“Sorry about this, Coach,” Gretchen Bixler spoke into the fabric mouth of her shoe, though the devilish grin she wore with such delight demonstrated she wasn’t actually sorry at all. She tilted her chin down, coyly swirling her wavy blonde locks around her callused finger. In her opposite hand, the burly six-foot-two giantess palmed a shotput ball. “But you’re my good luck charm now. The last few practices proved that. And you know what competition’s like at this stage. If you give up your rituals, you can kiss the medals goodbye.”
The woman’s former coach Fred bowed his head with seething resentment as he crouched in the age-beaten, lightly-soggy insole of his one-time protégé’s athletic shoe. She called him Coach without fail, even though he wasn’t her coach any longer, just because it hurt to remember. Even though he’d helped the girl climb the ranks from high school amateur to college star and eventually Olympic hopeful, all it took was one mistake. He’d over-trained her two years before, and cost her a qualifying round. With the stipulations of Gretchen’s contract, he not only lost his employment; he lost most of his height.
And, as of late, he was a regular resident of the smarmy and adorable giant beefcake’s shoes whenever it came time for her to hurl that ball down the field. Still on her staff, but far lower down the food chain.
“Well, like you always said. Success waits for no man or woman. So original, aren’t you, Coach?” Gretchen snorted. She set down the shot put and perched her ample thighs on a bench, cresting her dense bare toes over the edge of the shoe and waving in at Fred. Her glistening smile widened.
An aide called to the next competitors to get out on the field. From beyond, the cheers of the dizzying Olympic stadium echoed all the way inside the shoe. As a stickler for ritual, in addition to keeping her former coach in her shoes during every competition, Gretchen was also not a fan of socks. Not that Fred suspected he’d be much happier if he was being stood upon by the muscular blonde in sweat-soaked socks as opposed to fleshy, rock-hard mattress of damp sole.
Rather than shove her foot right in on top of Fred, though, Gretchen instead made him watch the violent swoosh of her opposite ped entering the twin sneaker. She knotted the laces with enough force to tie a noose, specifically one scaled to Fred’s four-inch size. At last the moment came. The woman set her empty shoe on the ground, forcing its occupant to stare all the way up at her broad-shouldered stature: beauty and beast, rolled into one.
“You know the drill, Coach. I wanna do my best right now. And as we proved during training, I do best when I’ve got you working your hardest down there. Hands, mouth, and legs. I want to feel you putting in even a fraction of the effort I’m putting in to bring home a medal for the country. Got it?”
Gretchen didn’t wait for an answer. Her toes re-entered the shoe’s mouth, and this time she didn’t withdraw. A sandbag-like big toe punched Fred to his knees, then quickly folded him onto his back using the fleshy coffin of tightly-packed digits. The rest of the young woman’s size-thirteen monster of a foot ate up space, inflating the cottony walls of the shoe, and squashing Fred like a pancake into the tacky insole with resolute swiftness.
The disgraced coach didn’t bother rebelling by inaction. That was a bad move. He’d tried that the first time Gretchen heard about the miraculous medical and physical benefits of shrunken foot worship before, during, and after training. For his lack of initial cooperation then, the man had earned a night of being duct taped to Gretchen’s sole, which she conveniently didn’t wash after practice, while she slept. A full nine hours with his face jammed into the pungent, swollen ball of her foot. Fred didn’t make that mistake a second time. That toejammy stench still haunted his dreams.
As Gretchen entered the field of play, serenaded by the flash of cameras and screaming from thousands of fans, Fred was hard at work. He pumped his legs as though on an invisible bike, kneading the rougher bend of her heel. Meanwhile, his hands circled in figure-eights around the pliable stretch of sole. Then, with his head under the ball of Gretchen’s foot, Fred went to town: teething on the gritty skin, licking in panicked rounds, and outright kissing if nothing else. The richly raunchy taste hardly bothered him now.
Sickly enough, he’d learned how to make the most of being walked upon, for efficiency’s sake. When his protégé’s massive bare foot was taking on her body weight for a step, it became impossible to pamper her. The meaty sole flesh inflated slightly, the creases of Gretchen’s arch turned shallow, and Fred was buried under several inches of muscled padding. During these moments, the already scarce oxygen was squelched away by Gretchen’s outdoorsy aroma. Heavy, muggy mass made his tiny bones creak.
Then, as Gretchen took a stride and winnowed her weight to the opposite foot, then that was Fred’s chance to get going. His legs, hands, and tongue worked in impressive tandem. The sad part was that he was likely among the most skilled shrinkies at this debasing activity. God knew Gretchen liked to tell him so after successful events, when she’d peel him off her sole and dump him right back in the briny footwear.
Fred could only imagine what it would be like to speak to his younger self back in time, and try to explain that his calling, his one true talent, was not coaching track & field events as he hoped, but in fact, servicing the unforgiving, swampy, titanic bare foot of a woman ten years his junior. Technically, he still got to be “in” the Olympics, so that was something. But, as Fred listened to the muffled sound of the announcers booming through the wall of the shoe and dense planetary mass of Gretchen’s foot, he decided it just wasn’t the same.
The crowd fell silent. Gretchen rolled on the balls of her feet in preparation, hoisting the shotput at her shoulder. Right about now, she was eyeballing the target with her famous steely scowl; she wasn’t thinking about herself, the millions of viewers, and certainly not the shrunken former coach stamped under her sole. Fred could just see her now, even though all he could “see” was blackness and the occasional flash of geometric foot skin cells whenever light cracked through the shoe’s mesh. She really did deserve to be a champion, judged purely on her athletic prowess.
Then came the wind-up. Fred gritted his teeth as Gretchen’s entire vast, doughy ped pivoted down upon him. She was spinning, building up momentum, concentrating on the release. One long stride forward, and the four-inch man felt the thankful relief of pressure. His body momentarily clung to the ceiling of hot skin, stuck fast like tar, then came down again and was sandwiched thoroughly when Gretchen’s foot mashed him anew into the insole. Fred continued licking the wet patch of skin for a while longer before he recalled that the attempt was already made, and his heel-lapping wasn’t necessary. Now the judgment.
Although he couldn’t quite make out the reading of the measurement, the enthusiasm of the announcers, plus the roar of the crowd, told Fred enough. Gretchen had done well. Maybe he really was her good luck charm after all?
The walking recommenced as the powerful blonde returned to the sidelines, with more of a confident strut this time that sloshed Fred all the way up to the dancing bell-ends of Gretchen’s toes. She never was shy about goose-stepping, especially when it was warranted. It made her tiny passenger all the sorer, being bowled down by her arch, but it would be over soon enough. Maybe she’d even be in a good enough mood that she’d see fit to give him the night off from servicing her. That sounded like a cheer big enough for a gold medal.
Laces were unlashed, and Gretchen’s foot was pried out of the shoe, sappy now with pre-competition perspiration. As her toes passed over Fred’s naked body, the girl made sure to caress the pillowy digits along the little man’s face and chest. Grimy, but her way of showing tomboyish gratitude.
“Great show out there, Coach,” she whispered into the shoe. “What would I ever do without my little good luck charm?”
“I don’t know,” he said hollowly.
“Remind me later: we need to have a quick pep talk about your technique,” Gretchen commented boldly. “It’s not bad. I mean, it feels really good, having you licking my foot over and over again until you dry up, but it could still be better. Like you used to say, perfect is never perfect enough.”
Angry and humiliated as this arrangement made Fred feel most of the time, there were moments where he was still capable of feeling a glimmer of pride for this amazon of a girl who was really already a giant unto herself even before he was shrunk down to be her personal living insole. That, ironically, made him feel even lowlier than his near-constant duty as a foot licker and sweat chugger. She had to be a true champion, after all, to make him believe for even an instant that this wasn’t wrong, and that just maybe he did belong down here in her shoes for as long as she deemed to keep him around.