Wherever Sheila regained consciousness, the floor was hard, and flat, and ice cold. There was no light, and she had to blink to make sure her eyelids were actually open. With a panicked gasp, Sheila was suddenly wide awake. She sat up on her frosty, mysterious perch and stared, sightless, at the opaque gloom that surrounded her.
Then a monstrous headache drove itself like a spear through the woman's brain. She let out a small wail as horrible details flooded back in on her all at once, images to go with her pain: Lakshmi, a powerful giant, and the crushing weight of her rough, fragrant sole -- Sheila's pains and aches suddenly made terrible sense. Lakshmi must have kept her foot on top of her until she knocked her out.
Realization settled on Sheila, one that dried out her mouth, and chilled her skin. A thought -- she could have killed me -- rattled around Sheila's mind as all the terror those five little words inspired slowly dawned on her. Like a laser striking a prism, the beam multiplied and branched out in countless different paths: Was Lakshmi trying to kill her? Would the giant have cared if she did? If she was willing to go that far...
It was an unconscious movement: as she sat in the dark, limbs pulled in, Sheila's hand drifted by her neck while the woman was lost in thought. Her fingertips brushed up against something. A foreign object. Something around her neck that was not there before. A collar. Sheila's searching fingers found hard leather all the way around, with a large metal clasp on the back.
Sheila gripped the clasp around its edges and tugged at it. She yanked it as hard as she could. The mechanism wouldn't budge, and the leather twisted against her throat. Sheila croaked in despair, choking her own cry as she flopped against the hard ground and fought with the restraint around her neck. Her eyes bulged at the effort, and her tongue felt dry, and both hurt. A hot line trickled down the back of her neck where the clasp bit into her flesh as she strained against her collar.
Then Sheila gave up and lied flat, limbs askew, like a doll thrown and left there. As her breathing slowed, her eyes adjusted to the darkness and started picking out new details.
Bars. And a low ceiling. Sheila was in a cage. Collared, and in a cage.
The woman hugged herself as she sobbed. She watched more of the room reveal itself, shapes becoming objects she knew -- a small bed, drawers, a plastic-looking laptop computer -- though everything was disturbingly large. It was a cavernous bedroom. The cage that imprisoned her must have been on top of a dresser for how high up she was. Despite the space's size to her, the bedroom was smaller than any Sheila had ever called her own -- even as a child. It was a tiny room, and messy, too: there were clothes piled in the corners, and discarded shoes, and mounds of paper heaped here and there amongst the rest of the clutter -- books, boxes, socks and underwear, bedding, household odds and ends.
Sheila found her mind drifting to Lakshmi. Was this her room? Was this how she lived? Sheila had no idea. The woman kept her quarters in the room behind the garage of Sheila's house tidy and spartan. Or, Sheila thought: maybe it wasn't her house anymore.
The tiny woman pulled herself from the floor. She wrapped her arms around her bent legs and pulled them closer. Lakshmi always liked playing rougher than Sheila wanted her to. Sheila's fantasy was to serve and pamper the woman: washing her feet, giving her foot rubs and massages -- even kissing Lakshmi's soles, after they were cleaned. She most enjoyed a teasing and light tone. Typically Lakshmi would read a magazine or talk on the phone through it all, her expression flat and uninterested. But Sheila had paid her, and sometimes the woman would even tease her a bit, which Sheila had loved.
For hours Sheila was left in the small cage: a tiny figure huddled and shivering. A few times she got up to walk around and stretch her legs, and to inspect the thinly spaced bars that contained her; she couldn't squeeze through them, or bend the metal. The clasp on the door, too, was a simple pinch-lock -- but Sheila's little arms couldn't force the knobs together. After a while she gave up and simply lied in the center of the cage, shivering on the cool ground until her body heat warmed the spot up for her. She almost fell asleep.
The sound of talking alerted Sheila's dulled senses. Then the door across the room opened. Her heart raced painfully in her chest; her breath caught as the lights snapped on. Even through the over-illuminated haze Sheila made out the distinct, massive form of Lakshmi entering the space. Lakshmi's cruel visage took shape as Sheila's former maid walked right right up to the cage and loomed over her new toy.
Sheila scrambled backward, as if she could escape Lakshmi. She crashed into the bars behind her. Even then, fear seized control of her body and she tried to squeeze between the metal rods, knowing she couldn't. Lakshmi chuckled and effortlessly pinched the clasp of the lock open between her finger and thumb.
Lakshmi's huge brown hand reached for Sheila; the woman's thick fingers crashed all around her. Sheila was positively waifish at only a couple of inches tall, and was easily swallowed up and captured, pressed against the warm flesh of Lakshmi's palm that was musty from the titan's sweating.
Sheila's stomach dropped into her guts and swam around as she was pulled from the cage, encased within Lakshmi's fist. She had no way of telling which direction was up as her body struggled for equilibrium. Then Sheila settled on her back, and Lakshmi's curled fingers rose, and light spilled in around the woman atop the undulating, living pedestal of Lakshmi's palm, held right before her colossal, malicious countenance.
Lakshmi had a face like a crow; long sharp nose, dark sparkling eyes, thin pursed lips, big round cheekbones and gaunt cheeks and small chin. Her russet brown skin was a little lighter than her thick black locks, which were pulled back into a tight bun. She was fierce and beautiful. Especially at her size. Sheila felt pathetic by comparison. Lakshmi was big and powerful, and Sheila was nothing, held before her. She was a sliver -- as white as the belly of a fish -- sitting in the center of Lakshmi's rosy tan palm.
The giant grinned, showing her teeth; then Lakshmi's jaw came apart as she laughed, loudly, right over Sheila's nude, collared form. Lakshmi's hot breath was all over her, pungent and stale. Sheila held her arms up and screamed as Lakshmi used her fingers of her other hand to pinch her; and then the tiny toy was traveling down the length of the giant's form: she was dressed in her usual work attire, with a simple shirt and slacks, and her flats.
"Want me to knock you out again, bitch?"
Lakshmi kicked off her thin, tattered flats. They clattered around Sheila, who cried out and hunkered down, hoping the hard sole of one of the shoes wouldn't swat her dead like a fly. She glanced skyward when she heard Lakshmi chuckling, only to watch the underside of the woman's dirty toes appear directly overhead -- it was dizzying, how fast Lakshmi could move. The toes crashed onto her and forced her against the dusty hardwood floor of the bedroom.
"Maybe you won't wake up this time."
Sheila fought against Lakshmi's grasping, harassing toes. They were slick with sweat, and a tangy odor wafted over Sheila every time Lakshmi spread her digits; between them, Sheila saw how clumps of grime gathered in their deepest nooks, and flecks of dirt and specks of lint dotted the giant woman's brown flesh.
The tiny woman lost the fight. Lakshmi's overpowering toes pressed her flat, and Sheila was treated to one last glimpse of her grinning tormentor, high above, from between Lakshmi's big toe and the next. Then the flesh of Lakshmi's sole slid over her, molding to her shape. The plush mass of the ball of the giant foot returned Sheila to a familiar position: suffocating to a sour stink, buried under a smothering blanket of skin.
Sheila almost blacked out. She had no concept of how long Lakshmi's foot stayed on top of her, but, suddenly, she was awake and alert as the giant reached down for her. The tiny woman's shriek had no wind to it; her lungs were tired, her throat raw. The world spun around in a mash of blurry colors as Lakshmi's bulk shuffled toward her colossal bed. Sheila almost puked from how fast Lakshmi's hand moved: all at once the woman's sole -- her foot resting on her knee at the ankle -- was waiting for Sheila to be pressed against it.
"You're pathetic," Lakshmi loudly growled.
Sheila was forced into the soft, hot expanse of Lakshmi's sole. To the tiny woman it was a moving wall of flesh, alive. Lakshmi's finger and thumb pinched her tightly about the waist, meanwhile her forefinger stayed behind Sheila's head, keeping her face pressed against the fragrant skin. The sweat from Lakshmi's foot clogged Sheila's nose and got in her mouth, warm and salty -- it was difficult to scream, let alone breath. She could feel the stuff all over her body, making her sticky and damp, and matting her hair. Sheila was dragged through something thicker, like gunk, as Lakshmi swiped her across a streak of dirt and pushed the tiny blond's head between her long, bony toes.
"Little white cunt. Look how dirty you are. You're too pale. I can see it all over you, you filthy bug!"
For the giant, Sheila's little ball-like head was the perfect fit, slotting into the nook deepest between her toes. For Sheila, it was almost worse than being smothered underneath Lakshmi's sole. Her body was spared the crushing weight, but Sheila's face was pushed completely into a suffocating mask of soft webbing, and the odors there were far more potent. Combined with whatever the wet sludge was that her face was buried in, it was as if she'd been dunked into a tub full of pungent, soft cheese.
Lakshmi's huge fingertip gave Sheila's itty-bitty skull one last press before leaving her, and then the giant's toes curled possessively, so her captive had no chance to unwedge her head. Lakshmi's distant chuckle was muffled by the pulsating structure of flesh and meat and blood and bones surrounding Sheila in all directions. It was harder and harder to breathe -- she had to fight for every lungful of Lakshmi's sharp sour stink -- and Sheila wiggled fiercely, and beat against Lakshmi's rough sole with her fists and legs. The giant only laughed more.
"You're so white. White like one of my rags."
Once more Sheila found herself scrubbed along the rough sole, now more deliberately. She was scraped over the dry, tough spots of Lakshmi's overworked skin, and Sheila's body was cut by torn ridges of flesh that had dried and become sharp. Lakshmi's heel, especially, was coarse as sandpaper and grated Sheila's sensitive, manicured form.
"Lakshmi, please don't-"
Lakshmi's looming visage soured like the sky before a storm. "Shut up, you insect. You pathetic little grub. Never speak up to me again. If you do," Sheila was repositioned by Lakshmi's long, knobby toes, which wiggled against her -- the tiny blond struggled against the flurry of blows; Lakshmi's toes beat her hard enough to bruise, "I'll break that ugly little face of yours. I'll smash it flat! You'll look like a pink little pig with a smashed nose, I bet."
Sheila expended all her effort to shield herself from the attention of Lakshmi's sour toes, but the impacts were too great. When Sheila was pulled from the underside of the giant foot and back toward the woman's face, she was limp between the fingertips that pinched her. Blood trickled from her nose, and the corner of her lips. Her eyes were wet and pleading, which caused Lakshmi to sneer with glee.
"You will do everything I say, or I will crush you. You are a worthless, disgusting, pale grub. A termite. Never talk unless spoken to. And you never say anything other than, 'Yes, Goddess Lakshmi!'"
Lakshmi's eyes narrowed and her thumb and fingertips put a dangerous amount of pressure on Sheila's hips.
Sheila's throat was as dry as a desert. "Yes, Goddess Lakshmi!" She croaked.
Lakshmi threw back her head and laughed; Sheila nearly threw up -- her mind bobbed on the verge of a blackout. She moaned as she was lowered. Sheila knew with dreadful certainty that she was heading back towards Lakshmi's foot; she was pressed against it, held fast to the plane of wrinkled flesh by the giant's thick fingers.
"Now," Lakshmi's powerful voice rumbled, "Lick!"
Sheila dragged her tongue against the wrinkled flesh of Lakshmi's sole; the flavor of it was hard to take, as if she'd just popped a too-sour, salty candy into her mouth. The giant woman's flesh had a gritty texture to it -- nothing like Sheila's own soft, precious feet.
"You are small because you are weak. You are white and American. Weak! Lazy! Stupid!" Lakshmi chuckled with relish. "I am a goddess compared to you!"
Lakshmi pushed Sheila's head back between her toes. "Lick!"
And Sheila did, eating the gunk between the giant's digits. The sludge was thick and bitter in her mouth, and she struggled to choke it down. She had to work each mouthful into a tighter ball with her tongue, first, and wet it with as much saliva as she could, or else it jammed in her throat.
Lakshmi guffawed the night away, guiding Sheila around every part of her feet, and making her eat all the dirt between her toes. When she was finally returned to her cage in the dead of the morning, Sheila was quick to fall asleep. She woke up several times, throwing up the filth in her stomach.
Each time, after emptying herself best she could, Sheila lied back and surrendered to the escape of her dreams, desperately hoping she could stay inside their false realities.
###
Sheila moaned; she stirred. Her body ached from having slept on the smooth, hard plane of the cage floor, which was warm and wet from her body heat and sweat. Her nose, too, stung sharply from how Lakshmi had smashed it with her toes. Blubbering, Sheila felt the shape of it with her fingertips, her mind unsure whether this bump, or that dent, was there before. And then she realized that she wasn't the only one moaning and sobbing.
She shared her space with two young women. Sheila wiped her dripping eyes. Her daughters, Lyla and Julie, were naked and collared and huddling together, shaking. They stared back, mirroring her uncertainty -- then all three broke into tears at once, crawling toward the center of the cage and embracing.
Sheila wailed. "My girls!"
A flood of sudden relief overcame the mother as she wrapped her arms around her two daughters and pressed their nakedness to her own. It was a tight huddle, and they locked their limbs together. Lyla, the eldest -- soon to leave for university -- was taking it a bit better than Julie. The youngest of the three couldn't stop herself from shaking all over, like a dog back home after being lost in the rain.
Sheila sat back, with one hand on Lyla's shoulder and the other on Julie's, and looked between their scared eyes. Blue, like their mother's. She almost started crying again. "What happened? How did you get here? Oh, god, we've got to get out of here. Please tell me one of you has a cellphone, or -- no of course you wouldn't -- wait! Was anyone expecting you anywhere? What day is it exactly? Someone will have to come looking for us. They must. Please, please tell me one of you had a sleepover, or a party, or something this weekend!"
It was only then that Sheila realized how her daughters stared at her. With fear and consternation; wanting both to help her, but struggling to recognize their mother. Sheila couldn't stop babbling. She tried to tell them of the horrors she'd already suffered as Lakshmi's toy -- tried to impress upon them just how dire it was that they gather their wits about them, and quickly.
Lyla swallowed, and spoke first. "Mom, I-"
They all felt the rhythmic build: steady pounding that shook the hard metal floor, which drilled pain into the bones in their knees. Sheila looked toward the door to the bedroom just as it opened, and was blinded by the burst of illumination that spilled in from the hallway. "No no no no!" The girls screamed as the lights overhead snapped on, and the distant giant was all at once larger and looming over the cage after a few powerful strides. Lakshmi's features above them appeared angry, but her eyes sparkled.
The whole front wall of the cage opened with a terrible screech as Lakshmi pinched the door's clasp. Sheila didn't know what she was planning even as she rushed forward and screamed with all of her might: "La-" she caught herself, "Goddess Lakshmi! This is too far. Take me! Do whatever you want to me! But leave them!"
Lakshmi grinned down from high above. Sheila didn't notice how the giant brought her hand around until it was too late, and her coiled, trunk-like finger was already flicking outward. The glinting nail caught Sheila's cheek, the edge of it slicing the tiny woman's flesh open, and the flat of it smashed against her skull and sent her tumbling backward. Sheila let out a wild wail of pain as she bowled into the opposite end of the cage.
Her girls called out warnings as a cool gloom overtook Sheila -- fearfully she glanced up to see how Lakshmi's hand had followed her, finger cocked once more. With a quick scrape of flesh the pillar of an appendage swung through the air like a pendulum. Sheila only just managed to get out of its way, displaced air whipping at her with a whump. Lakshmi laughed. The finger retreated, and just as quickly struck out again, this time catching the tiny matron right in the leg.
Sheila screamed; the hot hurt reached all the way to her bone. Her leg didn't move as well after the hit, and she found it hard to escape Lakshmi's whipping finger then. It bashed her right in the stomach, and slapped her breasts, and smacked the fat of her thigh so hard she bruised instantly, her whole side turning jaundiced violet. The rest of her pale flesh was molting into yellows and purple and blues, or bleeding red. Curling up and crying, hoping for mercy, only made it worse: Lakshmi's finger knocked her helpless slave into the bars of the cage as if she was a hockey puck. Sheila fell to the floor in a heap.
Julie sobbed into Lyla's chest as her older sister held her; Lyla, too, was horrified at the sight of her mother's brutally beaten body lying almost still. When the young woman glanced up at Lakshmi, she was chilled by the sight of the giant glaring down at her. The angry visage was still there, but that gleeful glitter was gone: her captor's eyes were full of contempt.
"Come here. Now!"
Lyla's terrified eyes dropped down and took in Lakshmi's waiting hand, as large as a tennis court. At first she clutched Julie tighter, but her brain kicked in: "Come on, Julie. We have to do as she says!"
Julie's face was full of horrified disbelief and she whined, "What? Are you nuts?"
Lyla dragged her younger sister to her feet, and nearly chucked her onto Lakshmi's giant, waiting fingers. Then she moved quickly to help her mother up; the woman held her sliced-open cheek with one hand, and blood trickled between her fingers and down her arm. She cried out as Lyla grabbed her and pulled her, too, toward Lakshmi's grasp. Lyla couldn't keep herself from staring up at the giant once more out of instinctive fear as she hauled her mother forth. She was surprised and ashamed to find satisfaction written on the giant's features, but they quickly hardened when Lakshmi noticed Lyla gazing up at her.
"Hurry up, bug girl!"
Sheila wailed as Lyla forced her ever forward. Reluctantly the mother scrambled -- and Lyla pushed her -- up onto the dry, wrinkled flesh of Lakshmi's fingers. The appendages curled, and all three women screamed as they fell, rolling, tumbling painfully over one another as they spilled onto Lakshmi's palm. All at once the world whirled around them; they were hoisted up into the air so fast their stomachs fell into their guts. The giant's distant face peeked in at them overtop her pillar-like fingers as she moved quickly through the house. There was a small smile on her face. Far below, the giant's bare soles slapped hardwood.
Two other faces suddenly came into view through the curled trunks of Lakshmi's fingers. Both women, one old and one younger, were as richly brown as Lakshmi, and shared her angular features. Lyla thought she recognized the girl, who looked to be around Julie's age, but she couldn't put a name to the face. She was positive she'd seen her around school: something like hope surged inside Lyla upon seeing the youngest of the giants, whose countenance seemed more innocent in its excitement.
In the older woman's face, Lyla saw no mercy. The wizened visage was as stoic as a stone carving, with beady eyes set under wisps of eyebrows, and a perpetual frown. Her white hair was pulled back under a red-and-gold shawl. Where Lakshmi's hatred burned white hot, this eldest giant's contempt was pure frost -- all the color in her irises having faded to a steely gray over time.
"I am your goddess, Fatima," the dowager croaked in a voice that was soft but firm.
"And I'm Goddess Anala," the giant daughter announced, loud and proud, her face suddenly serious. In her eyes, Lyla saw that same fire, like Lakshmi -- a greedy flame that robbed her of any warmth.
The platform that held them started to descend, and the giants loomed higher and higher -- Lakshmi's face lowered with her hand, sneering at Lyla and her family the while. Lyla, full of awe and terror, was the only one of them staring back: Julie still sobbed in her arms; Sheila, who lied curled nearby, wore a mask of constant pain. Her head and shoulders were covered with drying blood from the deep slash across her cheek.
The trio of tiny women screamed as Lakshmi simply tilted her palm, unceremoniously dumping them onto the uneven, dirty wooden floor of the apartment. Like a soldier plunked onto a beachhead under heavy fire, Lyla scrambled to get her bearings in a panic, and to check on her mother and sister -- constantly, fearfully aware of the titanic beings who loomed over her.
Sheila wasn't on her feet, or even on her knees -- she was sitting sidelong, like a drunk just trying to hold her sloshing payload in. At least she wasn't curled into a ball, Lyla thought with anger, and then the young woman felt ashamed. She knew she shouldn't be mad at her mother -- the blood spattered all over her parent was a clear sign of how much she'd already endured -- but Lyla needed Sheila then more than ever. Instead, she found herself in the spotlight, a de facto matron. She went and helped her naked, shivering little sister to her feet first, before turning toward her mother.
Sheila wasn't there anymore -- that is, if she was, then she was engulfed by Lakshmi's long, bony toes, each bigger and larger around than any of the tinies, which wiggled on top of something. Lyla gasped and glowered up at the giant, balling her fists.
"Leave her alone! Haven't you gotten your fill already, you monster?"
Lakshmi gazed down; in her eyes was a chilled heat, like a freshly dormant furnace still searing to the touch -- a cooling volcano, post eruption.
"On. Your. Knees!"
Lyla crossed her arms and glared back at Lakshmi.
It was Anala's foot that slapped down, dangerously close in front of the insolent little woman. "Kiss my toes right now, stupid slave!"
"How dare you!" Lyla screamed, shaking a raised fist in the air. "I am not your slave!"
Anala's hands were on her hips and her expression was unimpressed. The tiny pale woman felt even smaller under that giant's brown-eyed gaze. "Then you are a bug."
In one smooth motion towering Anala raised her tan, reddened sole and then brought it down right on top of Lyla with a loud snapping staccato, and a wet, disturbing gurgle -- as if Anala just stepped on a fat, juicy cricket. The big brown foot twisted slowly one way and then the other, crackles popping in the ears of Julie and Sheila. The house-sized mass of flesh lifted away to reveal Lyla, mashed up and in a bad way. Sheila's eldest twitched like a half-smashed insect, crushed into the filth of the hardwood floor.
Sheila, suddenly alert, sat up straight as a board and shrieked. Julie sank down to her knees, the tears flowing over her cheeks and dripping off her chin as she gazed up at the giants, full of fear. All three of the god-like beings watched while wearing grins, but their eyes didn't smile -- their eyes all held the same malevolent spark.
Sheila staggered to her feet. She almost fell right back over. Her body was horribly weak. Only in her most exhausted and wasted moments -- in severe illness, or childbirth -- had any experience ever come close. Sheila's brain felt like it was lost in fog, and just taking a step forward was a real effort.
It was the vision of Lyla that fueled her, and forced her onward despite her injuries from Lakshmi's thrashing finger. Young, beautiful Lyla, now horribly mangled. The gruesome wounds were beyond anything that Sheila imagined could be healed -- and what hope was there of help? Sheila's mind floated away from her body. It was all too much: she wasn't this skeletal, bloodied woman marching forward; she wasn't making the pitiful, blubbering noises that this thing was trying to pass off as speech. She wasn't this helpless, or powerless.
To see Lyla as she was in that moment was a waking nightmare. How her midsection was smashed flat, and stringy guts had burst forth from her split-open sides. Her legs were unnaturally curled and crinkled, and the one good arm she raised to beseech her mother's help zigged and zagged, broken all over. And Lyla's face -- Sheila almost couldn't bear to look at it: there was a ghastly tear down the middle of the young woman's face from how her skull was crushed in on itself, and her flesh ripped in a jagged line.
Then Fatima's thick, rough toes lowered onto Lyla's fragile, broken form -- they rested heavily on top of her. "Lick," the old woman ordered curtly. Worry fluttered inside Sheila at how the thick toes flexed dangerously, and how a fluffy piece of debris was pressed down onto Lyla's ruined face. The young woman mechanically turned her head and lapped at the tanned flesh, her strokes weak; she was forced to pull the grime into her mouth and swallow it quickly, fearing that the elder giant might think she'd stopped, and hurt her. Fatima chuckled and curled her toes anyway, flexing them around Lyla with a crackling of ribs, and a deflated scream from the tiny teen.
"No!" Sheila yelled. She rushed forward with all her might, which wasn't much. As she hobbled toward her fallen daughter, Fatima's bulbous digits wiggled on top of the pale-and-red body beneath them. The giant toes beat down like hammers. Lyla was helpless against the blows. Her functioning arm moved to shield her, but was quickly smashed into the ground at her side. When the toes finally had their fill and rose away, Lyla's head slumped to the side, and a thin slick of black-red blood rapidly pooled around it in all directions.
Wearing a mask of abject horror, Sheila shuffled, losing steam as she gazed at Lyla, who lied still and could very well be dead. No, the matron told herself. She wouldn't stop, or slow down, or fall to her knees. She wouldn't!
Lakshmi's long toes appeared in front of Sheila and pushed the tiny woman back onto her ass. Sheila wailed as she watched how Lakshmi's foot rose up into the air, revealing the length of her long, glistening sole, covered with smears of dust from walking around the apartment barefoot.
Lyla stirred, hacking blood and gazing fearfully up at the foot poised above her. Lakshmi's sole silenced Lyla's curt deathscream with a horrifying SLAP! against the wood, followed by crackles and a squelch. Lakshmi twisted her foot in place as if she were putting out a cigarette under the ball of her sole. When the russet flesh lifted, all the was left of Sheila's eldest daughter was a splatter of blood, shredded pale slivers, and wet chunks -- nothing resembling the defiant young woman who stood there shaking her fist moments before.
Sheila fell to the ground, limp. Her eyes rolled back and for a moment a fainting spell seized her -- she pushed it back. Rolling over, the former mother of two watched as her remaining daughter was sobbing in the shade of Anala's hovering sole.
"God, no," Sheila whimpered.
"If you don't do what we say," Anala announced, haughty, bratty -- to Sheila's bottomless dismay Julie was pressed down beneath the giant foot -- "then your last breaths in this life will be from under my stinky foot, and you'll die like a bug!"
Sheila raked her dry tongue across her parched lips. She worked what moisture she could into her throat, just so she could beg, but all she could muster was a whisper: "Please don't kill my baby girl. Oh, please," she said, and kept repeating it.
A creeping shadow overtook Sheila, then, and she rolled onto her back just in time for Fatima's grubby toes to lower down onto her. The warm, fragrant flesh molded around her, and the old woman gave her a painful squeeze, as if to force her deeper into a more comfortable nook. After a slow, happy chuckle, the dowager ordered, "Lick."
Sheila started lapping at the salty flesh. Bits of dirt stuck to her her tongue, gritty and bitter. She couldn't spit it out from her dry mouth, so she had to swallow it, and with effort. Anala's voice boomed distantly with the same command to Julie. Sheila squeezed her eyes shut and continued to lick.
"You are both nothing!" Lakshmi hissed her words. "Your lives are over. You are already dead." And then the giant woman chuckled. "You live to serve us, your superior goddesses. Or, you'll be another smear on the floor."
Like Lyla, Sheila thought even though Lakshmi didn't say it. Fatima's toes squeezed her once more and the giant old woman cackled as Sheila lapped, and lapped, and lapped at her toes, sobbing.
Giantess World
Chapter End Notes:
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