Happy Birthday Blues (Chapter 3) (Patreon)

Another wild minute on, Ted was half-certain he’d blacked out, until he tried to wrestle again with the pliable yet immovable bulwarks of side-toe skin, and realized he was just getting dazed in the musty blackness. Then, in a move that both turned his stomach and made him eternally grateful, the tiny young man felt the weight transferring away from Molly’s foot, and staying that way, while her whole leg dangled off the ground. When at last her toes spread just far enough apart that Ted could peer out to the infinite expanse beyond, though not quite free enough that he could pull himself out of the iron grip of the delicate muscle and flesh, he realized Molly had taken a seat on the couch and crossed one leg over the other. As a result, he was now perched between toes on a foot that was hovering off the ground; it wasn’t far for Molly, of course, but her brother found himself held the equivalent of more than a thousand feet up in the air. One slip of her toes now, and he was toast.

“HELP!” he peeped, only praying that with five potential witnesses present while he was in the open, half-pinched between his sibling’s burly toes, he’d have a better chance. This felt like being held in quicksand. Still, all they had to do was recognize his pinhead-scaled face crying out for aid from the strange landscape of his sister’s tan pedicured foot, and they’d rescue him, right? “HELP ME!”

“It looks sooooo great up here, Molly. Did your mom decorate it for you?” Stephanie chimed in with a shy yet lyrical laugh, obviously not noticing their secret guest, just like the rest of the girls. Everyone took seats on the couches and chairs.

“No! It was all Ted!” Molly said.

“Wow! That’s so nice of him,” Stephanie gushed. “What a sweetie. He sure loves his big sister, huh?”

Ted recognized Stephanie immediately. The girl was Molly’s oldest friend, since elementary school, and lived just down the block, now a talented hairdresser. With fiery red locks that contrasted her porcelain-pale freckled complexion, and crystal-blue eyes, Stephanie had “developed” into a very lovely if meek young woman, somewhat heavyset but generously proportioned in her juicy curves. She was a real sweetheart, and in fact Ted suspected she’d had a crush on him back in grade school; aside from his sister and mother, Stephanie’s kind heart was most likely to deliver him to safety. He just needed her to spot him, though his continued screaming for attention brought no respite.

“So, what the heck are all those?” Tara wryly cut in, pointing to the mountain of shoeboxes. She didn’t try to hide her mockery.

“I don’t know. What’s it look like, dummy?” Molly jokingly replied, jabbing her friend in the shoulder.

“It looks like a shit-load of brand-new shoes. So, what, your brother’s a women’s fashion expert now?” Tara fired back, still in the spirit of fun, but nevertheless reveling in it. “Guess that confirms it again, in case anybody ever doubted it when we were all kids. I could totally beat him up.”

Ted couldn’t really disagree with Tara on that point, whether he was his current or full size. Though deceptively petite, the second-shortest of the convened group, the black-haired Cambodian-American cutie was scrappy, and packed substantial strength into her shorter limbs. An all-around athlete, but especially an avid rock climber, the emerald-eyed spitfire had spent years play-bullying Ted with comparisons of their endurance and ability. Nobody would say she did this in total malice, but the girl was certainly not above trying to humiliate Ted for a laugh, and secretly, the little guy couldn’t hate it, seeing what delicious interest such an alluring mini-warrior woman took in him, whether positive or negative. Pretty as she was in an outdoorsy vibe, deeply golden-tanned with her hair always in a no-frills ponytail, Tara’s other reliable trait was her constant workout regime, and she had seemingly arrived to the party with a glamorous sheen of sweat shining on her skin. Even from this distance, Ted could detect the salty sweat-fog radiating off of Tara. His coughing interrupted his pleas for help.

“Yeah, anybody could beat him up if they spent all their time hanging off of rocks and turning into She-Hulk like you,” Jessica snarked from her chair. Her eye-roll took a blatant loop. She pushed her woolen beanie-hat at a slant on her unkempt blue-dyed locks.

“You’re just jealous,” Tara teased back at their sullen friend.

“Uhh, I promise you, I’m not jealous of being some valkyrie-chick,” Jessica responded. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it is funny that Ted went out and bought a bunch of girly-girl shoes that all look the same unless you’re a weirdo, but… c’mon, cut the dude some slack. He’s trying.”

This was typical Jessica. Ted had a special liking for the girl, despite the fact that his sister’s college roommate was unable to show anything but bored disdain, even in affectionate interactions. She was too aloof let anything get her down. A tattoo artist and Etsy saleswoman, Jessica was body-inked in much of her own self-designed work, mostly florals and chains. The consummate hipster, Jessica was rarely seen without a hat, her flannel shirts and torn jeans, and a pair of dirt-crusted Converse sneakers, as she was today. Lounging lazily back on the couch, the girl kicked both feet up on the coffee table, displaying wadded gum and grit jammed into the treads of her beloved shoes: a predictably “comfortable” attitude she adopted, no matter her surroundings, though her friends and even Ted were used to it. While Jessica had come somewhat to his defense against Tara’s ribbing, though, the shrunken man doubted he could rely on her to spy him in the public stocks of Molly’s toes: sweet-acidic weed-stink hung on Jessica, which meant the too-cool giantess was liable to write off any unexpected sights as a remaining side-effect of her high.

“Those shoes are not all the same,” Alexis snapped, almost insulted at this suggestion. She hopped up from the couch and went to the boxes, lifting each lid for a peek inside and making facial appraisals of each. “Seriously, I could tell you the brands on all of these while blindfolded.”

“Maybe that should be the party game later,” Molly snickered, to a shared backdrop of laughter from the others.

“I’m serious, and you know it,” Alexis vowed. She removed the shoes from their cardboard packaging at the top of the pyramid, a pair of flirty strappy copper-hued leather sandals. “Okay, I’m not saying your brother has amazing taste, but it’s definitely good enough. He picked a few decent ones here. Really. A few lame ones, too, but whatever, he’s a guy. As if he’d know. Honestly, I’d have never guessed, since he always dresses like a slob himself.”

Alexis was certainly qualified to judge his shoe choices, Ted decided, given how often she spent time at the mall, researching the latest fashions and trying to keep up with the trends herself. A popular friend of Molly’s from high school, the rail-thin blonde definitely had the model build to pull off the “in” look of every season. Heavily made-up, with long lashes, cherry-red lips, and accented cheekbones, the girl may have been the most traditionally “feminine” of the group, but her domineering attitude, borne of her rich old-money family, meant she wasn’t above taking charge in any situation. Of Molly’s four friends, Ted usually did his best to avoid her, too fearful of a quietly sniped insult in his direction; he knew, unlike loud-mouthed Tara or the sardonic Jessica, Alexis actually meant it when she made fun of someone.

“I told him I wanted to have a shoe-trying at my parties years ago, when we were still teenagers,” Molly explained. As she spoke, recounting the glad memory, her toes nonchalantly wormed about in all directions, flaring and popping joints. Again her millimeter-brother remained grateful that she’d nuzzled him so hard against the side of her toe for now; he stuck there like glue, even when her toes spread apart, revealing the horrifying drop below the V-shaped crevasse. “And here we are, and he finally made it come true! So, none of you are gonna rain on my parade, because I am so excited. You like that one, Alexis?”

“Like I said. It’s okay,” the golden-haired fashionista shrugged. “I wouldn’t wear it.”

“That’s an all-right one, yeah,” Tara reluctantly agreed, eyeing the leather sandal. “I probably wouldn’t choose it either, cuz it would limit my range of motion so much. Seriously, I’d slip right off my foothold on the wall. But it’s fine for a party or something.”

“Hey, not all of us want to climb rocks in every pair of shoes!” Molly teased.

“Those are some thin-ass straps on there. It shows off so much foot. No, thank you,” Jessica reliably groaned. She clonked her own tight-laced sneakers together, reminding everyone how infrequently she wore anything that showed skin. “Might as well be naked.”

“It’s a really cute shoe!” Stephanie insisted, almost defensive of Ted. “I… don’t know as much about fashion as Alexis, obviously, but… you know… I bet it would look great on Molly!”

“You think so?” Molly chuckled, blushing a little.

“Yes, I think so too,” Alexis agreed. With all eyes upon her and the shoe, she strutted from the box pile to the throne of the birthday girl. She knelt, holding out the sandal like Cinderella’s slipper and indicated to Molly’s foot, already propped over her opposite knee. “Come on. Don’t be shy. There’s a lot of boxes in that stack, and your birthday only lasts so long.”

“I wish Ted would come back so he could see it, since he went to all the trouble. But, I guess he’ll be back soon. And then he can see us all wearing his presents!” Molly agreed. She uncrossed her leg and pointed her pinkish nude foot right at Alexis, wriggling her white-tipped toes and causing the sloping contours of her wrinkly sole to transform in all manner of fleshy sculptures. “All right, servant. Put on my first shoe.”

“Now that’s going too far,” Alexis muttered, much to the amusement of the room, but she obeyed and plucked back the leathery straps to make way at the opening for her friend’s foot to pass through. All too eager, clapping like a schoolgirl, Molly thrust her foot forward, toes pointed balletic-style to fit snugly within, totally unaware that she was taking her brother inside the new sandal right along with her monstrously huge ped.

Throughout this conversation, Ted had never given up shouting and pleading for rescue, even when his throat went hoarse. There they all were, female friends from throughout their shared youth, gathered in a circle to relax and celebrate, and yet not a one could spot him in this compromised position. Ted was already quieter than a mosquito at his miniscule size, not to mention the fact that the grinding slabs of his sister’s toe-walls applied so much pressure that most of the air was squeezed out of him at any given moment anyway, making it impossible to generate volume. Plus, after so many repetitions of Molly’s beefy digits slamming back together, cramming her brother ever-deeper into the squashy texture of her sock lint-dotted skin, Ted was occasionally too numbed to even open his mouth to scream again, let alone resist the adherence of his arms and legs to the sticky skin-terrain, scented of lush flowers and summer sweat in equal measure.

Upon Alexis’s suggestion that they get the activity started, however, Ted’s heart fluttered with hope, even though he feared the consequences. If Molly was going to finally partake of his hard-earned gift to her, that would mean she and all her friends would be paying close attention to her feet. All five pairs of eyes, variably keen, would be squinting this way to judge the viability of the sandals for Molly’s wardrobe. The shrunken passenger between her toes, then, would have a brief window to take advantage and be seen. If he missed that chance, Ted knew he was destined to be stuffed into a high-class sandal right along with his sister’s powerful foot, and if things went poorly in there, he’d have no other opportunities to reach safety; he’d just expire on the leathery insole, under a megaton weight of sole flesh, while his sister obliviously remarked on shoe aesthetic with her friends without ever knowing that she was walking on her brother to his demise.