The water that I used to wash off was boiling hot. Mostly because I couldn’t figure out the correct combination of the cold and hot valves on Jasper’s kitchen sink to make the wash comfortable. I was in and then out in less ten minutes but I had to wake in the sink because the walls were over three times my height at the suit ran through its self-cleaning process.  I was standing on the edge of the sink when I felt a wall of flesh close around and I tensed. Jasper set me down on the counter top and shut the water off. There was a micro-meal waiting for me.

“Like I said, you don’t have to be afraid when you’re out of the suit. I am not going to hurt you because it take longer and the wounds are more likely permanent.” She said to me as she set the suit onto the counter next to me. “Eat up, before I change my mind.”

I started to ask about what she meant but then I focused on the food.  If anything set me on edge it was being exposed to the elements while Jasper was around. The meal was bland, one of those that you can tell was obviously packaged and then shrunk and then frozen to keep the flavor. It tasted like cardboard but anything that was shrunk down to this size for my consumption usually did. It was one of the reasons why I usually stole from the fridge. 

The suit dinged and I walked over to it. It had vaporized the water inside to thoroughly sterilize the inside of the suit because the last thing a consort needed was a blood-borne illness. I walked up to it and it opened expectantly and I crawled inside. Jasper walked over and threw away the micro-meal container and then picked me up before setting me on the table. “Stay here,” She said. She walked out of the room toward her bedroom. When she returned she was wearing black yoga pants and a black tank top. “As you know, it’s your last day here so I’m going to give you a choice on how you want to be tortured. We’re going for a run. I can run a good four miles and I’m sure that you can fly that far but you’re not going to be flying.  You’re going to be under my foot the entire time. Now here’s where your choice comes in. you can ride on the inside of my shoe which will smell bad and be painful but you should be able to survive it, or be on the outside of the show with the core on damage mode and maybe survive. The only difference between the two is the length. If you choose the first it will be a 45-minute run because that all you can survive. If you turn damage mode on we will go until I decide to stop. Yes there is the possibility that you will perish but I have to experiment just this once. So what is the choice?”

I was almost instantly regretting the fact that I had eaten, though the suit had ways with dealing with the situation that a consort had vomited but I would try to hold it together and try not to think about the motion that going on a 45 minute run would put me through. The other issue is the smell, I hadn’t been trapped inside her shoe for more than a couple of minutes and when I had been I was almost dying so the smell hadn’t affected me. But this was different, if I used the damage core feature I would get fresh air but it would be one hell of a ride, the second option was in her shoe, which wouldn’t be bad at first but like a car, the suit draws air in from the outside and eventually I would be subjected to the smell. Each side had their benefits but they also had their downfalls. Going without damage mode would be extremely brutal but even with damage mode I would get the full force of her weight on against hard concrete which could be bad especially if she decided that she didn’t want to stop after the suit had taken its beating.

I looked at her face and it was stern with almost no emotion expect for her blue eyes were lit up with anticipation mixed with pleasure. “I guess the logical decision would to be endure inside of your shoe, because on the outside the suit will more than definitely fail.”

“If you decide that you want to cheat me or be funny I will make sure that the bottom of my foot is the last thing that you see.  Other than that, we’re running to a bus stop about 30 minutes away, there I will board the bus and it will take me to the other stop that is 15 minutes away and I will run the rest of the way back to my house, you will get a break for the ride but don’t count on being able to heal much on it. Depending on the day, the bus is to full and I have to stand but we will see. I wont be taking you out in public unless the buzzer for your life support sounds and then I will only pull my foot out to keep the pressure off but when it turns off I will be sticking my foot back in and we will resume the run. Does this make sense?” she asked.

I nodded.  “Good” she smile as she took me in her hand and walked into the living room and she dropped me into a pair of white running shoes that had faded into brown with dirt and dust. I looked down to see that I had about 3 inches left before my feet touched the end of her shoe. She tilted the shoe down and I slid down. Without her foot in the shoe I could barely move my arms outwards or bend my knees I knew that it was going to be a tight fit. I thought about trying to turn over when I felt myself plummet before slamming into the insole that had almost no cushioning to the fall.

I heard the sound of the laces being undone as she Jasper adjusted the shoe. I tried to look at the insole but couldn’t crane my head around to see it. I could only picture that there was an outline in the shoe of a person in the shoe where she had gone running with a consort before. Jasper slipped her foot in slowly and I saw the toe section of the thin yellow sock pass over my face before blackness as her foot slid over the suit. The suit creaked as she set her foot on the floor and I felt myself being moved by her toes as she tried to get her foot comfortable in she shoe. She stood and the suit groaned against the weight of her. I figured that I my head was under the arc of her foot just below the heel and that put my knees under the ball of her foot and my feet were forced awkwardly between her toes. She stepped slowly at first and the flex in her toes broke both my ankles in one step and I knew that this was probably going to be one of the longest runs I have been on. I heard the ringing of keys and then the weight of her foot disappeared for as I felt my self getting stood on my head as I assume she sat down to do stretching.

“I hope your ready.” She said as I returned to lying on my back and the weight of her was back on the suit. She took of her left foot and in a second I was in the air and thrown so that I was thrown against what I assumed was her heel. The g’s shifted and I was slammed into the ground and her foot slammed into the suit squeezing the air out of me. I knew that I would have to time my breaths right or else I would pass out in about five minutes.  The weight was bearable for about 15 minutes until the charge dropped below 75% and the suit started letting me take the blows for her footfalls. It felt like somebody was dropping a bag of brick on my everywhere at once. I would take a breath while I was in mid free fall only to have it knocked out of me. I told my self I had only ten minutes left until the bus station.

I was trying to focus on breathing so I didn’t have to smell what smelt liked rotten onions and molding leather but the humidity in the suit from the heat of the day and her foot sweating forced me to breath through my nose. At the twenty-minute mark my world shifted again and we were running down hill. The gravity of freefalling and only to have almost 8 times her weight slam into me rapidly brought the suit down to 35%. The supports on my sides were weakening fast and then next step slammed into me full force. I felt a rib snap as her foot landed on me. I heard a chuckle from above and the footfalls seem to increase which meant I was taking short little breaths not inhaling all the way only to have all the air forced out of my lungs. 

The footfalls were taking about one percent each step and in knew in two or three minutes I wouldn’t have any assistance which meant I had five minutes where I would be bearing her full weight each step. The screen on cracked as I slipped her heel for only a minute. I felt her stumble a little and I smiled to myself because I knew that the head section of the suit wouldn’t cushion her footfalls stepping so it would feel like running full weight on sharp rock. The suit warned about system failure and the chest support gave out just as her foot slammed into me. I felt three ribs and my knees give out crack simultaneously. The next stepped caused another rib to snap. It felt like I was breathing nails and chocking on the thick air. I knew that I would make it to the bus stop but with for ribs and a two broken legs it was bleak.  Her steps were causing hairline fractures on the screen of the suit and I felt every one of them in my sternum the only thing that was keeping her footfall from crushing me flat. I heard the sound in her footsteps change signifying that we had moved to a different surface and the weight became a little bit more bearable but the fact that we were on a level surface didn’t face the fact that her footfalls were breaking the suit into pieces. I could feel the shell of the chest plate cutting into my sides due to the broken supports. I heard the alarm on the suit signaling that it was now on emergency power and in two steps the suit went silent, as the battery system had failed. Her next step landed on me and I screamed as her foot slammed into me and the sharp metal of the supports punctured my side. Each stepped pushed the medal harder against bleeding ribs and I knew that it was a matter of steps before last of my ribs gave a way and my heart stopped.

I felt another hard step as if she had skipped a beat and then nothing. I could barley breathe and my eyes felt heavy from blood loss. I was on the verge of passing out and I didn’t know if I would wake up. I felt her foot shift and light blinded me as she pulled her foot out of the shoe.

She brought her shoe up to her face and gasped. “I knew it was bad but I didn’t realize it was this bad. You can’t stay in there but I don’t have any pockets. Shit.” She exclaimed. She picked pulled me out of the indent I had made in her shoe. She set me down gently on the bench next to her and I realized that she was the only one here in the bus stop. The suit booted on and the power display showed 3%. I knew it wasn’t much to do what ever she had planned but it couldn’t be good. She picked me up again and mouthed the word sorry before looking around quickly before stuffing me sideways down the back of her pink thong.

The elastic material pulled on my shattered hips and I felt Jasper sitting down on me very slowly. I felt her weight pushing back down on me as she sat down and onto the wooden bench and the suit compressed into me. I could hardly breathe and the suit was protesting against her along with my shattered body. I couldn’t feel anything as the suit had injected me with the painkillers. But I knew that I most of my ribs had fractures in them and my legs were in pretty bad shape. I tried to switch the suit to damage mode but the screen wasn’t responding to my commands. The cracks on the screen that were there were only getting bigger because the power core couldn’t keep up with her weight on me.

The suit made a loud cracking sound her weight collapsed onto to me. The suit detected the nausea spreading through me and snapped my head to the side and unfolded the faceplate just as I vomited. It didn’t go far because Jasper’s butt cheeks were forming a solid wall on the other side of the edge of the plate. I could feel her weight pushing in on my skull because the suit had unfolded the only thing that kept it off. The world seemed to spin away as I heard a cracking sound resonating in my skull.

The electric charge surged through me and I snapped awake. I was sitting on Jasper’s kitchen. It was the charge meant to restart a consort’s heart in the event of cardiac arrest. The whirl of the nanobots was surging through my body sounded in my ears. The suit showed that it had a 10% charge and a chart filled my eyes of all the broken bones I had. It also had an overlay of the organs that had suffered significant damage. My heard and my brain were probably the only thing that had gone unscathed which probably the only reason the shock worked. Out of 207 of my bones the only ones that didn’t have any breaks where my sternum and the disks that made up my spine, “are you okay?”

I blinked twice and the computer changed the red critical light in the suits head to green. “Oh thank god,” Jasper said.

It was another 25 minutes before I was able to speak and almost an hour before I was able to move. Jasper had filled a cake pan full of warm water and set in on the table so I could get out of the suit and wash up.

After exiting the suit I went through the test of walking and stretching to make sure no permanent damage had been done. “ Are you okay?” she asked as I finished stretching I gave her a thumbs up and she left the room and left a set of clothes for me to change into on the table.

After 45 minutes of soaking in the warm water that had tinted slightly red with the blood from my clothing I climbed out of the pan and changed into the clothes before pulling the suit out of the water and climbing into it.

I flew into the living room where I found Jasper sitting on the couch. “Glad to see you’re okay.”

“No permanent damage done so we’re good.” I said.

“No hard feelings?” she asked.

“It was closer to death than I’ve wanted to be but I’ve been through it before so all is good.” I told her, shuddering at the memories of the two times it had happened before this.

“Good, well I have to drive you back and check you in. If you report me I completely understand.” Jasper said as I landed in her hand.

“I relatively enjoyed my time here so I won’t be reporting you. It’s going to be a couple of months before I want to go through that kind of treatment again, but it was nice.” I smiled at her as she dropped me in her purse and we walked out to the car.

I flew out of her purse as we were driving back to the Micro Inc. store and hovered by the mirror before resting on the dash. The ride was spent in mostly silence and Jasper held me in her hand as she carried me into the store before dropping me on the counter.

“Everything go well Miss Creaston?” the clerk asked as she double-checked the paper work for Jasper’s name.

“It was probably the best time I’ve had in a really long time. A much needed vacation.” Jasper said.

“Okay,” clerk said as she took out a wand and scanned the suit and it automatically loaded the data off the suits hard drive and onto computer on the desk, “it looks like we had a couple of close calls?” the clerk asked.

“Yeah,” Jasper started about that but the clerk looked at me for an explanation.

“Jasper is used to a more durable consort and she got a little rough, but it doesn’t matter because I enjoyed the experience.” I said and smiled.

“If Keyla says that it was okay then everything is good to go. Just a reminder that you come back and take Keyla out in three months, this is standard policy at Micro Inc. but if you want we can give you a call when the resting period is over?”

“I’m sure that will be fine,” Jasper said as she dug her wallet out for payment.

“Anything else you had to say to Keyla?” the clerk asked.

“No, that will be all.” Jasper said as the clerk lowered me into the sound proof box that had my name on the outside.

I smiled as Jasper paid and then waved at me before leaving. The clerk took me out of the box and set me on the counter.

I turned and looked at her. “Are you sure that you’re okay? The file said that you had a cardiac arrest. Did we need to flag Miss Creaston’s profile for you?”

“No, it was okay. I’m fine. She just took it a little to far. She felt really bad about it and it wasn’t like she wasn’t anything indecent. You can look at the footage but I am really okay and will not be reporting her.”

“If you insist that you’re okay then we will check you in and then get you prepped for the consort file and then you can go to the dormitory.” The clerk smiled. “It looks like you have two weeks of vacation time did you want to use that?”

“No, just the standard two day leave.” I said as the clerk went to the back of the office to print off some paperwork.

When she came back she scanned a barcode and then set to registering on the computer. “Did you want to be un-shrunk for you rest period or just stay in the dorm?”

“I’ll stay in the dorm. The procedure makes me nauseous and I don’t want to deal with that for two days only to have to go through it again.” I explained.

“Makes sense. Okay. Did you want me to put the usual report?”  She asked.

“Yeah.” I said as I flew to the back of the office where they held the storage for the suits and the entrance to a dorm, an underground building that housed the consorts and everything to make life comfortable for the times between sessions. I ejected myself from the suit and a robotic arm put it into a box for holding so I could pick it up in two days after my leave.

“Have a good weekend,” the clerk said as she poked her head into the office before I stepped into the eight-inch elevator that sat about desk level with the clerk.

“You too.” I said as the doors closed. I was looking forward to the two days off.