no doubt that she’d be able to smell it even in the neighbouring kitchen or hallway.

“Enjoying yourself, Samuel? Well, better get used to it, because we’re staying like this for a few hours. That’s right! Hours of nothing but smelling my sweaty feet.”

Hours? Wow, Mom, harsh! Poor Sammy. Stuck tiny between Mom’s stinky feet for hours. Unless…

“Mom,” Daisy said, pinched nostrils causing her to sound nasally.

“What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“This—” Daisy suppressed a giggle, “—isn’t the first time he’s stolen my dirty socks.”

She watched their mom shoot Sam a withering look, who was now screaming once more, likely wishing to argue his innocence.

“You’d better tell me what happened.”

“Gladly!”

Daisy went on to make up a bunch of lies, each making her brother’s reactions more and more violent. Telling their mom how she’d been pretending to sleep whilst he fished freshly-worn socks from her hamper, hidden as he pick-pocketed sweaty socks from her trainers, acted as if she didn’t notice pairs peeled off and dumped on the floor missing mere minutes later.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” her mom demanded.

“Because I didn’t want to get Sammy in trouble! It’s just a fetish, Mom.” With a half-smirk, she met Sam’s pleading gaze. “Sure, liking smelly, dirty feet is gross, but it’s what he’s into.”

“No. I won’t accept this. He’s violated your privacy, Daisy. You have to understand that. Taken advantage of his own sister. We have to snuff this out immediately, before it grows into a greater problem. What if he can’t control himself and breaks into a girls’ locker room to steal footwear? That’s a crime! Thanks for informing me of this, sweetie. Hours won’t cut it anymore. He’s going to be suffering at my feet for days.”

We can do better than that!

“Remember when you caught me with cigarettes?”

“How could I forget. You haven’t touched them since,” Daisy’s mom’s eyes narrowed, “right?”

Daisy nodded. “Exactly my point. You—we—need to repeat that, only with stinky feet instead. I had to smoke an entire pack, even though I was crying and doing nothing but apologising, I had to keep going. By the end I was a wreck; snotty, wheezing, bloodshot eyes… but I haven’t touched a cigarette since then.”

She strolled back around the coffee table and reseated on the couch. Her mom’s feet moved along as she lifted her own, kicking them up onto it. Now four feet towered above her bound bug of a brother.

“We need to expose him to our feet for much longer than he can take. We have to ignore when he begs and cries—just like you did with me—and push his limits far beyond what he wants. In a few… let’s say, months, he’ll be the normal, foot-detested son you’ve always dreamed of.”

Daisy watched her mom’s deep-in-thought expression anxiously. Damn! Why did I say months? She’ll never go for it. Weeks might have worked. Oh well. I get to watch Sammy suffer at mom’s feet for tonight, at least. I—

Slowly, their mom nodded. A smile crept onto her lips.

“Yes… yes! Excellent idea, sweetie. Sorry, Samuel, but this is for your own good. For the next few months, you’ll be remaining at that size, experiencing nothing other than our feet. Clean, dirty, sweaty. No matter what condition they’re in, you’ll be smelling, kissing and licking them. You’ll either in our shoes or tied to our soles. Every morsel of food will be eaten from between our cheesy toes, mixed together with whatever we find in those grubby little crevices. It sounds like a disgusting way of torturing you—it pretty much is, in all honesty—but by the end of it, you’ll thank us for ridding you of these perversions.”

Daisy and her mom flexed their feet over her brother then. She was eager to torment him underfoot, and she had a feeling that her mom felt similarly.

Best. Prank. Ever. Who knew a pair of socks could be so effective?