Work From Home (Chapter 15)

The conversation was bubbly and joyous, each woman taking the reins at natural points to discuss work complaints, friend drama, new movies, cooking methods and, to the goofy chagrin of Blair and August, any romance in their lives, as questioned by Tamatha. Not a subtopic or even a word was wasted on anything having to do with the tiny man in their lives. For the first time in a little while, as he’d finally learned to zone out most of the overbearing pain of Tamatha’s foot on top of him, Carl dredged up some forgotten tears from somewhere in his achingly dehydrated body, bestowed not because they were being physically squeezed out of him by a giant sole, but because he’d finally done exactly what Tamatha had requested during her earlier phone call with August. He was coming to peace with it.

But he couldn’t. Not yet. If he acquiesced whatever small part of his humanly fortitude that remained, Carl knew, he’d have no chance at ever escaping this new excuse for a “life.” Already, his odds were thinner even than the shape his body had been gradually mashed into by having a gargantuan stockinged foot smashing him to kingdom come all day long.

The family trio at last took their seats at the table, punctuated by clattering plates and silverware finding their place, and capped off by the plopping of six mountainous feet to the floor under the table. Each set of feminine peds radiated the personality of their hulking owner: from Blair’s naked, exhaustion-swollen rose-pink soles busily slapping the surface and wringing her grimy toes, across the way to August’s longer, more rigid and queenly feet enclosed in mocha-hued sheer nylons.

With everyone situated, the giantesses began serving up from the dishes and carrying right on with their animated discussion. Though Carl could feel the tension and weariness in his wife’s feet during the workday, due to the professional responsibilities resting on her shoulders and in turn lofting much of that weight upon him, he could tell she’d relaxed now, especially with the appearance of August that had put both her precious daughters under one roof again for the evening. Her flesh seemed to soften, spreading out and letting her sweaty pores open up, minus many of the muscle knots she’d had worked out by her happiness at this family dinner and the literally kink-focused efforts of her bite-sized spouse. This, Carl knew, was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, and likely the only one he’d receive. With just a smidge less pressure being applied through the infinite mass of Tamatha’s arch, the little fellow began his snail’s pace odyssey out from under the ball of her foot, toward her toes, where he might get a better look at August and devise a way to contact her. It was slow and draining process, energy-wise and because Carl had another two orgasms just during that two-inch-long journey, but powered by his hope in August, the man emerged out from under the bulkiest hunk of Tamatha’s sole, where her arch sloped into a rounded boulder of skin and muscle, and allowed him to clamber among the webbed segments of pale, doughy flesh looped between each thick digit. Grasping the netting of the opaque stocking like jail bars, Carl stretched the fibers and peered to the middle distance.

He had no idea where to begin; perhaps he should open his mouth to scream, or risk annoying Tamatha to the point of her demonstrating his shrunken scale to August, or maybe expend the last of his limited energy trying to burrow through the stocking and reach his daughter on his own. As it turned out, though, he selected none of those choices. Something halted Carl in his tracks.

Following such a brain-frying twenty-four hours, during which Carl’s perceptions of physics and humanity had all been shattered, he might not have been especially shocked by having yet another insanity added to the list by seeing a fellow shrunken slave under his older daughter’s foot. Almost anything was possible at this point. However, there was not one slave. There were two, one planted under each authoritative foot and corralled in place by August’s stockings, glimmering like razor wire in every restrictive thread.

They were tricky to make out from this far off, but there was no question in Carl’s mind. Not anymore. Both individuals were men, if such a name could be assigned to beings who’d obviously had so much of their former being stripped and stomped and squeezed away beneath the giantess’s incarcerating soles. Each of them, like Carl, had crept to the front of the stocking, jamming themselves willingly between August’s graceful digits to use the distended stocking mesh like a window, but they clearly were making no effort to escape or fight back. Either the faith or the desire had long-ago been bled out of them.

All thought of why August had these creatures in her stockings dissipated, or how she even knew about this shrinking phenomenon that Carl had only just discovered; he instead occupied himself with questions of who. Under her right foot was a young man probably just a bit younger than August, likely around university age, though Carl had never seen him before and recognized no part of his countenance, except for instantly sympathizing with the dead look in his beady little eyes. The opposite ped, however, was home sweet home to an equally-wretched shell of a shrunken man that forced Carl to do a double-take. For several minutes that felt like they passed in dead silence, even though the skyward women above the tabletop were still merrily gabbing away about everything and anything except miniature foot slaves, Carl squinted in intense study of the second man. It struck him that he’d once sat across the dinner table from him, a guy named Ronnie who’d several years back held the title of August’s boyfriend, until vanishing not so long ago. Their daughter had explained it as things just not working out between them romantically, though they’d chosen to keep in touch. At first Carl had assumed August was insinuating staying in touch “as friends,” but now he comprehended that wasn’t what she’d meant at all. Judging by the gaunt, inhuman look on that ex-boyfriend’s face, the breakup aftermath situation was not a mutual one. Was that what Carl was to become?

Ronnie silently mouthed something, though it was impossible to read at first.

What? Carl replied in the same manner.

GET OUT NOW, Ronnie screamed without sound.

Minus all fanfare and circumstance, that last atom of belief in the possibility of turning this all around died within Carl. He scarcely even noticed the demise of his hope. It just felt natural, like so much else of what had occurred during these humbling, righteous hours. Had he been a stronger person, a better one, or even someone worthy of a second chance, Carl supposed he might’ve still found the will to keep striving for a way to satisfy his family’s need for justice in ways other than spending the rest of his life on the inside of shoes and stockings, being trampled and toe-clenched and sweated out by humongous feet well-past the brink of the Geneva Conventions. But, Carl was none of those things, and so he had nothing left to give but what could and would be taken from him by force and underfoot. He let go of the stocking threads, sighed, and allowed himself to go limp, maybe forever. Probably forever.

Almost at the same time, chosen by kismet, he heard the booming laughter and jittery speech above pause. When someone spoke again, her godlike voice rebounding through the room, it was with greater seriousness and fervor than had yet graced the dinner conversation.

“Now, August, honey, enough beating around the bush. You promised us you’d give us your thoughts on your dear father, and share a bit of your expertise that you’ve been keeping to yourself all this time,” Tamatha insisted. “I’m frankly dying to hear it.”

“Yes, please!” Blair enthused. “Since you’re supposed to be the expert and all, from what you’re saying. I can’t believe you kept all this from us for so long! What, like, years?”

“There’s a time and place for everything,” August’s cold, sagely voice intoned, though her love for her sister and mother still came through. “And I suppose both of those terms have finally converged here. I’ve been waiting a long time to share this with you both. Why don’t you give me a look at him, Mom?”

Like he’d already experienced so often in the past day each time Tamatha fancied adjusting Carl’s position for a brand-new foot-smothering method, the shrunken slave awaited the removal process, to bring him back to the outside world, though he sincerely doubted it would be much better than in here. It was hard for him to feel strongly either way, however, as surrender had already come after getting a glimpse at his future in the form of August’s ex, and so Carl laid in peaceful despondency while his wife rolled down her stylish see-through nylon and fished him by hand out of the crumpled tunnel.