Alia stands before me in splendor, gleaming with what I can only describe as a victor’s light.

She smiles so brightly that even under the ample lighting of the mall, she somehow manages to stand out. But it’s not a friendly smile.

She twirls before me in her summer dress, holding a pair of heels she’s yet to try on, as I sweat and puff with the weight and bulk of bags upon bags of new clothes… Alia’s new purchases, of course, probably more clothes than I’ve ever owned in my life. More than I and my mum could even afford.

It is my duty to carry them. A servant’s duties.

“I like our trips to the mall a lot better now,” Alia says, her lips curled in a huntress’ snarl. “Don’t you, Zainab?”

The twist of the knife hurts me and makes me wince in pain – which is exactly the point, I’m sure. Alia loves power, but she loves my suffering even more. Emotions crash upon one another inside me like the rolling waves of the sea: anger, indignation at her betrayal of our bond, snivelling fear that she won’t show me an ounce of mercy, the profound humiliation of my defeat. The latter always wins out, and in the end, I capitulate. Like I always do, these days.

I may not be smelling Alia’s feet right now, but she’s made sure to massage my face with her feet at length before we embarked on this shopping trip, and as usual, my old defiance deserts me. I bow my head in surrender, and whisper, “Yes Alia, whatever you say.”

She giggles, pleased with herself at winning yet another exchange, and returns to the racks of shoes behind her, looking for a new pair to try out. It’s a momentary respite from her constant, sadistic assaults, and it leaves me briefly alone with my thoughts.

My life under the sisters’ thumb has been a living nightmare ever since they first discovered my… unspeakable weakness to the smell of feet, for which even I have no rational explanation I can think of. Every afternoon since has been spent the same way: I visit Alia at home, let her use my face as a footrest while she titters and gossips with her friends on the phone, and then graciously accompany her to the mall.

It sounds simple enough, but in a way, it is as horrifying a torture as she could devise for me. We used to come here when we were friends when we were equals. Hell, it’s the very last thing we did together before she discovered my weakness, and pounced on me to claim me as her toy.

This used to be our visit to the mall. Now, it’s a travesty, a warped version of the past, a mockery of our old friendship, cannibalised into a sick exchange of power. It almost sounds designed to drive home to me how much my life has changed.

Except I know Alia doesn’t really operate that way. This isn’t about me, it’s about her. She genuinely did want someone to carry all the bags, and not complain. Someone to dote on her with overt enthusiasm for everything she tries on. A submissive cheerleader with no will of her own, no needs, and no boundaries. Someone who could never steal the spotlight away from the one true queen.

I am ashamed to admit I play this part well. Alia has always been prettier than me, but now, with my hair disheveled, my eyes sunken in from sleep deprivation and shock, my despondency, my face downcast at my constant humiliations… I really do look like her lackey. I disappear next to her. Attention shifts back to me only when she wants to play with me, to press her foot down until I squirm.

She enjoys it. But not merely because she likes my submission. If anything, serving Alia is proving to be highly educational as to what she actually enjoys, and the knowledge makes me shiver with anticipation, and dread.

There is a sadistic impulse in the mind of many animals, humans included. Surely you have seen it in house cats, or sometimes children. Even well-fed and looked after, a cat will toy with a lizard unlucky enough to enter the house. Lethally so.

It is an evolutionary adaptation, of course – practice for predation. At an abstract level, it’s the brain having fun with a smaller, vulnerable being until it stops responding. And this is what I am to Alia: a bug to squash for fun, to poke at and prod and manipulate. And I never stop responding, which makes me dread that Alia will keep dominating and torturing me on and on, down the years. Maybe forever.

I have to find a way to stop her, but how? Right now, she’s my predator, and her foot is firmly planted on my neck – literally and metaphorically.

Alia sits down before me, one leg crossed over the other, and hands me the heels. Snapped out of my reverie, I put down the bags with a sigh to take them from her, and gulp as she expectantly arches an eyebrow.

She’s training me to act without verbal orders – to recognise her needs from the simplest of visual cues.

The idea to devise a training regimen for me was Anbar’s, of course, but a part of me is almost impressed by how masterful Alia is at carrying it out. She’s programming me, I can feel it. Long afternoons spent resting on the floor, with her feet carelessly splayed out across my face, are taking a toll on me. With her toes mastering my nose, every breath empties out my brain for her to fill with instructions and new truths.

Then come activities like these. Everyday servitude at the mall, taken one step further each time. The foot smell is the anvil, and the days with Alia are the hammer. Squashed between the two, there is less and less space for me. I feel like I’m mentally growing thinner, like there’s less and less of my independent self with every new subjugation.

It kills me how self-assured Alia is in her expectation of unquestioning obedience. And how methodical she is in testing new ways to hurt me.

Being her pack mule is one thing, this is quite another. Of course, I’ve spent a week submissively smelling her feet, much worse than putting their shoes on… but this is in public. People we know might be in this very mall at this very time, and they might happen to see me kneel before Alia like a humble servant. They might take photos, put them online.

Unfortunately, there’s no arguing with the meekness. Where my outspoken rule once stood, now is a wholly different kind of rule. I belong to the sisters, and to Alia in particular. My will is theirs.

Slowly, gently, I descend to my knees, craning my neck up to look at Queen Alia, her left foot swinging and circling expectantly in the air. I hate that I’m getting used to look at her from this position. I hate that for all my internal struggles to resist, from the outside I look smooth, precise, and punctual in my obedience.

“Put it on me,” Alia says with a giggle.

My hands tremble as I hold the shoe ever nearer to her proffered foot. It’s weird to consider I would have never touched such a pair of heels in my life, had Alia not reduced me to this state. I’m uncomfortable on heels, and I always feel they make me look ridiculous – the big-boned, plain-faced girl trying and failing to look lithe and graceful.

Perhaps more importantly, this pair costs more than our entire weekly household budget. I can feel the amazing quality of the build under my fingertips, the glossy look and feel of it, and it crushes my heart to know that I only get to touch these shoes as part of my duties to Alia.

Even still, there is just enough of me left that I still try to fight. That’s part of why my fingers tremble. I really want to drop the damn shoe, if nothing else.

But Alia has given me a direct command. And so, I elegantly slip the shoe onto her foot in one move, leaving out a whimper of discomfort when my fingertips brush against Alia’s foot in the process – I fear her feet more than I do anything in this world. Hers and Anbar’s, the engines of my destruction.

I repeat the same, humiliating service with her other foot, and all of a sudden, Alia’s imperious mask is forgotten – she stands up, overexcitedly stepping around in the new shoes while looking at them from every angle she can manage. For a fleeting moment, she looks like the bubbly, bratty girl I’ve always known. It’s hard for me to reconcile that brattiness with what she’s doing to me. Sadism is such genuine fun for her. She’s a spoiled puppy, and I’m her chew toy.

“What do you think?”

How many times have I heard that question in the past? And yet, this time, everything is different. This time, Alia steps forward as she asks this, planting her shoe square on my right hand on the floor. I wince in pain as the heel digs into my flesh, crushingly aware of the store clerks throwing sidelong glances at us.

Needless to say, I no longer feel like in the “Say the line!” scene from The Simpsons.

“Those look great on you,” I say, and my voice comes out raspy and breathy, almost worshipful. God, the level of self-betrayal my mind is capable of when it smells feet is enough to make me dissociate hard.

Alia titters in amusement. “You say that every time! I guess I shouldn’t expect a peasant girl like you to understand such things. Your simple brain can’t quite handle the intricacies of fashion.”

At the word simple, she twists the heel deeper into my hand. I wince, and not just from the pain. I may be poor next to her, but I’m not dumb!

On the other hand… how many people do I know that let themselves be bullied and subjugated just because they smell feet? Especially among non-fetishists? Maybe she’s right. Maybe she deserves to overwhelm me. In doubt, I choke back tears and say nothing.

Alia’s face darkens. She clearly was expecting a more noticeable reaction out of me. She snaps her fingers – God, I hate when she does that, and I hate that my body immediately snaps to attention every time – and points to her feet.

“Kiss, peasant girl.”

I throw myself at Alia’s feet with unscrupulous obedience, showering them in kisses. The rich fabric of the shoe feels glossy and luxurious under my lips, whereas her skin is slightly clammy – unsurprisingly so, after many hours with her feet sweating against my face, and then a long shopping binge here at the mall.

It’s repulsive. It makes me shiver to think that, once we go back to her place, I’ll likely have to clean them for her. And yet, there is no margin for defiance or even hesitation, especially this close to the source of the all-conquering smell… I swear I can almost make out the ftzzz and the pops as my brain gradually shuts down, leaving nothing but a dumb, drooling mess for Alia to programme…

“That’s enough, silly,” she says with a giggle, helping me stand up. “Now that you’ve kissed them, I guess I’ll have to buy them! Haha!”

My head feels dizzy and I’m unsteady on my feet. But what really throws me off balance is Alia’s sudden change in demeanour. She flutters her eyelashes at me in the most exaggerated manner, her face softening.

“I know we’re being so mean to you. Let me make it up to you just a little. Go to the dressing room, and wait for me.”

Gentle tone or not, my body interprets this as a command, and immediately executes it before I can protest, or ask a question. My feet carry me to the nearest dressing room of their own volition, while my mind oscillates between hope and doubt. Dare I believe that a part of Alia actually still cares about me? Or should I know better?

To be honest, the situation is so hopeless that if I don’t embrace the tiniest shred of hope, I might as well jump in front of a moving train. So I cling to the idea with all my might – yes, Alia is having fun at my expense, and horribly abusing the bizarre circumstances of my weakness, but my friend is still somewhere in there. She must be. All the years we’ve spent so close to one another must count for something.

Right?

My heart flutters with anticipation as the curtain to the dressing room is pulled open. Alia stands before me, her eyes glittering with clever amusement, as she offers me a bundle of black clothes.

“Here,” she says with a giggle. “Put it on. My treat!”

I open my mouth to thank Alia, but the feel of the fabric against my hands distracts me. I frown, running my fingers back and forth to get a better feel for the bundle. What is it?

Wait...

I pick what looks like the top from the bundle, and unfold it across my arm, to get a better look at it. And then, as Alia first breaks into a snigger, I gasp with slowly dawning horror.

It’s a French maid’s outfit.

Slick and black, frilled with white, not one of those cheap plastic ones you might get for Halloween, but flexible and soft, designed to let the body breathe. In its own way, it’s of amazing quality, but it’s also unmistakable. My cheeks go red with embarrassment, and my eyes well up with tears.

That pleases Alia greatly, I’m sure. Even after all I’ve endured so far, she’s found a way to shock me, to reach past my walls and strike me where it hurts. If I’d shown myself to be more hurt when I was kissing her shoes, maybe I would have been spared this humiliation.

I choke back on the knot at the pit of my stomach. I don’t deserve to be treated like her maid just because she’s far wealthier, prettier, and more popular than I am!
But if I don’t, why can’t I stop her? What do you call a person that is made compliant by the smell of her betters’ feet?

Alia throws me a long look. “Come on, peasant girl. Never turn down gifts from nobility. Put it on.”

I can’t say no to Alia. I can’t shout at her, I can’t outwardly manifest any of the heartbreak and pain currently raging inside me. But I can ask questions, and so, working with the limitations of my mysterious obedience, I blurt out:

“Where did you even get this?”

“Oh, this store has a kinky section,” Alia says, pressing a hand to her mouth to contain her growingly hysterical laughter. “A pretty bland selection if you ask me, but this is just what I was looking for. Come on, don’t keep me waiting!”

The curtain snaps shut as Alia leaves me alone with the outfit – and with my obedience. My resistance all but eradicated, I shed my baggy clothes and – with considerable difficulty, and trembling hands – enter the form-fitting embrace of the maid’s uniform.

If I thought I looked ridiculous before, now I wish the Earth would open up underneath me to swallow me whole. By being so form-fitting, the uniform emphasises how thick and ungainly my body is. My legs don’t look better in stockings, they just look stockier. With no heels to push up my behind, I don’t look racey or tantalising – but saggy.

There is zero grace in how I wear the uniform – even as a servant I look like a failure, a grotesque parody of what a more graceful subject could perform. Alia isn’t making me slut it up in a hot servant’s dress: she’s highlighting my fundamental inadequacy for all the world to see.

For me to see.

I feel all of this, and a lot more besides, in Alia’s judgement. She laughs so hard and for so long that she brings herself to the point of tears, while I stand dejectedly in the dressing room, eyes downcast. My self-esteem is crumbling, bit by bit, and Alia knows it.

She pays for the purchases, and insists I wear the uniform on our way back home. We draw stares from all over the mall, and the contrast couldn’t be more apparent from the outside. Alia strides lithely on her heels, her petite form filling out her dress just right, and she hasn’t got a single care in the world.

Me? I’m a stupid, lumbering mountain of a beaten girl, goofy even in my unassuming flats, in a maid uniform, slaving behind Alia as I carry her day’s catch. I’m sure I’ve never sunk so low at any point in my life so far. And this is only a week into my enslavement.

Which leads me to an even more worrisome thought: what else will Alia come up with to destroy me?

The cab drives us to Alia’s, and as I step into the walled garden surrounding the mansion, the reality of my position clamps around me like a pair of jaws once more. I remember thinking it would require an army of maids to keep this place clean. Well, here I am, approaching the front door not as a friend and visitor, but as a humble servant.

As if to reinforce the point, I immediately step into my get-home routine once we cross the threshold. Alia has been drilling this into me for days now, and looks smugly on as I execute it without prompting.

“Thank you for allowing me into your home, princess,” I whisper, dropping humbly to my knees, all too aware of the stockings stretching around my legs as they fold beneath me. The image of subservience.

Then, I lean forward… and start licking Alia’s shoes.

They’re the new pair she bought at the mall, so I guess I’m housebreaking them… just like she’s gradually housebreaking...