As LeShae bobbed her foot around semi-aimlessly, she felt a tiny speck bouncing around near her heel. If she had been wearing socks, she probably wouldn’t have felt it at all. Knowing her tiny captive was stranded down there, she grinned some, tilting her foot forward so that her toes pointed to the floor. Then she paused. Should she do this? Was she really about to torment the shrunken woman even more? Erin had already been through a lot, surely, just getting over to her from wherever she shrunk. Then she had to have climbed up her boot, before being knocked inside. Taking her home wasn’t even legal, she’d be a criminal! No, worse…she’d be a felon! She might even go to jail, and that just couldn’t happen.
But what if she wasn’t kidnapping her? Erin was so tiny that she couldn’t understand a word the girl said. She was a victim, and LeShae was just helping a friend out of a bad situation. It wasn’t her fault that Erin climbed into her boot, was it? She shrugged some, chuckled, and began to quickly shake her foot inside of her boot. A second later, she felt a tiny tickle under the sole of her foot, which disappeared only moments later. She was glad that she’d gotten that pedicure only a day or two ago.
***
The little ball that Erin had rolled herself into to protect head and body hadn’t lasted long. The first shake of LeShae’s foot, once Erin was under her sole, had her sprawling about again. The soft, warm flesh that was the bottom of LeShae’s foot lorded over her like the sky. It was more pale than the rest of her foot, and certainly more riddled with shoe fuzz and toe lint. Unfortunately, most of that shoe fuzz and toe lint was the size of large boulders to Erin.
She rolled to a stop a few yards later, collapsing onto her chest, more bruised and in more pain than she’d felt in a long time. LeShae had finally stopped moving her foot, and Erin had a moment to rest. Her shoulder was still absolutely screaming at her, but she couldn’t think about it. Almost all of the light was gone now, and she reached forward blindly to grab the wall at the toe of the boot, only to find nothing there. Pulling herself a little more forward, she reached out to grab again, with the same result. Looking up finally, she tried to use what little light was left to see where the wall was, but could only really see darkness. Slowly rolling over onto her back, she looked straight up, and could make out a much more definitive shape.
LeShae’s toes hovered five feet over her head, and were the size of single-family houses. The darkness gave them a haunting, menacing ominousness, and Erin knew that she was in trouble. The pad of LeShae’s big toe was easily as large as the 1,100 square foot apartment she lived in, and a little tap of that toe could crush her easily. Erin screamed, and scrambled fervently away, imagining herself dying under her client’s little pink toes.
***
As LeShae skimmed through the article she was reading, she considered what she would do next. She needed to make sure that she seemed completely clueless to Erin’s plight. If she just got up and left, she’d be asked about why she walked out without paying. Obviously Erin wasn’t going to ring her up, and she didn’t know if anyone else was going to come in, but she knew that all the women here had business cards with contact information. She could just call the manager, tell her Erin had left, and walk right out of the front door.
Walk. Oh, shit. She hadn’t thought about that. Would walking with Erin in her boot crush the tiny girl? She wasn’t sure. Maybe Erin was already dead? How could she find out? Looking inside her shoe would be strange on camera. She was just going to have to risk it. She sighed heavily, tossed the magazine onto the side-table, and pushed up the hair-dryer, which had long since turned off. Glancing down casually at her feet, she slowly uncrossed her leg, pointed her shoe toe-down, and placed her foot on the ground, as carefully as she could. With both feet on the ground now, she waited, trying not to look at her boot.
She felt a tiny, tiny tickle next to her big toe. Then another. Erin was alive. LeShae breathed a sigh of relief as she carefully stood up.
“Here we go…” She thought to herself. “Better hold on tight in there.” She had to play it cool, walking around all strange would be incriminating. She thought about going to the bathroom and fishing the shrunken girl out first, but reconsidered. She needed the cameras to see her call someone on the phone, then leave. The more time she was accounted for in the salon, the more innocent she would seem. Glancing across the room at the desk with the business cards, LeShae swung her right, unoccupied foot forward, and followed it with a slightly more sluggish left foot. One step down, fifty or more to go.
***
LeShae’s toes had always been well-cared for, as was the rest of her body. Erin remembered seeing LeShae wearing flip-flops just the week before, and noticing how flawless even her feet were. If there was one thing to be grateful for in this situation, it was that LeShae was a very hygienic woman. Anyone else might have been a gamble. Then again, anyone else wouldn’t have trapped her in their boot.
Erin tried to pull herself together, no longer sobbing, but giving a pathetic whimper every few seconds. If she survived this, she knew she could survive anything. And better, this bitch was going to jail. Well, she hoped. She was still operating partially under the hope that LeShae had not actually seen her, and hadn’t intentionally knocked her into her shoe. LeShae was a terrible woman, but she wasn’t the kind of person to do something like that, was she? There had to be something criminal about trapping someone in your shoe. It was kidnapping and assault, at least.
The shrunken girl moved slowly along the wall of the shoe, after having emerged under the pinky toe, and its crater like toe impression in the sole. She hoped that she could climb back up the insole and into the heel of the shoe, and climb back out of the shoe. The chances of all that happening before LeShae moved were slim, but the chances of her surviving a day underfoot were even slimmer. Trying to avoid looking up at the menacing toes, Erin squeezed along the wall of the shoe, thinking about freedom.
The boot began to shake. It was already too late, she’d barely made it past the pinky toe, and LeShae was already moving. Erin tried to grab something to hold onto, but couldn’t find anything before the ground tilted sharply, and she was sliding again. Sliding on her ass this time, Erin only grimaced and braced for impact, screaming had gotten pointless. The incline was much, much more steep this time, and a moment after she began to slide, her body collided into the wall of the shoe, at the toe where she’d thought she’d been earlier. She tumbled along the wall into the larger, more open area in front of all five toes, and crumbled into a heap. The foot corrected itself, and the floor leveled out with a huge, earth-shaking thud. Erin opened her eyes to see herself face to face with all five of LeShae’s toes for the first time, and though they were all still much taller than her, they had settled onto the insole of the boot, no longer above her. LeShae’s foot was on the ground again.
The environment was about as punishing as she expected. The smell of LeShae’s foot had intensified some, but was still bearable, if she could escape soon. The air was thick, and it was absolutely sweltering. The ambient sounds of the salon were completely muted, except for a loud, sharp single tapping sound. It only tapped once, but it worried the little woman. A million questions raced through Erin’s mind. What if LeShae started tapping her foot? Maybe she was taking off her boot? Was she leaving? The toes in front of her seemed rather settled, and Erin was glad that LeShae’s boots were likely a half size too large, there was probably only an actual inch of space between the wall and the toes. For Erin, it was enough room to sit and not be harassed by the gigantic, powerful appendages. She didn’t think this would last long, though.
She was right.
Erin watched LeShae’s toes clench in the darkness. Though she could not make out the details, she could hear the sound of the toes sliding against the insole, squeezing against each other. She prepared for the worst.
Everything seemed to happen at once, and Erin wasn’t sure what happened first. Gravity seemed to change, the sound of the toes releasing their grip on the insole, the boot tilted up, and Erin was sent tumbling again. Immediately after, the boot swung forward more viciously than it had when it was suspended above ground, and Erin flew forward, briefly experiencing a feeling of propulsion, like being in a plane, before slamming full force into a soft, warm wall, with lots of ridges. It knocked the wind out of her, and the boot once again found its place on the floor with a terrible thud.
The smell of perfumed lotion and sweat filled her nose more now than ever, and Erin tried to support herself on the wall, using it’s ridges to pull herself up. Coughing and wheezing, Erin put the last few seconds together. That, the entire abusive experience, was a single step from LeShae, and now, Erin was clinging to the wall of one of LeShae’s toes.
LeShae was walking, and Erin was stranded between the pink, polished toes.
She was absolutely fucked.