I’m back to the mall, and I no longer feel like myself.

I look around with big, terrified eyes. This place has, in a way, become a metronome of my downfall.

It’s the before place, where Alia and I spent so many hours as friends. It’s the very last place where we ever interacted as friends, before she proceeded to enslave me. The thought alone is enough to make me tear up. Oh Alia, what have I ever done to you to deserve this…?

It’s the during place. Alia made me submit to her here, in public. She forced me into the slutty maid outfit I’m also wearing today. She clearly demonstrated the extent to which she didn’t really consider me her equal.

And now…

Now, it’s going to be the after place. Because what I’m about to do is going to have real, catastrophic consequences for the rest of my life.

The sisters flank me, my Queen and my Goddess.

They laugh, trade jokes, and walk on either side of me, almost like I’m a prisoner they intend to escort to her doom. I keep my gaze low, like they want me to, and shuffle ungainly half-a-step behind them. They draw eyes, like they always do.

I do, too… but for how ridiculous I look in my slutty maid outfit, with my boxy peasant-girl looks and my hair that reeks of foot sweat.

“Why the long face, Zainab?” Alia asks me, with an evil glint in her eye. Don’t you want to buy Yasmin a nice gift? Something that shows how grateful you are for being invited to her birthday party?”

The sisters giggle, while my chest tightens with anxiety and fear. God, the absolute sadism and mockery. Invited? I’ll be there as the literal servant to all of the invitees. And as for the gift, the gift…

My head spins. I’m racing towards a precipice, and I don’t know how to stop it. Alia and Anbar have so much control over me that I blink in stupefied confusion as they lead me into the store of their choice.

This is the perfect Alia place, in so many ways. The sizes on offer are all ridiculously small, meant for lithe girls with legs that go on for days. I’m not even sure the quality’s very good, but the labels and the minor seasonal variations in design guarantee that the hefty pricetag will always find willing buyers.

It’s not just that I can’t afford anything in this store. It’s that it represents everything I hate about female fashion today, a market deliberately designed to exclude girls like me.

As I look at my two conquerors glide effortlessly through the store, though, I tell myself that maybe there are no girls like me. Girls who get enslaved by the smell of feet. Girls whose IQ drools out of their mouth when in the presence of foot scent.

They don’t even let me choose the gift. But of course, why would I? I’m a joke of a person at this point.

Of course they’ve gone for a pair of shoes. The symbol of my new status in life, not just beneath both of them, but underneath Yasmin as well. The symbology of gifting shoes to the latest girl to stamp her will on me is unmistakable.

Alia holds them aloft like some kind of trophy, presenting them to me with a smile and a twirl. I’m just trying to sink into the floor and disappear forever, but all I do is stand and stare at the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the shoes are sneakers, a pair of a frankly disgusting bubble-pink colour. Positively thrashy. But what worries me is that they’re Balenciaga. With dread, I suddenly remember that I’m supposed to pay these with my own life savings, what little I’ve been able to steadily accumulate through my student years, one dime at a time.

“Your Majesty,” I tell Alia, my lips trembling. “How much… please, don’t, I… I can’t…”

My heart sinks as I realise that I will meet no mercy here. Alia smiles cruelly.

“Oh, about one grand, I think-”

It’s all I can do not to faint.

I break down in the store. Really break down this time, foot scent or not.

My body trembles like a leaf as I cry and sob and wail, loudly, to the evident embarassment of the staff, who glance my way and then pointedly look away. I feel like a child, so pathetic, but.. the raw emotion coming out of me cannot be contained. Weeks of abuse, of treason from my own best friend, of… reduction… all channel out through my tears and my sobs.

Anbar takes a step back, as if she wasn’t expecting the outburst, but Alia simply pouts. Even through the haze of my own tears, I recognise the pout – my emotional outburst is ruining the moment.

“That’s so annoying,” she says. “Stop bawling like a fucking baby, god. It’s not like we’re sawing your limbs off.”

Unfortunately for me, the decisiveness of her tone cuts through my emotions like a scythe. I begin to calm down. Tears still stream down my face in rivulets, but my breathing begins to slow.

“God, what a fucking bitch,” Alia mutters. “Come on, you’re buying this gift for Yasmin. No arguments. I won’t let you embarrass me at the birthday party of a fellow princess.”

I gulp. Alia is talking to me like I’m her accessory, a pet dog to show off to her friends, or… a part of her estate. And the sad truth is, I’m letting her do it, and so that means I am. She’s won.

I stare dully ahead as my card swipes against the reader, evaporating all my savings. Numbness begins to set in, where pain was before. What used to be a fear of the future is now a complete and utter certainty: Alia is really going to destroy my life for fun. There will be nothing left.

The girls giggle and titter as we head out of the mall.

“You must really like Yasmin!” Alia says, an evil glint in her eyes. “No wonder, though, she’s totally my best friend!”

Anbar is not to be outdone, and elbows me in the ribs. “I was wrong about you, Zainab. You never struck me as the financially irresponsible type!”

Alia laughs out loud, as if finding the idea of me continuing my education ridiculous. Defeated, I simply lower my head, and sink into my own mind.

It is no use. By the time we make it back to her home, Yasmin’s gift wrapped and in my hands, I feel like the empty shell of the person I once used to be.

I leave the gift on the mantelpiece by the front door, and then immediately kneel before the sisters for the ritual.

I begin with Alia’s shoes, as is right and proper. I place a soft, humble kiss on the tip of the shoe, feeling her toes wiggle in excitement underneath. Then I move along the length of the shoe, kissing as I go, before she generously lifts her foot.

I keep kissing the sole as I take the shoe off – Alia wants me to “kiss the street dirt away”, as she puts it – and do the same with her other shoe. I perform the same, humiliating duty for Anbar, and again, like when Yasmin subdued me, I feel a soul-crushing proto-arousal build inside me.

This is the only kind of non-destructive contact I’ve had with a human being for weeks, now. Tiny shoe kisses. It’s sneakers, they’re not so bad – certainly compared to the torture at the mall, I’d rather be doing this.

But it still makes me feel… humbled. It’s basically treason that a part of my brain is starting to associate this physical and mental reduction between the overwhelming might of Alia and Anbar with pleasure.

My kissing duties done, I offer the sisters their comfy slippers. Before sliding one into each foot, I smell the slipper and the foot alike, thanking my conquerors for driving me stupid.

“You always were stupid,” Alia reminds me. “We just finally got sick of your uppity attitude, and put you in your place. Haha!”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” I say in a breathless whisper. Before the girls can decide what to subject me to for the rest of the afternoon, however, we’re distracted by voices upstairs.

A sinking feeling takes hold of me when I realize the voices are familiar.

Following in Anbar and Alia’s wake, I get up the stairs and onto the hallway above. Sanae is standing in the middle of the hallway, looking into the bathroom, whose door is open.

At the sight of Sanae, I immediately cower in place, almost trying to hide behind the sisters. She spots me anyway, and the feral smirk that crosses her face is unusual – she’s always very composed in her cruelty.

“Is this okay?” A voice asks, from inside the bathroom.

And my breath stops.

What’s my mum doing here?!?

I very nearly shout out, but all it takes is a look from Sanae and I know in my heart that I’m supposed to stay quiet – so of course I immediately comply, biting my lower lip to stop myself from uttering a single sound.

“No, you need to work harder,” Sanae says, turning back towards the bathroom. “Come on, put some elbow into it. I want it spick and span.”

What?!?

Alia and Anbar finally move to get a closer look, and the wave of dizziness that crashes through me is enough to make me lose my balance.

My mother is kneeling in Sanae’s bathroom.

Her back is turned to me, she doesn’t know I’m here, although she can definitely hear the girls giggling. She’s in a maid outfit – a real one this time, not the French maid erotic parody I’ve been forced into – and is scrubbing the tiled floor on her hands and knees.

Outrage courses through my veins, and I’m distantly aware of my own breath coming in ragged puffs. My mum and I, we… we barely make ends meet, and I know she takes shitty jobs sometimes, but how could she take this, and not tell me? And why did Sanae even hire her?

Alia and Anbar are virtually bent in two, such is the hilarity they see in this situation. My mother is a maid to theirs, much like I am a maid to them.

Damn, I shouldn’t have thought that… something snaps inside my mind as I contemplate the utter subjugation of my family. All of a sudden, my outrage begins to dim, and humiliation – my daily dish in my life under Alia – rises in its place.

Blood drains from my face at the realization of how pathetic we must look, Mum and I, these upstarts who thought they could mingle with people from the upper class and not be pulled into their orbit.

Our pride is gone. Our pretense to equality has been stamped out under their feet. They’re our superiors.

Sanae advances, standing menacingly close to my mum and looking down at her the way she would at a stain on the floor. I see my mum look up at Sanae, staying quietly on the ground – how has she got her so cowed already?

At last, Sanae taps the point of her flats on a particular tile.

“Do this one again,” she says imperiously.

“Yes ma’am,” my mother responds, dropping back down to scrub away under Sanae’s victorious gaze.

Her arms crossed, Sanae turns back to face us.

“Go back to your rooms, girls,” she says, as if speaking to her daughters alone, but her eyes are fixed on me the entire time. “We need to let our maid work in peace.”

So she doesn’t want my mum to see me like this. Absurdly, I’m almost grateful, but the emotion quickly dissipates as the sisters grab my arms and strong-march me, giggling and laughing, towards Anbar’s room.

As I’m pushed inside, the permanent foot haze that permeates the room immediately sinks its claws into me. I hate coming here. It literally takes the edge off my intellect, turning a sharp blade into a dull one. I feel meeker already, passive and available, waiting to discover what the sisters want to do to me.

For the moment, at least, they’re too distracted talking and laughing with one another.

“Did you see that?” Alia asks, literally tearing up with laughter.

“God, what a family of losers,” Anbar responds, wiping tears off her own eyes. “For a second I almost thought she was gonna have to kiss Mum’s foot!”

That made Alia smile devilishly. “For all we know, maybe she does. Maybe she’s foot-stupid, just like her fat whore of a daughter.”

In spite of the thick foot-fog entrapping my brain right now, the words still cut like a knife. No, surely Mum wouldn’t have the same… condition, would she? I’m trying to think, remember if I’ve spotted any odd behavior from her lately, but concentrating is so hard…

I snap out of it when I realize Anbar is standing before me, her hand lifted in the air – and now gripping me by the hair. She winces in disgust, unsurprisingly since my hair’s basically a foot sweat cake at this point – but nonetheless, her grip tightens.

“You’re just like your mum,” Anbar says, looking me in the eye as I cower and whimper. “You’re even wearing the same uniform.”

Then, she pulls on my hair like it’s a leash, and I yielp in pain, trying to follow her like an obedient dog. But that’s not what Anbar wants. She tosses me to the ground with effortless ease – god, for a girl who spends her life sitting before a computer, she’s strong – and then steps closer, looking down at me like I’m a speck of dirt on the floor.

Soon, Alia joins from the other side.

The sisters are blocking my view, tall and beautiful and terrible. They inspire such a heady mixture of awe and terror into me, it takes my breath away. I blink through the overpowering foot scent, trying my best to get angry about Mum, to defy them, to sit up…

But, as Alia’s now-naked foot presses gently against my forehead to pin me down, and Anbar’s rests triumphantly against my throat, I feel the familiar thrill of defeat pulsing in my sex. And I hate myself for it.

“You’re right,” Alia says, toying with my lips with her toes, flicking them up and down. “She is wearing the same uniform.”

Anbar spreads her arms out for balance, and then climbs over my stomach.

Her weight drives the breath out of me, and I begin to squirm and agitate – which Alia notices immediately. In a swift motion, she transitions to standing over me herself, both feet on each of my shoulders.

The combined weight of the sisters hurts, pressing down against my muscles and bones in ways I’ve rarely experienced. I yielp and moan, but Alia lifts one foot in the air, and slaps it down against my cheek with force.

The impact slams my face sideways against the floor, and she starts rubbing her sweaty sole into my cheeks, leaving a trail of sweat in the way, while Anbar stomps up and down my lower body with sadistic glee.

“Don’t make a sound,” Alia says, lifting her foot. She moves the toes to my chin, and gently pushes my face back up, until I’m looking at her. It’s such a… delicate and fine manipulation, that it somehow feels more humiliating than the slap. “I’m trying to work out something.”

My training is too thorough for me not to understand that Alia means more than just be quiet, this time. So, I diligently open my mouth, and I find myself responding to the satisfaction and approval on her face. It really is that easy to make a human obedient, huh? Just a bit of carrot and a lot of stick.

Or maybe that just works with affection-starved, financially weak, plain-faced girls like me.

Alia’s foot slips seamlessly into my mouth, gagging me, just like she wants. She doesn’t need to hear me speak. She thinks I have nothing to contribute to the conversation, and she’s right, of course. I deserve this. Simply being in this room is driving all resistance out of me, like it always does.

I’m a stupid foot slut. The salty, sweaty, clammy skin I’m currently massaging with my tongue is proof enough. No self-respecting girl would let her mouth be used as a foot holster. Once you do that, something changes inside you. You no longer think of yourself as equal to the rest of womankind.

“What are you thinking about, sis?” Anbar says, one heel digging deep into my stomach while the other rests luxuriantly above my crotch, rubbing it back and forth. It’s becoming harder and harder to deny that arousal and humiliation are now rolled into one in my fucked-up brain. I’m having to hold back from humping Anbar’s foot.

Unbidden, the image of losing my v-card to the sisters’ feet crosses my mind, and just, God. Cannot be un-thought, ughh.

“Well,” Alia says, slowly but inexorably working her foot deeper into my mouth. “She is wearing a maid uniform. And Yasmin does want to use her as serving staff…”

“And I make her clean my room,” Anbar says, in a sultry tone that suddenly fills me with dread. Where’s this going?

“Precisely,” Alia says, her toes now getting a massage from my tonsils as my eyes water and my throat spasms. She turns her focus fully on me, her clever eyes digging into mine, a suggestive smile playing across her lips.

God, she’s beautiful.

“We should demote her to being a live-in maid,” Alia says, grinning.

I close my eyes, softly gagging on her right foot, while her left digs painfully into my boobs. The lack of shock in my reaction surprises even me. Maybe it’s the foot haze, or maybe it’s that, on some level, I was expecting that this moment would come.

“She wouldn’t be paid, of course,” Anbar says, now standing with both feet above my crotch, laughing at the sight of my legs thrashing this way and that as I squirm in pain. They’re literally trampling me into dust, compressing me into the floor.

I should be way more scared about this than I am. I wouldn’t be living with Mum anymore, although I suppose we could be… colleagues here. Somehow, I doubt I would get a bedroom to call my own, so all my things would be forfeit as well, I know how Alia’s mind works at this point.

And being under the sisters 24/7… how would I study? Hell, how would I do anything that isn’t drooling my brains onto Alia’s feet as I lick them?

I would have no personal life left, and no chance at regaining my freedom. No chance at all.

“If anything, she should be paying us,” Alia says, her foot now bobbing up and down, lightly facefucking me. “I’m not giving this undeserving bitch free room and board, that’s for sure.”

“Mmmmpphh??!” I moan, to Alia’s hilarity, as the sole of her foot presses hard against my tongue. Of course I expected being unpaid, but wouldn’t I be paying for my room and board with my literal 24/7 subjugation to their whims? What did they even have money for, they’re filthy rich!

Besides, I have none to give. What little I had has been wiped out with Yasmin’s gift.

Anbar quickly comes to the same conclusion, somehow blaming me for it of course.

“The slut’s probably pissed away all her money on those sneakers,” Anbar says, stomping my thighs – like she’s methodically trying to make me hurt all over. “Damn fetishists.”

I’d like to protest, but Alia’s facefucking of me is increasing, and all I can muster is a pathetic series of gluk gluk gluk sounds.

“Oh, I think I know how to fix that,” Alia says, and the evil glimmer in her eyes makes me quiver in fear. “We’ll brainstorm a few ideas, sis. I think you’ll like what I have in mind.”

“Somehow,” Anbar says, returning her foot to my crotch, now openly rubbing it up and down, “I don’t think she’ll like it.”

Alia crouches lower, bending a knee over my squished chest. As her center of gravity lowers, the foot she’s impaling my mouth with sinks even deeper, making me cough and choke around it. Her angelic face now dominates my field of vision, a sight of beauty and cruelty through the veil of my tears.

“No one cares what she likes,” Alia says, slowly and deliberately, looking into my foot-sucker eyes. “What matters is we have fun. She has no say in how that happens. Isn’t that right, Zainab?”

Her hand caresses my cheek, resting against the bulge formed by her own foot. Between this intimate, fucked-up moment with Alia, and my hips now humping Anbar’s fleeting, teasing foot, it’s getting harder and harder for me to maintain any semblance of stability.

I can’t speak, I can’t move, I can’t flee. I can barely even think, in this room. Every little part of me is fully subordinated to their pleasure.

So, when Alia’s hand descends downward from my cheek and rests gently around my throat – a threat and a promise at once, just as her foot sinks all the way in one last time – I find myself listening to her words like the pronouncements of a deity.

“You can’t wait to move in with us,” she says, in mock-sweetness. “Having you around will make my life so much better, and you want that.”

Alia tilts her head, almost curious, and blinks at me. “Don’t you?”

My lips sealed like a suction around her foot, my entire body underneath every part of hers, my mind finally tamed like she’s lasso’d it into restraints, I close my eyes once.

Then, I reopen them, meeting Alia’s gaze.

And, utterly defeated... I nod.