It was morning, and for a long time that was all I knew. There was darkness amid the sounds of chittering birds, crickets, and the rising crescendo of the cicadas. And in this darkness I first heard, from high above, the sound of a woman’s voice, followed by thundering footsteps. I was soon on my feet, breathing heavily, and stumbled forward in the pitch black into the moistness and mesh of some fabric, which smelled heavily of feet. The footsteps neared, and I heard, high up, the sound of contact and the pressure of some living thing pushing against the black walls of my prison. The mesh was removed and I saw as though through a tunnel, far above, as my eyes adjusted, the face of a woman. She was a blonde, a blondie. That was the first thing I noticed about her. She looked 30-32, but I learned later that she was 38. She was also—and it’s strange to admit that I realized this last of all—at least 80 feet tall. A giantess.
It was her voice, though, that I heard first. She told me she was ‘Holly’ –that was her name—and I was hers. Ms. Holly, I thought. My English teacher, 10th grade. I couldn’t move; I was paralyzed with confusion. No, by her hand, which lifted me up to her face from—a large riding boot, 60 feet below.
She looked at me long, and then, slowly, a smirk spread across her face. “You don’t understand, but that’s fine. I’m sorry. Yes, I am your teacher, and No, this is not detention.” She smiled, and then frowned. “I’m afraid this is about my daughter, Adela.” On my face was written the hopeless confusion I felt, and she seemed to recognize this, because she clarified: “You know, your girlfriend.”
After I failed to respond again, she walked across the room, quickly, and set me on the dresser. Picking up a comb and perfume spray, and beginning to brush her hair before the great mirror in front of her, she explained, casually, “I don’t expect you to understand any of this today, and, of course, no explanation of my own would quite do. But there are plain facts here that I don’t want you to overlook.” She paused, and gave me a long, contemplative look. “Let me show you something,” she said, and dropping the comb where it had lay, scooped me up in her hand and brought me to her bed. With her hands, she lifted her left boot and tipped it over, like a water pitcher, and then spoke.
“Come on, you insect. Stand up and look at me.” A pale, toothless man, with skin the shade of a white grub, tumbled out of her boot and circled his arms about, frantically, as if looking for a place to hide. Holly called to him, and tauntingly asked him, while showing him the bottom of her foot, “What do you say? What do you say to me?” He made a vain attempt at speech, moving his lips as if trying to form words, but failed. He could say nothing. Slowly she leant over him, her hair cascading around him and her face, pushed the hair behind her ears, and let out a long string or thread of drool, then spit it violently into his face. “Get back where you belong, Worm,” she yelled.
She then turned to me, “Do you recognize him?” I said nothing, paralyzed by all the terror and incomprehension I felt. “He was my husband,” she said. “He is my husband, I suppose.” Holly paused. “A number of years ago he threatened to leave Adela, leave me, and nothing I could do would change his mind or bend his course of action, he said. Of course, he didn’t know I could do this to him, to anyone. He knew very little about me, in fact, when he asked me for my hand.” She looked over at me, perhaps to gauge my reaction, whether I was horrified and, if so, how horrified I was. But I still said nothing, and she went on.
“I only do this to him because he disappoints me. If he cared only a little more, loved me a little more, I would be happy again. But he doesn’t. No--Just look at him.” She scowled. My neck bent down with an involuntary twitch, and I saw him trying to crawl back to the shoe. I seemed to be dreaming, or re-living these events. Or, as I thought, in stupefaction, I was seeing a vision. “…because he just doesn’t care enough. I don’t remember the last time I was able to let him out. I don’t remember the last time I washed my feet.” She looked with a mixture of sorrow and mischief at me, and I recognized Ms. Holly, as if for the first time. It was she, but she was 80 feet tall, and I was perhaps 3 inches, or less. How had this happened? And then I remembered Adela, who sat beside me in Chemistry. Adela, whom I had, in some remote or very recent time, asked “out” for some long-lost Friday, for dinner, for a night alone.
I looked down on the other man, the one she called her husband, as he finally found his way to the mouth of the boot, and disappeared inside. “So that’s that,” Holly said. “You aren’t the first who’s approached my daughter, and I doubt you’ll be the last. But I’m always interested about the little students I’ve brought home and, well, despite myself, I’m interested in you. Not you –Martin—the boy in English class. (I liked that Martin.) Not you—Martin—the boy who decided to court my daughter. (That Martin I don’t like so much.) But the Martin you are when you’re at home, or doing things alone. Tell me about yourself. We have an hour before school begins.” She swung her legs from the floor to the bed, and stretched herself out. To my right and left, her feet cast their shadows on me, and in the distance, past her thighs, I saw her exposed and uncovered womanhood. “Come closer,” she said, casually, and spread the palm of her right hand before her pussy. My legs decided it was time to move forward, and I walked, for thirty seconds or more, to her palm, and she brought me to the head of the bed and deposited me beside her pillow. She waited, and soon I found my voice, or a voice, deep within. It was true. I was Martin, and at some indefinite point in the past, I used to be someone else. I started to speak.