She slowly rose to her feet and walked over to where his dress shoes were; one of them still laid on top of her little sneakers. She felt tears come to her eyes as she kneeled next to the other shoe and started carefully rubbing at it with the edge of her silly robe.

Later, he stepped out of the shower, now barefoot and only wearing boxers; she heard him him a little song, then, before she knew it, his toes hit her from behind and playfully kneaded her body against the carpet. Only for several seconds, though. Then he moved on. As she worked on his shoe, she saw him spend some time on his phone, then on the laptop, then - watching the TV… all while she had to rub and scrub and polish, and to get to the other shoe she had to climb on top of her own old sneakers, and the smell coming off those was so surreal, so strong, that she felt nauseated. Why did he keep her stuff? Why like this? She had so many questions that she was afraid to ask now, but all of them would be left unanswered as she kept working until early evening. Once she was done, she sheepishly made her way in his general direction, unsure of what he meant earlier but feeling like that would be what he wanted, and she was right, since once she was close enough his foot lunged for her and buried her once again under its now bare bulk, smothering her, rubbing her into the carpet. Helpless and aching, Cynthia couldn’t help but wonder if there would ever be an end to this.