Forcing himself to stay frosty, Alex proceeded forward across the hardwood.  Even though Michelle had only tossed the shoe using her toes, it had ended up under the center of the table, meaning Alex had a slight walk to endure before returning to his relative safe haven behind the table leg.  Slowly, Alex approached his mother’s statuesque form, still sitting comfortably in the kitchen chair.  By now, Michelle had kicked both pumps off, freeing her feet to be massaged by the gentle, clean air of the kitchen.  Stopping just short of her right foot’s big toe, Alex gulped.  Even without the pumps on, Michelle dwarfed her unfortunate teenage son to the point that his head didn’t even reach the top of her big toe.  Instead, what he had to stare at was a rounded, peachy wall of peeling skin, rippling toeprint, and a light greasing of perspiration coating the flesh.  It was intimidating, to be sure, and as Michelle absentmindedly raised her toe, stretching it out, before setting it softly back on the ground in front of her son, Alex began to think this undertaking was more and more impossible.  How was the boy supposed to get his mother’s attention when, in all technicality, he could be killed if she decided to inch her bulbous toes forward just a few inches, accidentally grasping him into the sweaty jungle of flesh between her toes, where he would no doubt be instantly ground into lifeless toejam?

                The prospect of such a situation made Alex shiver horribly, and it wasn’t just from the fact that he was naked and the air was steadily feeling colder.  He wracked his brain as hard as he could, even though it was fighting to go into crisis mode at the unbelievable absurdity of the situation.  The teen had a feeling his mind was going to lose it very soon over the sheer insanity of this reality, and therefore his time to get his mother’s attention was limited.  The longer he stayed calm and collected, to a certain degree, his chances of success were far better.

                For a moment, Alex considered the possibility of climbing onto his mother’s foot and stomping with all his might in hopes of getting her attention, but the margin for error in this ploy quickly revealed itself as Alex thought through the common sense approach to such a situation.  No doubt, with the light, tiny touch of his barely detectable bare feet stomping with all his might, which would only register as a tickling tap on the vast plain of flesh that made up Michelle’s foot, his mother would assume an insect had landed on her.  At this point, she would either kick her leg outward to scare it off, or worse, smash it flat by quickly bringing her other foot down on top of it.  These options, which would send Alex either flying helplessly through the air to break his bones, or ending up mashed into a bloody goo in the crevices of his mother’s sole, respectively, didn’t appeal much to the boy.  Worse, the odds of their happening was pretty high.

                Alex stared ahead, steeling himself.  In this moment, it almost seemed a miraculous godsend that the boy was such a skilled athlete and, more importantly, that he had dabbled a bit in recreational rock-climbing.  He wasn’t fantastic at it by any stretch, but he could hold his own, and that was what mattered here.  Surgically, Alex mentally deduced his battle plan.  He would climb onto his mother’s foot via her pinky toe, which was short enough for him to roughly clamber onto.  From there, he would ever so carefully walk up the slight incline of her wide foot and up to her ankle.  Michelle, being fashionable and always keeping up with the trends, was currently wearing a faux diamond anklet, which, if Alex could reach high enough, would serve as his transition step up to the hem of the billowing skirt.  From there, it would be a hell of a climb up his mother’s body, toward the tabletop and hopefully a place where he could alert his parent without fear of her instinctively smashing him with her deadly fist, thinking he was a bug.

                It wasn’t a pretty plan, but Alex knew there was little other option, and if he didn’t take the opportunity now to get help, his chances of survival only became slimmer.  Clasping his hands together, Alex sauntered forward, attempting to muster some courage in himself as he stopped directly in front of his mother’s pinky toe, which, although it was short enough for him to climb onto, was larger than him even.  It was a disheartening fact for the boy to have to consider: even his mother’s tiniest toe was bigger, stronger, and more powerful than his entire body.  Gently, so as not to alert her to his presence, Alex climbed onto Michelle’s pinky toe.  He could feel the warmth radiating from it, and the slight give of the firm flesh as he crept forward onto her foot.  It was the single most humbling experience of Alex’s life to be in this position, but this was no time to feel lowly.  The boy was on a mission, and although he didn’t like admitting it outright, his life depended on the success of that mission.  His life literally depended on his ability to walk across the terrifyingly long platform of flesh comprising his mother’s calmly resting foot.

                Alex held his breath as he moved forward at a snail’s pace on all fours up the incline of Michelle’s soft ped, feeling his ankles brush past the barely noticeable changes in elevation where veins ran under her sinewy skin.  The stale, fusty odor of his mother’s sweat combined with the salt stained into the leathery interior of the velvet pumps hung in the air like pollution, clogging Alex’s windpipe to the point that with every few breaths, he felt the need to cough as if trying to rid his throat of some of the vile filth.

                The trek up Michelle’s right foot was a slow one, as Alex was determined to not take too hard of a step and risk being mistaken for a pesky insect fit for crushing or swatting.  Despite his fear and desperation, Alex’s mother’s skin was warm and cushy to the touch, and this was comforting to the tiny boy in an odd way.  Even though she was unaware of it, and even though she might accidentally kill her son without even realizing it, Michelle was helping Alex through his perilous journey by the mere fact that she would be present through the entire thing, almost as a spiritual guide, as silly as it felt for the boy to admit to himself.

                “I’m coming, Mom,” whispered Alex down into the wide, pacifying ground made up of her malleable flesh.  As the boy continued slowly but steadily crawling along his mother’s ped, his eyes became transfixed on the crisscrossing patterns that he would never have been able to notice if he wasn’t this size.  He could make out diamond-shaped cells of skin, with the most miniscule of hairs popping up every few feet or so that would normally go unnoticed by even the most perceptive of eyes.  Alex knew this for a fact, as his mother kept herself on a strict hygiene regime, bathing and brushing twice a day, and shaving her legs once every two days just to make sure she kept her skin as smooth as possible.  Even though the teen boy wasn’t nearly as concerned as his mother with his own personal upkeep, he had always secretly admired the pride Michelle took in keeping herself clean.

                Breathing more deeply than he had realized due to the fear, Alex arrived at his mother’s ankle.  Gingerly, he stood up and looked directly upward at the anklet.  It was going to be a tough shot; the piece of jewelry wound around Michelle’s smooth ankle was high enough that Alex had serious doubts that anything less than a well-placed high jump would reach it.  The difficulty was compounded by the fact that Alex had to ensure he didn’t apply any high-impact pressure to any part of his mother’s flesh, lest he have his cover blown and risk being instinctively mulched by a quickly descending wrinkled sole of death from Michelle’s left foot.

                Unfortunately for Alex, the decision about how to proceed was made null and void as gravity began shifting.  The boy felt a chill run down his back as the incline of his mother’s foot became steeper and steeper.  With a shock to his heart, he realized she was arching her foot against the hardwood, splaying her toes out flat on the floor.

                With a silent gasp, Alex tumbled down the fleshy slope of his mother’s foot, plopping directly between two of her moist, bulbous toes.