Cady’s lips grazed the rubbery dam which curved around the range of her head and down past her hips. There was no wriggling away. She tried craning her neck, but every direction she turned her face, she only unintentionally kissed her clenched mouth against another doughy swath of skin. Two oblong pillars of flesh and muscle wedged around her ribs from either side whenever Cady attempted to squirm to safety. She was trapped.
The irony was that the flavor of that peachy wall, consisting of the tender webbed skin between a set of giant toes, ordinarily was far fouler: like vinegar and old gym socks brewed in a pot of boiling saltwater. Tonight, for once, the aroma was instead perfumed by citrus soap and floral beauty products. Yet due to the occasion, Cady couldn’t have felt more repulsed or full of self-loathing.
She’d dreamed of being here for years. From pee-wee soccer, then travel clubs, her high school’s championship-winning team, then university super-stardom, and eventually Olympic hopeful status. Cady had poured every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears and then some into the effort of playing on the international stage. And, perhaps most of all, earning the well-deserved honor of the post-competition press conference, with all the glory and flash of press cameras surrounding her. Since she was a little girl, she’d pictured herself here.
Of course, Cady had always imagined she’d be sitting at the conference table in that dream. Not naked, shrunken to a quarter-inch tall, and imprisoned between the toes of her teammate and bitter rival Trish Moss. The difference was palpable. So close and yet so very, very far.
And it was all due to a bad game, or really a string of games, after which Cady was faced with being booted from the team altogether. Instead she was put on suspension by the coaches, thanks to some persuasion from Trish, whose motivations ended up being far less generous than it first seemed. Cady would remain on the team, but throughout the Olympics, she would be the 24/7 foot-pet to the American team’s best striker.
Occasionally, light from a camera would flare beneath the table, casting a glow into the callused crevices of Trish’s battle-hardened toes. Cady would wince at this millisecond exposure, and wonder if the high-def photographs would capture her image. Of course, at her size of a carpenter ant, it would take a keen eye to spot her entombed between Trish’s tan toes, and which themselves were outfitted in expensive sparkle-toned heels. However, even the faint possibility of being discovered down here made Cady even sicker than she became when she was forced to lick and drink the post-scrimmage grime out from Trish’s digits.
There was no confusion on her part. No matter how clean Trish scrubbed her filthy feet, Cady would still easily choose to spend a full day snogging every meaty wrinkle of Trish’s giant gritty sole, rather than a single half-hour press conference amongst flower-scented toes. Cady’s pride made this current endurance almost unbearable. It should’ve been her up there, with Trish’s shrunken face jammed against Cady’s luxurious foot flesh. Not the other way around.
“A couple questions for Miss Moss, now,” the announcer called out. “Yes, you?”
“Hi, Trish. Betty Landman, from The Times? Would you be able to comment on a rumor which has been circulating the Olympic complex? There’s been talk of brand-new performance enhancement of some kind, shared by many athletes, with particular attention today on the soccer team. Anything to say?”
Cady noticed Trish’s freshly showered toes dampening slightly during the question. Obvious nerves over the truth turned the woman’s skin clammy and moist. Even if this practice was sanctioned by cruel bastards from the ethics committee behind closed doors, the evidence was pinched pathetically between her toes at this exact second.
A coach whispered something in Trish’s ear.
“I, nor anyone I know, has done anything unethical. We serve our country in this competition, and take that responsibility seriously. I’ve never seen or touched a needle or pill of any kind, and all my reports are clean, which is public record.” Trish’s explanation was cookie-cutter, and technically true. Even as she spoke it, though, she scrunched her toes tighter around her quarter-inch teammate: perhaps suddenly self-conscious of the possibility of a reporter peeking under the table at her open-toed heels and noticing a person smushed underneath.
During Trish’s answer, Cady was utterly submerged in swollen toe flesh from either side. Puffy skin seemed to inflate above and below as Trish pressed her digits tightly together. Without warning, Cady couldn’t see or hear anything, nor smell or taste aside from a gridded flank of inner toe forcibly massaged into her face. At the suspended player’s puny size of a quarter inch, and stuck between Trish’s two largest toes, it was entirely possible for the giantess to clamp her slender phalanges together and completely conceal her human toy. Hidden in plain sight.
For the rest of the press conference, Trish did just that. She kept her toes mostly bunched together; with expert muscular focus, though, she parted her digits only enough to let in a wisp of oxygen for Cady. Down in the musky, floral darkness, embraced on every iota of her naked form by pillowy toe skin, the shrunken woman listened in anguish.
“What message do I have for all the kids out there, you ask?” Trish boomed, responding to a final question. Her toes squeezed tighter than ever, briefly muting Cady’s world again, and caving her tiny face into the supple wall of flesh. Once satisfied with the degree of kisses she forced her shrunken teammate to administer on her foot, though, Trish flexed her toes wide enough for Cady to hear every word. “That’s easy. Never give up on your dreams, and you can achieve anything. Work hard enough, and someday you can be sitting in this very spot, one way or another. God bless America.”