Unknown and Unlucky (Chapter 1)

Many times in my life I’ve opened my eyes after sleep, only to find myself still flying, or undressed on stage at a middle school assembly, proving the first awakening from a dream was just a fake-out, so I wasn’t alarmed at first when I awoke to find my mattress had hardened to a crusted flaking leather platform, tilted downward at a slant like a dry waterslide, and more curiously, the bedroom ceiling was not only much closer than I recalled, but in motion and subtly alive. I was used to the grainy speckles in the milky-orange paint of my room, but wasn’t expecting to see them tessellating, with the speckled textures sliding across one another in crisscrossing tracks, even shining like diamond dusting, while beneath the outer shell of what I assumed to be plaster, I could’ve sworn I spotted a greater and even less familiar mass, smoother and rounded on the whole but sculpted with half-tubed shapes like rain gullies that would scoop into shape then flatten again just as soon as they formed. Where the peachy colors of the ceiling’s exterior layer ended and where the hulking shape behind it began, I couldn’t say, but all of it was gracefully at play, with those colorful creases beneath the sparkles undulating gently and slowly as the contents of a lava lamp.

            This bizarre display took place close enough that I could’ve stood up on my odd leather bedding and touched it, or at least I thought I could, until my bleary focus on the surface above gave way instead to attention on my body, which was suspended on this spot despite being positioned on a slope. At the same time, I became aware that my frame was not only stripped naked (again, not uncommon in dreams), but spread-eagle, with my arms and legs stretched in opposite compass directions toward the distant edges of the expansive downward-facing ramp, brown and weathered, especially near the center beneath me. And as it turned out, I was only kept from sliding down the wide chute by four tightly-applied cowhide straps, finer than the grit under my bare back, and so securely screwed into place, I couldn’t get more than a wiggle from any one of the four.

            Then, as the perplexing seconds wore on, only becoming more befuddling the longer I didn’t “actually” wake up for the second time, my gaze drifted in blinking disbelief between the binds over my wrinkles and ankles and that still-shifting ceiling of dancing textures joined by the webby outer film, thin enough that it could be seen through, and the hues I recognized were due only to the organic sky lurking behind the veil. At last the full picture of my surroundings sunk in, even if it was no closer to making sense, when I discovered the long leather hill curved up into white walls of a single piece like the hull of a ship, then leveled off into precipices just where the separate slab of silken netting and animalistic terrain behind it hovered above in the way of an unconventional roof.

            Whatever secondhand light shone across me only made its way into this pit via the steeper angle of the ceiling somewhere behind me, and by craning my neck, I saw the thick meaty floss-coated platform overhead narrowing slightly to a bulkhead, like the broad edge of a cliff. Deeper below, however, at the base of the slope, the pinkish ceiling actually bent deep enough to unite with the ground, and it occurred to me for the first time in these silent minutes of elongated unknowing that the mysterious shape above me was, in all likelihood, probably capable of manipulating itself to slump all the way into the empty volume of the alabaster-white “ship,” right on top of me, to perfectly fit the hull as well as a tailored glove. Or if not a glove, then-

            The sudden echo of a thunderous rumble startled me out of my train of thought, then softened and pitched up to a more humane and almost-feminine tone, settling into a contented murmur. Of course my first instinct was to believe the sound was somehow coming from the transforming ceiling itself, as that was the only other “alive” thing in my field of view while strapped naked to the ground. Soon, however, I pinpointed the reverberating effect from the call as coming from much higher than that, between the cusp formed of the white port-and-starboard sides and the nude-lace pattern of the loosely wrapped roof.

            When the noise flooded my unusual surroundings again, this time articulated into recognizable English speech, simultaneously the overwhelming environment bloomed abruptly into intense focus for me, like finally seeing a hidden picture in a 3D optical illusion after hours of squinting. Overcome by both sensory revelations, though naturally I didn’t believe any of it for an instant, I cowered in stunned silence, strapped bare-assed into what I now realized was the basin of a gigantic woman’s white leather pump, stuck beneath a propped-up stocking-adorned foot large enough to make the Statue of Liberty’s peds look like a doll’s.

            “Oh, good. You’re awake now, aren’t you… shit, what was your name again? Oh well. Not that it matters now,” she spoke. “I wouldn’t have noticed at first, but that girl in the bookstore gave me the perfect model to practice with before I had one of you of my own for real, and now, even though you’re less than half an inch tall, I can tell everything that’s happening down there, just by hearing and feeling your little breaths. Yes, it took a while to learn how to do that, and yes, you should be impressed. I mean, you’re practically nothing in there, but I can still tell almost everything you’re doing without even looking, and I’ll know even more once I’m stepping on you. And okay, full disclosure, I made you smaller than I meant to, but what can I say, I’m enthusiastic. Then again, you’ll probably remember that and all the rest of the traits from my bio, right? Just kidding, obviously. I’m not going to pretend you’ll remember that, and neither should you. I’m not really somebody who likes to play games. Well… maybe a few games, but not the kind you’ll like.”

            Her voice, though youthful, was flinty and just a little husky in the way of some effortlessly ravishing old-Hollywood starlet. The sound might’ve been a turn-on if she wasn’t speaking to me in an earth-tremoring timbre while I lay vulnerable, comparatively-miniscule, and lashed into the place where the beefy center of her nyloned sole would comfortably and weightily rest once she ceased arching her foot out of its holding, which was definitely what it seemed she was threatening to do. No matter how much I told myself a woman’s foot slowly descending couldn’t harm or kill me, it was difficult to take myself at my word, when her stylishly clad sole had the same surface area as those school auditorium stages I once dreamed of standing upon in my underwear. Of course, what was slowly becoming clear as reality was far worse than that silly nightmare, given that I didn’t even have the luxury of boxers now, I was tied down rather than standing free, and I was faced with the ever-present possibility of the entire roof caving in on me at any second if desired by the colossal owner of the biggest foot I’d ever imagined.