Baker's Dozen (Chapter 8) (Patreon)

In the middle of Amber’s sentence, alarm at my accidental disobedience overtook me, and I robotically began licking and nibbling at the only patch of sole flesh I had access to. The furrowed texture was wretchedly slimy, of course, wet as a bog and rife with sweat that came gushing forth from the skin cells like a pie to the face from the moment I pressed my tongue against the oil-slaked terrain. Of course, it was every bit as repugnant as yesterday, and my stomach was bubbling in protest before the first gooey blob of toejam-and-callus-flake made it down my seared throat. But at this stage, I could only take my losses and gobble up all the curdled muck from these blanch-white creases in the moist plain of her arch, because pausing to breathe might make me pass out while the sweaty liquid sizzled through my innards.

“-HA, there you go! That’s the stuff. Yep, slurp it all up. It’s good for you,” Amber cackled as I ate. “Now, it’s too bad, Oscar, but since you were too stupid to do that job without asking, I’m going to have to punish you, or otherwise you’ll just go off thinking you’re getting a break down there. Like a vacation. And I’ll squash you like a bug before THAT ever happens. So, here’s what I’m thinking. I’ve been testing out this one new spell the last couple days. Your senses are already stronger, just so we make sure you get the most out of every sniff and every drink you take down there… again, you’re welcome for that… but I think you want more. More stink, more burn, more of my foot inside you. And I want you to have more, too. Just to show you there’s no hard feelings between us, now that you’re where you belong. Here’s the game: your senses of smell and taste are going to get one percent stronger every time you cough, every time you swallow, and every time you stick out your tongue. Oh, and every time you take a breath. And since this is magic, it doesn’t have to stop at one hundred percent! Have fun, you pointless little asshole, and remember that if I don’t feel you trying to eat up everything off my foot for even five seconds, I’m upping it to two percent stronger every breath. Ready, set, go!”

The rest of my day at the bakery then unfolded in a haze of ever-blossoming sensory dread, with my hysteria only making me writhe and breathe heavier, thus creating a vicious cycle. As was to be expected, within seconds of taking my next collected gulps of foot brew, my perceptions began heightening to tortuous degrees, yet I couldn’t stop, or the process would happen faster. Even sock fuzz like damp cotton candy hit my throat with the feeling of an acid-filled shot glass, and the buffet of other indigestible treats on offer were much more caustic, from the shreds of grid-lined foot skin shorn away by friction, bits of mushy grit from her nailbeds, and especially the gemstone-like globes of sweat splashing into my face every other heartbeat.

It was impossible to avoid triggering any of the spell’s amplifiers while still following Amber’s orders. Since the stench was worsening every few seconds, I couldn’t help but hack and spew, which bumped up the percentage, then licking and swallowing every hateful bite, the one thing I had to do in order to succeed, added more. I was starting to go so crazy from the existential fright of having to shovel down clammy alkaline-flavored dredge in a way that would only make it taste worse by design, I actually considered for a moment whether it would be possible to stop breathing. Then I could give myself some relief in slowing the “improvement” of my senses, at least until I remembered that tanking up the mist of Amber’s hulking foot was literally vital for survival, and I regretfully continued allowing the cheesily brackish fumes to violate my body.

With my connection to reality so fractured, I endured hours of trampling under the pulsating weight of my giantess ex’s rosy bare ped, though the time seemed like days, if not weeks. It began to feel like an out-of-body experience, with so little choice except to keep eating grease and footy bread-dust off the smorgasbord of her sweaty sole, trapped in a never-ending loop of smelling the expanding odor, so much more peppery and cutting with every inhale and lick. The strength had lost almost all meaning, except to recognize that I had never “felt” something so strongly, nor probably had any human in history, as I was now experiencing the taste of Amber’s foot.

Then just like that, after a seeming lifetime of sodden delirium crammed into a single day, I was rolling over under her meaty arch, no longer bound by its planetary weight, nor the straps of the sock threads. My body came unstuck from the labor-baked skin of her foot, but not without some effort, as though she’d pounded me hard enough that my shrunken form had melded right into her sole and become a part of it. Certainly I smelled bad enough to belong here.

When the abandoned cave of the sock was vacated, however, heavy enough with clogged saltwater that it could’ve filled a pitcher if gently squeezed, the tunnel revolved to tip me toward the light, but I didn’t see Amber’s hand waiting to catch me. Instead, I plummeted toward a dramatic fall, a fate I didn’t especially mind now after the kind of day I’d spent under my ex-girlfriend. Just in the nick of time, though, the distorted walls of a glass jar big as a house swooped into place, and the witch had me captured in a new container. Granted, it felt like being put in a luxury hotel to now occupy a space not made of bitter sweat and swampy flesh, but when Amber’s Cheshire grin filled up the visage through the glass wall, my stomach turned just as grimly.

“Liking the air, shithead? It’s really clean in there, isn’t it?” she said, before twisting the lid onto the jar. “It’s the weekend now, after all, and I don’t have to wear you back to the bakery until Monday. So just for you, I made it fresh as could be in here. Like flowers and cookies. Also, I’m erasing your memories now of what you were just smelling and eating all day down in my sock like a little bitch. Since you did such a good job…”

For about five quiet seconds, I happily breathed in the indeed delightful air of the jar, realizing too that I had forgotten exactly what the worst and sharpest foot-odor on Earth was like. This must’ve been what heaven was like. Perhaps, despite all her evil flaws, Amber was capable of mercy, and had chosen to give me a rest now after boring herself with my torture.

“…of course, I only did that to make it smell so much worse once I do this!” she finished with a sniveling giggle that deepened to a hungry growl. Amber slammed the jar down on the floor between the gothic monuments of her naked feet, then waved her hands, and just as quickly as I was blessed with my first clean puff of oxygen in days, smothering reality returned with a vengeance.

Miniature black spots began to decorate the glass walls in polka-dotted patterns, at first looking like mold spores, though after I inevitably was forced to sniff the limited air poisoned by the specks, I recognized it as the material from Amber’s socks, specifically in the spongy broken-down format it took on after enough washings in high tides of gruesome sweat, juicy as midnight-hued blueberries but far more haunting in their aroma.

Then, after enough lint-balls had magically materialized in the jar, growing fast over the walls like living tar, the once-dry curve of the glass below me started to pool with water. Judging by the stink of the brine wafting from the depths, not to mention the hot-tub temperature, it wasn’t ordinary fluid, though, cloudy in appearance and clinging around my ankles like melted lard as it flooded my translucent prison. It looked like I just might literally drown in an Olympic pool’s worth of sweat.

Next, skimming the surface of the rising bilge like lake scum were peachy-white pieces of gnarly refuse that resembled falling leaves, but upon closer inspection, were revealed to be pieces of deceased foot-skin raked off her tired heels and toe-blisters, either as a fine powder or as whole chunks not much larger than nail clippings to Amber, but which to me constituted slippery bits of detritus the size of diseased fish.

“Welcome to your week, Oscar. I thought this would be a fun reminder of how far we’ve come together. That stuff joining you in there now is actually everything that fell off my feet this week, all collected in the same place and sealed for maximum freshness. Every drop, every crumb, every sock-ball, every skin-peel. All for you to smell, and taste too. Oh, and just to give you some extra encouragement, I’m going to curse you so you’re ten times as hungry all day, which means you’re going to have to eat as fast as you can before it starts to hurt. But lucky for you, you’re not going to run out of that stuff, no matter how hard you try. So don’t worry.”

All of the alien elements in the jar continued multiplying, with the lint-rot crusting gooily over the jar walls, the frothy sweat quickly rising up past my knees, and the soup of flaked flesh shards building itself like a new layer of skin over the tepid liquid. In one minute, half the jar was full of gnarly debris representing the droppings from my ex-girlfriend’s most formidable body parts. I noticed too that my stomach was rapidly gnawing at me for sustenance, aching like never before, even though I’d just spent all day chewing stale sweat off Amber’s sole. Thus I had no choice but to scoop my trembling hands through the simmering pond of perspiration and gloppy black sludge on the walls, grabbing anything I could to sate my enchanted hunger, and like a bolt of lightning, I was reminded of the exponentially enhanced flavors of any souvenirs from the giantess’s feet that I put in my mouth, but as usual, I had no choice but to feast.

By then, the aroma of all the combined terror, fungal and tangy and more noxious than anything conceivable in the known cosmos, had gathered in a choking cloud of inescapable malodor that actually manifested as a sickly green fog, sticking humidly to my skin while I uselessly gasped for air in a dance approaching death-throes, though of course Amber wouldn’t allow me to perish from something as simple as a week’s worth of decomposed foot-sweat. Not when I still had a lifetime of it to sniff yet.

“It’s so much fun to play with your stupid little brain like this. Almost as much fun as it is to play with your stupid little body under my foot.,” Amber laughed, snapping her fingers from above. Using her pudgy toes, she pushed the jar into the shadows under her desk, leaving me in even greater darkness, as her thunderous steps carried her out of the room, though I could no longer see her through the mutating gunk-pile all around me. Still, my astronomic ex-girlfriend’s voice boomed ever-louder, reaching me even through the swelling chimera of her most apocalyptic foot-essence sacraments. “Yep, we’re going to go ahead and push your sensitivity up to ten percent more every time you sniff, sip, breathe, or even move. Hey, look on the bright side, Oscar: by the time I let you out of there in two days for another round at the shop, you’ll be SO excited to escape all that nastiness, you’ll probably dive right into my sock all by yourself and pray that I let you drink and eat up every last scrap of dirt I smear on for you. And you know what? Because I’m such a NICE goddess to my slave, and just for old time’s sake, I’ll even agree to answer those prayers. You fucking loser.”

---

THE END