Dangling Feet at the Big un-Bang: Volume 1, Chapter 4
- Aug 24
- 5 min read
According to the local news, the snowfall had been isolated to a few square miles of the suburbs. Weather crews arrived late and overdressed. Much of the snow was melted by the afternoon, with the hardest documentation of this bizarre happening coming from videos taken by residents, most of which had already been uploaded to the internet.
For Desiree, she returned phone in hand to the symbol in the snow but found nothing there, not even a sunken line that betrayed a former trench, belatedly filled-in. In a few swift hours she’d passed through majesty, dread, strangeness, offense, and confusion, and was ready to return to her usual state of stress, preferably while clocked-in at the hospital.
By evening, both the news and Desiree had moved on: the news to a foiled attempt to place a homemade bomb inside the state capitol; Desiree to her face-wash and lotion routine.
The stars remained in place through the night.
Usually, when Desiree’s mother awoke first to visit the gym, Desiree descended the staircase into the low aroma of already brewed coffee. Today the staircase carried perfumed air, spicy yet earthy, pungent enough to be a concentrated wisp of scent that seemed to be dragging her by the nostrils into the living room. There, on the arm of the turquoise loveseat leaned a woman, arms crossed and austere as if Desiree had missed an alarm.
Twice in two mornings, she met a stranger in her living room. Standing in the sunrise, this woman was a model of upscale fashion, posh and cosmopolitan, dressed as if the snow were still falling in a black broadtail coat. She wore a matching fur beret, flat on top, with salon-curled hair carefully springing from underneath, healthy and controlled. If the flat beret had been turned upside down like a vase, her curls would have been a carefully pruned bouquet made to fit. Gold rings gilded every finger. Several strings of pearls hung from her fur neck. Gemmed bracelets wrapped around the cuffs of her fur coat. A misshapen onyx brooch, crusted by crystals and with a large pearl in its center, pinned the coat together below a loose fur collar. Her eyes and cheeks glowed. Her lashes were long and fine. Her eyebrows were bushy near the center, then arched high and thinned to a sharp line, almost like dolphins in dive, and she had the puckered face of a mature woman who lived her life to taste things and had found most, whether by tongue, touch, nose, ear, eye, or intellect, to be sour.
On seeing Desiree, the woman’s face became exaggeratedly animated; the dolphins in her eyebrows rose to do flips, and her puckered face broke into a bright smile.
“What a beautiful room! It could be featured in one of your home magazines.”
She looked to Desiree like an art critic, dressed and postured for an exhibit.
“Thank you—how did you?”
“My favorite artist told me I couldn’t miss it. Look at these black flower blossoms you have pinned to the wall. And these sophisticated jars of—blue and yellow rocks.”
Yet as she revolved a jar in her hands, the sour face returned as if the coffee table’s centerpieces were two decorative jars of painted fingernail clippings.
“Again, thank you,” said Desiree, “I’d kill for your coat. But how did you get in?”
The woman in pearls shook her head, sighed.
“All that’s missing is a framed piece of pepperoni. I was told to compliment your living room but I can’t keep up the ruse. Nor should anyone have to.” Across so many ornaments, the woman’s stylish expression became jaded with boredom. “Show me your feet.”
Numbness pumped through Desiree’s heart and flushed the sleepiness from her eyes. In mismatched pajamas, she no longer groped groggily for an answer to the fashionable woman’s presence, such as having forgotten an important, fancy-outfit event; but instead felt caught, as if she’d been naked with this woman’s husband in the bedroom above.
“Do I know you?”
“You are the foot artist, are you not?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“I have a gift. For my passage.” From her coat pocket she removed another dazzling ring.
“Now, show me your feet.”
“Excuse me?”
“You put your feet on display. I’d like to see the exhibit.”
Presently, Desiree’s feet were stuffed into fluffy violet socks.
“People only see from the ankle down. Nothing else. Nothing higher than that.”
“I’ve already seen your face. Quite different from what I’d envisioned for those dangling feet. Is that not more intimate for you?”
“Anything between me and a client is strictly through correspondence. I don’t see anyone in person.”
“You aren’t going to make me go through the regular channel, are you? Like some perverted heel sniffer. Don’t offend me. Remove your socks.”
It was a nightmare morning for Desiree. For the past two years, she’d had two primary fears that could realistically occur due to her ongoing side business.
The first that a stalker with a foot fetish would discover her identity, and physical location, and pay the feet he paid to see in photos an unwelcome visit.
The second nightmare was being found by the stalker’s wife.
“Okay,” said Desiree, “what do you want from me?”
The gold ring was almost serpentine in design but without the slithering head or tail of a snake, more wayward and chaotic like the jags of a coiled river.
“Are you afraid to take it? Is it not a beautiful ring? Do you not believe the ring is as beautiful as your feet?”
Desiree clutched the staircase rail, went to speak but took only a deep breath instead. The nightmare scenario was complicating itself. Desiree knew some of the men who purchased photos of her feet were married. But never in her greatest anxieties had she imagined a scorned wife hunting her down and trading the ring of a ruined marriage to see what had lusted their husband away.
“I’ll leave it here then.” She laid the jewelry on the gold plate on top of the coffee table. “Now show me, before I return with a little ankle biter to torture you with.”
And Desiree, resigned to being caught, slipped off her fluffy sock as if revealing an incriminating mark left by another’s lover. She pointed her toe, looked to the ceiling, rolled her eyes.
“Would you like to take a picture?”
“A short inspection is enough.”
The woman bent over, black beret stiff on her head.
“Exquisite.”
She caught Desiree’s eye, her bright smile genuine this time.
“As advertised, you might say.”
Desiree sat down on the bottom step to slip on her sock.
“Okay, that’s enough. Look, I’m sorry for whatever you saw, or found, and yes your husband is a pervert, but I have a lot of debt.”
She didn’t sound very sorry and with her sock on, she looked up, and the woman was gone. The front door closed and Desiree was alone in the house with the woman’s perfume, running late for work.
Next week on Dangling Feet at the Big un-Bang, Desiree returns to work and welcomes the normalcy. But normalcy can only last so long once a neighbor comes knocking for help. Has the strangeness of the past few days extended beyond her living room? Find out August 31st.
Author: Zachary Ryan
Zachary Ryan is just a guy who is excited to entertain you for a few short minutes.
