Work From Home (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Blair Turner slumped on the living room couch, exhausted, and swung both legs up on the ottoman to rest. She reached half-heartedly for her black heels to remove them, as the things had been cooking her feet all day long during her job at the bank, where she hadn’t had a moment’s peace for eight straight hours, either standing or walking for every minute. Too weary to pull them off just yet, though, Blair sighed and instead settled for scratching an itch on the back of her shimmering sheer-black stockings, which practically clung to her legs after being on duty all day as well. Her head lolled against the pillow, splaying her long dirty-blonde locks messily about, and she exhaled. What a day.

She crossed her legs now, trying instead to pry her heels off hands-free, and just managed to wedge the tip of one shoe into the cusp on the other where the footwear cupped her stocking-clad skin. However, the zipper running up the side of the leather serpent-patterned shoe made it too tough to pull off by sheer force, and reluctantly, Blair leaned forward to pull them off herself. Peeling them off her feet was among the most heavenly sensations she’d experienced in months, and that included the more-successful hookups she’d had with clumsy boys in the backseats of cars. The shape of her slender feet was now partially molded by force and sweat-soaking into the slant of each insole felt, a reminder of this taxing day and the many others like it still to come in adult life. Blair practically threw the heels across the room once they were off, but resolved to just set them neatly by the couch.

She loved these shoes, expensive-looking and sexy to boot, and doubly so when combined with these eye-catching stockings. The girl unfortunately hadn’t at the time of purchase counted on the strain of wearing them full-time for her post-high school job at the bank. It would be nice once she was off to college and could dress more casually, but for now, Blair was feeling as trapped by her shoes as she often felt by this house and her family’s situation, owing to one very specific and slovenly reason.

Upon thinking of her father Carl, though, Blair was surprised to realize she couldn’t hear him right now. Normally she returned from a tough day to the sounds of her deadbeat dad digitally wasting away the day and probably-night too in his office, not to bring in any bacon to support the family, but rotting his brain on some Warcraft quest. Usually the loud volume of his game filled the house and acted as a grim reminder of his uselessness to both Blair and her mother Tamatha, but today, there was lovely silence. Maybe he’d gotten bored enough to take a nap, Blair thought, or even, if the planets had aligned, he’d left the house to look for a job.

“Whatever,” Blair shrugged, getting more comfortable now in her repose. Carl would turn up eventually. She’d just have to make the most of her solitude now, and her mother as well, until her dad decided to do or say something else to remind them again what a waste of space he was.

Just then, she remembered Larissa had said she was coming by to hang out once her afternoon college lectures were over. The absence of Blair’s dad was especially a boon now, as she much preferred the idea of her scorching-hot BFF, a young fair-faced redheaded bombshell, not having to deal with Carl’s lustful gaze sizing her up every few minutes. Not that Larissa especially minded the magnetic attention from every man and even most women who entered her aura, but sometimes it was nice to be free of wandering eyes.

Right on time, there came a knock at the door. Larissa let herself in.

“Hey, Lar,” Blair murmured. She massaged her stockinged feet into the ottoman cushion, trying to work out the kinks in her tender muscles and also get the sticky fabric to come loose from her sole wrinkles. “C’mon in and sit. How was class?”

“Oh, you know. Nothing very interesting. Nothing I’ll ever need to use in real life,” Larissa remarked, dismissive as always, but still gave her friend a mischievous smile as she settled onto the couch beside her. With a flighty toss of her hand, she swiped her sleek ginger tresses over her shoulder, then rested her chin upon her elegantly upturned fingers. She too utilized the ottoman, crossing legs and delicately setting her dark leather clogs beside Blair’s tired feet. “I swear it gets more pointless every time I go to class. All the stuff I actually need, I’m learning outside school.”

“I bet you are,” Blair teased. She knew darn well that Larissa’s unique combination of drop-dead stunning beauty and intelligent, psychologically manipulative personality would net her just about anything she wanted in life, higher education or not. The redhead tended to take whatever it was she desired, usually without asking, and nobody really called her on it.

“Tough day at the bank, huh?” Larissa questioned.

“You have NO idea. I was on my feet the entire… fucking… day…” Blair squealed, bouncing her heels up and down on the cushions. Feeling a twinge in her arch, she flinched, then reached forward to massage herself again, kneading the lightly damp silken black fabric into her soft doughy sole. “It seriously kills. Like, that’s 99% of what I don’t like about my job, just all the standing in these stupid heels, with nothing good enough to support me. You don’t know what I’d give to fix that, Lar. Really.”

“Yeah?” the redhead queried innocently, twirling a strand of hair around her index finger. “Hey, not to completely change the subject, but do you remember that one conversation we had like a month ago?”

“We talk a lot. Which time do you mean?”

“Oh, just the last time we got drunk.”

Weeks before, Blair and Larissa had unwound together on a Friday night in the latter’s dorm room, with a bottle of middle-shelf vodka provided by Blair’s older sister August. Once they got buzzed enough, and the talk turned deeper, the young blonde, sick of her father’s presence in the house, and especially his shirking of parental responsibilities onto Tamatha, found herself on a semi-drunken, but nonetheless true tirade to her understanding friend.

“He doesn’t do anything, Lar. I’m serious. He just sits on his ass the whole day, playing that game or messing around online. He never brings in any money, and he doesn’t even try to clean up the house after his own messes, so Mom and I still have to do all that after we get done with work,” Blair rambled. She sighed and took another pull of her drink. “I know I talk about it a lot, but I’m serious this time. He doesn’t serve any purpose. He’s useless to anyone except himself. He’s just a leech. Something has to be done. If he’s going to keep living with us, it’s time he… pulled his weight, and did something good for once. My mom’s not gonna make him do it. I… think it’ll have to be me. I have to do something. W-Would you help me somehow?”

“Sure,” Larissa agreed, surprisingly cogent still despite all the alcohol she too had imbibed. Her green eyes twinkled with promise, as the gears obviously turned in her conniving brain, but she withheld this interior life for the moment. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know, like…” Blair mumbled. Her gaze wandered blearily down Larissa’s crossed legs, to her petite feet dangling off the sofa. Then, despite a lack of focus or much physical awareness, Blair grinned from ear to ear. The pleasure center in her brain lit up like Christmas bulbs. “Do you remember that one guy, from church… God, what was his name… T-something… whatever, but the guy who got really small, and you got him, and put him… you know, down there… whatever happened to him?”
 “Thought you’d never ask,” Larissa snickered. Then she brought her foot up, propping it over the opposite knee, to reveal her naked sole to Blair. On the underside, right in the deepest slope of her arch, secured with tape and ribbons, was none other than Ted, the shrunken boy who used to perve on their friend group during church, and became Larissa’s foot pet for his troubles. “He’s good for at least something, it turns out. I wear him almost every day, and it works out great. As a person, he was just creepy and weird and a waste of space, but now that he’s down there, working for me in all kinds of awesome ways… he’s strong, supportive, and even feels pretty good… he’s everything your dad’s not. At least not now that he’s in the right place.”

“Wow,” Blair gawked. Unblinking, she admired the sight of the miniature man secured tightly under Larissa’s pearly sole, his weary bare body clenched tight from temple to ankle against her skin. “And that one special stocking you made in home ec, you still…”

“All the time,” Larissa interrupted with a diabolical smirk.

“No way.”

“Yes, way. So… are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“Maybe I am,” the drunken blonde shrugged, then took a swig straight from the bottle. “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t even think about how I don’t know how to shrink someone. God, that… without that, it doesn’t work.”

“I’m sure that part would work itself out,” Larissa cryptically added.

“But even if I could make my dad tiny, I don’t know… going through with it, I… he’s garbage, and he’s useless, but it might still be weird. It doesn’t matter, either way, since we might never see another tiny guy like that one again,” Blair said, defeated. She leaned against a pillow, already half-asleep from the drinks, but smiled at her friend and the puny human accessory tethered to her pale, elegant sole. “He does look nice down there. Kinda like he belongs.”

“You’re right,” Larissa said. Ever the soft-spoken Machiavelli, she leaned back and took languid sips from her glass, while stifling a broad smile at her friend’s epiphany. All the while, she rocked her ankle back and forth, sending Ted on a sickening journey, occasionally scrunching her sole as well so he never got a moment’s peace. “So, how would you lure someone in to become… like this? You know, if it was possible?”

Any other time, Blair might have just scoffed at this silly hypothetical question, but she was too deeply engrossed in the collective imagination now to wonder.

“Oh, I don’t know. Dad doesn’t leave the house for anything. Not even when Mom gives notices about good job offers to him, he just throws them away. So we couldn’t just tell him to go out on an errand, or even to do something fun. I guess the only thing that might make him let down his guard would be… something that promised to let him make money, but keep on doing what he’s doing now, just sitting there like a slug,” Blair theorized. The words flowed like poetry now, even while impeded by her woozy state. She swallowed hard. “Like… some kind of work-from-home ad, but one that was too good to be true, you know? He knows how much Mom makes from her job, and I know he’s jealous of it. So it would have to be something even he would fall for. Then, you could get him to go anywhere, all ready to help himself, when really, he’d just be about to help us for once in his stupid life, and… oh, what’s the use, Lar? You’re just getting my hopes up. That little loser under your foot is one in a billion. Fantasies are fun to think about, but we have to be realistic sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Larissa giggled. She prodded Ted in the back of his shrunken head, pressing her fingertip down firmly against his skull and rubbing it to and fro among the nearest ruddy arch wrinkle. “Sometimes.”