“Well?  Are you taking your itty bitty undies off, or not?” Maggie repeated to her defeated captive.  A wildly coy smile broke across her lips again at her suggestion, sickening Scott.  He knew it brought Maggie endless joy to humiliate him like this.

            Technically, she didn’t even need his permission to remove his clothes forcibly.  She could, according to the law, tug the boxers off his thrashing little body at this very moment and leave him completely in the nude under her naked pink toes, and no one could say otherwise.

            She could, but she wouldn’t.  That wasn’t enough.

            She would want him to do it for her, forcing him to stew in that subservient act, in addition to literally stewing in the muggy hellhole of her sweaty cleat.

            “I… um…” Scott drawled slowly, wanting so badly to get the slick feeling of the toe sweat-soaked underwear to stop hugging against his clammy skin.  But to do so would require him to strip willingly in the palm of his little sister’s hand, something he just wasn’t quite willing to do at this moment, or ever.

            “C’mon,” she whispered even more coolly, bringing her cupped hand closer to her lips until Scott could feel the wind from her warm breath swirling around him in the upturned dome of her creamy palm.  “You’ll feel so much better.”

            “I’d… I’d rather not,” Scott coughed, moving his head away from Maggie’s gargantuan finger as it curled under the crook of his neck, as though she were tickling the chin of a baby.

            “I’ll do it for you if you’re still too shy around your big sissy for some reason,” she whispered in a hush under her breath so quietly that only someone of Scott’s size could’ve picked it up.

            He gulped, slowly shaking his head no.

            The tip of her finger moved from under his chin and pawed gently at the leg of his tiny boxers.  Her fingernail slid its way under the waistband, threatening to strip him down the rest of the way with just a flick of her wrist.  She was obviously more than willing.

            “Are you sure you don’t want me to?”

            “I’m sure,” Scott affirmed quickly, uncomfortable enough as it was.

            His sister always found enormous humor in making him strip, just like she did in every aspect of toying with his helpless tiny body.  Still, there was a particular fascination she had with this specific act that made him pray harder than ever that it was only immature personal amusement she had in mind and nothing more perversely sinister.

            “All right, suit yourself, you little prude,” she said with a shrug, her tone returning to the casual note of before as though nothing had happened.  She had still won, of course, by forcing him to remain in the damp and itchy garments, and they both knew it.  True to her word a month before, she was indeed letting him occasionally make choices for himself while under her supervision, though as per usual, neither choice was particularly desirable.

            “Thank you,” Scott said quickly and clearly.  He had been making efforts to stay on Maggie’s good side as much as possible recently to ease his burden in her playful hands, though he had the unfortunate suspicion that a few pleases were doing little to sway the girl.

            In the long run, he hoped to apologize to Maggie for the differences they’d had in years past, but as he’d discovered a month before, her forgiveness was not so forthcoming, when she’d responded to his most heartfelt apology by promptly depositing him into her shoe and going on a long walk with her friends.

            “Whatever.  So I’ll tell you what,” she answered eagerly, leaning further forward on the metal bench she had found on the sidelines while the rest of her team rested momentarily by the water cooler.  “I’ll give you a break. You don’t have to go under my sock again for the rest of the game.”

            Scott knew this little trick all too well.  He had fallen for it an embarrassing number of times in his shrunken life, mostly due to a stupid little emotion he clung to so pathetically called hope.

            “Right.  So don’t you have to take the sock off now before I go back in?” Scott nonchalantly asked, not caring in the least at this moment what it cost him.

            Maggie’s jubilant face quickly devolved into a disappointed frown.  It was a small victory, but it was something, at least.  He’d robbed her of any additional glee.

            “Oh, you just think you’re so freaking funny, don’t you?” she grumbled, not angrily, but visibly irritated.

            Maggie leaned toward the ground to reach for something.  Scott assumed she was grasping for the cleat so she could insert him back inside before the time-out ended, but she was taking too long to be doing that.  He turned his head to watch her fingers pinching around the toe of her yellow knee-high.

            With effort, she unpeeled the sock from her foot.  Vibrant and peachy, it emerged from the cottony hovel like a creature from the earth, hungry for prey.  Her toes stretched forth, kissed by the cool air in between the fleshy crevices, and her sole arched majestically, the wrinkles in the rosy underside rippling powerfully with each pulse.

            The patterned rivets of the lined sock fibers were imprinted as swollen stripes along her ankle and the top of her foot.  Dotted clusters of sock fiber were glued at spots all along her shin and instep.  Several juicy clumps of toe jam peeked ominously from between her punishing teenage toes.

            “You think you’ve got me and my cute little toesies all figured out, don’t you?” Maggie accused, though despite the aggression in her words, she was unable to hide her enraptured anticipation.  “Don’t forget who’s standing on who here.  Now we’re gonna have to kick it up a notch or two.”

            Scott hardly had more than a moment to stare with muted horror at what he now realized was coming before his sister’s cupped palm was tipping over.  He slipped over the side and gasped, entering tinted darkness, with a bouncy pointed fate at the end.

            The walls of his sister’s used yellow sock became narrower and darker as he descended quickly into the wet, cottony prison and rolled along the rancid base of it.  It was impossible to stand up as Maggie dangled her sock above the ground, so he instead laid on his back and held his arms over his head for protection from the inevitable.

            “Incoming!” Maggie sang out into the opening of the now-occupied sock.

            Not that he needed the warning.  He clamped his eyes shut, tightened his muscles, and curled back into his normal fetal position just as the scraping sound of Maggie’s toenails catching on the thready tunnel met his ears.

            “Hey Mags,” a feminine voice sang out suddenly, slightly short of breath still.  “You get a rock in your shoe or something?”

            “You could say that, Libs,” Maggie laughed, pausing suddenly in pulling the yellow fabric tube taut onto her leg, allowing her brother a few added moments to gaze up at the sight of his looming soon-to-be sockmate.

            “Oh.  Wait,” the girl continued hesitantly, who Scott now recognized as his sister’s friend and teammate Libby Hammond from the nickname and tenor of the voice.  “Are you…”

            “Yeah?”

            “Are you putting your… brother in there… again?”

            “Uh-huh,” snorted Maggie liltingly.  “Just changing him out real quick and then I’ll be ready to get back out there, I swear.”

            “Does he… really have to be in there again?  Haven’t you been wearing him…”

            “…all game,” chuckled the triumphant teenage queen.  “He’s doing pretty well at it, though.  He’s had a lot of practice.  Trust me.  Don’t even worry about him.”

            “Your mom doesn’t care?  You know, about…”

            “Oh, she kinda does, I guess.  She usually only lets me wear him for scrimmage so nobody steps on my foot.  But you’ve seen me; I can move my feet so no one gets too close.”

            “Doesn’t it… hurt him, though?  To be in there that long?”

            “Probably a little.  He’ll get over it, though; he’s a big boy.  Plus, he’s my good luck charm,” Maggie insisted as sincerely as possible.  “And I would never let anything happen to my good luck charm.”

            “Um.  Oh… okay.  If… if you’re sure he can… you know…” Libby hesitantly mumbled.

            “He’s fine.  Don’t think about it.  By the way, you’re still coming by Monday, right?”

            “What?  I… um, yeah, sure.  Totally.  I’m there.”

            “Sweet.  See ya back on the field, girly,” Maggie mused with a giggle and a jokingly blown kiss to Libby, whose reluctantly slow footsteps faded off in Scott’s ears as she returned to the rest of the team.  Despite the position he found himself in at this moment, he couldn’t help but feel a little shiver of optimism.

            It was no secret that Libby had had something of a puppy crush on him ever since she was thirteen, though the age gap had made her far too hesitant to try anything, particularly given how shy she was.  Now, however, whenever she’d visit Maggie after the living arrangements had changed and brought back the shamed twenty-one-year-old, Scott could usually count on some slightly kinder treatment than he could expect from his mother or sister.  He wasn’t sure anymore if it was Libby’s oddly misguided feelings for her friend’s brother, or simply basic decency that made her treat him so well, but he didn’t care, as any reprieve from his bitter existence at the mercy of his family was usually good news.

            It had become a habit to instantly dread the mention that his sister’s friends were coming to visit, with the exception of Libby, who more or less gave him a brief vacation when she’d take him into her gentle hands with a scold at Maggie, who allowed it simply because she found the girl’s crush on the tiny inmate to be such a vast source of entertainment.

            Libby still got quite a kick out of being able to hold the object of her admiration in her hands, and generally wound up hanging onto him for the better part of several hours depending on how long she was visiting, but seeing as she wasn’t squeezing him or depositing him into compromising places on her body, Scott couldn’t help but look forward to it, particularly given the alternatives.  Besides, she could usually be counted on for a bit of conversation that didn’t involve belittling him with every other word, so that was a plus as well.

            Scott couldn’t quite finish this joyfully forward-looking thought due to the heart-jolting sight of his sister’s shadowy appendage descending again when things were suddenly put in motion again.  It took only a few more seconds for Maggie’s foot to eat up the remaining balmy real estate of the sock, her bulbous toes meeting her brother’s body with bulldozing aplomb.

            In what was by now a normal occurrence, all Scott was required to do was survive while Maggie took full ownership of the physics of his tiny body.  She shifted her toes, positioning him to her liking, even flicking them back and forth over his limbs to test how steady he could hold himself under the doughy ceiling of her foot skin.  At this point in the game, he was flimsy at best.

            He hardly even flinched as his sister forced her socked foot back inside the cleat and stood up at the echoing bleat of the whistle for the final portion of the game to begin.

            “Game on, Scotty,” she shouted enthusiastically down to him before taking off running across the grass.