Footbound (Chapter 22) (Patreon)

With a squeal of marrow-deep fright like he’d been quietly stabbed between the ribs, Mitch flung his headset off and chucked it clean into his computer. The screen flashed various neon shades from its central crack like a cartoon vortex, then sparked to black. Stumbling out of his seat onto all fours, swaying and then scraping his cheek against the ratty carpet in an effort to find balance, Mitch was struck still again upon finding his face inches away from Lilina’s meticulously comely stocking-gowned feet. It just so happened, in this moment following a zenith of hopeless terror for him, that his manager had one foot stamped flat to the ground and the other arched half into the air.

Her nyloned heel pressed to the opposite ankle, forcing that underfoot slope into its curviest possible arch that strained the twilight-glinting fibers of aromatic stretchy silk so obscenely that, even as Mitch refused to blink and squinted with hypnotic intent into the populous tide of pithy wrinkles treasured within the garment that he might never see again after this moment (given the call center’s likely no-tolerance policy on destroying company equipment with an impassioned shout), he found it impossible to judge whether she really was wearing those things or not. Lilina, every seductive and impossible part of her combined, rightfully seemed like the only tangible being alive who could wear these ethereal Schrodinger’s stockings, leaving her feet both hypothetically naked and shrouded at once. Mitch couldn’t be sure he’d ever seen anything more beautiful.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he wheezed, clawing his way up the desk to stand again. He felt Lilina’s hand at his shoulder as if to help him, but she said nothing, unlike the chorus of gasps that understandably rang out from their coworkers at surrounding desks. Mitch concentrated his gaze only on his manager, though, etching the vision of her feet into his memory and hoping they’d bring him strength, even though he was likely to never see them again. “I… have to go.”

Before Lilina could reply, before anyone could approach to ask what the fuck his problem was, and before any authorities could arrive to heave him out the front door themselves, Mitch shambled back out the way he’d arrived. He was so tired now that he could barely distinguish his own steps, let alone whether he was still balanced upright, feeling instead as though he was pushing through a hip-deep lagoon with swamp waters that only thickened more to mud the further he traveled. All he could concentrate on now though was the need to return home, believing his odds of withstanding Eve’s ever-evolving power would be marginally better there, as well as the comfortingly present imagery of Lilina’s stockinged peds sifting those plucky nude silk thread across miniscule dunes of sole dimples and raindrop-shaped toepads. That vivid sight hadn’t lost an ounce of vivacity even when she was no longer standing above him, the lovely specter of those feet lingering in the same way of Mitch’s blue-spotty vision after staring up at the ceiling fluorescents for too long. Though this was far preferable.

Mitch couldn’t recall whether he’d taken a bus back home, though his legs certainly hurt much worse by the time he crash-landed back in the apartment. First things first, he locked and dead-bolted the front door, then jury-rigged a bike lock around the wall and knob, as if any of this would prevent Eve from coming inside to get him. As if she required the use of doors. Next he switched on every light, like he had upon escaping that last dream, threw open the curtains and cranked the AC way up to turn the place as stingingly bright and frigid as possible. The TV and stereo he put on full-blast again, the fridge was left open and the smoke detector batteries removed so the device would continuously wail. Only then, when he’d placed himself in a protective hive of sleep-depriving discomfort, and picked up a baseball bat to use in self-defense that he absolutely expected would not save him from the wrath of Eve’s underfoot judgment, did Mitch stop to breathe in the center of his home.

Cold, blinking against the blaring lights and wincing at the ringing in his ears, he revolved slowly in place for hours, watching every wall and window, expecting with each pivot to see the architecture melting away to be replaced by a foot humongous enough to crush far more than just the entire building, but the city, the planet, and his spirit at the center of it all. If Eve could literally call him on the phone outside his wet dreams, could make him think he was just speaking to some horny customer for three days straight without ever noticing the parameters around reality being stripped, who was to say he’d even have to lie down and fall asleep for her soles to take him? Doubt tormented him over whether anything he’d done here would even remotely keep him out of the grasp of Eve’s giant humid sweet-musked existence-pancaking soles, but then again, there was nothing else for Mitch to do but stand here, painfully awake, and refuse to passively descend back into that nighttime realm where her control over him was significantly more potent.

Maybe if he could just break the cycle once, and outlast a single night without offering that last drop of seed into her dewy arch creases for the claiming of his soul, then maybe Eve would have no choice but to abandon her quest to take him, or at least get bored of his meddling and leave him be, deciding he wasn’t worth the trouble. Unsure, but intent now on seeing the sunrise in hopes of it preventing Eve from stomping him out for good, Mitch waited nervously as the light through the window gradually turned orange and then vanished. He was vaguely aware that he was hungry, thirsty, and sore to the point of involuntary twitching, yet all of these needs were vastly overtaken by his exhaustion. Once deeper into the night, the neighbors complained again, banging on the walls and front door, but this time Mitch didn’t heed them, even turning the volume higher to drown them out. Though he fully expected cops to break inside later in response to the noise complaints, there were soon no other signs of life to interrupt Mitch’s wakeful marathon to outrun Eve’s mission of sole-fucking him a final time into offering up his measly being. Even the street lamps and lit window squares in buildings across the street went black, leaving him alone in a buzzing blooming sonic din to hope and pray for just enough energy to see the sun again.

“Well, if this is the sort of activity you’ve been getting up to every night to string yourself out so badly, I have to say, I’m disappointed. Surely there are much more enjoyable ways to keep the sandman at bay. With friends? And better music? And a back room where the real party is happening?”

Hunched over, his eyelids half-drooped, Mitch spun around and gripped the coffee table for support. He’d been surprised by Lilina’s voice with the same instantly-recognizable clarity as he had nearly every day of this sordid week, but since it had been uncountable hours since he heard or saw another hint of humanity, especially because of his triply-locked door, it did seem particularly unlikely that the original object of his fetishistic obsessions had managed to sneak up on him here.

Yet there she was all the same, standing right in front of the still-bolted entryway, and wearing exactly the same smoky-hued smart-and-sultry business attire from earlier. Only now with an extra button in her top undone, and her hair let down into a wilder mane – those follicle tones of rich black and saccharine red more indistinguishable than ever in the spectral yin-yang atmosphere that Mitch had crafted here of blinding glow and yet still pitch-darkness bleeding in through the window. Lilina’s gorgeous brown eyes, too, were more of a sunken-abyss color than he’d seen them before, making her pupils swell larger and more piercing, in tandem with that familiar seductive full-lipped smile that appeared to hide increasingly-juicy secrets every time the corners of her mouth curled upward anew.