A Vascular Vintage

A Vascular Vintage

         Napa Valley was even more beautiful than the photographs suggested. The fecund soil, diligently maintained by the viticulturists, had provided an incredible harvest. Vigorous plants bore onerous bunches of fat, heavy grapes, standing dutifully in rows that seemed to stretch all the way to the setting sun, whose final rays still beat down with oppressive force. My wife, Hillary, had insisted that we go on this vacation, although I guess I hadn't actively resisted the idea. I appreciate good wine, if not her irrepressible friends and their exceptionally repressible husbands, and this would be a good escape from some of the trivial issues that were encroaching upon our mutual happiness. We had recently had a fairly spirited argument based on my reluctance to purchase life insurance. I was young and felt that my career was providing more than enough money for any dependants I might leave behind in the case of an early departure, especially when she was perfectly self-sufficient, often bringing home more money than I. However, she was always the planner, and it was an issue that could affect "our future" (more accurately, hers, considering I'd be dead if it did), so I surrendered. I found that when she made up her mind, appeasement was really the only viable strategy.
         When we arrived that evening, the sexes separated as the three women went to make use of the hotel spa and share their insecurities and the copious shortcomings of their husbands. They were inclined to open up about marital woes while strangers fondled their feet. We preferred discussion over the Sisyphean task of hitting and retrieving balls commonly known as golf. As we hacked our way across the pristinely kept lawn, our conversation gravitated towards a strange common argument we had all had with our wives, regarding the importance of buying life insurance, just before the trip. The jester of the group summarized our predicament like this: "either this is one of those 'great ideas' they thought up after a few too many Chardonnays and all decided to force upon us, like couples yoga, or they're conspiring to kill us. Frankly, if they try to bring up couples yoga again too, I think I'd prefer the latter situation."
         After a few too many drinks at the clubhouse, we headed back to the hotel and our paths deviated as we returned to our respective rooms. I fumbled with the key card before entering the bedroom, musing with the idea of my wife awaiting me, completely naked (as always, in my imagination), with a Colt .44 and a life insurance plan in need of a signature. I chuckled to myself as I remembered the time I had tried taking her to a shooting range and turned the lever. As I entered, it seemed I had one part of the scene right: Hillary was wearing nothing but a single stiletto heel. She was above average height, with a voluptuous but slender form, and hair and eyes that had the dark luster of obsidian. Her skin was a deep tan that alluded to distant African ancestors. But of all the beauty she was so graciously displaying, I was drawn most intensely and immediately to her recently pedicured toes. They were painted an eye-popping red, perfectly shapely and undeniably delectable. She knew how easily she could seduce me with them, and exactly how much haphazardly dangling her heel off the side of the bed, allowing occasional glances at her luscious sole, would affect me. As I approached her, she let the heel drop to the floor and impeded my progress by pressing her foot against my chest, letting me feel the power of her long, athletic legs. I lifted her foot to my mouth and began to worship her passionately.
         As we reunited with the rest of the party for dinner later that night, I noticed that the other men did not seem to share in my luck, judging by their demeanors. Although luck might be a stretch, as Hillary had been surprisingly demanding, and I had a fleeting worry that my tongue might not be up to dinner. Once the incredible spread arrived, however, this worry subsided quickly. As I satiated my hunger, I reflected on Hillary's strange bedroom antics. She had instructed me, against some fairly well established tradition, to avoid orgasm while worshipping her. "Save it, you'll thank me" were her only explanatory words, and they had stimulated another kind of hunger deep inside me. Hillary was always hard to read, keeping emotional distance even from me and often contriving schemes that involved me without informing me, but this was definitely more devious behavior than usual, and it was exciting. I was awoken abruptly from my fantasizing about the night's prospects by a paroxysm of boisterous laughter from one of the men, who had clearly been indulging excessively. "Well boys, we have a surprise for you," said the most assertive of Hillary's friends, once the laughter had subsided, "We're going on a late night tour of my old friend's vineyard. It's going to be magical!"
          When we arrived at the vineyard, everyone was in high spirits ostensibly, although I could tell Hillary was a bit preoccupied beneath the fade of a smile. The moon sat behind her in the sky, casting her figure in silhouette, with her lustrous eyes her only feature peeking through the darkness. They observed me keenly and intently, and I felt for an ominous moment like an oblivious mouse, wandering through the darkness under the vigilant gaze of an owl. We stepped out of the night and into a dimly lit room that had a strong odor of old wood from the numerous wine casks scattered across the floor in no apparent order. We discovered that the weakly flickering light was actually coming from a candle, if you can imagine that. The place looked positively abandoned. Before anyone had time to draw attention to the building's decrepitude, one of the women proposed a toast, to "Huge future success!" and we all sipped at yet another glass of truly splendid wine. The depth and complexity of its flavor was incredible, and it had a lingeringly pleasant aftertaste that I couldn't quite put my finger on. As I tried to comb my memories for what it might be, I began to feel a bit lightheaded, and the lights began to brighten. They grew brighter and brighter, and all else grew darker and darker, until all I could see was the candle, and its reflection in a pair of disembodied eyes, floating before me in the darkness. I approached them, but they seemed to float higher and higher, and as I strode towards them, my energy waned and I collapsed to the floor, blacking out.
         I awoke inside a giant wine cask, alongside my naked male compatriots. I began to ponder the reason for my first homosexually themed dream, when one of the others urgently informed me that I was in fact not dreaming. I looked about the cask, at its cavernous emptiness and the last man dazedly arising from his compulsory nap, and tried to piece together our situation. At about that time, I heard the sound of female laughter coming from outside of the cask. Suddenly, we were all tossed about as it was lifted off of its perch, which I assumed was a table of some sort. The cask descended to the ground, where we were deposited with a thud. From this lower perspective, we could see the massive forms of our wives. They towered above the cask, discussing our fates in booming voices. First spoke a blonde woman, with deep blue eyes that could have been small lakes and teeth as bright as polished pearls. "The normal human body has about 6-10 pints of blood. At their size, that should be just enough to do the trick." A second woman, a brunette with hazel colored eyes, sharp features, and a particularly prominent bosom, chimed in, "Yeah, we just want enough to add flavor, but not so much that it overpowers the grapes. We'll kill them each individually and then dejuice them together." Hilary hadn't so much as made a sound; she was just watching me with an unsettling wolfish grin. She looked hungry, and her smile demonstrated exactly how easily her huge, perfect teeth could slice through my diminutive frame. She seemed quite aware of this, and it only seemed to make her smile wider. "Well, let's get to it," she said, and one of the women disappeared from our view. When she returned, she poured a bag of grapes the size of boulders into the cask. It was all we could do to avoid being smashed or buried by the cascading fruit, and by the time the grapes were all in the barrel, two of us were submerged up to our chests. The last man was cowering in a corner. His wife, the brunette, moved forward. "I tried to give you everything you wanted to get you to pay attention to my body as a whole, but all you ever wanted to do was suck on my toes. You're a boring perv who doesn't know how to pleasure a woman, and you are going to pay with your life for it." He didn't waste time begging, quickly diving to the side to avoid her falling foot. Countless grapes were crushed in his place under the weight of her relentless soles. She giggled as their juices squirted and sloshed between her toes, and her husband franticly ran around, occasionally tripping over the uneven surface of the grape pile. However, he somehow managed to elude his tormentor's feet, resulting in her stomping about and causing grape juice to pool up beneath our chins. I thought she would surely lose sight of my puny head and crush it in pursuit of her spouse, and one of her huge bare heels nearly did just that. However, she cornered him eventually against the hard wood and picked him up between her toes by his neck. She commanded him to find his last pleasure at her feet, but hardly gave him enough time before she snapped his neck like a stalk of straw, giggling in her callous mirth and dropping his body among the corpses of the grapes. Next, the blonde stepped into the cask, pressing grapes right out of their skins on the way to her trapped spouse. She held her big toe before her tiny husbands face, and demanded that he lick it clean. He fervently attended his task, but her weight was slowly pressing more and more grape juice to the surface, staining her light feet with dark violet, reminiscent of the blood they would soon feel. "Disappointing work, as usual. In a few years, after you ferment with these grapes, we'll be drinking your blood while we toast to your deaths" were her last words to him, as she raised her big toe above his head, and pushed him down into the grapes below. She lifted her foot above where she could see his body still struggling among the grapes, and pressed down with her heel until the squirming subsided. "Your turn next!" she said to me with a terrible smile. By the time Hillary's gorgeous foot was squishing down in front of me, I had managed to free myself from the cumbersome grapes. However, I realized the futility of attempting to escape, and fell to my knees before her. "Please, spare me. What have I done to deserve this? All that I have is already yours, why do you need to steal it, and why do I need to die? I will worship you, at any size, to the best of my ability for the rest of my life, I will find a way to provide you with more money, I will do ANYTHING." Hillary transfixed me with those piercing eyes, but they softened for a moment as she smiled down at my insignificance, "Because it's more fun this way. Relish in your last taste of life." And she brought down her foot, ever so slowly, giving my body ample time to respond in the way it had fantasized of doing so many times. I felt the growing pressure push me down into the cool, soft grapes, heard sloshing and the cracking of bones, and smelled the sweetness of freshly squashed grapes and tasted their juices as they mixed with my blood.