Footbound (Chapter 20) (Patreon)

Even with those wee hours of night he had left to outlast, Mitch didn’t dare let himself try to sleep another wink. Turning on every light and appliance in his apartment, he refused to lie down, chugged some coffee, and watched TV on full blast until his neighbors angrily rapped on the door. Even then he quieted it down only enough to make them go away. Mitch might’ve gotten away from Eve by the skin of his teeth that time, yet made no mistake that it wasn’t his own cunning or capability that allowed him to still be standing here, almost fatigued enough to belong in a grave, but with his soul still intact.

Instead, he owed his escape to whatever rule that decreed he could only make one orgasmic payment a night in the full sequence before she took him, whether that was his own lunatic subconscious trying to give him an out, or if there truly was some beautiful demonic presence bound by unnatural laws. If he fell asleep again, and Eve (whatever kind of entity she was, be it mental illness hallucination or skyscraper-sized witch) hadn’t yet been purged, there would be no other chance. He believed that much.

The second the sun rose, when normally he would’ve been getting ready for work, Mitch instead took a long bus ride to an emergency medical clinic. Afraid of being lulled to sleep by the rocking of the vehicle, he slapped himself hard across the cheek whenever his chin started to droop, which at least helped keep any strangers from sitting down around him. After doing the same thing in the waiting room, staring dead ahead and corporeally punishing himself to stay in the moment, he was seen by the doctor.

Aside from an evident case of sleep deprivation, there was nothing physically wrong with Mitch, by the physician’s estimation. Which was just as he’d guessed, though there’d still been a hope, right until hearing that clean bill of health, that all his problems might be solved by science and a pharmacy fluid. Scrounging together cash he usually relied on for rent money, then, he bought additional tests to search his brain for any mysterious tumors that might’ve been keeping him from retaining rest, or indeed making him think a cosmically humongous giantess and her gorgeous inter-dimensional sole wrinkles were going to excise his spirit from his exhausted body. By noon, Mitch had let the techs poke, prod, and scan just about every conceivable part of him that could’ve been poisoning his sleep. Though the results couldn’t be known for sure the same day, the doctor assured him that there was no reason to believe there would be any negative findings. The visit ended with a prescription for some heavy-duty sleeping pills, the kind that seemed like they could tranquilize a gorilla, though obviously Mitch had no intention of taking them, as that would mean wandering back into enemy territory unarmed.

On the bus ride back toward home, Mitch discovered he had six missed calls from Lilina. This was understandable, seeing how she was his supervisor, but keeping his employers happy was low on his priority list today, when the fate of his soul or at least unknown parts of his brain might’ve been at stake. Supposing the call center chose not to keep him for an unexplained absence, it was deeply saddening to think that in the span of one day, Mitch might lose access to both pairs of feminine feet he’d come to cherish so deeply, the real and the unreal. But then again, keeping his body, mind, and spirit exclusively laser-focused on silky rippling-rimpled naked soles, whether they were dangling out clogs in nude stockings or expanding over him like celestial bodies in red darkness, seemed to be the reason he’d gotten into this mess. Maybe, for his health, it was time to give them a break for such obsessions, assuming he found a way out of this indescribable conundrum.

Gazing out the window and still slapping his cheeks to keep cogent, Mitch saw a church whiz by. As he’d never set foot inside one before, it hadn’t yet occurred to him to try it under these unique circumstances. It seemed a long shot, but then again so did an MRI, when it came to healing him of a night-witch’s orgasmic sole warmth. At the next stop he disembarked and trekked back to the mostly-deserted holy site. If Eve’s influence couldn’t be diagnosed in his physical body, maybe it was time to check in on that soul of his that she was so hell-bent on peeling out of Mitch’s diminutive frame and fastening to her arch-flesh scrunches like a victory flag. The first pastor he found, after scoffing at the idea of performing an exorcism on him, kindly performed a blessing over Mitch instead, and insisted that he could stay there to pray. Presuming though that the only sort of “prayer” which might or might not win him any salvation would be one of weeping apology to Eve (not any God or gods) once she caught up to him again in non-slumber, though, Mitch thanked the man and shambled through town instead of waiting on the bus again.

Though he didn’t make many conscious directional choices while pacing the streets, since it took all his already-frayed brainpower working at its current capacity of roughly seventeen percent to try and decide his next probably-powerless move, Mitch somehow or other found himself standing in front of the call center where he worked. He hadn’t planned on coming in today, perhaps ever again depending on if he could purge Eve’s feet from his life or not, despite now having thirteen missed calls from Lilina. But then again, if neither the doctor nor the priest could help him, maybe fate was trying to throw him a bone by bringing him to this spot. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any other ideas.

The ultra-sterile white lights inside seemed brighter than ever, so harsh that Mitch had to keep his head bowed the whole march inside, heading toward his desk at slug-pace based only on muscle memory and making a sharp turn whenever he saw someone’s legs about to crash into his. Mere steps away from his workstation, he was already beginning to feel weaker, less mentally sound, and even more afraid. It was too late to turn the other way, though, because just as his chair entered his floor-bound field of vision, so did a beguiling pair of svelte legs encased skin-tight in nylons sheer as a crystalline gel, and at the root of each, soft beautiful exquisitely-proportioned feet unencumbered by stiletto heels or backless slip-ons. They startled Mitch so much that he had to actually grab onto his knees to keep from stumbling into a hunch, a collapse that very well might’ve caused him to face-plant into Lilina’s peds.

“Well, there you are,” she said with an unlikely lilt in her voice. “I thought I was about to have to go looking for you myself. Get a late start, did you?”

Mitch blinked, braced his pupils for impact, then looked up for the first time. The bloom of the blinding call center lights made everything except the woman’s silhouette fade into anonymous white, but even while the glow stung his retinas, he could still see Lilina there before him clear as day. Though the rest of the world had become a sickly-gray blur, on the bus then the clinic and in the church pew, this woman alone had actually gained radiance from Mitch’s already-superior opinion of her painfully attractive visage, with those full lips, dual-toned tresses, and hauntingly piercing obsidian-brown eyes. Maybe it was the hunch in his back that came of not getting a wink of actual sleep for six days, but even while she wasn’t wearing shoes, Lilina seemed to tower head-and-shoulders over Mitch. Still afraid he might wobble forward and crumble at her feet, the man tried to find the right words and his center of gravity at once, but could locate neither. Helpfully, though, his self-proclaimed friend in management reached out before he could stumble, clasping her surprisingly strong hand on his shoulder, and instantly he was stabilized.