Ted approached the rounded hump of her heel. The light through the chapel stained glass was blooming brighter, and what's more, the goings-on above could now be heard. By focusing as intently as possible, the boy could finally make out the sister's words:

            "...amen. Thank you. You may all take your seats again now."

            Uh-oh.

            For a second, he considered throwing his last stores of energy into hurling himself over the wall of Larissa's heel to liberty. Then, from behind the broad athletic pillar of her titanic leg, the girl's hand hovered into view. Though it hung casually under the shelf of the pew, probably inviting no unwanted attentions from her regular-sized neighbors, it was all Ted could focus on. She didn't even have to look down to address Ted. Her fingers twiddled in midair, as if waving to him, and then Larissa's manicured index finger pointed like a lance, while the rest of her slender digits rolled into a white-knuckle fist. Suddenly her hand came driving down, her finger leading the charge, and struck Ted's body with little more effort than it would take to push a sock roll back under the lip of a shoe. Yet for the boy, this amounted to a powerful sucker-punch, and with one insistent shove from Larissa's expertly poised finger, Ted tumbled back into the shoe-shaped ravine, scraping along the nylon the whole way down.

            The room rumbled as every uniformed girl stowed the kneelers back under the pews, followed by tucking their skirts beneath their legs to sit again. Though Ted couldn't actually see any of this, he watched the limited window above change from the sculpted ceiling to an inverted vantage point aimed backward at dozens of female legs, bedecked in a wide variety of creamy knee socks, shady nylon stockings, spandex, and completed with dainty slippers, ballet flats, and buckled mary-janes. This tantalizing view of freedom was not shown to Ted for long, though, as Larissa lowered her toned rear end back to the pew, and at last laid her clogs flat on the cold floor, ensuring that her shapely feet now slumped fully into the slant of the flaky insoles.

            Which of course meant the shrunken boy inside her shoe was trounced like never before.

            Larissa's foot didn't merely press down; it crashed into the ground like a meteor. Ted unleashed a pathetic yelp that was quickly consumed into the absorbent new ceiling of living, breathing sole. The boy's survival instinct told him to throw his hands up in an effort to catch the heaving slab of spongy flesh entombed inside paper-thin stocking, though of course this was an absurd gesture, and he knew it. At this size, he wasn't even strong enough to lift her pinky toe. All it would take was one purposeful, powerful downward slam at just the right angle, and Larissa would crush him. No bones about it. If she got it in her mind to dispose of him, it would require just an instant and a slam of her foot, and no one would ever know, except maybe whoever had to clean the little red stain out of her nude nylons.

            There was nothing to hear now. No light to make out, and no fresh air to enjoy. There was only the unbearably heavy, endlessly shifting, monumental landmass of Larissa's pale, wrinkle-painted sole sagging down on the helpless inch-tall victim beneath her.

            Unlike when she was crouched on the kneeler, Larissa kept her feet steady and still as the grave. As irritating and even painful as it was when the girl's soles kept juggling Ted against the clog like a yo-yo minutes before, he almost missed it now, when she instead gave no indication of peeling away the stale blanket of nylon from his flattened form. For the remainder of morning announcements, the redhead's shoe didn't budge. At most, her toes occasionally curled or flexed at the bow of the clog, but this did little other than cause the formation of pinkish crinkles in her sole flesh to remold like clay. As if she'd suddenly forgotten he was there at all.

            Ted supposed he ought to count himself lucky that she'd stowed him, either by accident or serendipity, under the doughiest stretch of her foot's underside. Larissa's sole turned out to be just as smooth and milky-soft as in the boy's dreams, and would surely have been a life-changing pleasure to even touch them with his hands at full size, let alone engage in such holy rituals as kissing or worshiping them. Unfortunately, because he was only an inch tall, those luxurious traits meant that he was merely kept conscious and justly barely unbroken beneath the burly heft of snow-white sole-meat that seemed to run infinitely into the dark of her shoe prison.

            Without warning, Larissa's ped arched high in the shoe, propelling herself off the balls of her feet to stand up from the pew. Ted had been massaged so hard into the grainy ceiling of nylon, he adhered to it momentarily, but plunked right off again once the girl's foot rose an inch away from the insole. The stringy nylon was pulled taut over the convex differential of her bowl-shaped sole, and acted like an upside-down trampoline, preventing the prisoner from crawling to his feet to make another escape attempt at the mouth of the clog cave just ahead.

            It was somehow even more defeating to be allowed brief access to light and oxygen, rather than being non-fatally smushed in the void, if only because there was no chance of going toward it, no matter how much he wanted. Larissa had him right where she wanted, and all she had to do was arch her foot a little to keep him in place. Or, on occasion, poke him in the face without even looking. The mirage of opportunity vanished just as soon as it had come when Larissa set her sole flush to the clog's basin again, and joined the rest of the filing crowd on their way en masse from the chapel. Thus, Ted was introduced to a new torture he'd been fearing from the very second Larissa jammed him inside her shoe: being walked on.

            The laborious activity was just as grueling as he'd anticipated, and yet somehow even more so. Instead of the withheld weight of her foot piling on Ted, he now had to contend with an ever-altering degree of compression which tested the limits of his body. This ranged from a magnetic floating sensation while airborne, during which he orbited the pudgy creases of her sole, to a spine-bending squeeze whenever the girl's foot made berth on land again and stood upon him so hard that all feeling was numbed except the near-possibility of snapping bones.

            Larissa walked with the steady gait of someone who owed urgency to no one, and yet simultaneously the thudding confidence of a girl who could and would be noticed by anyone passing through her vicinity. This resulted in measured paces, arching and replanting her foot upon the inch-tall man slow as molasses, but still transferring her full weight into each limb in turn when striding forth. Ted almost wished she'd stop dragging this out and just run to the next class, which might result in a worse battering, but at least it would be over sooner, and likely happen so fast that all he'd be able to keep track of was an epileptic trampling of flesh-and-nylon from all directions.

            What he got instead was a sense-teasing warning whenever the redhead's hovering foot was getting ready to trod on him again. First, the whole black vessel of the shoe would tip downward, causing Ted to roll along the slick, perspiration-glazed insole, until he splatted against the wedge-angle between the clog and the ball of Larissa's ped again. Next, the girl would arch her toes so deeply that the leather of the shoe would bristle as the artificial folds rubbed together, and in turn, the pressure on Ted was cranked up until he was snow-angeled into the wet netting of the nylon above. Only then, with her foot anchored on her stylishly arched foot that oh-so-temptingly dangled the chunky clog off her heel, did Larissa set down. Again, nothing about the process was rushed, and the girl took her time standing with a rolling motion, from toe to heel. This meant Ted had to feel his legs gently pulverized under the sinking ceiling of ruddy sole every single time, followed by the disappearance of his body under the heft, and finally his head's consumption to the beefy, mattress-like isle of a foot. From there, Larissa would take a step, then pluck her ped right up again to begin the process anew. Over and over, again and again, she dragged Ted to the edge of a blackout, only to bring him squealing back during the roller-coaster fling of her arcing leg.