Bad Bet (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Tiara and Nele sat cross-legged beside one another on the trampoline, laughing and mopping sweat from their cheeks post-race, much to Liam’s rapture, as he joined them on the springy surface. Despite each petite young woman glistening with the grassy filth and salty exertion of a day spent outside, the emerald-eyed dishwater-blonde farm girl and her equally-slim ocean-irised friend still appeared like angels to their visitor in their own ways, with one being a rough-and-tumble tomboy, while the gentler girl between the two had Liam’s heart.

Despite the insane humidity, yet again Tiara’s feet were entrapped in thick black rubber boots on top of her wooly ash-gray tube socks, a choice that always confused Liam considering how famously putrescent and soggy her peds became inside them while cooking throughout her sweltering outdoor chores, but then again he supposed it fit her fun albeit semi-unhinged personality, never quite doing what made sense. At least Nele was smart enough to wear sneakers, even if she went sockless and thus created almost as much moisture and fustiness, though an occasional whiff of briny stink from the girl’s discarded insoles could never dent Liam’s appreciation for her.

“Oh my God, my feet are so… freaking… sweaty!” Tiara guffawed. Wiping a habitual drop of slobber from her lips as she enthused, the girl waved her boot soles at her friends, who merely rolled their eyes, accustomed to this immature behavior. “Hey, I think I’ve got a great idea! I just learned a few new spells, and I’m dying to try them out. Wanna see, huh? Just wait here!”

Liam and Nele joined the laughter in affectionate mocking of their weirdo friend, immature but lovable in her odd way. Without waiting for an answer, Tiara grinned and hopped off the trampoline. With every step toward the house, her soaked soles loudly squelched as though submerged in rainwater within her obsidian-hued boots, a goofy-sounding chorus that again made Liam and his secret crush share a snicker; Tiara certainly wasn’t exaggerating before. With a rare moment alone, Nele and her admirer bashfully glanced one another’s way, blushing and smirking, but not finding the words.

“I hope you too are ready to play a game!” Tiara blurted, jumping back on the trampoline with a mysterious page in-hand. She scribbled something upon it, wracking her memory before adding more, but stopped to give Liam a toothy smile while he suppressed his skeptical chuckling. “What, you don’t believe my new spells will work?”

“Not really,” he laughed. “I believe that YOU believe it!”

“Okay, smarty-pants,” the dirty-blonde boot-lover snarked. “If it works, though, you have to pay up.”

“How?”

“By smelling my big ol’ sweaty FEET, obviously!” she cheered, again waving the boot tread at Liam. “Right in your face!”

“Sure, why not?” he said, shaking his head in amusement. Feeling a surge of confidence to match his goofball friend’s energy, then, he jokingly added: “Heck, if your magic is real, I’ll do more than smell them. I’ll lick them clean!”

“So come on already, Tiara. Let’s see your powers!” Nele laughed, just as disbelieving.

With a few belly-laughs that again made a strand of saliva hang from her lip, a wild-eyed Tiara chanted the words on the page under her breath. Building to a louder climax, she suddenly went silent, then looked expectantly to her friends, obviously with full conviction in her supernatural capabilities. After sharing a look, Nele and Liam burst into raucous laughter at an outcome they’d naturally anticipated, but which was even funnier in practice. Much as they loved Tiara, her occasional arrogance and alien logic were difficult to ignore without some playful mocking. Then, no sooner did Liam catch his breath before getting ready to share another commiserating chuckle with his crush, when his body jolted, went rigid, and diminished in size with lightning-speed, sprawling him like a helpless insect at just a few millimeters high next to the now-gigantic Nele’s thigh.

Tiara resumed her mirth, cackling now and almost crying from the humor of it all, though she was the only one reacting this way. A spot of her laughter-spit splashed onto the trampoline next to Liam like a gooey cannonball, while Nele stared at their shrunken friend in stupefied nonbelief. Her jaw hung open and, trembling, she looked back to Tiara with unfamiliar fear.

“TIARA!” she shrieked, her voice crossing the vast farmland fields. “W-What have you DONE? Oh my God, you… y-you…”

Unable to find the words, and traumatized by what she’d just seen, a pallid Nele crawled urgently off the trampoline, crouching over the shrubs and puking into the leaves with a sorrowful whine. Liam, meanwhile, was paralyzed with surprise at his miniscule scale, unable to speak and feeling as though he was having an out-of-body experience, or perhaps just a dream of otherworldly bizarreness.

“Just to remind you…” Tiara drawled with a self-satisfied grin, as she moved forward and loomed suddenly above her helpless friend. Her triumphant posture made the lovely-but-crazed nineteen-year-old appear like a living monument to the shrunken fellow. “…we had a bet. And now you’ve got to pay up like you promised, Liam. Hope you’re ready to take some BIG breaths, even though you’re sooooo small!”

His terrifying new reality became much more palpable to the victim while Tiara was powerfully knelt above, and he finally reacted with an understandable yelp and flailing seizure. Entertained by his reaction, Tiara immediately began prying her boots off her feet one at a time. He’d seen her do so before, but now viewing the same act from barely the stature of a crumb, Liam was unnerved by the echo of slippery wetness inside, the thump of her toes on the interior, and the view of those shiny rubber troughs sliding down the giantess’s sun-kissed lower legs like spaceships. Both pieces of floppy black footwear, the size of buildings from the shrinker’s vantage, were thrown aside, and then Tiara began peeling her densely-threaded socks down her calves and feet too, though this took more effort, since the sweat had glued the textile to her skin in large dark patches of salty-aired dampness, but she was determined, and once the elastic tubes were catapulted off, Liam found himself cowering in the twin shadows of Tiara’s newly-naked feet right as they bore down above him. Soon all he could see was a slanted sky of wrinkly, spongy sole skin glazed heavily with perspiration and speckled all over with jammy gray lint-balls. All the while, the girl couldn’t stop laughing, probably leaking drool down her chin as she flexed her toes and caused the creases in her arch to rapidly reform, and in the process, dripping several vinegary blobs of sweat from her pores straight onto Liam, while surrounding him in balmy odorous atmosphere thick enough to create a foot-flavored film on his body. The smell was apparent from the moment her boots started to budge downward, but the plaguing scent of her soles became like a beastly entity now, making the summery air even stickier.

“Seems like you’re sniffing them, but I don’t think I feel you licking yet. You know, like you promised?” Tiara questioned, barely able to speak from all her giggling. “You’re pretty tiny, Liam, so you’re really going to have to work hard to make me feel that tongue!”