Baker's Dozen (Chapter 5) (Patreon)

THURSDAY

As it turned out, “more fun” and “making things interesting” for Amber meant wrapping me into the thinnest possible strip of tape the next morning, using a pair of tweezers at her desk to ensure I was tightly and completely mummified from my ankles up to my neck. This made sure I no longer had the ability to use my hands for crawling around inside her shoe or, more importantly, cleaning the foot-flavored trash. Which left just one method for doing the job ahead, though I didn’t want to have to think about it yet. With my tiny body stiffened straight by the binding, I endured a cruel smirk from my ex and another goodbye-waggle from her fingers before being dumped back in a high-top prison.

Though much of the moisture had thankfully sunken into the half-rotten insole, it was miraculously still sticky, the atmosphere around me humid despite having a full night to air out. Her now-familiar foot followed quickly after in a pair of “clean” socks, though after I was buried under the fuzz, they still smelled rather stuffy, and I had a suspicion Amber wasn’t very thorough in bathing her soles last night. Trodden heavily upon in my tape-chains, I was now made to roll around in the chaos beneath my giantess torturer’s foot, without any way to stop myself besides turning my head or trying to bite the swampy ground, which was of course out of the question.

Hours passed, with Amber’s trampling pattern causing me to bounce and crash from one foamy edge to the other. At times I was drummed beneath all five of her toes, which seemed to make a special effort to grab me in the already-damp fabric pocket between, while on other occasions, I tumbled all the way to the back, finding myself fitted under her heel. One smashing blow from the heaviest portion of her colossal foot rendered me dumb and hazy for several minutes afterward, which was saying something, considering I was already surrounded by so much decaying fabric, near-tangible sweat fog, and ruthless sole-slab.

Then, as it happened yesterday, just as I expected, Amber pried her sock off me, but didn’t even fully remove it from the shoe, likely because she didn’t want me to have an even slightly-refreshing bit of oxygen to wash out the otherwise brackish pollution of her feet in my lungs. That would’ve been too kind. This time, rather than merely simpering down at me with the haughtiest expression imaginable, the giantess had her phone out, with the camera lens aimed directly at me.

“God, this is just too perfect. If only you knew how sad you look in there, Oscar,” she murmured. I saw her finger tap the screen, likely snapping several images, then holding the phone still for what I assumed to be a video of my suffering taped-up one-third-inch body mired in the liquid gunk of her insole, trapped in the shadow of her semi-chubby citadel of an arched foot wrapped in old sock. “You know, I can’t really remember because I wasn’t really paying attention whenever you tried to describe the weird shrinky-sex fantasies you always had, but I’m pretty sure you talked about something like this once, didn’t you? Like how much fun it would be to hang out with me all day, but tiny and down here, taking care of my feet and showing me all the love I deserve? Maybe you just way underestimated what it would be like, but either way, I’m happy to finally give you the sick shit you wanted, since it benefits me so much. Hope it’s everything you dreamed of, loser! Oh, I can’t wait to watch this later on my break. It’s so depressing to see you in there, I almost feel sorry for you. But not quite, obviously, because you deserve it. Sorry, I almost forgot. Bon appetit! I found this thing in the dumpster out back, but don’t worry, it’s at least two days old, so maybe it won’t taste as strong!”

With that, Amber’s other hand appeared overhead, clutching a giant frosted scone that certainly looked like it had been sitting in the garbage for fifty hours, stale and crusty in places while soaked with mysterious trash-liquid in others. Her mighty hand closed into a fist, crumbling hunks of the grody treat down into the shoe, and she was much more “generous” today, as promised, leaving me with at least double the amount to pick up and eat. How I was going to track it all down, with my hands taped down and a limited amount of stomach space in my shrunken body, I had no idea, but Amber didn’t seem to care about what was possible or not. She was too busy covering her mouth to keep the laughter silent, lest a co-worker hear, filming me flinching helplessly while scone clumps hailed onto my body.

“Same deal, dipshit. I don’t want to see a single crumb leftover when I take off my shoes after work,” Amber sneered, then winked, which was actually more unsettling than her open hostility. “But don’t you worry. Since that tape is making you even moreuseless as a little slave than usual, I picked up some more tricks from that enchantment book to help you out. Because I’m nice like that. All right, enough chit-chat. You’ve got almost as much work to do as me!”

Finished with this round of mocking, Amber put away her phone, then folded her socked sole back down against the shoe’s crummy insole. As the weight of her heel slumped back into place, sealing out what little light and air could penetrate beneath the damp atmosphere, I felt the squelchy ground beneath me shifting like marshland, and was once again left in pitch-darkness, but only for a moment. A mysterious bead of light appeared in the center of the narrow space I occupied between the repulsive high-top basin and my ex-girlfriend’s totalitarian foot, which had no obvious source for its glow. Nevertheless, I could now suddenly see the bizarre wafer-thin arena of her shoe’s interior around me thanks to the light, illuminating the perspiration-congealed dust, tar-like toejam smears, and hunks of dumpster-tainted scone, all of which was decorated on both the slippery floor of the rot-scented shoe and the fuzzy ever-shifting ceiling of used sock above. I realized this must be the spell Amber was referring to, and indeed it would at least let me know where to find the “food” I was to clean, but it would do nothing to help me move, nor find room in my shrunken stomach to fit such a high volume of garbage.

I also couldn’t help but notice the heat inside Amber’s shoe immediately jumped upward by another twenty degrees at least from the magic light, like she’d wandered into a sauna. This was a serious problem, considering I was already choking on every other breath, coated in almost as much of my own heat-stroke sweat as the salty leakage from my giantess ex’s sole-pores. It was so hot now I didn’t even want to move, since the slightest exertion while trying to worm toward scone pieces in my tape-hogtied state would require me to rub myself against the sticky heat-baked ground or, worse, Amber’s damp sock-foot, which would drip more sweaty discharge at the smallest touch. The effect was only compounded once my captor started walking again, bouncing me and the pastry crumbs violently through the well-lit and smolderingly hot cavern of shoe beneath her ped.

Then if these surprises weren’t enough, I was startled nearly to madness at the sound of a familiar and snobby voice so distinct it was like she was sensuously whispering directly into my ear:

“Hey, testing one-two-three… can you hear me, little Oscar? Don’t worry, you’re not going crazy. Not yet, anyway. This is just another one of my new tricks. Obviously, you can’t talk back to me, but at least I can give you encouragement while you try to eat all the breakfast I was nice enough to give you,” Amber’s cruel timbre reverberated inside my head. “Plus, it’ll keep me from getting bored dealing with all these lame customers. Let’s face it, it’s nice to earn money, but… I’d much rather spend my day fucking around with you. If I could get paid doing this, that’d be the ultimate! Well, don’t just lie there, stupid and useless like you are! Start wiggling around and eating up those yummy crumbs I left you. It’s only going to get harder once it gets warmer in there and they all start melting. Tick-tock, tick-tock!”

Though the odds stacked against me were more hopeless than ever, I knew I’d only be punished even worse if I refused to try. Amber was quick to remind me of this too, and used her magically-projected voice to offer sarcastic cheers while I tried and failed to complete the task. Throwing myself around with only my fractional-inch momentum against the insurmountable force of Amber’s burly foot, slamming continually into the soupy insole with a deadly galosh each time, was even more pathetic in practice than I thought. However, after half an hour of hurling myself deliriously through the steamy, raunchy foot-essence air, I buried my face almost-accidentally in a glob of scone. Already the heat from the magic was affecting it, making it piping hot as though fresh from the oven, which might’ve been nice, if not for the sheer volume of sole sweat already sopping inside it like a full sponge. Suppressing the reflex to vomit which I’d honed yesterday, I gulped down the biggest bite I could fit, then promptly spat it back out.

The inside of my mouth felt like I’d tried to swallow a beaker of acid, so briny and acrid in its every liquid morsel that I couldn’t even taste the sweetness of the scone itself. After chasing down chocolate hunks tainted with her foot-funk the last time, I thought I’d become immune to the poisonous horrors of surviving by eating the dreck off the bottom of Amber’s foot. As I cringed in disgust, I heard the telepathic booms of evil cackling filling the shoe.

“Oh, God, that is too GOOD. What’s wrong, Oscar? Did I forget to tell you about the other enchantment I put down there? I just wanted to help you out, so I made sure that everything you’re supposed to eat in there now tastes ten times as strong. That way, you’ll know you’re doing what you’re supposed to! You’re welcome. Well, better get eating. You must be hungry…”

I should’ve counted on Amber not to leave the torment at super-heating me in an already-broiling aura of unwashed foot and filth-caked DC high-tops, where the once-white insole was so thoroughly blackened in the imprints by putrefied sweat that in certain spots it could’ve been dark as night sky, even with the magic light showing me the way. No, she had to make sure that every day was so much more hateful than the last that I was made to miss the relatively-tame circumstances of my last torture underfoot. Though my throat closed just thinking about it, I knew I was only wasting time.

Macking with the squashed scone-lump again, I fought past the abhorrent flavors of bitter earth, cheesy toe-lint, and chemically-potent sweat, trying my best to focus on the iota of sugar-sweetness left, though this was basically impossible. Just taking one bite, I felt as sick as I had at the end of the day yesterday, yet I had roughly double as much to consume. Though my body hated me for it, I continued gobbling up the sludge of the foot-treated bakery trash Amber had so kindly left me, feeling the salty burn of the thing moving down my gullet like a stone. Then, looking around the next time my towering owner’s foot came to rest, I marveled at just how far I was from salvation; would I pop like an overfilled mosquito first, or simply expire from the toxic effect of the putrid musk-coated bread entering my system like nuclear fallout?

“Stop making those dumb faces, as though you’re not enjoying this just a little bit,” Amber laughed through her spell-voice again. “You can’t lie, you would’ve been all over this game back when we were together. Obviously, it wouldn’t have tasted as strong, and you wouldn’t have been cooking alive from the heat, and you would’ve been allowed to stop if you wanted, since none of those things are true now, but still! Just try to imagine this is one of those times you whined enough to convince me to let you play with my feet. Tell yourself we’re still together, still equals, and that you’re just licking up the delicious bits off your oh-so-understanding girlfriend’s foot, which is a littlewet and a little smelly, but not too bad! DON’T think about the fact that you’re actuallynow just a tiny insect that nobody else is ever going to see again, that you’re going to spend every day for the rest of your pathetic life trapped down there under my foot where you belong, eating everything I give you like your life depends on it, because it does depend on it. And just for fun, you’re going to have to take it whenever I feel like putting extra little curses in my shoe to mess you up. Like this!”

Alarmed, I finished scarfing down my third caustic scone-and-perspiration blob right before being thrown into the pounding chaos again. At this point I just had to absorb her trampling, awaiting another temporary halt so I could squirm toward the next hellish bite. When it finally paused, though, I immediately became aware of the additional abuse she’d applied when next I inhaled. Over time, I’d managed to become immune to the pervasive stench which clouded the space under her foot like smog, thick and moist with the aromas of unlaundered cotton, grass stains, flaky sweat-abraded flesh, and whatever hint of bakery dough still remained. However, when I sniffed another shallow gasp of sweat-aerosol oxygen, only enough to keep my body running, I recoiled and instantly began hacking like I was smelling the inside of her shoe for the first time.