Babysitters: Gamer Girl, Part 2

Joshua wasn’t sure which emotion he was feeling more strongly about: the anger at Madison for confining him to her shoe, or the claustrophobia from where she’d put him. The second of the two emotions was a lot simpler for him to process—her shoe, like most shoes on most feet, was a snug fit, so even as small as Joshua was, he was pretty securely wedged in between the dense canvas material and the soft cotton covering his babysitter’s foot. It was kind of a good thing, since he wasn’t worried about accidentally falling out of her shoe, but he shouldn’t even have had to be put in her shoe to begin with. Not adequately planning ahead was her problem, yet he was the one paying the price. At least it won’t be for very long… I hope. He trusted Madison and believed her that the bike ride wouldn’t be long, and that he’d get to watch anything on her phone when they got to her place, and that he’d be back to normal by the end of the day. But he couldn’t ignore the worry clawing at his stomach, like a parasite eating away at him slowly enough not to feel anything but quickly enough that he was constantly realizing he felt worse than just moments ago. There were several reasons for that.

Firstly, it had already been a few minutes that he’d spent inside Madison’s shoe. She seemed to be pedaling as hard as she could so she could get home as quickly as possible, which might’ve seemed like a nice gesture from the outside, but from Joshua’s perspective it just made his situation a whole lot worse. He was being rapidly spun in circles at what felt like a breakneck speed to his tiny body; the fact that he hadn’t thrown up again was a miracle, since it was like riding on a violent roller coaster for him.

But the other problem with her pedaling so quickly was that it was gradually shifting Joshua’s body forward within Madison’s shoe. He might’ve been wedged inside pretty tight, but not tight enough to prevent his body from sliding towards the front of her shoe at such a slow speed that he barely even noticed it at first. Until his body was close to her toes, and he thought, Wait, wasn’t I on the middle of her foot? He could feel the little dimple of her sock as his head was positioned above the crevice of two of her toes, where the cotton suddenly had much more give to it since there wasn’t anything beneath it. And now that the idea had come to his mind, he realized that soon his shoulders were above the crevice too, and moments later his upper torso. So I am moving! he realized frightfully, scared of what could happen if he reached the front of her shoe.

As Madison pedaled her way through the suburban streets, she too became aware of the fact that Joshua’s tiny body was slowly creeping closer towards the front of her foot. That just makes him more safe though, a voice in her head told her, which she tried to shake off and remind herself that the deeper into her shoe the boy got, the worse his experience would become. And the more he had to put up with, the greater her chance that she’d be exposed by him once his parents came home in a few days. The only thing she could do at the moment was continue forward and worry about the consequences later. The five minutes she’d said the journey would take had definitely passed by that point, but at least she was halfway home… give or take. But then, with Joshua’s body on top of the edge of her toes—he was struggling even more now compared to when she’d first stuck him in—it finally happened. The boy she was supposed to be watching over the weekend had finally shifted far enough in her shoe to topple over the front of her foot, and had fallen into the space in front of her toes. The deepest, darkest, hottest, and smelliest part of her shoe.

It wasn’t that Madison’s feet smelled horrible, not technically, not to a full sized person. But they were feet, and since she hadn’t showered since early that morning, the usual and uncomfortable odor of a worn sock became clear and strong within Joshua’s nose. Just earlier that day, he had been thinking to herself about how nice she smelled; whenever she walked by him, the faintest smell of fresh peaches would waft by a few seconds later. The boys in his class either smelled like they hadn’t washed themselves in days, or like they’d been bathed in Axe deodorant, and some of the girls wore perfume, but a lot of them just smelled neutral and normal. That was one of the reasons he always appreciated when Madison babysat him, and whenever she left and gave him a hug, he cherished the few seconds that his cheek was pressed against her body, and how nice she smelled before leaving. But that smell was all but gone now. No longer could he sense the fresh-smelling, artificial scent that the girl had to apply every day. He was smelling the real Madison. Her feet, and her socks along with it, were the last places that anyone would ever spray perfume. And if she’d put on any lotion on her feet, Joshua certainly couldn’t tell anymore. The stale mustiness of her sock took over, and his reflex of holding his breath to avoid it proved to be a foolish mistake when he obviously ran out of breath, and was forced to take a deep breath to replenish his lungs, a breath so deep that he accidentally even sucked a couple tiny hairs off the fuzzy material.

Up above, Madison felt like she should apologize considering how much worse his position now was, but she couldn’t bring herself to actually say it. It was like she could just pretend not to notice where Joshua was now stuck, and then there might be a slim chance that he’d forgive her and believe that she didn’t know any better. But to awkwardly yell down at her shoe that she was sorry would be acknowledging the problem, and every moment she continued to leave him down there would suddenly make him feel even more purposefully neglected. So she said nothing, but felt awful and terrible and like the worst babysitter in the world for doing so.

The only thing that took her even more self control though was not wiggling her toes directly in Joshua’s face. He actually had even more space than before now, but he only took use of the extra freedom to wiggle around, as if that might somehow aid his predicament. And the wiggles tickled her; having a tiny little thing squirming at the end of her toes made her instinctively want to play with it, and she had to literally focus on keeping them still. That’s a person, he’s a human being down there, she thought, although that only served to make her feel guiltier. And while Madison thought she was keeping her foot still, there were still micro movements that she wasn’t conscious of, which at Joshua’s size felt like a giant, fuzzy boulder flinching against his face every once in awhile.

By the home stretch of the teenager’s bike ride, the summer day had taken a noticeable toll on the interior of Madison’s shoe. In barely ten minutes, the mix of physical exertion beneath the hot sun had heated up the girl’s shoe worse than a dog in a hot car. Joshua was so uncomfortable now that he even started crying a little bit. He knew he’d made a bet with his babysitter, but he obviously hadn’t expected this to be the outcome—even she didn’t think this would be the outcome! But now he was stuck writhing around in a cramped and humid compartment, only inches tall, as the girl’s sweating foot started to seep through the sock and replace the musty smell with a much saltier stench.

Somehow, he was accidentally got twisted upside down, and his face went from rubbing against the front of Madison’s toe to being smeared against her sole. It was as if fate had heard his complaints about how bad her sock smelled and was showing him a similar yet distinctively new smell instead. Plenty of people might know what the inside of a shoe smells like, and have maybe even caught a hint of a shoe’s insole, but it was a lot more rare to know what an insole smells like as it’s being worn, and being actively sweated against. Madison might be good about taking showers every day and doing her laundry every week, but nobody ever washes the inside of her shoes. It was naturally an amalgamation of a year’s worth of foot-tainted mustiness, and now Joshua’s face was being smushed against it.

By the time Madison finally arrived back at her home, she was itching to pry her shoes off and rescue the poor boy she’d subjected to such craziness. But doing so required finding a secluded spot, so nobody could question who it was that the teenager had just retrieved from her shoe. Except her parents had expected her to be away watching Joshua for the weekend, so they’d decided to invite their friends over for a barbecue. Not only were there people milling around outside their family’s apartment building, but there were people in the lobby and people in the apartment too.

Joshua was there, he was right there. Literally inside her clothes and able to be rescued in a matter of seconds. But if her home was filled with people at every corner, how would she be able to save him without anybody seeing?