Mama V's Little Masseur Shrunken First Semester chapter 5 by maximally

Max didn't know how long he lay in the drawer. Long enough to count the stitches on the lavender briefs. Long enough to decide, twice, that he would explain everything the second the drawer opened, and long enough to realize, twice, that he had no way to explain anything at all.

He ran it in his head like a trial.

Your Honor, the folder was planted. By who? My stepsister. Why would she do that? Because she's Izzy. Where's your proof? I don't have any. Then whose laptop is it? Mine. Whose password? Mine. Whose forum account, posting at two in the morning, when you're always up at two in the morning? ...Mine, technically.

The jury, in his head, was six Victorias. All of them looked very supportive.

He was going to lose this one.

Out in the room, things had gone quiet after the shriek down the hall. The phone calls never happened. Instead he heard drawers in the bathroom, the hiss of a spray bottle, a long stretch of humming, and once, horribly, the tap of a trackpad. Victoria had opened the laptop again. Just for a minute. Then she closed it with a soft click and said, "Okay," to herself in a voice that sounded like someone who'd just finished homework.

Then socks again in the hall. The door.

"Hey. So. I did some research," Izzy said.

"Mija, Mama is still processing."

"No, I know, I just. I don't want you to go too hard, you know? Like, day one." Her voice was low and careful, the voice of a girl who'd watched a lot of therapists on TikTok. "I read that with this kind of stuff, you gotta start small. Baby steps. Like if you just go full, like, shoe on him, he'll get overwhelmed and shut down."

Max closed his eyes. Shoe. She'd said shoe like it was a medical procedure.

"So what do you think Mama should do?" Victoria asked. She sounded genuinely uncertain, which was a thing Max had heard maybe three times in four years.

"I mean, I'm not an expert."

"You found it all, mija. You know more than Mama does."

There was a pause just long enough for Max to picture Izzy pretending to think about it.

"Okay, so, like. The history was a lot of feet. Like, mostly feet." Another pause. "So maybe just... ask him for a foot rub? Super casual. Like, 'hey, Mama's feet hurt.' And if he's into it, he'll do it. And if he's not, then, like, no harm, right? It's just a foot rub. Everybody's mom asks for a foot rub."

"Everybody's mom does not—" Max whispered to the lavender briefs.

"That's... actually very mature, Isabella," Victoria said slowly.

"I'm a very mature person."

"Mama's feet do hurt. I wore the Louboutins to that brunch Thursday."

"See? It's natural. It's organic." The bed creaked as Izzy got up. "Okay, I'm gonna go so it's not weird. Good luck, Mom. Be, like, open."

"Thank you, mija."

The door closed. Max heard Izzy's footsteps go down the hall and stop right outside her own door. They did not go in.

She was listening.

Of course she was listening.

*

The key turned. The drawer slid open, and the light hit him like a flashbang. Max threw an arm over his face, and when he lowered it, Victoria was leaning over him with her chin on her fist, and she was smiling.

Not her usual smile. Not the brisk, berry-red, let's-go-over-your-safety-schools smile. This was a soft, careful, almost shy one, the smile you'd give a stray cat to keep it from bolting under a car.

"Hi, sweetie," she said gently.

"Hi," Max said. "Mom, about the laptop—"

"Shh. Shh, shh, shh." A fingertip came down and stroked the top of his head, three long, lazy passes. "We don't have to talk about that."

"No, I really think we should—"

"Mama's not mad, mijo." Her eyes went shiny. "Mama could never be mad at you for being who you are."

"That's not who I—"

"You don't have to explain anything. Not one thing." She smiled bravely. "When you're ready. Okay? Mama will be right here."

He could see it in her face. Every word he said now was just going to be shame talking. Denial. A frightened little boy who'd been hiding for years. She was going to hug him through the whole thing and believe absolutely none of it.

Max shut his mouth.

The trial was over. He'd lost. Now there was only staying on her good side, and maybe, if he was very lucky, surviving long enough to get back to normal size before September.

"Okay," he said quietly.

Victoria beamed. She scooped him out of the drawer, bedding and all, and shook him gently free of the lavender briefs like a baker dusting off a roll. Then she cradled him in her palm and carried him back across the room in three long, rocking strides. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and the mattress let out a long sigh under her.

"So," she said. Very casual. So casual that Max knew she'd rehearsed it in the bathroom mirror. "Mama's had a long week."

"Okay."

"And Mama's feet are killing her." She wiggled on the mattress, theatrical. "Those Louboutins on Thursday. Ay. Six hours. You wouldn't believe."

"I'm sorry," Max said, and waited.

"And Mama was just thinking..." She looked at the ceiling, at the closet, at anywhere but him. "Since you're just sitting there anyway. And you need something to keep your mind off things. Maybe you could give Mama a little foot rub?"

There it was.

She looked down at him then, finally, and he saw it all on her face at once: hope, nerves, and the giddy, guilty excitement of a woman giving a present she wasn't sure the recipient would like. Behind it, already, the first faint shimmer of tears was gathering, in case he said no.

If he said no, she'd cry. If she cried, she'd call Lupe. If she called Lupe, Lupe would come over. He would end up spending the rest of the summer in somebody's bra.

"Sure," Max said. "Yeah. Okay."

Victoria let out a breath so big it ruffled his hair.

"Really?"

"It's just a foot rub."

"It's just a foot rub," she agreed, too fast, nodding. "Exactly. Totally normal."

Out in the hall, very faintly, someone snorted.

*

Victoria lay back against the mountain of decorative pillows, the ones no one was allowed to touch, and set him down at the foot of the bed.

Then she stretched out her legs.

It was like watching a drawbridge come down. Her calves slid across the duvet toward him, brown and smooth and glossy with lotion, and the cream comforter rippled like sand dunes as the weight passed over it. Then her heels came to rest maybe a foot in front of him, and her feet stood up toward the ceiling like two cliffs.

Max had seen his stepmother's feet a thousand times. Kicked up on the coffee table during her shows. Tapping in the kitchen while she waited for the espresso machine. Shoved in his face once during a wrestling match with Izzy that he'd lost badly.

He had never seen them like this.

A size-twelve foot was almost a foot long. He was three inches tall. Each sole rose above him four stories high, curving up from a heel the size of a hay bale to a row of toes that loomed like a skyline. Each toenail was painted the same deep berry as her lips, perfectly glossy, and each one was bigger than his face. The soles themselves were a soft, pinkish tan, wrinkled at the arch, faintly shiny with whatever she'd rubbed into them last night.

And then there was the smell.

It wasn't bad, exactly. That was almost more upsetting. It was warm and close, and it seemed to come at him from every direction at once. It smelled of shea butter and the faint leather of expensive shoes, and under that was something salty and human that was just her, the scent of a body that had been walking around on a hot July morning. It pressed against his face like humid air on a summer night.

"Go ahead, sweetie," Victoria said from somewhere far up the bed. Her voice had gone drowsy. "Wherever you want. Mama trusts you."

Max stepped forward. He put both hands flat on the ball of her right foot.

It was warm. Hot, almost, and faintly damp with sweat from a night under the covers. Much hotter than he'd expected. The skin gave under his palms, softer than it looked, smooth on top with a faint ridged grain underneath, like suede. He felt her pulse in it. Slow. Huge.

He pushed.

Nothing happened. He might as well have been pushing on a mattress. He leaned in harder, putting his whole weight behind it, digging both thumbs in like he'd seen in a massage video once. The skin dimpled very slightly under him.

"Oh," Victoria said.

He tried again, working in small circles. His arms burned already. It felt like kneading bread dough the size of a beanbag. Above him, the toes flexed gently, slowly, all five of them curling forward and then back again. Their shadow passed over him and back.

"Oh," Victoria said again, longer this time. "Oh, mijo."

He moved down to the arch. That was easier. The arch curved up over him like the ceiling of a cave, and he could get his shoulder into it and push upward with his legs. The skin was thinner here and more sensitive. When he leaned into it, the whole foot gave a little shiver, and the berry toes above him splayed apart.

From the pillows came a long, low sigh that went on and on.

"Sweetie, that's... ay. That's good."

He kept going. What else was he supposed to do? He worked up the outside edge of the sole, where the skin got rougher from all those years of heels. He pushed both fists into the pad under her big toe, which turned out to be the size of a couch cushion and very nearly as soft. He climbed up onto the heel when he got tired, sat on it, and rubbed the ankle bone behind him with both hands until the whole foot rolled lazily outward and he had to grab onto a crease of skin to keep from sliding off.

Victoria giggled. Her whole leg shook with it, and he hung on for dear life.

"Sorry, sorry. It tickles when you do that."

"Sorry," Max mumbled into her heel.

"No! Don't be sorry. Do it again."

He did it again. She giggled again. Her toes wiggled with delight above him, all ten of them, and a fresh, warm wave of her scent rolled down over him like a breeze off a beach.

He was sweating now. His hands smelled like shea butter. He was pretty sure he'd smell like her feet for the rest of the day no matter how many times he washed, and some quiet, traitorous part of his brain noted that it didn't actually mind as much as it should have.

He told that part of his brain to shut up, too. It had been very talkative today.

"Other foot, sweetie," Victoria murmured. "Don't want the left one to get jealous."

*

By the time he'd done the left foot, his arms felt like overcooked noodles, and Victoria had gone completely boneless against the pillows.

She lay there with her eyes half-closed and one arm draped over her forehead like a heroine in a telenovela, breathing slow and deep. Every now and then her toes curled lazily on their own, flexing and spreading, the way a cat kneads a blanket.

Max sat on the duvet between her heels and panted.

"Mijo," she said at last, dreamily, not opening her eyes. "Where did you learn that?"

"I didn't. I just kind of. Did it."

"A natural." She sighed so deeply that the whole bed rocked. "Mama's feet haven't felt this good since Milan."

Max didn't know what had happened in Milan. He decided not to ask.

She cracked one eye open and looked down the length of her body at him, past the twin hills of her boobs and the slope of her stomach, all the way down to the tiny figure sitting between her feet. Her face did something soft and complicated. For a second she looked like she might cry again. Then, slowly, she broke into a grin.

"You liked that," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I mean—"

"Don't. Don't you dare say you didn't, Max." She wagged a finger at him, playful. "Mama felt how careful you were. Mama felt you go slow. Nobody does it like that unless they want to."

He had gone slow because her foot was four stories tall and he didn't want to fall off it.

He didn't say that.

"It was... fine," he managed. "It was nice."

"Nice." Victoria laughed, delighted. She stretched her legs out long, and her toes spread wide on either side of him, so that for one dizzy moment he was standing in a valley between two cliffs of warm skin. "Oh, mijo. It was better than nice. It was perfect."

She sat up. The mattress tilted, and he slid an inch toward her. She reached down, scooped him up out of the valley, and brought him up to her face, where she studied him with her chin propped on her fist and her eyes sparkling.

"Okay," Victoria said. "So here's what we're going to do."

Max's stomach sank. He knew that sentence. He had heard it before every summer job, every SAT prep course, every family road trip he'd ever been dragged on.

"Every day," Victoria announced, "you're going to give Mama a foot rub."

"Every—"

"Every day. Morning or night, whatever you want. That's your job now." She smiled at him, all tenderness. "It's good for you. It gives you a little structure, keeps your mind busy. And it's good for Mama, and it's something special, just for us."

"Mom, I really don't think—"

"And if you want more than one a day..." She gave him a sly look and a little shimmy of her shoulders. "Well. Mama won't say no."

"I'm good with one," Max said quickly.

"See? Already setting boundaries. So healthy." She kissed the top of his head, and the edge of her berry lips swallowed him down to the shoulders. "Mama's so proud of you."

From the hall came a sound like a girl falling against a wall, laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.

"Isabella!" Victoria called sharply. "Are you eavesdropping?"

"No!" Izzy called back, wheezing. "I'm vacuuming!"

There was no vacuum.

Victoria rolled her eyes and settled back against the pillows with Max cupped against the warm, heaving top of her tits. Her bare feet stretched out at the end of the bed, toes curling lazily, already looking forward to tomorrow.

"Every day, mijo," she murmured, stroking his back with one finger. "Mama's little masseur."

Max stared at the ceiling fan going slowly around and around overhead.

Forty-one days until orientation, he thought. Forty-one foot rubs.

The math wasn't hard. He just didn't like where it was going.