Blinking back tears of petrified humiliation, you wobbled to the edge of the desk where, teetering a moment longer you hesitated, heart hammering, before plummeting off the edge. In what seemed the same instant, you hit the damp heat of his waiting cupped hands, with a violent thud. ‘You see,’ he grinned. ‘That wasn’t bad, was it? And now you know you can trust me and I know I can trust you. Did you like my trainers, by the way?’
Mercurial in his threats and chatter, Derek offered little indication of the crash his train of thought might station in the next breaks’ fail. Battling the inevitable collision with hysterical collapse, you nodded weakly but too animated to seem sincere, too winded from the fall to reply immediately in words. ‘I think they’re great but I bet you guessed that when I put my feet on the desk which, yeah, it’s really rude of me but that’s not a good enough reason to stick on another fucking week of community service, is it?’ As his hackles appeared to be rising, you shook your head in cowed agreement before crumpling in a heap in his hot palm and crying without inhibition. ‘God, you’re great,’ he snuffled, lifting you higher, seemingly oblivious to your woebegone outpouring and even affording himself a surreptitious but transparent sniff. ‘You see, I’m a right fucking pig to you but you just put up and shut up, don’t you? I always did think you were fucking great. I wish I was nicer. Not to all those other fuckers, no. Just nice for you.’ Leaving the capricious leviathan to rain a monologue of praise on your despairing head, you curled tightly into a ball and, crying harder, buried your face in the palm of the erstwhile bully, come flesh god of the one-sided-eulogy.
‘I remember,’ he began, ‘those sunglasses you wore to assembly…’
The reality was, you’d never owned a pair of sunglasses in your life.
‘Your family were flying to America but you made them go to Sweden, instead…’
You’d neither flown with a single family member nor travelled east of Oostende.
‘Would you run to me, if somebody hurt you, even that somebody did it was me?’
It took a moment to name that tune and success wasn’t a comfort.
‘You said buy quality,’ he continued, ‘and I know I didn’t listen at the time - well, nobody did but I listen now. Here.’
All cried out and, ready or not, he tipped you roughly, by his own estimation gently, back onto the worktop. For the time being, he’d completed retouching your imaginary past with the heroic flourishes of a rebel you never were. Still sporting an expression of proud ownership, he gazed down upon you like he couldn’t believe his luck at winning the bid. Then, suddenly noticing a change, his expression altered.
‘Oh,’ he exclaimed, as if disappointed ‘You stopped crying.’ With not a hint of self-conscious hesitation, he squinted into the palm you’d wet with morose tears, examining it for the physical evidence and, upon discerning damp not of his own origin, licked with two broad, harsh sweeps of a hideous tongue. With a slight smack of the chops, he glowered as you shuddered, his fixed concentration upon you sat, legs splayed, facing him, as if he were matching the sight of your helplessness with the taste in his gut. In a blank cogitation of permanently associating a narrative of eyes and tongue, he rallied. ‘No cheap rubbish, you said!’ Without further explanation, he again lifted a leg and crashed his foot upon the desktop, tossing you a bare inch from your seat but a bare inch enough to throw you into a renewed fright of adrenaline. ‘Sorry,’ he said with the gruff quiet of possible contrition. ‘Feel!’ bellowed the giant bully again calling the shots. ‘Feel the quality.’
‘Derek!’ knocked the same voice beyond the door, as before. ‘I’m going to need my office back, in a minute. Is that ok?’
‘Yeah, yeah!’ bawled the towering ruffian with one trainer planted horribly close to where you still couldn’t understand what response he was trying to elicit. ‘God, they don’t half fucking go on! No - you feel! It’s real wool like you said!’
Never having shared much more than the disturbing moment in the cloakroom with the great beast, you emphatically hadn’t said anything of the sort. ‘Touch it!’ Derek appeared to be becoming angry and so, quickly staggering to your feet, you approached his foot, taking a sharp turn at the dirty sole, looming like the vertically positioned, immovable crusher, which to you, it now was, around the body of a great shoe to reach for the sultry damp of a grey sock whose wool the tetchy titan would have you admire. ‘Way back, you told me!’ His shouting now modified to the strange annunciation of a character reference in a court appearance. ‘The natural fibres wick away the sweat and prevent a build up of odours.’ Disorientated, frightened and wary, you nevertheless recognised advertising campaign as rote, applied to an artificial, rosy past. ‘Here.’ You found yourself again snatched without warning and unceremoniously placed on the floor. ‘I can’t keep my leg up there,’ he explained, hurriedly untying the lace of the trainer resting across the opposite knee. ‘I get cramp,’ he elaborated almost apologetically, nevertheless watching you as if you might pull a runner as he pulled his foot free and dropped an enormous trainer, heavily, much closer than either of you anticipated. ‘Sorry, buddy,’ he stated. ‘Nearly got you, then.’ Slamming the grey, socked foot so close to where you’d been deposited, an unpleasant, humid shockwave buffeted you, actually ruffling your hair. ‘But you see.’ He slid his foot so close you were slightly displaced. ‘It doesn’t smell,’ he miscalculated. ‘Well, not as much as it would.’ With an unintelligent chuckle, he had his toe give you another shove. ‘It’s not that bad, is it.’ Far above you, his face frowned oddly the moment before laughing, too loudly. ‘Maybe it is that bad!’ he joked, too heartily, his foot knocking you onto your back, before raising just above you and then sinking to embrace you in its pungent, weighty insistence.
In part an involuntary expulsion of air from flattened lungs, your squeal of terror, as his foot heavily pinned you beneath its vicious smelling heat, elicited a guffaw from a bully, truly rediscovering the malevolent joy of others’ terror. ‘Oh, man,’ he laughed, as openly reckless as he was obviously aroused. ‘Tell me the truth! It is that bad, isn’t it? Toes wiggling, he pressed down. ‘You have no idea,’ he sighed, ’how good this feels.’ His laugh, a meandering groan of satisfaction, became hoarse but elated. ‘I could keep you there for good. You’d like that, too. Wouldn’t you?’
‘No, please!’ you choked, your head twisted sideways to avoid a broken nose, unheard and sprawled in a flattening lather of despair.
‘Derek!’ rapped the door. ‘I really do need my office back.’
‘Just hang on!’ he bawled, angrily at the caller. ‘I’m finishing off something I should have finished off years ago.’
‘Please!’ You begged, in a last-gasp agony of asphyxiation.
‘That’s right, you try and wriggle out of it, Joe,’ pressed Derek. ‘But I’m afraid to say, your wriggling days are over, you dirty little mouse. You see, this is what happens when little so-called buddies don’t make me laugh when they go out of their way to promise they would. I told you I hate liars.’
Shifting in his seat, he sighed in contented exultation, carefully repositioning his weigh, the better to slowly crush the schoolmate he felt needed a long, overdue and painful lesson in the consequences of not living up to expectations. Struggling but unable even to breathe, your frantic sweat mingled with the stinking sweat of his foot, just as your dying blood would ‘wick’ into the wool of his sock. With a gentle breath of a light laughter, he pressed down harder still, giving his foot a small twist whilst listening intently for screams, crunches or an amusing squelch.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author
