Michelle tapped a pencil hard against the desk of her office cubicle. Returning to work had been Greg’s idea, to help keep her mind off what was happening at home, as Walter Andrews quickly reverse-engineered his machinery to “track the energy signature of his minor mistakes,” meaning discover the targets and exact movements taken by Alex, Thomas, and the neighbors in their shrunken state. He’d made it sound like there was hope.

            Still, Michelle was sure she’d crack soon. Of all the evenings of this past week, when she hadn’t known where her elder son Alex had disappeared, this latest night was the most difficult. “Knowing” was so much more painful, and now, it seemed likely Thomas had received the same fate.

            She couldn’t lose both. Not each of her sons in a single week. The universe couldn’t be that twisted.

            Naturally, to avoid any accidents in the house, Greg and Michelle had gone to a nearby hotel for a night of tossing sleep and haunting nightmares of their lost kids. All night, Michelle rolled in bed, crying during what short bursts of sleep she could achieve.

            Through all of it, unknowingly to Michelle, each of her sons was with her: her eldest, trapped somewhere in subatomic space after she’d swallowed him, and then her younger, pinched like a prisoner between two of her toes.

            Thomas, of course, experienced every rock and ride of the difficult night. Occasionally he, too, attempted some sleep, but it was near impossible. Just as soon as he’d get comfortable, resting his tiny cheek against the massive bulwark of his mother’s inner digit, Michelle would squirm again, and Thomas would be bucked between the globes of toe flesh once again.

            In the morning, Michelle showered and changed into her work clothes with painful hesitation. She’d been sitting in her office for an hour now, listlessly, unable to distract herself with work. Hardly anything was accomplished.

            Thomas’s world, meanwhile, was made ever-more hellish from that simple, momentary decision for his mother to return to work. Before, the boy enjoyed at least some access to fresh air filtered in between his parent’s admittedly rank toes. The scent of lush grass, familiar linoleum, and starchy hotel bedsheets helped keep his head clear whenever he felt himself going numb from the piercing, acidic air of Michelle’s perspiration.

            But then Michelle went and abandoned those summer sandals, trading them for sensible heels. Not spikes, but tall enough such that much of her body weight was distributed down into the balls of her feet and, most importantly, her toes. Whatever sources of light and fresh oxygen Thomas once had were quickly stolen. The weight of his giant mother’s skin was unlike anything he’d felt before.

            Truly, without his parent having even half a notion of the cruelty of it, Thomas was imprisoned by Michelle’s foot. Not just within the walls of the shoe, nor the constricting, fleshy cell of her toes, but by darkness and heat, by lack of knowledge.

            And at last, after he’d endured this tortured stated for more than an hour at Michelle’s office, Thomas allowed himself to cry. When he did so, it came quickly and without remorse, like a baby. He wept for his missing brother, for the realization that he might never make it out of here alive, and for the probability that their mother would never know what she’d done.

            The air, already almost unbreathable, was so bitter now with salt that Thomas could hardly lift his chest for a gasp of the choking atmosphere. This cramped space which now confined the boy between his mother’s substantial, dark-green painted toes, had become a pure essence of her foot. It wasn’t merely tainted by the smell of skin and the spice of sweat: it was these things, distilled to vapor.

            Every instant now that Thomas was squeezed between his unaware mother’s toes, the boy almost imagined that Michelle’s entire foot was being jammed down his throat. Uncontrollable, unstoppable. He had to breathe to live, after all, and every time he opened his lips, the sensation of his own mother’s toes and sole were being raked down his stomach, clogging his being.

            Occasionally Michelle would rise to her feet, trudging meekly down the hall of the office to deliver reports or check in with a coworker. During these times, Thomas was granted the small blessing of the air stirring about, even if it was the same stuffy prison. On each step, Michelle’s toes closed tighter around Thomas’s delicate little body, the very wrinkles of her skin beating him from side to side, yet cushioning him from taking real harm. Each time his mother’s digits closed again, the boy wondered if this was his last moment on earth with his parent.

            Moisture was building now after several trips around the office. Liquid pooled at Thomas’s ankles, hot and sticky, the sweat in a soup state. Michelle was seated again, giving her toes time to settle into a swamp. Shapely and firm as the woman was, even she wasn’t immune to the effects of summer heat and AC problems.

            Increasingly, the pores of the woman’s mammoth foot opened up. Smooth skin cells seeped with salty excretion, dribbling in healthy rivulets into the shallow crevice of Michelle’s toes.

            Thomas’s body weighed down beneath drop after drop of sweat, slipping and sliding about the viscous muck of his mother’s toes. Just before he could be squeezed out of the clamp of two toes, though, Michelle’s flesh would contract again and keep him gripped by her unknowing foot.

            In his weakened state, as fat trickles of beaded foot sweat splashed on his face, Thomas let his thirst get the best of him. He opened his lips and slurped hungrily, feeling the hot, poisonous concoction of his mother’s sweat, flavored with shoe leather and lotion, washing down his throat. Almost instantly he gagged, spitting out what he could, only to find another portion splashing on his head. The tears came again as he noted the hopelessness of it, though of course his crying was pathetically outweighed by the volume of sweat. His tiny tears became lost into the flow of liquid and were reabsorbed into Michelle’s skin.

            “Mommy…” Thomas cried, gagging on another mouthful of revolting liquid. His body spun again in the squeezing, thrashing dance of his mother’s toes, his warm skin flush to her own. “Please, please, please. Please help me, Mommy.”