Four years ago, a massive round ship appeared in North America. I had watched the news with disbelief, expecting an army to emerge. Instead, just one enormous woman stepped out. Her size (85 feet tall!) was shocking, but so was her beauty. Straight, shoulder-length black hair framed her soft face as she took in the military and media gathered around her.
Although the woman cast a long, dark shadow, the smile on her face was bright and friendly. She introduced herself as Maldona, one of many sentinels sent out to bring justice and peace to the galaxy. She was amused by our small size, but she was respectful. Every step she took in her calf-high gray boots was careful and deliberate.
Nonetheless, the world went crazy. People feared Maldona, so militaries rose up against her. Naturally, she defended herself, swatting planes from the sky, stomping tanks and missile batteries, and kicking her way through ranks of foot soldiers.
Maldona came to see us as irrational, scheming, cruel, and unjust. She declared us a violent and savage race, incapable of peaceful self-rule. Maldona named herself supreme ruler of earth and instituted martial law, executing any transgressors with a swift stomp of her foot.
When Maldona stripped off her blood-soaked boots, her feet were breathtakingly powerful, yet soft and shapely. She deserved new shoes, and I finally understood my calling in life. I got a job in the Department of Vestments, a division of the new government tasked with clothing Maldona.
We couldn’t produce boots like she had before, so we made sandals. The insoles were crafted from the skin of whales and the straps made from the hides of elephants. They were nothing more than utilitarian, and no single pair stood up to her punishing feet for very long. Maldona brought peace to our world, and we rewarded her with mediocrity.
Fed up with the uninspired shoes and the lazy directors of my department, I risked going to Maldona directly to propose a pair of high heels. She confessed that she had wanted a pair since the day she arrived and saw them on an earth woman. We agreed on red stiletto sandals, with straps looping between her toes, flowing down along her arches, and ascending the heights of her feet to her ankles. I did not object when she suggested using human hides for the leather and wanted to begin with my incompetent supervisors. She wanted her shoes to make a statement.
To make sure her shoes fit perfectly, I measured every dimension and curve of Maldona’s feet, from her powerful heels to each shapely toe. She’d recently begun having her toenails painted, and that day they were a deep red. When Maldona lifted her right foot for me to measure her magnificent sole, I eagerly crawled beneath it. I couldn’t stop staring up at her massive arch and tracing the downward curve of each toe. Her muscles rippled under the wrinkles as she held her foot over me. I lay there in her shadow imagining what it would be like if she put her foot back down before I moved out from under it.
While I went to work crafting the framework of the shoes, Maldona went to work producing the leather. Each month, she’d hold public executions, stepping on the people threatening her peace. The numbers had gone down a lot, but they curiously went up substantially the month we planned to start harvesting leather from them. It didn’t go well at first. The hard soles of Maldona’s sandals destroyed their bodies beyond use.
Before her executions a month later, I advised Maldona to conduct them barefoot. It was haunting to watch living people smashed beneath her colossal feet. She stomped on some of them hard and fast; others she pressed slowly and gently. Whether she used her bare heels or the balls of her feet, every single body popped like a ketchup packet under her weight, and they were all too mangled to use.
Maldona came up with the solution. During the next set of executions, she held each victim down with her left foot. She placed the big toe of her right foot on top of their heads while she recited their crimes, then swiftly pressed it down. The loud pop of their skulls startled me every single time. But that wasn’t as chilling as when she grabbed the smashed heads between her toes and ripped them off. She slowly pressed the bodies flat with her left foot, squeezing their insides out through their necks. Lungs, livers, hearts, and other vital organs lay strewn about, only to be squished to jelly as Maldona absently walked on them as she continued her executions. One man’s intestines became entangled in her toes and stayed there while she eviscerated several more.
I cleaned and tanned the hides of Maldona’s victims, dying them a dark cherry red. I worked for 10 months casting, welding, cutting, and stitching. I finally get to present them to her today . . .
* * *
When Maldona sees her new shoes being carried in, she trots over. Everyone darts out of her path, but the ambassador from France trips on her own high heels and falls beneath Maldona’s giddy run. Everyone knows it’s a hazard of serving Maldona. She rarely notices when it happens.
I summon my confidence and loudly declare, “Your Majesty, I present you with your first pair of high heels. I hope that you find them a worthy gift.”
Maldona picks up one of the shoes and examines it closely. She grins with approval. “Those are thin heels. They better hold up my weight, shoe man.”
Maldona kicks off her old sandals. She lifts her right foot in the air and slides the sandal on. Then she drops her foot down with an ear-splitting CRACK! as the heel hits the floor. “Buckle it for me.”
I tremble as I climb onto Maldona’s foot and pull the red strap up from her arch. I have a hard time balancing on her sloped foot as I buckle the strap around her ankle.
Maldona lifts her other foot and slides her toes (painted black today) around on the footbed of the other shoe. “I love the feel of this leather. Perhaps those traitors were good for something after all.” She wiggles her toes as she slides her foot all the way in. Without even thinking, I plant a kiss on her soft skin before I climb up to clasp the buckle. “Your reverence for my feet is noted, shoe man.”
Maldona walks around, showing off her new shoes to the increasingly nervous diplomats. They wince at each thunderous clap of her footsteps. If she were our size, the straight, thin stilettos holding her up would be 4 inches tall. At Maldona’s size, her bare heels rest gloriously at our eye level on their 5-foot-tall pedestals.
“Come here, shoe man.”
I run over. “Yes, your Majesty?”
“Lie down.”
“W-what? Why?”
“I said, LIE DOWN!” Maldona kicks me over and pins my arms, one under each foot. As I struggle to move my arms, she commands the cameramen in the room to approach and record her latest demonstration of power.
“Thank you for my shoes,” Maldona says as she smiles down at me affectionately. “I assumed you would enjoy being the first to lie beneath me as I try them out. As you well know, my shoes aren’t just for walking. I use them to put you savages in your rightful places.”
Realizing what’s about to happen, I plead, “Please, don’t!”
But Maldona’s face and feet are resolute. She slowly rocks her weight forward and scrunches her toes. The bones in my arms yield a series of cracks. “Ooh, I like how you made these shoes so I could feel your bones snapping through them.”
I begin to cry, but she continues, “You’ve done the world a great service. Just imagine how long and painfully I can make traitors suffer now. No one will stand against me.” To emphasize her point, Maldona twists her feet ever so slightly, ripping my arms out of their sockets and a scream out of my lips.
Maldona steps back and lifts her right foot as if she’s about to stomp on a bug. “Now it’s time to test the real power of these glorious heels.”
Maldona thrusts her heel down lightening-fast, but stops the instant it touches my chest. I’d reach up to touch the wrinkles of Maldona’s arch if my arms still worked. I designed her shoes so that her perfectly cradled arches alluringly hang over the side, teasing her prey with her beauty.
“Let’s see how much pressure these shoes require to snap human ribs.”
The moment Maldona begins to apply her weight, I feel the snap of a single rib breaking. She laughs, “That didn’t take much effort.”
I whimper as Maldona continues slowly pressing her chiseled heel deeper into my chest. Snap after painful snap echoes through the hushed chamber. Pinned under her cruel heel, I writhe and gasp.
Just as she’s about to fully impale me, Maldona sadistically stops and holds her heel there. Ever since that day I lay measuring beneath her bare feet, I knew this is how my life would end. I suppose it's what I’ve really wanted since she came to our world. I wanted Maldona to trample me. I just didn’t realize how painful she would make it.
After a moment, Maldona lifts her foot off my chest. I know it means she’s not yet done with me. With what little breath I can take in, I plead, “PLEASE, FINISH ME!!!”
Maldona smirks as she circles around me. The rumble of each step resonates within my broken ribs. “I suppose I should have mercy on you. After all, you did a splendid job making my shoes.” Maldona places her foot over me again, this time with the tip of her heel hovering over my head. “This is a beautiful stiletto, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I whisper, defeated. I cough and spray blood as I beg, “Please, finish me.” Although the tip of her stiletto nearly touches my face, Maldona doesn’t press it down. Not yet.
Instead, she kicks me away. “But then again, you did just cough blood onto my new shoes.”
Maldona steps closer. “I’m not ready to relieve you of my service.”
Shivers run up my spine as she lays the cool sole of her shoe onto my legs. I can barely lift my head to watch. I look up at the light brown long sloping arch of Maldona’s shoe that cradles her sculpted foot. She slowly and deliberately presses it down. With all five beautifully-black-painted toes, she effortlessly pulverizes my leg bones.
When there are no bones left to break in my legs, Maldona rocks her foot back and smashes my pelvis into pieces with a hideous crunch. I drop my head back to the ground and helplessly watch the tip of Maldona's stiletto floating back and forth as she twists her foot on my broken body.
I get really light-headed as Maldona slides her foot forward on the goo that is my lower half. I refuse to close my eyes as she places the tip of her heel squarely on my forehead.
As she slowly adds her weight onto my skull, Maldona’s powerful bare heel spreads ever so slightly over the edges of her shoe. My wildest dream and greatest honor has come true today--Her Highness Maldona is crushing me beneath her mind-blowing feet. I just hope the sound of my skull shattering beneath her towering heel will frighten the world into submission, and bring it the lasting peace she promised us.
Then the goddess above me proclaims, “Any man who stands against me will end up like this man: DEAD,”...CRUNNCH!!!...“beneath me.”