Fantasy Foot League (Chapter 8)

            “Oh, there you are,” Diane casually remarked upon meeting the shoe-hybrid creature’s eyeline down by her feet, with his transformed body jumbled among the other closet junk. “Now, I can guess what you’re thinking, because we both know Kayla is very particular about not letting anyone else use her things… all right, you know I’m not calling you a “thing,” Cody, but let’s face it, more of you is a thing right now than a person, just in terms of math. So there’s no need to feel insulted. Still, it does seem like a such a waste, doesn’t it? To have you in here for all this time, and not even put you to work? I mean, you’re already going to be this way for the whole weekend no matter what. It’s like throwing free money in the trash, if you ask me. So… I decided that what Kayla doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I’m sure you can agree with that.”

            Cody, struggling to find the words that would earn him the least-shitty circumstances this weekend, languished in Diane’s shadow. He didn’t doubt that whatever purpose she had for him would be less tortuous than his usual routines with Kayla, but that didn’t mean it was better than doing nothing. He watched her toying with the device’s settings, not seeming to care whether he answered her rhetorical babbling or not, then spoke up:

            “C-Couldn’t you just… make me “me” again? Normal? Please, Diane. I’ll… pay you. A lot. She never has to know.”

            “Oh, don’t talk like that, Cody!” Diane insisted, cracking a smile, then ceased messing with the transmogrifier. “You’re still yourself! You always are. Even if MOST of you happens to be a shoe today! Which… I’m sorry, is still very ridiculous looking, with your face poking out of that dirty sandal, but… Kayla seems to think there’s really something to it. Having you be a part of it, I mean. An extra cushion. So, I appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. Money’s easy to come by. But the chance to try you out, when Kayla is usually so greedy with who gets to use her possessions? Well, that’s much rarer. Don’t worry, I won’t be too rough with you. Of course, I won’t be too gentle, either, because I’m going to be walking on your face, after all, and there’s only so much I can do to take it easy. Still, I can’t imagine it’ll be any worse than what you’ve been practicing with her, so maybe this’ll feel as simple as brushing your teeth.”

            Cody sincerely doubted these activities would ever feel anything like that, but had no more worthwhile objections to offer, as a mind-made Diane pointed the device and zapped him. After a painless-but-weird jolt, he found himself settling into sensations of equal futility to his last shoe fusion, only from somewhere vaguely to the left on the closet floor. The new slanted leather insole out of which his relocated face rose was a similar shade of espresso-brown, stained and fossilized by its own weighty sweat-smeared imprints in much the same fashion as Kayla’s pair. Only these sandals – with their raised-platform treads – were noticeably smaller, and correct for a comparatively petite size-6 foot. Though that difference hardly mattered as Cody had to watch the bottom of Diane’s humongous bare foot growing larger from his vantage as it neared and eventually blotting out his view to her, as the earthen beefy-firm slab of her squiggled sole wrinkles swept overhead, and then plopped down upon him to put on the shoe.

            He braced himself for that first inevitable thwoooomp that temporarily smothered his face into the doughy center of her arch, as she drew both newly-outfitted feet out of the closet and then pivoted on her heels to march away. Cody was unfortunately very accustomed to this treatment by now, even if it would never be anywhere as habitual for him as Diane had joked, and his dramatically-increased durability meant that every faceward stomp from the giantess’s sole thankfully wasn’t excruciating for him. Still, as those inaugural steps were taken to test out her stepdaughter’s hijacked shrunken slave in his pathetic shoe-hybrid form, he could tell immediately that she indeed wasn’t pulling her punches, or rather her footfalls, when she walked on him.

Three times in a row, moving slower than her usual gait while she sensitively experienced the curious novelty of a tiny face compressing into her creasy sole curve like a human pillow, Diane strutted forward. Her strides weren’t as militant or vengefully determined as Kayla’s, who tended to walk like she wanted everyone in earshot to know she was coming. But it was still a considerable burden for Cody to bear, agony or not. The underbelly of Diane’s foot, while not outright sopping with salted perspiration or that usual farmland ruggedness, was definitely already dirty from a morning spent outdoors, and appreciably damp. So the face of her transfigured sandal just had to accept an asphyxiating taste of that hot cloying essence each time his puny features were forcibly re-molded up into the highly-pliant squishiness of her sole for another step.

“Hmmm…” Diane drawled with obvious discontent. The blonde came to a stop with her leg halfway raised off the ground, which meant Cody had about an inch of breathing room between his face and her steeply-arched underfoot flesh. “As usual, I think it’s safe to say Kayla was exaggerating just a little. From the way she was talking about having you down there, I was expecting some kind of life-changing luxury. But, to be honest with you, Cody, this isn’t nearly as comfortable as I thought it would be.”

Holding his breath, Cody let himself feel his first real spark of hope today. For once, Kayla’s insistence on hyperbole just to increase his suffering had backfired on her: Diane, being a much more practical person and lacking the former’s inherent cruelty, had discovered there was no huge personal benefit to wearing him after all. That had to mean she would decide this wasn’t worth the trouble, and simply kick him back in the closet where she’d found him. There was no need for him to use him, and he could return to the relative-peace of his unpressurized isolation in the closet, without a single foot the size of his whole body repeatedly clapping him into the floor. Right?

“Of course, it’s not uncomfortable, either. It’s just… fine, really,” Diane neutrally concluded after a thoughtful pause, still dangling her man-implanted sandal off the ground. And just like that, Cody’s hopes crashed back down upon him – much like her hovering foot was probably going to do in a few seconds. “And sometimes, that’s a win in and of itself.”

With that, Diane kept on walking upon him through the house, at a regular pace now, with no intention of ditching her shoes after all, despite the lack of miraculous god-tier comfort that Cody’s face provided for her gradually stampeding sole in actuality. Let down for the umpteenth time, and only upset at himself for having fallen for the possibility of a bright side yet again, the little thing dispassionately girded himself once more for an inevitable marathon of feeling every square inch of the giantess’s foot treading and compacting the leather portion of his dehumanized anatomy. And most of all his scrunched-in half-dome of a face, which was positioned to take on innumerable poundings from the pale thickest-padded region of the woman’s gigantic smut-flecked undersole.

The hours that followed were spent in much the way Cody originally thought his weekend would be burned through, only beneath Diane instead of Kayla. His not-quite-savior took care of chores around the house and later went back outside to garden for a while, stopping only to answer the phone a few times or find a snack in the kitchen. At the very least, she didn’t mercilessly taunt him whenever she caught sight of him, like Kayla tended to do, but Cody couldn’t really say that the one-way conversation she offered him was any better than silence.

“It’s too bad. I’d hoped that if I just took a while to get used to the feeling of your face sticking out down there, I’d start to see what Kayla was talking about. You know, like an acquired taste. But it’s still not much different than wearing a normal shoe,” Diane calmly reported at one point in the afternoon, while arching her heel off the sandal just high enough to meet Cody’s gaze again in the shadow of her sole. Still, she showed no sign of giving him up, either. “The funny thing is, I never really thought much about all the ways these tiny rental people like you could be used. I’ve never paid for one myself. Never really cared to. But, if a lot of other people feel the same way as Kayla, who can say how many of them you might pass on the street, without even knowing it. They could have someone just like you made into a part of their shoe, and you just can’t see them, because they’ve got your face pressed up into the bottom of their foot. Gosh, what a strange line of work. I can’t imagine it’s worth the money. Unless you’re just desperate. Or… unlucky, like in your case, Cody.”

Another spate of hours later, after she’d shambled to what felt like every single room and corner of the house to take care of menial tasks, Diane had really put her sandal-merged occupant through the wringer, even if she hadn’t made any special effort to stamp his face with sadistic oomph. Cody wasn’t exactly in pain, but felt deeply sore and worn-out, like he’d been made to ride an especially herky-jerky roller coaster on a repeated loop all day long. Even if the woman wasn’t shedding her shoes yet, he was hugely relieved when she finally lounged on a porch chair with an iced tea and a magazine to watch the sunset, with one leg crossed over the other. This meant Cody was given a reprieve from so many mashings into her foot, so long as those toes didn’t flex hard enough to re-level the insole with her arch.

Of course, there did turn out to be a downside to this open-air recess while touchlessly roofed below Diane’s sole, when an hour into the giantess’s relaxation, he happened to look off to the side just in time to meet the seething squint-eyed glare of a grimacing Kayla.

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THE END (for now)