Four loud thumps rattled the table like four trees crashing into the earth – or four nails into a coffin. Slack-jawed, Chuxi stared up at the four bare soles rising above him like monolithic pillars.

“I wouldn’t have picked ‘Dare’ if I knew Julie was gonna say this!” teased Haley. Her apologetic smile seemed so far away, offering cold comfort for what was to come. On the other hand, Julie’s downright malicious grin sent a mixture of anger and fear into the pit of his stomach. For some reason, being humiliated by Julie’s feet didn’t bother him very much, but this… this just felt completely, urgently wrong.

“What are you talking about? This’ll be a piece of cake,” he joked.

“Well, what are you waiting for then, Sushi?” asked Julie in leading tones. “Kiss our feet – starting with Haley’s.”

Trying to hide how profoundly this deflated him, Chuxi puffed his chest out and resolutely approached Haley’s right foot. He resolved long before they had arrived to show absolutely no emotion or weakness during the ordeal to come. If nothing else, he would be light-hearted and joking about the whole thing for Haley’s sake – he would die before making her feel guilty.

The first thing Haley had done upon arriving was remove her boots and socks, so they had had a few minutes to air out. Nonetheless, Julie had been right about how poorly those boots circulated air, because the odor emanating from Haley’s feet was rancid. It smelled like an awful combination of old leather, sweaty laundry, and the mustiness of feet in general, and despite his efforts to breathe through his mouth, he could never truly shake off the stench.

As he drew closer, he could see a thin sheen of sweat on the surface of her skin, but like the smell he tried to ignore it. In another step, he could go no further without walking into Haley’s sole. From this close, he couldn’t see her face.

“Sushi, wait!” exclaimed Haley, suddenly. She withdrew her feet from the coffee table and gave him a worried look. “This is kind of weird, Julie – I don’t feel comfortable with this at all.” Chuxi could tell that she’d been drinking: her words came out a little slurred and her cheeks were noticeably red.

“Oh don’t be ridiculous,” chided Julie. “It’s just a little fun, right Sushi?” Julie gave him a pointed look that couldn’t be misinterpreted.

“Yeah,” said Chuxi brightly, even as he groaned inwardly, “wouldn’t be a dare if it was easy, would it?”

Haley hesitated, clearly feeling reluctant about the whole thing, even in her inebriation. For that, Chuxi’s heart soared, but he knew that no amount of trepidation on Haley’s part could keep Julie from getting her way. “Okay… if you say so,” she murmured. She brought back both of her feet from below the table and gently placed them in front of him.

Like a diver plunging off the board, Chuxi thrust his face forward into his friend’s smelly sole and pressed his lips against her moist skin. Without warning, Julie’s derisive laughter boomed from just to his right: at some point she had shifted positions to get a better view of his humiliation. Chuxi couldn’t recall ever being this close to Julie’s face, but the fact that she so intimately witnessed this act somehow made it that much worse. He hoped she couldn’t see his skin burning from embarrassment.

“C’mon, Sushi, what kind of kiss is that? Put a little tongue into it!”

Chuxi complied immediately, and with both arms he attempted to pull Haley’s foot into an awkward embrace before dragging his tongue across her dirty skin in a sad imitation of an impassioned kiss. Her sweaty foot tasted predictably foul, but Chuxi tried his best to imagine himself kissing Haley’s lips instead.

“He’s… he’s doing it?” asked Haley, plainly mortified.

“Yeah!” crowed Julie. “He’s making out with your stinky foot!”

Chuxi felt a sudden pressure on his back. Julie’s hand was pressing him into Haley’s foot, and it came as no surprise when she began rubbing his helpless body up and down her sole. “Julie! What are you doing?!” Despite the alarm in Haley’s voice, Julie paid her no head. She continued to press Chuxi into the dirty sole, clearly relishing the discomfort she inflicted on him. “Julie, stop!”

Without really seeing it, Chuxi gathered that Haley had grabbed Julie’s wrist and was grappling with her in an attempt to get him out of his predicament. Suddenly, the wall of flesh in front of him vanished, and Chuxi looked up to see Haley glaring at Julie, her eyes like icicles. “Drop him,” she commanded.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The heat from Julie’s hand rose by the second, and perspiration began to form around him. Thankfully, she didn’t squeeze. Then, she released him, and he dropped down to the safety of Haley’s waiting palm.

He hadn’t even landed before he heard Julie’s retreating footsteps. They pounded into the ground in a quick, furious staccato, not unlike an angry child running to her room. Still, the tension he felt in the air was decidedly unlike a prepubescent temper tantrum: it felt like the air was tainted with venom.

A few seconds after the door slammed, Haley finally exhaled. “I’ve never seen her like this,” she said apologetically. “I don’t know what it is, but it seems like she’s a different person lately. I’m really sorry about all of this, but please don’t think too badly of her. Julie can get a little crazy sometimes, but she’s honestly a good person deep down.”

Chuxi gave her a wan smile; he was more tired than anything. “It’s not a big deal, Haley,” he deflected. He knew he was losing a big opportunity to expose Julie’s borderline psychopathic behavior, but the fact that Haley was defending her friend even now made him hesitant. Plus he was really exhausted – he didn’t know if he could slog through such an inevitably intense conversation. “She was just a little drunk – why don’t we wash up and just call it a night?”

“Deal.”

…

Unsurprisingly, Chuxi couldn’t sleep at all that night. When he wasn’t rolling around in his makeshift bed, he suffered from horrible nightmares – predictably, many pairs of gigantic feet haunted him in his dreams.

One particularly vivid dream placed him inside of Haley’s shoe. She had no idea of his presence, and instead she walked around with him trapped beneath her pungent foot while he begged for mercy. This went on for some time before he heard a tremendous voice coming from every direction at once: it was Julie.

“Come on into my shoe, Haley,” she boomed, impossibly loud. In the way of dreams, Chuxi somehow knew that Julie was as huge to Haley as Haley to him, and his friend’s protests confirmed it.

“How did you get like that Julie?” she asked, her fear evident.

“Just crawl under my foot, you little bitch,” Julie snapped, and when the air he breathed became even worse than before, he knew that Haley now experienced his fate as well.

He awoke in a cold sweat.

Breathing heavily, it took him a few moments to gather himself. A quick glance to the side revealed Haley’s massive form, asleep and still. He stared at her for an inordinate amount of time, just drinking in her beautiful face enhanced by moonlight. Her deep, regular breathing soothed his unraveling nerves, but he didn’t want to fall asleep again.

He got up and made the short hop over to Haley’s nightstand, where his iPad lay hooked up to the wall. Not really thinking, he logged onto Facebook and began shamelessly stalking the girl sleeping right next to him. He clung to this shade of normalcy like a shipwrecked sailor to a piece of floating debris. Of course Haley looked beautiful in all of her pictures, but he was surprised by how cheerful and normal Julie looked as well – they really seemed happy together. He would never have guessed what she would do in order to satiate her bizarre fetishes.

Suddenly, he noticed the sound of soft sobbing. It had been going on for some time, he realized, but up until this point he had only registered it subconsciously: Julie was crying. And if he took into account the many walls and feet of distance between them, it became clear that this was the wracking, bitter crying of someone in real distress.

For a while, he just listened, his feelings understandably ambivalent. After everything she’d done to him, why should he care if Julie was upset? Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to revel in her pain, or whatever it may be. The sobbing continued, like the forlorn cries of a ghost.

Usually he liked to mull things over ad nauseam, carefully weigh and consider each option. This time, though, he surprised himself with a decidedly uncharacteristic impulse decision. It happened so fast, he honestly didn’t realize what he was doing until it was already done. He gazed in a mixture of awe and trepidation at the iPad’s screen, not quite believing what he’d done.

Conversation started today.

Chuxi Zhao: Hi.                                                3:09AM

Unmistakably, he heard the electronic chirp of an incoming message coming from the other room. The sobbing began to abate slightly, before coming to an abrupt stop. A whole minute passed. And then:

Julie Hall: hi                                                     3:11AM