Lilliana's Gift (Chapter 3)

The stench hit him immediately after this horrible revelation, as though Haley’s toes were miniature planets with their own unique atmosphere of sour, musky heat. The aura was so palpable, it clung to David’s body like a misty film before he’d even touched her, though Lilliana wasted no more time in placing him with surprisingly gentleness against the inner flank of Haley’s baby toe, just as she’d vowed. When the blonde let go, the shrunken man’s heart leapt into his throat, expecting to plummet down the gulf of her toe-cleavage to be dashed against the bench below, but yet again, Lilliana proved her promises true, and David found himself “safely” adhered to Haley’s flesh as though by cement. At the same time, his instincts to writhe in panic didn’t translate to movement, and his insectoid frame was rendered motionlessly quadriplegic.

With one firm yet sweat-mushy mass of foot-skin at his back, and another even-larger edifice of greasy rounded digit dead-ahead, just aching to come flying this way and compress to the pinky, David’s body went into lockdown. His brain couldn’t compute everything happening, leaving him in a void of hysteria, confusion, and just a hint of arousal. Lilliana’s finger glided up out of the toe-gulch, leaving him alone deep in the warm, bittersweet-fragrant embrace of Haley’s toes, which were blunted by the slightest summer breeze, but with the sun still bearing down and heating her foot almost back to the temperature inside her stuffy boot, the open air made little difference. David might have gone into a squirming fit if he could still move, powerless to do anything but dangle from the rounded side-hemisphere of Haley’s pinky and imbibe the dewy, dripping odor surrounding him in a malicious cloud.

“Enjoy yourself, little David. I certainly know I’m going to enjoy watching you, and I’m sure Haley will benefit too, even if she never knows you’re down there. Good luck in your new life as her personal living toejam! No need to thank me, the expression on your face is plenty. You’re very welcome for the greatest and last gift you’ll ever need!”

In the same instant Lilliana ceased speaking, she stood and stalked away, and the world around them resumed its loud and joyous locomotion, as if nothing bizarre had happened at all. Looking up with fading hope at Haley’s looming and adorable billboard-face, David prayed at first that, against the odds, she’d spot him while her gaze squinted into the space between her toes. The pillar of her finger descended, while the digits of her bare foot flared to make room, and she proceeded to dig her nail against the doughy divot-wrinkles of her fourth toe, sighing with relief as she scratched.

“Whew. That hit the spot!” Haley muttered with a smirk to herself, as the itch was alleviated and she could withdraw her fingertip, all without noticing the distraught micro-man magically tacked to the sweaty, putrid embankment of her tiniest toe. “That’s funny. I thought for sure I felt a bug or something crawling around in there. Oh, well. Guess it’s gone now.”

Wanting to scream for aid more than anything he’d ever wished in his life, David was forced to watch his giantess friend’s gaze averting from where he’d been invisibly trapped. He tried not to enter too deep a frenzy when her two toes at last cruised back into their natural resting positions, walling him in more tightly and increasing the heat and potency of the briny smell by tenfold. The incredible situation aside, even trying to grapple with Haley’s abject scale itself as a living being was nigh-impossible; she was more massive than any sentient thing David had ever conceived. Even the clamped crevice of her little toes was an ecosystem unto itself, not unlike an amazon jungle with its balmy air, thickly flavored by raunch, beaten-down leather, and saltwater-treated sock-jam clusters triple the size of David.

“Hey, what the… David!” Haley called at the top of her lungs, again momentarily getting the little guy’s hopes up that he’d been discovered, only to witness the girl curiously bellowing in every other direction instead. “David! Oh, DAVID! Where’d you go? I swear, I turn my back for one minute, and he goes away. Hey, have you seen him? He was right behind us two seconds ago!”

While Haley addressed one of her other friends for help, not knowing that David was closer to her than ever, the shrunken victim fought his paralyzed body, trying every which way to force his lips open and squeal for rescue. Yet he could do nothing, and was forced to watch Haley yell over her shoulder several more times, before grabbing her phone out of her pocket, all as her new diminutive toe-passenger kept right on suffering in anonymity melded to the pale, marshmallowy wall of soppy foot skin.

“Where the heck are you?” Haley narrated while typing on the screen. Scrunching her nose and raising an eyebrow, she paused to read the reply, despite David having no capacity for texting her back, nor anything else except existing in the smelly, putrescent haze of her summer-soiled flesh. “That was quick. Had to run, catch you later. Well, THAT’S freaking weird, but okay, I guess…”

David’s sorrow at the disappointment and doubt in Haley’s voice was quickly and literally overshadowed by a far more disturbing event: her rainbow sock swooping back into view above. Its colorful threads hung heavy with collected liquid, indeed enough to drown a certain shrunken fellow a hundred times over, and also stunk to high heaven with an even greater wallop of sweat-tainted cowhide and earth. Raising the giant squishy bulges of her toes at once, Haley fed her digits into the dark cottony maw of the pride-friendly garment.

The fibrous cave wrapped over her entire foot, forcing David into its secluded depths as well, while packaging the already-overpowering fumes of vinegar and dank pore-runoff into an even more claustrophobic space. The breeze was blocked now, letting the pungent air turn stagnant fast, and the effect was only compounded when David felt the plush yet muscular environment of balled toes rising fast, then plunging all over again through total darkness: the interior of her boots. Every inch her monumental foot and tiny friend ventured into the hellish leather pit felt more like entering the underworld, while Haley’s slippery toes gripped more tightly around their secret prey.

From there, David’s colossal BFF shrugged and rejoined the rest of her friends, laughing and celebrating the fantastic parade turnout, totally oblivious to the fact that with every happy stride she took deeper into the throngs, she was worsening the suffering of someone she cared deeply about.

Even before the treaded sole of her boot was set back to Earth, the miniscule toe-dweller was smothered by the atmosphere of liquid filth and feminine perspiration, bottled tightly in the enclosure of acrid flesh, the viscous-fibered rainbow socks, and finally a double layer of black leather boot terrain built like a fortress barricade, all while the sun bore down from high above outside, turning the heinous interior into something like a prodigious microwave, and developing the swampy aromas into a symphony of disgust.

Of course, David was also more literally smothered by the physical swell of Haley’s inward-pumping toes, the pale mildewy flesh walls made slightly puffier due to the heat and pruny water-logging. As her toes innocuously curled in preparation to lift her leg off the bench, her shrunken friend was made to experience the true iron-wrought strength of even the giantess’s smallest and most easily manipulated digits, which swallowed around him like the maw of a whale. Though Lilliana’s magic ensured he was kept unbreakably glued to the skin regardless of whether Haley’s toes were clenched, this closure of the gap when the girl finally slammed her foot back to terra firma was a grim demonstration that even without the curse, David would’ve easily been kept in a flattened spread-eagle position sandwiched between twin interlocking canyon walls of bulbous sweat-spackled toe brawn.