Time-Out: Nancy's Dominion (Chapter 6)

Upon reaching home again, and the vast tastefully-decorated halls that usually served as his prison rather than the much-tighter bounds of Nancy’s shoes where he’d spent most of the last month, Scott was even surer of fitting back into the same habitual existence. So long as he was here, in his home base, surrounded by people like his mother and sister who merely wanted to get a power-hungry rush by making him feel lesser under their feet – instead of molding him into something else entirely, like Nancy seemed to wish – he had nothing to truly fear. Even when Judy took Scott into her office and set him on the floor, he felt no apprehension. A part of him had hoped she might regrow him to a more-convenient six or seven inches tall before assigning him some mindless janitorial chores around the house, so he could get some solitude, but he supposed that was impractical thinking. His mother had just gone a whole month without casually subjugating her eldest child at her massive peds. It was the longest stretch of time, in fact, that she’d gone without doing so since Scott’s house arrest even began. To have expected her to do anything except take advantage of her favorite use for him as soon as humanly possible would’ve been unrealistic.

“Well, sweetie, I’m sure you were kept pretty busy over at Nancy’s while I’ve been gone…” Judy sighed. This was the understatement of the year, though unlike usual, Scott’s mother wasn’t being melodramatically sarcastic when she grossly minimized something her shrunken son had been through. Because for once, she had no idea: only Scott and Nancy, at least for now, held those filthy secrets. “Still, I know you understand that I’ve had a very busy time myself: getting so much accomplished, marching all over town, meeting new folks for the cause, but not having any of my usual ways to release all that tension. And let me tell you, it’s really starting to get to me. You were certainly missed, in more ways than one. Don’t think for a second that you weren’t. So, I hope it’s not going to take too much out of you, dear, to indulge me in a little of what you do best. Like I said, I know Nancy must have made the most of her time with you, so I’m not expecting miracles here, until you’ve had a chance to rest up a little. Just… give me all you’ve got for now, whatever that may be, and that’ll be good enough for me.”

Not that he was actually being given a real choice here so much as being told in faux-polite terms what was about to happen to him, Scott nonetheless nodded in affirmation to his mother from far below, and for once hardly had to fake his acceptance of what she planned to do with him. The sooner he reintegrated himself into some kind of normalcy – even the most denigrating parts of that normalcy, such as spending hours on his knees kneading Judy’s thick malleable foot flesh with his inadequate shrunken strength – the sooner he could fully shed that false self he’d entertained for too long while possessed by Nancy. She didn’t reach for the PMRD to regrow him even slightly, nor did she offer him any clothes after he’d spent much of the past month naked, but not even that bothered Scott. In some strange way, such conditions meant this would be the purest test possible of his desperately-held theory: that it was Nancy herself, the seclusion of their time together, and the survival-necessary yearning for temporary release which had so warped his personality and desires while at her feet. Because there was no way in hell that it was simply this shameful exhausting often-disgusting act itself that he had learned to love. He couldn’t accept that. Serving Judy now, even at his smallest size while nude and still freshly wrung-out from the past month of debasing himself between the toes of his parent’s best friend, would be ordinary. Dispassionate. Just another day at the office for Scott. It had to be.

So when Judy presented the bottom of her first gigantic foot to her eldest son without another word and began typing away at her keyboard on the desk far overhead, Scott wasted no time. With her right foot tilted sideways to expose the wrinkled pinkish underbelly while still resting upon its soft outer dimension, and her toes helpfully spread so that the boy could scour every reachable crevice between, he practically lunged forth to firmly plant both hands against the meaty wall of her arch. After a month spent with Nancy, he’d almost forgotten how much bigger Judy’s foot was in comparison, and that difference was made all the more overwhelming when he was down at his tiniest stature. It really was massive. Epic, almost. The heat wasn’t too extreme as he rubbed his puny palms in focused circles against the pliant terrain, but there was a damp semi-floral canvas-mealy aroma still steaming from every dimple along her humongous sole which Scott instantly recognized. Not only did he know from personal experience precisely which pair of shoes she’d worn to acquire that distinct scent, but he could practically guess at how long she’d worn them and how hot it was outside without even needing to see a thermostat. Such uselessly expert knowledge built up over years of humiliating himself at the feet of almost every woman he’d ever met was once a sickening burden, but now it only made it easier for Scott to believe that he could indeed slip back into his previous pre-Nancy being like a well-worn glove (or rather a well-worn sandal, and certainly not one that belonged to him). This was how he was “supposed” to feel. And that had to mean he was moving on already.

Encouraged by that lesser evil in a way he never thought he would be, Scott proceeded to put his all into caressing Judy’s sole, ironically with pumped-up enthusiasm that he hadn’t paid to her in a long time. Prior to this moment, he’d perfectly calibrated the precise level of effort required to massage his towering mother’s feet in a way that pleased her enough to keep her from critiquing him, but still not so much that he burnt himself out before even reaching the other side. Now, though, he felt such bizarre relief upon deciding that he’d successfully immunized himself against indoctrination to Nancy’s feet, and “fixed” himself as soon as he left her clutches, that he couldn’t help but devote himself with unusual fervor to work that was usually at best a mindless inevitability, and at worst, a disgraceful stenchy sweat-sliming soul-fatiguing catastrophe. Soon, in a twisted yet vindicating way, he felt rather like an artist who, after a long sabbatical, had returned to molding his clay. It all came back quickly.

Scott squeezed, beat, and stroked at Judy’s foot with immaculate discretion. He inhaled those fumes without bother. He studied the ruddy ever-shifting flesh creases directly before his face as his mother’s toes relaxingly scrunched. The tiredness and soreness he should’ve been suffering from now after so long at Nancy’s were almost nonexistent. When the time came, he sidled onward along his mother’s sideways-planted ped, treating every square inch to the same tender yet impressively energetic effort. In time, that freshly-perspired shoe-warmed whiff numbed in Scott’s senses, then almost gained a half-imaginary note of sweetness, like a dash of sugar slipped into an otherwise savory vinegar-infused dish. The texture of Judy’s sole, supple yet brawny due to the sheer scope of it and the amount of time she spent marching off somewhere with a motivated purpose, felt peculiarly “right” in Scott’s miniscule hands. All these conditions of relative comfort would’ve once freaked the boy out, but now they just offered him a weird kind of exoneration, only further proving that he’d successfully broken free from his former babysitter’s psychosexual grip. Because although this current sole-rubbing duty felt correct, there was no impulse inside him to show his own mother’s feet anywhere near the same disturbing erotically-charged obsession he’d given to his “favorite” Auntie Nancy’s.