Never Ready (Complete short story)

Something sinister and morbid surrounded Emma and Jen’s family. Fact is, Emma was born from another mother, and Jen, was born years later after their dad remarried. During teenage years, their father died of cardiac arrest and Susan, who was Jen’s mother, completely changed. She went from a considerate and kind person to a restrictive, angry and impatient despot. Her attitude changed gradually and she started to expect more of her daughters, mostly being demanding towards Emma, her stepdaughter. School grades were never good enough, cleaning was never done the right way, dinner wasn’t ready on time. Many tasks and chores ended up on Emma’s shoulder while, for reasons unknown, Susan seemed to favor Jen. Emma turned down into anxiety and traumatic stress, spiraled down her early teenage years give less and less of a fuck about anything. And that, Susan didn’t let happen.

Working as a secretary at the local school, Susan snatched a shrinking ray from the discipline cabinet. She brought it back home, busted into Emma’s room and shrunk her without any warning, to the very frightening size of half an inch tall. Emma’s quick screams were instantly muffled and the girl shrunk and got lost into the pile of clothes on her bed.

“Mom, what are you doing?” asked Jen, standing in the doorway behind her mother. Susan walked to the bed and started to lift up the clothes to finally find her tumbling little shrunken stepdaughter Emma, visibly in sheer terror and panic.

“I am punishing your sister.” Said Susan. “Go back to your room.” She added firmly. Susan focused on picking up Emma between her huge fingers, and it felt like picking up an ant. Jen stayed in the doorway.

“What are you going to do to her?” asked Jen, unsure and shaken to see the drastic and sudden turn of event.

“Go back to your room!” said Susan, looking at her younger daughter. Looking down at Emma in the palm of her hand, and then quickly glancing to the floor at her feet, Susan suddenly frowned down and hinted a satisfied smile that lasted a fraction of second. “This will teach you to be more respectful.” She said to her tiny shrunken stepdaughter. She pulled left heel out of her leather loafers she was wearing with navy socks and jeans, and slipped her foot out of her shoe, bending down. She ultimately placed Emma inside the warm and aromatic leather shoe and dropped her on the insole. Standing back up, Susan kept a very harsh look down into the shoe. Upset and radical, Susan slipped her foot back into the shoe, trapping the little girl inside and under her sole. Susan forced her foot inside until the heel would fit in and she rotated her ankle, wiggled her toes and pressed down. In the doorway, Jen covered her mouth after letting out surprised and shocked muffled cry. Susan looked at her daughter.

“Go to your room now!” said Susan, walking towards her. Jen ran away into her room. Susan turned off the lights and walked downstairs.

Days passed and Jen didn’t see her sister at all. On a school day morning, jen asked her mother where was Emma, knowing exactly where her stepsister actually was.

“She’s grounded, mind your own business.” Said Susan to her daughter before both went to school where Susan worked and where Jen studied.

More days passed, which ended being more weeks. Jen was worried about Emma. Susan kept her in whatever shoe she was wearing, kept her in her socks while she was showering, sometimes kept her in a lock jewel box.

“Mom, maybe we should unshrink Emma now, don’t you think, it’s been a while now.” Said Jen to her mother during dinner weeks later.

“Well, I think, she needs a bit more punishment.” Said Susan, like if it was something casual to say.

Weeks passed, and seasons later, months piled up and Emma was nowhere to be seen. Jen knew Susan kept her in there and had no intention whatsoever to let Emma out ever again. Jen was still young and didn’t fully understand why Susan did that but she eventually came to accept it as it is, and move on with her own teenage dramas and friends. Jen had the best grades in class, studied hard, worked hard, and her mother Susan was very proud.

Some kind of odd complacency took place between Jen and her mother Susan as they would sometimes joke about Emma. They sometimes laughed at her while looking down into the opening of whatever shoe Susan was wearing. She was there, naked, alive, completely numb and probably crazy, her mind destroyed and crushed, brainwashed, filthy and disgusting. Then Susan would just put her giant foot back in her shoe, perpetuating the forever punishment.

Years passed and Jen grew up. She enjoyed having her older stepsister inside her own shoes at school or during sports or anytime. Sometimes Susan would let her have Emma and Jen would just keep the tiny weak girl in her shoe just like her mother would do. Whenever interacting briefly with her sister, Jen would always make sure to remind her that she used to be her stepsister, but not anymore. Sometimes she would make sure that the little girl was humiliated. “Don’t forget to smell my foot while you’re in there.” She would taunt. But most of the time, Emma was under her stepmother’s foot like usual.

Jen was allowed to trap Emma in the shoe for special occasions. Parties, soccer, cinema, restaurants, driving lessons, exam days, and so on. Jen ended up participating to the punishment and sometimes requested to. “Mom can I have Emma tomorrow for the field trip to museum?” Then Susan would agree and Emma suffered under Jen’s foot some more and again.

Emma was in Jen’s shoe when the giantess had her first kiss, when she graduated, when she turned 18, when she bought her first car, when she got her job at the school’s library.

But one day it was Susan’s turn to pass away, an early cancer got hold of her and it didn’t take long for her health to decline fatally. Jen inherited the house and the money. That’s when things changed a bit for Emma.

Legal stuff got in the way. They found out about Emma and she was taken into therapy to save what would be left of her sanity. Jen was fin for participating in her mother’s cruel abuse towards the little girl that once were her step sister. The judge ordered them to be separated however, after a few hours of being back to normal size in the stabilization room at the hospital, Emma entered a state of mindless lethargy. She was basically in a coma, maintained artificially in life with a respirator. After years of being trodden on, stepped on, trampled, crushed, tortured under foot, it was too much of a shock for Emma to be anything else but dirt. After a few days, the therapist in charge of Emma’s rehab felt like it would be a good idea to slow down the transition process and managed to get the judge’s favor in what she suggested as a new therapy. Therefore, Jen was scheduled to the hospital and once she got there she met the therapist, Nicole. They greeted each other and were left with Emma, still unconscious on her hospital bed.

“Don’t worry Jen, I am not here to judge your past or anything related to what you or your mother did before. These things are none of my concern, but you see, the past may be the past, we’re here now, and Emma needs to have a more smooth transition. And that’s why I called for you.”

“Sure, I huh…. I mean… I just…. Don’t know if it’s a good idea. What if she wakes up and just… wants to kill me or something….” Said Jen to Nicole.

“Don’t worry, we’re safe.” She said, checking on the straps that tied Emma to the hospital bed. Ankles, legs, wrists, arms, body and upper torso were all strapped. “Now we’re going to soothe her mind by comforting it. Please take off one of your shoes.” Said Nicole, putting down her notepad and pen on a nearby table. Jen looked down at her old leather shoes she wore everyday at college, and she actually slipped both off and picked them up. They were old and dusty, but what was more of interest for Nicole, is that they war particularly smelly. Nicole put mask on and some hospital latex gloves and picked both shoes from Jen, who was not too sure if her shoes were -that- disgusting. Maybe it was just procedure.

Nicole place one shoe over Emma’s chest and turned the other shoe upside down on over an air intake bypass, which she steeled to the deepest of the leather shoe. The respirator now used the air from inside the shoe and force it inside Emma’s lungs with each breathing. It didn’t take long for the encephalograph’s patterns to change on most if not all of the sensors placed on Emma’s head. Her heartrate also slowed down. Muscles felt less tense and the effect of Jen’s shoe on the air intake of the respirator managed to soothe Emma’s metabolism, effectively brining her into a conscious, but still sleepy state.

Fascinated, both Jen and Nicole stood next to Emma, one on each sides of the bed, and Jen placed a hand on her stepsister’s forehead. Gently, the girls eyes tried to open, but the light was too dense so Nicole dimmed it a bit.

“Hey.” Said Jen to Emma, smiling with the most comforting smile she could make under the circumstances. Emma moaned when she saw her, but she was too weak to move or say anything. The respirator over her mouth and nose was not necessary anymore since she was breathing on her own, and Nicole gently removed it. Seconds later, the heartrate started to rise up again, a few beeps showed that her neuronal activity was off again, and Nicole quickly grabbed Jen’s other shoe and placed it directly over Emma’s nose, buried it inside.

“Hold it please.” Said Nicole to Jen, who took the shoe and held it in place over her stepsister’s nose, effectively slowing down the heart rate and brining her revulsed eyes back in their right orbit. The different measures were dropping back to normal but not quite to the levels that would satisfy Nicole. She took notes on her notepad. A nurse came in and without really caring about what was happening, started to clean up the place, turn off unused machines, replace the blankets, and care about the patient, all while Jen was holding her own shoe upside down on Emma’s nose. “It’s not enough.” Said Nicole. “Put your socks in her mouth.” Said Nicole.

“Are you sure?” Jen asked, completely baffled at the surrealist situation. Emma’s eyes opened wider and she moaned. “Hey sis, hmm. Want my socks in your mouth?” she asked candidly to the slowly waking girl. Emma nodded slowly. Nicole held the shoe in place while Jen removed both her socks and ended up barefoot on the cold hospital floor. She got back up, holding her black cotton socks and lowered them, balled up towards Emma’s mouth who opened and welcomed the socks like if it was something she actually craved for. Jen pushed the socks inside her mouth, and with her finger, made sure it was going deep and that both socks would completely fit in. “There you go, feeling better?” Jen asked.

Emma nodded slowly, her breathing deeply through her nose into the depths of the smelly leather shoe that was on her nose, and the taste of Jen’s socks in her mouth made her feel relaxed, and the whole process had a soothing effect. She eventually fell asleep, and it was now safely possible to remove the socks and shoe and let her sleep. Jen didn’t want to put her socks back on since they were soaked with saliva. She just put her shoes back on barefoot.

Days passed. While she was not there, Jen had brought a pair of old sneakers and left them with Emma. Nurses would come and press the dirty old shoes up on Emma’s nose whenever a crisis would come up. It would calm her back again. Each day, Jen visited Emma at the hospital, only to see that she was getting better and better. Every day Jen would make her smell inside her shoes and suck on her socks. Jen brought clean spares to change while Emma would have the used and smelly pair in her mouth. Emma didn’t seem to be able to talk yet, but she would always seem happy, the way she weakly smiled when she would see Jen, like if she was an angel.

At some point, she got her hospital leave and Jen brought Emma back home with strict medication and a set of rules from the court. She was to be Emma’s tutor and she was responsible for her, including all her basic needs and also for her rehabilitation into society. The first days went well for the most part, put aside some crisis. Emma would enter a state of tantrum and crisis that Jen could only calm down and stop by forcing Emma to smell inside her worn out shoes and make her smell her feet directly. Emma spent a lot of time under Jen’s feet, whether Jen would be working from home or when watching TV, or even in other situations. Jen kind of missed the time when Emma was shrunk down, it was much more simple and easier to deal with. Emma would also see her therapist and it seems she had developed a speech impediment, unable to really communicate her needs verbally. When Jen had to leave the house, Emma had to come and she could not be left alone. Jen would often find Emma lurking creepily inside her closet, smelling her shoes.

One day an event occurred. Emma couldn’t be found anywhere and Jen started to panic as she seemingly had lost Emma. She thought the girl had run away from the house, and she immediately called the therapist who also put the local police on the case and they all started searching the local village in order to find Emma. However, what happened was that Emma had found the shrinking device, shrunk herself and hid inside one of Jen’s sneakers. Jen word those sneakers all day unknowing that her step-sister was actually little again, and buried inside, almost crushed under the shoe’s insole. Jen only found out later in the evening, when she actually saw the device and looked inside her shoes. She scolded her step-sister, unshrunk her immediately, and hid the shrinking device somewhere safer.

The therapist, Mrs Nicole, had a hard time seeing any progress about Emma’s behaviors and she deemed necessary to advice Emma should attend school again, specialized adult school to get back into society and socialize with other human beings. However, it was really difficult because Emma would often be found naked in the school’s hallways, sniffing inside some other female student’s shoes. She did not make friends at all, and when she would enter into a crisis state, teachers would have to find female shoes to put on her nose to calm her down, sometimes taking their own, or asking other students to help. One day, Emma spent a whole class under one of her girl classmate’s desk, her feet planted on Emma’s face the whole time, or else she would become problematic and agitated. It did not take long for the school and the therapist to take Emma out of school for obvious reasons that she was not learning, nor socializing, and that the whole thing made it hard on other people’s own progress.

The shrink ray incident re-occurred a few times. One time Jen managed to prevent it, taking the shrinking device away from Emma before she could shrink herself again. But while talking to her therapist, Jen couldn’t help but underline the single fact that her step-sister was not ready to come back to the real world, and might probably never be ready at all ever again. The trauma she had suffered was too strong, too deep rooted, and she suggested the therapist that Emma could probably live a better life, and be more happy and safe if she was to just be shrunk again, indefinitely living in Jen’s shoes.

Legally, it was hard to get there, but it finally worked. Jen confronted Emma and told her that she would be shrunk forever and that she would live inside her shoes and smell her feet as much as she want. A sight of relief cam out of Emma who pronounced her first words in years.

She said: “Thank you.”

The End.