Footbound (Chapter 17) (Patreon)

His fourth consecutive day sapped of all energy and the will to stand erect was no longer even a remote surprise for Mitch. He remembered better now the threats and decisions made last night, the bargaining and debasement, and most importantly, the bliss under Eve he’d pledged to reach no matter what, even if the sexual rapture he’d felt at the mercy of her foot was the exact opposite of the sleepless body-wracking soreness he was plagued by now in the cold light of day. Taking the madness of this whole situation in stride, and consciously choosing not to deal with the nebulous psychological (and possibly medical) implications of becoming an indentured servant to a character from his own restless dreams, he arrived at the call center like usual, booted up his work station, and tanked just the right amount of coffee to keep from collapsing on his desk while also not allowing his heart to explode from over-acceleration.

“You really are Little Mister Social, aren’t you?” came the expected drawl.

Mitch no longer had a right to feel startled when Lilina managed to appear beside his desk without even a flutter in the peripheral, though his pulse certainly leapt regardless. Yet once she spoke, he instantly perceived that crimson-black mane shimmering above like a dark halo. He’d been so wired all morning, he hadn’t even yet indulged in his usual favorite pastime of leering at the richly sloped netting-encased undersides of his coworker-turned-superior’s feet while they endlessly dipped and stroked out of those shoes she so loved to remove while seated at her desk.

“What do you mean?” he groggily replied with a twitchy smile, hardly even hearing the voice as his own.

“Those late-night not-parties of yours? Come on now. I have eyes, don’t I? Barely focusing, just holding it together, and happier than ever. You’ve been having the time of your life out there.”

A couple days before this, Mitch would’ve whole-heartedly agreed with that statement, though the lines were beginning to blur, the more his brain was turned inside-out by Eve’s high-priced satisfaction. Yes, he was “happy,” and it was indeed the time of his life, yet he couldn’t be certain it was still entirely still “his” life to claim ownership over. In fact, were he dreaming right now, he’d be in a world of trouble for even considering this a question.

“I think you still have me mixed up with someone more exciting,” he sheepishly answered.

“No, I don’t believe I do,” Lilina said with a whispered chortle, her expression reassuring him that this wasn’t stated in judgment. If anything, there was a spark of encouragement coming through her tone. “You might play coy, but I know the signs. I’ve seen it many times before. The graceful fall. Not that a fall is always a bad thing.”

“It’s… just insomnia,” Mitch said, and tried to sit up straighter. “But it won’t affect my work. Honest.”

“Yes, I believe that you can still deliver and get the job done. Even under pressure. There’s just something about you. As you’ll recall, though, because I’m overseeing this quadrant of the center now, I see it as my personal and professional obligation to help you be the best you can be.”

“H-How’s that?” The lights seemed brighter than usual today, forcing Mitch to squint as he looked up at Lilina, which shrouded her striking features partially in shadow.

“I think it’ll have to be you who determines that,” she said.

The presence Lilina exuded while standing over his gradually exhaustion-withering form, seemingly a daily routine now, made the woman give off an impression of simultaneous potency and slightness. Oddly, it reminded him of Eve’s bare foot during those first nights, which had seemed so petitely sumptuous at a distance, and yet a full wrinkle-mountainous landscape of peach-lunar lushness over which he could soar when its form was examined closer. Lilina’s exacting gaze and simpering smile, deceptively masking genuine kindness and what appeared to be sympathy for Mitch’s descent, suggested she only held more and more secrets by the day, causing him squirms and meek titillation in equal measure as he looked up at her vantage-towering figure.

Mitch opened his mouth to bumble through another well-mannered brush-off, before Lilina could have the chance to fully appreciate what a subdued puddle she’d turned him into during the course of a few sweetly invasive sentences. He doubted severely that she or any mortal being had any way to help him solve the particular problem he was facing, maybe short of an electro-shock therapist, which meant the only outcome of this conversation (especially in his weakened husk state) was to babble even less coherently while his arousal became harder to hide. Saving him from stammering through any more brain-dead excuses, however, his workstation lit up with a new incoming call.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find out whatever it is you need sooner or later,” Lilina declared, and receded by several steps, much to Mitch’s relief, as his gaze guiltily fell to her stockinged peds below and watched the mesh overtop stretching a creamier hue each time that sleek material caught gently against the leather lip of her clogs to arc backward again. His headset rang again. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Mitch recited the greeting script to the caller, but relied entirely on the muscle memory of his lips, as his limited remaining attentive brain cells were immediately sucked in by the shuffling march of Lilina’s feet as she trekked back to her own desk, letting the hefty insoles clop with soft satisfaction up against her momentarily-dangled silk arches.

“How may I be of assistance today?” he finished.

“If you only knew,” moaned a familiar voice.

Yesterday, Mitch had just barely managed to keep his antsy composure when the same minx-throated customer captured his ear, since Lilina had been patiently staring him down throughout that entire meandering footrest-related non-conversation. Today, though, his systems were too depleted to handle the surreal surprise of hearing that same naturally eroticized voice leaking into his senses again. It was like her words zapped and then relaxed every near-dead muscle in his body at once. Mitch slumped straight forward, knocking his chin against the desktop and almost biting off the tip of his tongue: an almost-tragic loss, Mitch acknowledged, because he needed that tongue to please Eve tonight when next her naked behemoth foot came down on his bed like a flip-flop and wore him in between.

“Pardon me, ma’am? Is there something I can help you find?”

“Come now. Are you really going to treat me like a stranger? As if we haven’t crossed paths already?”

“Ma’am, I’m… afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mitch propped himself up on one arm, but still felt strangely exposed in the call center, even though no one else could hear her, and so slunk lower, pressing his cheek to the desk and muttering at a barely-audible volume. It was as though the woman’s voice had reached through the phone like a disembodied hand, pulled his pants down, and suspended him in midair above the room so everyone could witness the humiliating one-two punch of his attraction to the caller’s tone and Lilina’s nylon-contorting shoeplay.

“Don’t you? But we had such a wonderful chat yesterday. Even though you decided not to help me, I still knew that only you could. So I’d just love to have another go at it.”

“Right,” Mitch gulped. “You were… looking for a footrest?”

“YES! See, you do know what I’m talking about. More so even than you admit.”

“Ma’am, I truly would like to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. I just don’t have-”

“My feet are so sore. So deprived. Much worse than yesterday, and I think it’s only going to get worse. It’s like they’re crying out to me. Please give us something, they say. Please give us something to lay across. To rub, and squeeze, and press. Something we can call ours. It’s really very sad. I can’t concentrate on anything else. Can’t eat, can’t sleep. Don’t you feel any pity for my feet? Wouldn’t you like to hear that they’ve finally gotten the care they deserve. Wouldn’t you move heaven and earth to help them, in their time of need?”

The words hitting Mitch’s ears were so soapy and melodramatic, yet spoken with as much conviction as Eve interrogated him last night (albeit much less frightening than that shellacking from his personal sleep-goddess and her bed-squishing foot had been), that he didn’t disbelieve for a second this mystery nutcase lady was deadly serious in her loopy questioning. He definitely sympathized with her supposed sleeplessness; he just doubted he’d be able to do anything for her but numbly babble on in unhelpful response while hiding his hard-on under the desk, until she got bored of tying up his line again.

What if she called again tomorrow, though? Then the next day and the next? For a man whose primary goal in life was turning out to be the full-body worship of beautiful feet belonging to all manner of deserving ladies both human and hellishly angelic, at the expense of all other pursuits including self-preservation, this really wasn’t such a bad arrangement: visits with a soul-reaping giantess’s insatiable foot-fuckery in his dreams by night, and by day, regular calls from a kooky honey-toned mental patient who could probably make some good money in a phone sex business if only she could get her mind off this miraculous footrest of hers. So, feeling more blearily out of it than if he’d downed a bottle of whiskey in lieu of coffee, Mitch shrugged and just let himself enjoy this wild second gift from the universe.