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            “Jack? Honey?”

            Your mother’s words echo so distantly in your skull she might as well be a continent away. In the vaguest sense, you’re aware of the feeling of her fingers pressed into your legs, cradling you in her palm as you tip over the edge toward the bedspread not so far below.

            Is that what you’re reaching for? Earth, ground? The safety of the world below that you can actually recognize?

            Your lips part, exhaling a warm puff, and dragging your mouth against the desiccant hill of flesh that constitutes the ball of your mother’s foot.  It’s at this particular moment you realize that, in the traumatic flash toward a lost future, your subconscious took hold as it so often does, puppeteering the invisible strings hooked to your back muscles and dragging you over the edge of her hand and closer to the slender, plump-toed feet that have crossed into your vicinity as Leah Arton did her best to break down the emotional barrier still, evidently, caked over your brain.

            “Jack. Jack, please, sweetie, talk to me?”

            “Mmm…” Words feel impossible to shape in your throat as your tongue rolls out over your teeth and flicks at the landscape of tanned femininity, inviting that flavorful combination of sun-weathered skin, stale lotion, and floor lint into your cheeks. Like a distillation of Carly’s own flavors that your taste buds have become so versed in over the years, but matured like a fine wine. A tingle rushes through your digestive tract: the sensory shiver of one who hasn’t eaten in a long time. Subtly, a rumble emanates from inside your stomach, vibrating your thin torso and probably your parent’s hand as well. If your mother’s ped happened to be adorned with even a shred of toejam or grit, your jaws would’ve already lapped it up by default.

            “Jack?”

            The voice quavers every time it repeats the syllable of your name with increasingly indistinguishability, filled with salty remorse and befuddlement as she simply tries to keep you from tumbling out of her hand in your semi-drunken haze. You feel her thumb sliding under your knees and pinning into your tiny hips, trying to ease you deeper into the plush plain of her palm and protect you from yourself, but your every constricting muscle forbids it, tensing tighter at her touch. So, you feel her retract just as quickly, Leah’s thumb brushing back along your pants and resting at your ankles for safety.

            For several more minutes of numbed silence, your top half drapes over the curved ridge of your mother’s titanic hand, your cheek rested against the supportive surface of her foot. She shifts it steadily, hoping to prop you higher up in her hand without disturbing you, only serving to sidle a longer portion of her wrinkled instep along your face.

            Hungrily, your tongue lulls back out of your mouth, savoring the tour of this massive object your spirit still firmly believes to belong to a futuristic Carly, even as you linger tentatively back at the entrance to the present moment. It’s savory, a little spicy, and most of all, comforting. Your subconscious won’t let you make the return to your mother’s palms just yet. Not until you’ve recharged.

            Your miniscule taste buds ride the curvaceous waves of the paled sole, monumental and bulbous as an incoming tide formed of human flesh. Every wrinkle reveals a new shade of the flavors and textures, creamier in the deeper ridges of each but firmer and weathered where she walks the most often.

            God, it’s been so long. Where even are you anymore, and in the scheme of the universe, does the answer have even an iota of impact?

            Eventually you feel your whole body squeezed into the buoyant terrain of Leah’s foot, having finally tossed yourself over the curved edge of your parent’s defensive hands. Away from those fingers restricting your access to your rightful location in the world, beyond the need to question issues of superiority and humanity, and basking in a moment where you’re safe in a big dangerous planet, plastered on the sole of a goddess, with the tang of her foot flesh coating your throat.

            On either side, you spot the expansive width of her palms flanking you, cupped in case you slide off. Though it’s totally unnecessary. Your every bone is dedicated to keeping you centered atop this altar of female flesh and blood.

            “T-This… this is what h-happened to you, isn’t it? All… all those years…” By now she’s as paralyzed by shock as you, or perhaps just terrified of snapping your mind too violently from a waking daymare and wounding what remains of your fractured reality. “This is what she did to you, isn’t it? What she m-made...”

            Your only response is to continue slurping, sinking deeper into a self-constructed void as you spread your thinning saliva to every sole wrinkle you can stretch toward. Given enough time, you’d cover them all a hundred times over and then do it again.

            “Oh, my poor, poor baby,” your mother cries from on high as she watches her last remaining child debase himself on her naked foot. Her tears splash against your back, going completely unnoticed. “What did she do to you?”

 

            “Your mother told me what happened,” Dr. Felton reports from above, having waited as long as she could from a professional standpoint for you to pipe up from your pillow perch. She seems to be catching on that you’re not in much of a talking mood today.

            Who could blame you?

            “Oh.” It takes a lot to muster that syllable without your stomach folding into itself in mortal humiliation. You only agreed to come to today’s session after your mother expended all the tears in her body begging you to talk to the doctor about the zombified regression you experienced the day before. Still, it’s tough to recline on this pillow atop the woman’s desk, where she can observe you in your shameful entirety with the knowledge that you drunkenly slobbered across your parent’s giant bare foot.

            At this point, you’d be content divulging that, immediately prior to your outburst, you dragged one of Carly’s old socks out of the closet and jammed your nose into the hot pink fibers in the hopes of dredging up a sensory museum of your sister’s sweat. Just about anything would be less embarrassing to cover, come to think of it.

            “I understand why you wouldn’t want to talk about it, Jack,” the doctor offers gently. “But in a way, I’m glad this happened. I know that must sound confusing. But there is a reason. I promise you.”

            You perceive the soft tap-tapping of her fingers alighting on the edge of the desk, still well-distanced from your pillow. Concentrating, you can feel the subtle change in the air temperature as her lukewarm exhalations sift down over you. Like always, it’s relaxing, but you doubt it’ll be enough to help you this time.

            “Mhm,” you grunt.

            “Just try your best to answer, Jack, even if it’s difficult, and I’ll show you why you could use this occasion to your advantage. When it happened… before… you were telling your mother about some of what you experienced with Carly, yes?”

            “Yeah.”

            “And while you were telling her, you started to go through what you have when we try our visualizations, yes? A feeling of false reality, invading?”

            “Yes.”

            “I see. I believe, then, that being in a physical situation that allowed for you to act on those visualizations prompted you to do so. I know that’s frightening, but you’ve been through a lot, and it only means your body is doing whatever it can to survive, while your mind does the heavy lifting. Which means we just have to retrain your mind to allow you to sit in the driver’s seat, and you’ll be on your way. Does that make sense?”

            “Y-Yeah.” You wish with all your heart you could believe that.

            “Then I want you to try something new for me, Jack. I’d like to help you enter another visualization, like some of the others we have before. Confronting Carly.”

            “Oh.”

            “Just hear me out, Jack, please,” Dr. Felton wheedles. You can hear the click of her glasses being adjusted on the bridge of her nose. “Before, we’ve concentrated on trying to build up your courage in imagining her. To show you that you don’t have to be afraid. But now, I think the most important thing is to prove to you that you can not only stand against her, but resist, physically. By doing that, you’ll take back everything. You’ll… take back yourself. Does that make sense?”

            “S-Sort of.”

            “I know it’s a lot to take in. All you have to do right now is decide if you’re ready to try. Face Carly. Tell her you don’t belong to anyone, you belong to yourself, and show her that you’re strong enough to fight back against anything she can throw at you. You know all of that’s true now, don’t you?”

            “Yes,” you lie, at last allowing yourself a brief glance up at the mountainous doctor as she spouts so many things you can’t help but doubt with every microbe of your being.

            “Good,” Dr. Felton beams, clasping her long fingers together as though saying a prayer. “Now, lie all the way back, close your eyes, drown out everything else around you, and focus on only my voice…”

 

            Even more speedily than normal, the wispy shards of your reality in the psychologist’s office are traded out brick by vision-sifting brick for darkness, and then the stark opposite: a blank, rippling canvas of a sky, shaded at jagged intervals like ocean waves stained a deeply blinding white, and dotted occasionally by cartoonishly designed pink flowers.

            Then you recognize it. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds of looking around to realize you’re under the sheets of your sister’s bed: a location you recognize well after many a night spent taped to Carly’s toes as she slept, the sheets above creating a makeshift night sky as you struggled to find rest in the humid cave of unwashed linens and even more egregiously unwashed basketball flesh.

            Of course, this realization is confirmed beyond the slightest chance for wonderment once you regain control of your senses and note that five wriggling, squirming toes, drenched with salty excrement and caked with soggy sock lint, are currently jammed inside your weakening jaws and dominating your tongue with their muscular grasp. Toes that are, incredibly, the correct size of toes rather than the towering, meaty spires you’ve known them to be for six years, but toes nonetheless that are deposited inside your mouth.

            They can only have one owner; you don’t even need to see a face. You know her by the flavor as you dutifully suck her mealy digits.

            A distinctly normal-sized Carly’s soft heel rests comfortably at the side of your head, her sole embracing your cheek, as she enjoys your pampering services. Her toes flex to touch your molars and spread your filth to your every taste bud. You know she’d happily pinch your uvula between her toes if she could reach it. Following the slender, toned leg up along the bedsheets and beyond your vision in the billowing sheets, it occurs to you that most of your own body rests on the bed as well, returned to its former height of over six feet, but still consigned to the exact same location in life: the end of your sister’s bed, with some part of her foot filling your mouth.

            The visualization went off the rails nearly as soon as you arrived inside it, making Dr. Felton’s guidance all but useless now and marooning you inside your twisted mind, but you do manage to remember some of her tips. It’s now or never.

            Gathering all your strength, you part your lips and wrap your hands around Carly’s royal ped, prying the ball of her foot off your teeth and her curled toes off your tongue, long-ago dried of saliva after spending so much in service to her skin. It takes some effort, as you feel your sister’s powerful calves pulsing and resisting against your rebellion almost immediately, but you manage to thrust your sister’s foot out of your mouth.

            Was that all there was to it?

            It surely can’t be that easy.

            Wait, how do you wake yourself up again?

            A flash of sunlight through the window meets your dilated pupils as the sheet is flung off your concealed body, revealing all your well-informed suspicions were correct as you huddle at the end of your sister’s bed like a lapdog while she reclines on the pillows at the opposite end, a complimentary yellow sundress hugging her athletically-sculpted form. It’s certainly not an outfit you’re used to seeing her in, given her affinity for more casual wear, but you’re not going to start questioning the setting when, more importantly, your sister is wearing a noticeable quantity of liquid fury in those crystal blue eyes of hers, glazed over with just enough passion to let you know she’s enjoying it too.

            “Well, little bro, what have you got to say for yourself?” she demands instantly, crossing her arms over her chest, and flipping her dirty-golden locks to one shoulder. Before you can even begin crafting an explanation, a pale left sole, wrinkled and bursting with sprinting muscle, clasps down over your neck, impeding your airflow and most of your capacity to speak.

            “Uh… guh…” you gasp, letting your arms fall to your sides meekly at Carly’s other foot hovers menacingly over your face, letting the sunlight flicker between her dancing toes. Frankly, you’d probably prefer having her sole flesh hugging the curves of your head again rather than continue to drink in the disappointment in her face. Guilt hits you immediately and with unforgiving vengeance.

            “I don’t mean literally talk, not yet anyway,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes, but a smirk quickly creeps back over her lips. “I’m sure it’s hard to keep track of time down there, with that cute little head of yours getting mushed up, but I told you you’d be sucking my foot for two hours, not one and a half. And last time I checked, one and a half is not the same as two. Is it, little bro? You can talk now.”

            “No it’s not,” you report.

            “Good boy,” she simpers, patting your lips with her heel, then swiping her big toe along the tip of your nose, granting you another fleeting whiff of their pungently sweaty zeal. The tickling sensation almost unhinges your spine. “Now, I’ll forgive you this one time, cuz you’re my favorite brother in the whole wide world.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “And who’s your favorite sister?”

            “You.”

            “You got that straight, cutie,” she says with a wink, drawing her fingers through the cascading yellowish locks as she tilts her head to the side. She releases a sigh and begins to massage her sole along your Adam’s apple. “I get why you went against me. I expect a lot out of you, after all. But you have to remember, little bro, we had a deal. Didn’t we. You remember the deal, don’t you?”

            “Uh…”

            “Let me refresh your memory, then” she says, politely steepling her fingers in her lap. “I promise to take care of you, for the rest of your life, feeding you, protecting you, loving you… giving you a reason to get up in the morning. And all you have to do is listen to every word I say and devote every breath you take to licking my feet. Now, I think that’s a pretty good bargain, don’t you?”

            “No.”

            The word is a surprise for both of you. You can almost perceive the false bedroom walls shivering at this break in the norm.

            “What did you say?” she chuckles.

            “I said it’s not a good deal. And I’m done being under you, I’m done being… yours. I was never… yours. I’m mine.” With that, you grab hold of your sister’s bare feet once again, shoving them away from your face and throat with explosive aplomb.

            This act of defiance turns out to be much simpler than you expected, as your sibling is currently weakened by throes of uncontrollable laughter: belly cackles so deep that tears are already streaming down her face while you wait patiently, still curled up at the foot of her bed, clinging desperately to some invented shred of dignity.

            “Oh, that’s so cute, Jackie-poo, it really is. I love that you decided to come up with some jokes to entertain me,” she coos, her head sinking back into a purple pillow for support. “That’s a good new job for you. Whenever my foot isn’t in your mouth, I want you telling me funny, cute things like that. Which, I know isn’t a ton of the time, but-”

            “It’s not a joke,” you fire back, finding the improbable ability to rise to your haunches, actually putting you at eye level with this mad goddess of a twenty-year-old. It’s a tad sobering for a moment, but you stand your ground, even sidling off the bed in the process. Carly, meanwhile, remains relaxed as she melts deeper into the sheets, observing you with serene amusement.

            “Why’s that?”

            “Don’t you see?” you utter, hardly believing it yourself. “I’m… beating you right now. I CAN say no to you. It’s possible. I see that now. I’ve… already won.”

            “Oh, sure you said no in a dream, little bro,” Carly mocks loudly. Her booming, sugary voice floods your eardrums. “Try it in real life and you’ll bend like a little piece of gum. And fit right back inside my mouth. Like always.”

            The walls of the bedroom vibrate again, more violently this time as the bitter truth strikes at your soul. Any distinguishing features of your sister’s nightmarishly girly personal space has faded away, until the walls are stretching outward, brightening and shading as though the entire room has been covered in her flower sheets again. As if you never made it off her bed in the first place. As if you still have her foot blocking your voice and stamping out your will.

            “I know you’re not afraid to try and fight back, Jackie-poo. That’s how you escaped in the first place. But that doesn’t mean a thing. Not when you’d come back to me in a second if you had the chance.” Your sister’s voice echoes louder and louder, reverberating and filling in with the same tenacious force it always had when you were her three-inch pet and she was your Everything.

            You can’t even be sure she’s the same size as you any longer. Every time you blink, the space seems to bend between an average bed and a monumental throne serving its behemoth of a blonde so huge that she could now bury you under a single greasy toeprint. Some fragmented part of you even wishes she would.

            “That’s not true!” you spit, turning on your heels and marching away toward the distant doorway as fast as possible to close the distance.

            “Just come back whenever you decide to remember that you don’t even exist unless you’re under me, where you belong, little bro,” Carly sings out sweetly, so potently she might as well have her lips pressed to your ear, her tongue flicking at your skin. “No matter how far you wander, no matter how many people lie to you about the truth to turn you against me, there will always be a place for you in my shoes.”

            Meanwhile your own footwear, leaden and painful with every new step, finally deliver you to the bedroom door, which you crank open by the brass handle with far more force than should be necessary. Gasping for air in the suffocating counterpoint of your subconscious, you step out of the visualization, your old doubts now replaced with new ones.

            “After all…” your sister giggles after you, pointing her foot to the ceiling like a ballerina, flexing her shapely limb and letting the sunlight fill in the milky wrinkles of her divine sole. “…SOMEBODY’S gotta suck these toes for me!”

 

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