There was a loud metallic boom, like the sound of a huge door slamming shut. The echo rippled up from the floor through the shoes and feet of this woman I was under. The booming sound grew fainter and fainter—I felt the sound waves drift away, like the slow fading pulse after a heart attack. After the first few seconds, when the dark, full scent of this woman’s feet began to surround me, I knew that I was underneath Holly’s toes. To this day I don’t understand exactly how it happened, how I came to be in her boot after spending the evening with Adela—and Adela herself hasn’t been able, or perhaps hasn’t wanted, to answer that question sufficiently. As Holly ran, the throbbing impact of her footsteps against the hard surface wedged me deeper and deeper under her toes—I felt so far gone, that it seemed possible I might even disappear, crumple and crush, under her vast weight. Gripping the grimy fabric of her insole with both fists, I curled myself up like a pebble, and found a way, somehow, to take blow after blow, step after step. The familiar smell of her foot surrounded me, and as the seconds passed I yielded to it, or to her, like the familiar and welcome presence of some woman approaching me through a dense fog. It was she—it was Holly—but how? How did this happen?

Strange and desperate thoughts crowded over me, as I lay there in the blackness, sweltering. Whatever happened to me in this volatile, fast altering world, I had hoped that Adela would have been there with me, in a sense. Yet here I was under my teacher’s foot again, cushioning her sole and surrendering, for the hundredth time, to the foul, dank, leathery smell of her boot. Her toes squirmed across my slick body as she ran, and ground it down into the hollow space Meredith had just left. I was alive, once more, to make her foot comfortable. More than ever before, I felt utterly and hopelessly dominated by Holly. Something had gone awfully wrong. 

Those were bad times then, but now a smile crosses my face—as I breathe in deeply—when I think of what happened. Over thirty days and nights inside Adela’s mother’s slippers and shoes, under Holly’s right foot, had prepared me to become her daughter’s slave. There I was, but here—wherever here is—I’ll stay until the day I die.

The nightmare ended almost as suddenly as it started, and I soon heard the rasping of the zipper, and felt Holly’s broad, strong toes clench me from top to bottom, and lift me up out of the depths of her knee-high boots. She dropped me onto the cold stone floor of a cold chamber, somewhat like the inside of a mailroom. The walls were built squarely of cinder blocks, and a few naked light bulbs dangled precariously from the ceiling.

When my eyes had adjusted to the bright glare of this new place, a surprise greeted me. The room was windowless and a long countertop, about four and a half feet from the floor, pressed up against  the walls. On the counter, and over the many shelves bolted into the wall-blocks, I saw boxes and cages. Nearly all of them were filled with tiny men and, here and there among the men, the occasional shrunken woman.

At the desk in the back of the room, two office ladies sat with their heads bent over papers, their hands busily typing into a computer. A low hum kept up in the background, as though from some invisible machine. Three other ladies, dressed in office attire, worked silently and efficiently in the background: the first licked stamps, the second sealed the boxes, and the last dropped the full cartons, one after another, past a little opening in the wall with a rubber flap at the entrance. They slipped noiselessly through the hatch and disappeared down the chute to some deeper level of the building.

Then I looked up, and saw her. Two colossal feet stood in front of me, encased in a sleek pair of closed-toe black pumps, so deep, dark, and finely-polished that looking into them was like looking into another room, into another world. The shoes led up, past the immense, womanly legs, in black stockings, to a long, black, executive pencil skirt, to a white blouse, to the fine, delicate features of Pearl’s face. She looked surprised to see Holly.

Holly was behind, putting her boots back on. “Change of plans," she said. "We’ll do it now.”
“Oh,” said Pearl. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“That’s him? Martin, I think you said?”
“That’s right. Go ahead.” A huge shadow loomed over me from above, and one of Pearl’s lean, delicate hands descended and scooped me up like a doll. As she held me up to her face, her eyes, luminous and depthless blue eyes, seemed to sound me to the bottom and then some. I didn’t know eyes could be that deep. After a couple seconds, she looked at Holly, apparently satisfied, and dropped me into one of the front pockets of her skirt. Some exchange was made, the details of which were muffled to me, and I heard the heavy tread of Holly’s boots begin to recede into the background. Pearl swept back into some corner of the room, and my eyes began to adjust to the darkness of her pocket. I wasn’t alone. First, a complex smell—sharp, leathery, and feminine—reached my nostrils: Holly’s smell. Then, a voice a few feet off to my right. 

“Martin?” It was Meredith.
“Yeah.”
She moved closer to me, in the darkness. The pocket swayed back and forth, in rhythm with Pearl’s footsteps. “I’m happy you’re here.”
“What do you mean?”
She took my hand in hers, and leaned her back against mine for balance. Her breathing was a little labored, and her hands were trembling slightly, from nervousness and exhaustion. “She sold me.”
“Holly?”
“For ten thousand dollars.” Something caught in her voice—betrayal? “A woman up in B---- wanted an experienced slave, female. Pearl told me. That was the ring. That was the whole purpose. I didn’t know until today. Training us up to sell us.” 
“What?”
“It’s true,” she said, coughing a little.
“What about me?”
She sighed, and paused for a moment. After five seconds, I didn’t think she was going to say anything, but then she said, “I don’t know. I’m surprised you’re here.”
Pearl stopped moving. We heard voices chatting outside her pocket, and then, far behind, or above, or below, a huge metal door slammed shut again. Pearl reached into her deep pocket, and pulled Meredith out. Her hand came in a second time, lifted me up, and deposited me on one of the counters.

Far in the distance, another girl, in a green shirt, blue skirt and sneakers, gasping for breath and wildly waving her arms, ran headlong into the room. A very small, reddish-purplish spot colored her right cheek. “Pearl,” she said. “Wait.” It was Adela.

If Pearl was surprised to see Holly, she was dumbstruck to see Adela.
“Wait,” Adela said again.
“For what? How did you get down here?”
“A woman,” she said, stopping to catch her breath, holding her knee with one hand.
“What is it?”
“Him,” she said, pointing to me. “I have the money. I want him back.”
“Impossible.” Pearl nodded to a woman behind her. “He’s already bought. By one Chloe Winters of B----.” 
“For how much?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“I’ll pay five thousand more. That’s all I have.”
“No. This isn’t a bargain-table. I have a name to keep, and Ms. Winters is one of our biggest clients in the city.” She nodded to a girl behind her. “Get her out of here.” 
“Then I’ll go to B----.” 
“Where’s your mother?”
Adela was silent.
“You shouldn’t even be down here. Take her to her mother, upstairs.” A slim, secretarial type took Adela by the elbow, and tried to draw her back toward the stairwell.
“Wait,” said Adela. “Please. I have one more thing to say.” She shook off the girl, who stood by with arms akimbo, and a slightly piqued expression. 
“Hurry up,” said Pearl, who sounded preoccupied. She whispered to some of the other girls, and had her back turned to Adela.
“I’ll sell myself,” she said.
This got Pearl’s attention, though she only craned her head a few degrees toward Adela, and still didn’t condescend to look at her. “You’ll what?”
“I’ll sell myself. For twenty-five thousand.”
As she seemed to consider this proposal, Pearl’s turned her gaze back to the stairwell, as though Holly might come at any moment. “Your mother wouldn’t consent, clearly.”
“My mother is gone.”
“I don’t wish to intrude.” She lifted her chin to the girl standing by Adela, and told her not to put her name down on the sheet. “Your name will not be recorded. This was done without my explicit consent, without even my knowledge. But I’ll tell Ms. Winters. That is, if you’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Until he’s free.”
“She has Meredith for life. In his case, the specifics have still to be sorted out, but the minimum term for a slave, of his price, is one year.”
“Then one year.”

Meredith gripped my hand tightly, as one of the girls deposited us in a box (I didn’t know at the time that Adela was to be transported by the same vehicle). What happened during the next two hours was somewhat of a blur, even compared to the events just described. Holly had told me (but I had no way of verifying) that Adela wasn’t capable of shrinking or enlarging herself—and yet she had chosen to follow me and Meredith into this strange and frightening new world. She had chosen us even over her own mother. If I had ever had any doubts about her true feelings, I was absolutely certain then.

And, shortly afterwards, I was more certain than ever. One hour outside the city, the box burst open, and the starlight glimmered through the aluminum roof of the car. Once again, I found myself looking up into Adela’s eyes. As Meredith gasped, somewhere behind me, I thought I could see a faint, roguish smile cross her lips: a smile that seemed to extinguish not only my fear, but the whole confused and ill-matched bundle of all my feelings together. 

“Where to?” she asked, ten minutes later, as we—in this tiny subcompact it was only Meredith, Adela, and I—drove northwest along the highway. Meredith, once again her full height, sat in the passenger seat, and I, still shrunken, sat in her hand. Her normally rosy, healthy looking face was now lean and almost cadaverous: her cheeks were hollow, and her eyes were bright and deep-set behind her dark-red hair, still matted with Holly’s sweat. She looked out the window, and watched the landscape pass. I hadn’t known her for long, but something strange in her expression told me that Holly was on her mind. This made me nervous.

Adela guessed that we had about a ten hour start before anyone would know we were missing. And once they knew, they’d surely pursue us: Adela was Holly’s dependent, and Meredith and I were basically stolen property. So if anyone found us, we’d be sunk in pretty deep caca. And still, I thought (correctly, as it turned out), at that moment Holly might be asking around for Adela. She would stop at the upriver mansion that night, with her box from home. But who knew what could happen by morning?