The scent of eggs and bacon cooking drew me into the kitchen this morning. My mom, Jen, was at the stove cracking the last egg into the pan with a crisp sizzle that made my stomach grumble. She was wearing her pink short shorts and midriff-baring top that showed off her flat tummy and long toned legs as she was a workout nut. She tried to get me to be too, but I was much too into my computer games and had no time for working out.
Her long brunette hair was pulled back into a ponytail that bounced sporty around the middle of her back as she flipped the eggs. I guess at 39 she was still pretty good looking, as my friends liked to continually inform me. I think my mom liked to be flirty around them just to tease 'em. I wish she wouldn't do it though because they never shut up about her, it was just as bad as them talking about my older sister who took after her looks. In our family of long-legged women I guess I was kind of the runt of the litter. I've always been a bit small and scrawny for my age. Both my mom and sister were quite a bit taller than me. My dad was more like me, but he was always out on business somewhere so I was ever only the small one at home.
As she turns toward the fridge my eyes are drawn by the movement of her bare feet that somehow always made me uncomfortable. I didn't know why exactly, because she kept them looking really good. They were tanned and her toes were long, but they were well proportioned and her soles were kind of wide. They looked strong, but at the same time very feminine and soft. They were like a size 9.5 or maybe even 10, I know they are pretty big. She liked to wear a hemp ankle bracelet on her left ankle that to me looked kind of hippie-ish. And a toe ring on her long, (second) toe of each foot. I didn't like the way I was attracted to them because one, she was my mom, and two, they're feet. But I couldn't take my eyes away from them, it was so annoying!
"Good morning sleepy-head, how would you like your eggs?" Mom says to me, breaking me sharply out of my personal trance with her feet, instantly leaving me feeling both sheepish and embarrassed. "Um yeah, good morning! Sorry, uhh, I like them over-easy." I say while shaking away weird thoughts of my mom's feet. She studies me with her almond colored eyes as I try to appear innocent. "Mm-hmm, well why don't you have a seat at the table, this will be done in just a moment." She says as she turns back to the stove to tend to breakfast.
As I turn toward the table I hear her dropping the empty egg carton on the floor beside her feet, preparing to squash it flat for the recycle bin and I instinctively spin around to watch. The instant I turn around I catch her almond eyes staring directly into mine and suddenly feel like the floor has dropped out from under me. My stomach jumps into my throat as a flash of confusion and panic blinds me for a moment. The instant my sight is returned, my body is rocking back and forth before coming still with me looking directly up at the kitchen ceiling.
Unable to comprehend what just happened, the movement of my mom's hand returning to the counter above me brings my attention to the fact I am lying right next to her, just as her leg shifts and her large bare foot hovers into view directly over me. I react by trying to throw up my hands and shockingly realize I cannot move, I'm paralyzed! I can't feel my body and as I attempt to scream before my mom's titanic foot lowers down onto me I'm unable to produce a sound.
While not able to feel my body I am able to feel, well something, however, as I am able to 'feel' the heat from her foot increasing the closer it gets. I'm unable to blink or look away, only able to stare into the wide, wrinkled sole of her foot as it fills in my entire field of vision, casting me into shadow beneath it. And then the ball of her foot touches me, and I feel her toes press into me as my body shifts awkwardly beneath her. Only it doesn't feel like my body at all, it feels like something else. Her toes dig into me deeper and I sense my awkward body start to collapse under the pressure she is applying as a loud, squeeky sound like styrofoam rubbing together fills the air. A sudden memory of the white styrofoam egg carton my mom had dropped on the floor flashes through my mind and I instantly get the insane idea as to what it is I've become. But that's crazy!
My body collapses in on itself even further under the pressure and crazy or not, the reality of my situation sinks in. I've become the egg carton my mom is stepping on and I'm helpless to do anything about it! I can only watch and feel as I'm now just an object left to experience what is completely outside my control. As my mom's large foot digs into me, I can feel my body pressing into the soft spaces under her toes, filling in and forming to the crevices between them as they force me to take on their shape. The sole of her foot settles into the pillowy foam dimples that make up the underside of my body, squashing them loudly as the foam protests her increasing body mass.
As my body becomes incolescent around her sole I am able to feel and imagine its entire outline while it settles into me. My body conforms to its shape and pressure completely, and where I'm unable to conform my body tears and breaks apart in a desperate effort to accept her weight. And while I am able to feel the changes happening throughout my carton body the sensation is forgivingly painless. Even as I feel my shape becoming stressed and tortured beyond repair.
Her sole doesn't stop increasing in weight until she steps fully onto me, finally settling her weight into the hard floor beneath me. The heat emanating beneath her heel and ball of her foot where it pinches me between her sole and the floor increases exponentially as my styrofoam body is forced to convey her weight into the cold kitchen tile.
And then her weight is suddenly fully on me, her other foot leaving the floor as she forces me to fully accept her mass beneath her. The dimples on the underside of my carton have been popped and destroyed beyond measure and I have cracks and tears all throughout my form. Yet even that is still not good enough for her as her other foot settles down atop me beside her first as she begins to contort me further. Then in her last effort to fully ruin me beneath her she begins walking in place, turning slow half circles back and forth with her shuffling feet until I am left nothing but a flat mass of busted styrofoam unable to hold anything ever again. Her mammoth toes ripping through my shell to tear chunks out of me, leaving pieces of me flattened into the tile around her feet. As I spread out wider beneath her my field of vision increases as I watch incomprehendingly as her soles step down on my face repeatedly while I'm still able to look up along the sides of her pumping legs and watch her short shorts wrapped tightly around her atheltic butt swaying above me. As she turns her ponytail swings in motion with her body as her almond colored eyes gaze down at the ruined pieces of me as she continually presses her bare soles into me.
And then finally, strangely, as if my mom stopped to look directly down into my formless eyes she smiles and then brings the sole of her large foot over them as everything goes black beneath her step.
------
My eyes flash open, and I'm lying sweatsoaked in my bed, staring up at my ceiling alone in my bedroom. My sheets are strewn all over the mattress as I lay there panting, my heart racing as if I'd just woken out of a horrible nightmare. Indeed I have, but what an incredible nightmare, what an incredible dream! It was so, bizarre, so realistic. Just what the hell was that!? Checking the time revealed it to be just past 6:30, time for me to be getting up.
Laying there with my head buzzing I wait until my senses return to normal before attempting to get out of bed. I had taken a shower last night, but after waking up so wet and disheveled I decide I needed to take another one this morning before heading downstairs. I turn on the water and as I stand there in the shower memories of the dream flood back as I watch my mom's toned legs pumping rythmically as she stomps and crushes my body beneath her large, soft, feet. With such solid flashbacks of her eyes watching me as she ruins me under her soles a mixed wave of guilty pleasure and shame washes over me and I can't help masturbating into the shower. I try to imagine my favorite famous celebrities pumping their feet down on me but somehow my visions kept returning to my mom. I try not to think about it, but at least now I won't have to worry about getting spontaneously aroused at school today.
Finishing with my shower I get dressed and head into the kitchen. My sister Alicia is already up and pouring herself some juice while my mom is at the stove making breakfast. Her pink short shorts and midriff-top nearly bowl me over with deja-vu as I take a seat at the table. "Hey honey, you're finally up, sleep well?" My mom asks while looking over her shoulder. "You like your eggs overeasy right? Here, eat up, you're going to be late for school." She says as she carries a plate over to the table and sets it down in front of me, her almond eyes looking into me surrepticiously, making me look away. "Be quick, you're the last one to eat." She says before returning to the kitchen.
"Hey mom, you didn't pick up the egg carton you flattened." Alicia says as my eyes jolt up in alarm to find her tossing a squashed styrofoam carton into the bin. "Sorry about that, I must have been preoccupied." Mom tells her as she glances over at me, filling my stomach with a fluttery feeling of anxiety and confusion. Before I can begin to wrap my head around it my sister glances out the window and squeals in alarm, "Oh crap, the bus is here! Hurry up or we're going to miss it!" I glance one last time at my mom as she looks at me and says, "Go, go, go!" And I have no choice but to jump out of my chair, grab my bag and run after my sister to the bus. This was going to be a crazy day, I could just feel it.
First period economics was nothing more than a hazy fog for me, my mind drifting in and out of memories from this morning. It couldn't have all been coincidence could it? But then again, how could it not be. Mom wears that sporty outfit all the time, and the first thing she does to an egg carton when its empty is squash it so it fits in the bin better. So of course those aspects could easily appear in a dream. But the deja-vu, the surrealism; was still making me so twitchy and distant.
Listening to Mr. Steven's monotone drone about today's whatever lesson definitely was having the opposite effect of clearing my head of clouds. No, it must have just been a dream, had to have been. An intense, beautiful, insanely crazy and unconditionally improper dream to have of my mom.
But those looks she was giving me, .. gah! This is so frustrating!
While the morning wore on my thoughts did not. By the end of third period my head was so saturated with recollections of my mom's soles crushing down on me I just had to get some fresh air. Walking out into the courtyard I see Alicia and her friend Julie sitting together on the bottom steps leading up from the common area and I head over to them. The two of them are a year ahead of me and lucky enough to have a free period, so they were probably sitting there since second period ended just goofing around.
The May weather was still cool enough to need a light jacket, but nice enough for shorts. Many of the girls had started wearing flip-flops and sandals the very moment the weather permitted and my sister and her friend were no exception. Alicia was wearing a pair of flat strappy leather sandals that wrapped twice around her ankle while Jamie was in a pair of classy brown leather flip flops that fit snug between her tight pedicured toes painted a dark magenta shade that matched her sandals well. Alicia's feet were much larger by comparison, but she was also a full head taller than Julie too.
Both girls were quite popular and dressed the part, Julie in a red plaid skirt and grey cardigan over a white blouse, and Alicia in a simple black skirt and light blue button up shirt. Both girls had similar long straight hair, but Julie's was coal black where Alicia's was copper brown like our mom's. I really liked Julie, with her grey contact lenses and self-assured smile. She was one of my favorites from my sister's friends. She was beautiful in her own right and got plenty of attention from the guys, but even I could see she paled in comparison in popularity to my long legged sister. Which in my opinion wasn't entirely fair, but then I guess I'm just a bit biased against my sister. Then again, are guys supposed to think of their sisters as being long-legged? Best not to think about that one.
The steps from the commons were made of rough chiseled stone and fit between two raised-bed planters made from the same stone boulders. The girls sat with their backs against the stone facing each other so I set my bag down at the base of the stairs to the side of them and had a seat. They, typically, were chatting too much to even notice I had sat down to join them.
As they gossiped I gazed out over the commons not really listening to them and was soon day dreaming to the sound of their peaceful girlish voices. It wasn't until I heard Julie say my name and start giggling that I was pulled from my peaceful delirium.
"I think your brother really likes my toes, Alicia. He's been staring at them for some time now." Julie mentions to Alicia as my eyes come to focus and realize I have been in fact looking at her toes. I don't even remember when I started. Feeling embarrassed I glance up into Julie's grey eyes looking at me teasingly before I quickly look away, feeling the heat rise in my face. "No fair, I painted my toes too you know. He shouldn't only be noticing yours." Alicia complains to Julie as she wiggles her own plum colored toes accented with a simple gold band wrapped around each of her ring toes.
Returning to ignoring that I even exist the girls start chatting about where they got their toes done which quickly turned to what guys they ran into and what they're planning to do this summer. Feeling relieved the discussion had moved on from my embarrassing ogling of Julie's toes I relax again and focus on the movement of a little pill bug as it squeezes out of a crack in the stone and begins walking without purpose along the stairs between the girls. To my surprise it crawls up onto the tip of Julie's leather flip-flop and walks along the edge of it around toward her big toe. I watch as her toe shifts a bit making the pill bug hesitate, before resuming it's trek along her sandal. As it approaches her big toe it stops next to it, seemingly being unable to go any further. Then it decides to try a different tact and latches onto the side of it, pulling itself up over the toe and onto the nail before Julie takes notice as to what was tickling her.
"Oh I hate those things," she says as she reaches over and flicks it with her finger, sending it bouncing onto the stair. Alicia looks over at it and picks it up between her fingers, pinching it gently. "Aww, why do you hate them? They're so funny the way they ball up and just let you roll them around when they get scared," she says as she playfully rolls it around her palm.
I catch some voices from students leaving the tables in the commons and notice it's time to head to fourth period. Grabbing my bag I stand up to leave and as I rise I notice Alicia looking directly at me, her almond eyes just like our mom's staring directly into mine. Before I'm fully standing a feeling of vertigo fills my stomach and I feel like I'm pitching headfirst toward the concrete.
"Their shells are hard and they have a hundred running legs, they're just gross." I hear Julie say from somewhere as I fall headlong toward the ground as if I were rolling down a hill. I can't see a thing and a moment before impact I fling my hands out to absorb the shock, and suddenly there is light as I find myself falling once more off a warm rounded ledge that looks strangely like a manicured hand. Plummeting through the air my legs are kicking wildly before I impact something firm, yet soft and roll off to the side into a dark crevice, tightening myself into a ball to shield myself along the way. My heart is pumping a mile a minute and I'm waiting for the worst to be over.
"Whoa, Julie, I think you scared him!" Alicia laughs as she watches the pill bug suddenly spring open and fall from her hand. "Ha-ha, no way. Isn't that going to scare him more, he fell between your toes!" Julie laughs in response. "No, I think he feels safer in there, safer than being out here with you calling him gross!" Alicia giggles, pushing Julie playfully. "Fine, fine, well better in there where I don't have to look at him." Julie replies jokingly.
Confused about the discussion, I lay confined in darkness, my body tightly pinched between soft, and incredibly warm walls. The space I've fallen into quickly starts to become uncomfortably hot, but I can't seem to move myself in order to try and get out of it. Why it is so warm I can't even guess but it is near stifling.
The sensation of not being able to move is a dreaded familiar one as my mind races and I try my best to gain my bearings. I'm frozen in place just like last time, and for some reason am much more prone to panic than before. But even as I can sense how alarmed I am, when there is no further movement around me I feel myself instantly start to relax. Almost as if I only have two settings, extreme panic, or all is safe. The feeling is incredibly limiting my emotional spectrum.
My body starts to unfurl on its own even though it is still too dark to see. I feel the hot, steamy walls on all sides of me, but below me is a smooth surface my legs can grip easily. It's strange because I swear I can feel several sets of legs where I should only have had two. The crevice is becoming unbearably warm, and all I can feel is heat emanating all around me, but lesser so directly overhead. Moving instinctively toward the cooler feeling my body seems to know exactly what it is doing as my many legs adjust to the uneven surface along the walls and expertly pull myself into a vertical position facing the source of cooler air.
Hesitating I can see the tight walls of the crevice empty into open air, but far above it Alicia sits looking down at me with an amused smile on her face. On the other side of her I can just make out the face of Julie watching as well. I wonder why they're not helping me, but my body doesn't seem too alarmed by the large hovering faces and I feel myself begin to scramble upward as I squeeze out of the crevice and onto the landscape of what I quickly discover to be Alicia's toes. Shock rocks my senses as I take in the sight of her gold toe ring glinting in the distance and I can see the indentations along the hills and valleys of her toes as they gently slope to her purple toenails. The surface of her toes is completely uneven and seems impossible to navigate, but my body seems to have no trouble at all as I take off like a bullet across the difficult ground. The heat of her toes and slight scent of lotion from her skin only spurn me on faster.
I have no choice but to come to terms with the fact that this morning I dreamed I was an egg carton, and now I've somehow become a pill bug. And both times I've ended up at the mercy of my family's feet. But with how insanely quick the terrain of Alicia's toes was moving beneath me, I just couldn't focus on the thought for more than a second, the act of moving at breakneck speed keeping me focused on the here and now.
"Doesn't that tickle?" I hear Julie ask, her voice much more booming and powerful than before, as if I were hearing her through a damp, echoing tunnel. "It does, but it also feels kind of good," Alicia responds with a voice differing in volume, but still reverberating and loud.
As I get to the end of her toes and reach into empty air with my front legs I turn this way and that, but see no immediate way to continue on. Turning again on her toe, I circle down toward her toenail and begin making a circuit back along her nails in the direction I'd just come.
"He seems to like it there." Julie comments, as I sense the movement of her own nearby toes and hesitate in place, my panic spiking again to the apparent danger. "See, your toes are not the only ones worth staring at." Alicia responds, the memory of that conversation filling me with a new and ridiculous sense of embarrassment. But that felt like a lifetime ago and I still don't understand what happened to me. Why am I stuck on Alicia's toes and how is that even possible!?
As if that deliberation itself was enough to over-ride my uncharacteristic sense of panic, I suddenly take off again like I was possessed with a mission to crawl along these toes and I needed to get there ASAP. When I reached the end of Alicia's big toe again a shrill, resonating bell goes off, freezing me immediately in place.
"First bell already, time to head back." Julie mentions as she begins to gather her books from the stair above her. Thinking it safe again I turn along the edge of Alicia's toenail and wall-walk my way around the tip of her toe. Before I can move another step a shadow falls over me and I stop in place as another wall approaches me from the other side, pressing into my back and gently pushing me into the tip of Alicia's toe. My panic shatters through the roof again at the fact I'm unable to roll into a ball and my legs kick frantically trying to get away without result.
"Ohhh, what are you going to do?" I hear Alicia ask, her voice muffled from outside of my prison. "He's gross, and since he came out from between your toes and made me look at him I can't let that slide now can i? He'll need to be punished." Julie responds in a pouty, matter-of-fact way. "Well he has been pretty pervy with crawling all over my toes, so punishment might be fitting I guess." Alicia says as I feel her toe move forward into Julie's, my legs crumpling beneath the pressure. "See, I knew you'd agree with me." Julie says happily as she slowly begins to press back, matching the effort of Alicia's toe with her own while my body is caught in the middle.
The wall of their toes slowly come together, and my panic turns to real terror as I feel the heat and the pressure of the girls toes boring into me. My legs crumple into ruin against Alicia's big toe as my hard shell begins to crack beneath the pressure of Julie's punishing foot. I can't see a thing in the dark space between their toes and the sound of my back coming apart cracks and splinters loudly in my ears. I can feel myself expanding against Alicia's toe and can't do anything to fight the crushing mass of pressure that is squishing me. As their toes come together my body splits apart in half a hundred places, forcing my juices to spread out through the fissures as my insides erupt against my sister's unyielding digit.
My mind flashes white and red from the pain, and the pressure mounts to a crescendo while the final cracks and pops leave my body. Slowly my consciousness begins to fade. I can't believe that I have been crushed by my older sister as if I were a bug and neither of the girls even care about what they have done to me. I'm just a victim of their enjoyment, left crushed and broken between their toes for no other reason than they have the power over me to do so. While my mind fades out it's as if I can almost see myself squished between their feet, wrapped in their cute leather sandals, their pedicures sparkling in the morning sun.
My last thoughts are of the girl's giggling laughter at my demise before I pass out.
------
A second school bell going off jolts me up in my seat, the light blinding me as I raise my head from my schoolbag and sit back in my chair. "You're still here?" The teacher asks me, "This isn't your class, go find your next period, you're already late." He says as the students giggle at me mockingly. Confused, I gaze around and realize I'm still in my third period class and quickly wipe a strand of drool from my lip as I look down at the indentation in my bag where my head had been while I was sleeping.
Unable to respond to the teacher with more than an apology I quickly gather my things and run out the door to the sound of laughter behind me. While I make my way down the hallway I look out at the commons and try to center my head around what had just happened. There's no way that could have been a dream, again, for the second time today. What was happening to me? Am I sick!? I think to myself as I head toward my fourth period English class.
I walk past the senior's Environmental Science room and glance through the window, seeing Julie sitting with a group of girls in her grey cardigan and red plaid skirt and stop in my tracks. I was pretty sure I hadn't seen Julie before school this morning, so how is it I would know what she was wearing if it was in fact only a dream?
Suddenly feeling nauseous I decide I'm not feeling at all well today and make my way toward the entrance of the building. I hope mom won't mind my taking the rest of the day off, but I am clearly not doing so great. Walking slowly toward the bus stop I think back to the events in the commons, the horror of being squashed, mixed with the thrill of being in such close proximity to both my sister's and Julie's feet. Now that I'm not in that restrictive emotional state of being a bug my brain is filled with an incomprehensible mixture of dread and arousal that leaves my head spinning. The bus arrived mercifully soon after and I quickly board for home. Maybe if I'm lucky mom won't even be there.
To Be Continued...