A Tale of Little Cities (Chapter 4) (Patreon)

All Laura could think of now was the sheer chaos and foot-inspired violence taking place inside her shoe earlier, all while she joyfully skipped along the pavement to Tara’s. She’d even felt additional arch support, which she now realized was due to Paris imploding beneath the unrelenting weight of her marshmallow-smooth soles and buckling toes. The people must have felt nothing but fear and despair as they watched the darkness creep over them from the unidentified flying object of her comparatively island-sized foot, oppressively lowering itself atop them and their livelihoods, with no possible defense against her militant sole flattening every last skyscraper and park bench in its peachy, cataclysmic wake.

“Hey, what’s up, girl?” Tara questioned from the top of the stairs, breaking her friend’s concentration.

“Nothing!” Laura gasped in panic, flattening her greasy pink sole upon the floor to conceal the incriminating wreckage. Idly, she flicked her shoe onto its side against its match. Distraught as she felt, first and foremost, she acted on instinct to keep her family safe. “I, uh. Just called my dad, but he doesn’t know what’s going on, either.”

“I know, it’s super weird and kind of scary. I forgot you had family over there, so I probably should’ve said it nicer,” Tara mumbled, having mellowed from her earlier excitement over the social media frenzy. “You wanna come back up? Drink the iced tea I made?”

“Y-Yeah, I do,” Laura said. Catastrophe or no, there was nothing more she could do in this moment, except keep that shoe containing the remains of Paris secret. She followed her friend back up the stairs in single file.

Only as Laura was coming up the stairs after her friend, then, was she offered a vantage point just low enough for a peek into the backs of Tara’s floppy sandals. It wasn’t clear at first, but upon leaning in, the terrified blonde confirmed it: there was something under her best friend’s tanned left sole getting smashed flat over and over by the girl’s deep-arched ped. Upon closer inspection, Laura had to choke back a scream of shock: it was a whole second city, mostly still intact, but already half-mulched under Tara’s pounding heel. Whole structures hurtled like jumping beans from the back of her heel and up into the wedge of her toe crevices with a single stride.

Though the shrunken town was spared somewhat on the ascent up the staircase, as the young woman balanced mostly on the balls of her feet, her weight shifted right back to her heels before Laura had a chance to thrust her fingers into the sandal to protect the survivors. Not that she could’ve possibly explained that action, nor the inevitable discovery of the unfortunate little metropolis within currently meeting its maker beneath a megaton, citrus-scented sky of sun-glazed feminine foot flesh.

Swallowing her fear, Laura reminded herself of what was at stake. Certainly, she wanted to rescue anyone who was left within that city. Yet the damage was also already done; regardless of right or wrong, and no matter how sick it made her, Laura’s first purpose now was to protect her father.

“What’s the matter? You look like you just saw a ghost,” Tara laughed as she stood in the doorframe, gripping the frigid glass of tea. She pressed the lemon wedge deeper over the cusp. “By the way, while you were down there doing whatever, more insane stuff showed up on the news. Brace yourself if you need to, but it happened to Berlin this time. Berlin is just effing gone.”

“B-Berlin?” Laura uttered.

Well, there was the identity of the anonymous city. She tried not to look too long at Tara’s foot, imagining the citizens suffering amidst the deadly heat and musky darkness. Laura pondered trying to rip the sandal away and rescue the German people inside, but the risk of collateral was too high; instead she merely gulped.

“Yeah, Berlin. No family there, right? You need to try and relax. I know you’re worried about Paris and your second cousins and stuff, so I’m going to help keep you distracted, okay? How about we bust out the old karaoke machine from when we were kids and get to dancing?”

Then, to demonstrate her point, Tara began to mouth the words to a bubble gum pop tune. Simultaneously she threw her arms in the air, and began to dance. Her hips sashayed and her legs grooved. She bounced off the balls of her feet, landing again and again on the leathery flanks of her sandals, one of which currently contained a city under fire. For ten beats of a song, Tara jumped into the air and then came down hard upon the city in her shoe, surely demolishing buildings by the block within each curled ridge of her sole wrinkles. Completely unaware, the girl was literally dancing the city of Berlin toward bedlam, smudging more landmarks and crowds into the fibers of her sun-tanned, heavily lotioned skin with every leap.

“NO!” Laura screeched. She emergently embraced her friend, stopping her from dancing, and instead led her back toward the beanbag chair. Anything to get her off her feet; her next course of action would be to steal Tara’s sandal, any way she could, but the most vital thing would be to get her to shift the weight off. Providing anyone survived the five-second dance party.

“Geez, so uptight, aren’t you! I had no idea,” Tara simpered, nevertheless willingly ceasing her dance moves and joining Laura. “Okay, okay, rain check on the dance party. How about… we…”

“…mani/pedis!” Laura cheered, arriving at a solution first. “Pedis first.”

“Hey, good idea, girl. It is sunning season, after all, so we gotta make sure the people at the pool have something to admire if they get too good a look at our tootsies,” Tara surmised. She slumped back in the beanbag again, thankfully removing her full body weight off the destructive oblong-oval ground zero of her naked foot. “You wanna go first?”

“Nah. I’ll do you first,” Laura said quickly. She dropped to her knees and gently cradled Tara’s heel in her hand, undoing the straps as fast as she could.

“Wow, somebody’s eager, huh? Thinking you can do a rush job on mine so we’ll get to yours quicker, huh?” Tara teased with a toss of her highlighted brunette tresses. She bobbed her ankles playfully in Laura’s hands, inadvertently smearing her soft sole again over the ravaged capital of Germany upon the cracked leather.

“Hey, paranoid much?” Laura teased, sweating under the collar. In a couple plucks she had the sandal off; sighing with relief, she tried not to spend too many seconds gazing conspicuously past the strappy spires and into the insole. Sure enough, it was a little city, much like the one she’d found in her own running shoe. It appeared at least some of it was still intact, though a dramatic majority was currently either crumbled in foot-wrinkle-shape or simply in flames within Tara’s beloved house “slippers.”

Insisting that her friend not stand up again, Laura fetched the basket of pedicure products from under the bed and set about nonchalantly pampering Tara’s feet. When it came to the left foot, which had single-handedly wiped out most of Berlin, Laura was careful to wipe away every scrap of statues, car dust, or building husk away from Tara’s sole. The particles landed in Laura’s hand, which she smoothly pocketed while her friend’s eyes were closed in soothing pleasure.

“Kinda tickles,” Tara laughed. Squirming her toes, the girl pinch-crushed multiple buildings which become ensnared in the creases between. “But seriously, wow, Laura. You ever think about taking a summer job at one of the parlors? You’re really good at this.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re just saying that because you don’t want your turn to end,” Laura quipped. When next her BFF closed her eyes, the crafty blonde sneaked the ground-zero sandal into her purse, hoping its absence wouldn’t be noted until she was already out of the house. After all, what possible reason would there be to suspect Laura in its theft? Taking another glance at the damage, Laura’s heart sunk.

The German city was in utter disarray. If Laura didn’t know any better, she’d have said Tara took even weightier steps than she. That dancing didn’t help, either. Many city blocks were reduced to an insole-flush dust, so flat they might as well have never existed at all except with the unknowing brunette’s meaty sole resting atop the proud capital and its humble citizens. A tear formed in Laura’s eye, but she dabbed it away and returned to work.

The instant Laura finished working on Tara’s feet, however, and cleaning every scrap of micro-scale Berlin paraphernalia out from the crevices and folds of the woman’s tanned ped, she invented an excuse to get out. An insistence that her father would be upset thinking about his family, and that she needed to be with him.

“I hope you’re gonna be okay,” Tara sighed, obviously concerned at Laura’s bizarre behavior during this short visit. She remained perched on the balls of her feet, trying to let the various soothing creams dry on her lush skin. “Text me, okay?”

“You bet,” Laura said. With Tara’s sandal clandestinely stored in her purse, she scooped up her own sneakers, but thought better of wadding her massive feet back in. Though it seemed near-impossible, if there was even one civilian in there somehow still alive, she had to keep the remains of the city undisturbed. So, as normally as she could, Laura stepped off the porch, still in her bare feet, with the trainers hung from her thumbs.

“You’re not gonna wear your shoes?” Tara snorted. “I understand you’re upset, girl, and it’s totally okay, but… this Paris-Berlin thing has made you loopy! Why?”

“You have no idea,” Laura false-laughed as she back-pedaled down the driveway. “But you know, it’s hot out… the shoes might be a little stanky and whatnot… just trying to think all-naturale!” Out of excuses, Laura sprinted down the street back toward her home, clutching both shoes and the corresponding toejam-addled cities to her chest.

She just hoped it wasn’t too late.