patheticus555
03-15-2007, 4:57 PM
Part 5 - Serving Miss Merpati
Miss Merpati was not an ‘early riser’, nor was she accustomed to being in a good mood in the mornings. One thing the family footslave known as ‘Patheticus’ had learnt very quickly was the need to be ultra-submissive towards Miss Merpati when she was in one of her crotchety early-morning moods.
Even miss Sujatmi was nervous as she waited with the kneeling footslave outside Miss Merpati's bedroom door. Merpati did not treat the servants with the same respect that her twin sister Lastri did. However, at least the male slave would be present to take any of the flak -- Miss Merpati despised male slaves much more than she despised female servants.
At 09:00 a.m. precisely Sujatmi adjusted her plain, black headscarf and knocked somewhat tentatively on the bedroom door. She had been given instructions the previous evening by Merpati’s mother, Madam Ramelan, to awaken Miss Merpati at that precise time if the latter had not already stirred from her slumber as she had to be at college by 10:30 a.m.
There was no response.
Sujatmi swallowed hard and knocked on the door again, this time harder and louder. It appeared as though Miss Merpati was indeed still asleep.
Still no response.
Sujatmi knew she now had no option but to open the door and awake Miss Merpati as gently as possible by shaking her as she lay in her bed. It wasn't an unusual scenario, but given Miss Merpati's unpredictable mood-swings, Sujatmi was always nervous about doing it. With the footslave kneeling humbly and obediently behind her blue and white sneakered feet, Sujatmi, the erstwhile laundry-maid and now 'footslave trainer and taskmistress', gently shook Miss Merpati, gently beseeching her to wake up.
Merpati awoke with a start, her tousled red and black hair and sleepy brown eyes emerging from under the duvet:
‘What time is it?’, she grumbled.
‘Good morning, Miss Merpati,' chirped Sujatmi. 'It nine o'clock and beautiful day outside, miss,’ she continued, evidently trying to put the young mistress in a good frame of mind.
The footslave, of course, was not permitted to speak to miss Merpati unless he was directly spoken to by her. Although she was just a 20 year-old girl, she was his master’s daughter, and therefore his mistress, and therefore way too superior to engage in small talk with the likes of him. He knew he was privileged just to be allowed into her bedroom, – particularly when she was still in her night-clothes. Not that he was any kind of sexual threat to the superior young woman. Indeed, he was allowed into her bedroom precisely because he was a mere slave - impotent as a eunuch, completely in her power and at her mercy (and, for that matter, at the mercy of her maidservant, miss Sujatmi).
‘Fetch me a cigarette!’ ordered miss Merpati, somewhat perfunctorily.
This order was directed at Sujatmi – the footslave was considered unworthy to serve miss Merpati in any way other than as her personal footslave. There would be plenty for him to do in a moment.
Sujatmi knew exactly where miss Merpati hid her cigarettes. She ‘hid’ them because her parents, especially her father, didn’t approve of her smoking. Her mother smoked herself and therefore had less moral authority on the matter. But, whether her parents disapproved of it or not, Merpati just had to have a cigarette first thing in the morning. She often skipped breakfast, but never her early morning fag.
As she lit the cigarette for miss Merpati who was now sitting up in her comfortable bed, Sujatmi enquired politely as to what her mistress’s requirements were for the morning:
‘Miss Merpati want tea, coffee?’
‘Just a coffee, please,’ replied Merpati, more relaxed now that she had had her first fix of nicotine.
‘Yes miss. Sujatmi fetch now. Leave slave to serve miss Merpati feet,’ replied the maidservant, happy that Merpati appeared to be in a reasonably good mood.
‘Thank you, Sujatmi,’ said Merpati, yawning and stretching her arms as she did so.
‘Please’ and ‘thank you’. Yes! Miss Merpati is in an unusually good mood this morning, thought the smiling Sujatmi as she left for the kitchen to fetch Merpati’s coffee.
If the footslave, who during this exchange had remained kneeling, head bowed to the floor by the side of Merpati’s bed, had any hopes of the young mistress being as kind and polite to him, they were soon dashed:
‘You, the slave, I haven’t got time for you to wash my bare feet properly this morning so you’re going to clean them with your dirty, slave tongue!’ she informed him in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, twisting herself around to sit on the edge of her bed whilst taking another drag on her illicit cigarette.
Miss Merpati’s pretty, soft, brown feet were now resting on the fluffy white carpet under the kneeling slave’s nose. Her floral-patterned, white pyjama bottoms had risen up slightly to reveal also her shapely brown ankles. The middle-aged, white slave felt genuinely honoured to be so close to the 20 year old Indonesian girl’s beautiful, petite, bare feet, and was, pathetically, excited at the prospect of sucking her overnight toe-jam from between her delicate toes and swallowing any dead skin that had accumulated on her feminine feet.
‘What are you waiting for, lazy pig! Get on with it!’ she barked, reaching down to slap him hard across his left cheek with her cigarette-free left hand and waking him abruptly from his reverie of adoration for her bare feet.
‘Yes, mistress Merpati! At once, sweet mistress Merpati!’ blubbered the chastised slave, angry with himself for upsetting miss Merpati by his seeming reluctance to obey instantaneously her perfectly reasonable order.
Miss Merpati was doing nothing to help the slave – she rarely did – so her feet remained firmly on the carpet waiting for him to lift them to his kneeling lips.
He gently raised her right foot first. It felt so small and soft in his man-sized hand. What a privilege! What an honour to hold such a precious, beautiful thing in his hands! But it did also feel a little sweaty and a little sticky.
Merpati continued to smoke on her cigarette, exhaling the smoke onto the top of the kneeling slave’s head as he ever so gently inserted her big toe into his slave mouth.
As usual (for miss Merpati’s toes were often inside the footslave’s mouth first thing in the morning) it tasted a little salty, and he could feel tiny pieces of girl toe-jam coming off the toe and onto his tongue. He could also feel her big toe-nail scraping the roof of his mouth as he manipulated the toe inside his mouth in order to better clean it.
He did the same for each individual toe on both her divine, asian feet – one toe at a time, making sure his lips sucked the whole way down each of her bare toes removing any residual sweat from the day before and extracting all the night-time toe-cheese.
Merpati just puffed away on her cigarette enjoying both the feel and the sight of the footslave’s degradation down on the floor at her feet.
Just as he was finishing the last toe – the little toe on miss Merpati’s left foot – Sujatmi re-entered the bedroom with her mistress’s coffee.
Sujatmi smiled at the sight of ‘her’ slave sucking miss Merpati’s toes:
‘Ha! Ha! Slave clean miss Merpati toes good?’ she enquired of the young mistress.
Merpati took a last drag of her cigarette, extinguished it on the top of the middle-aged, male slave’s head, and took the cup of hot coffee from the tray proffered to her by Sujatmi:
‘It’ll have to do. I haven’t got time for him to wash them properly this morning – I have to get to an important seminar today. One of our country’s top fashion designers is coming to speak to us at the college!’ replied Merpati with girlish excitement, extracting her foot from the slave’s mouth and pushing him away with the ball of her foot – indicating that that particular task was at an end.
Although Sujatmi was of a similar age to her mistress (just five years’ her senior), she did not share her mistress’s interest in fashion – perhaps because she couldn’t afford nice clothes on her servant’s wages. Merpati and Sujatmi were complete opposites in that regard – the rich, spoilt fashion design student, who was accustomed to wearing rather garish and, some would say, outlandish outfits and the humble country-girl come laundry-maid, who nearly always wore the same old blue denim jeans, scruffy blue and white sneakers, and traditional, black headscarf. Nevertheless, Sujatmi was an astute enough maid to know when it was in her own best interests to feign excitement in empathy with her mistress’s evident excitement:
‘Really, miss? Miss Merpati very fortunate to be at such good fashion college with top designers!’
Merpati smiled and nodded her agreement. She was now rubbing her feet dry on the slave’s hair as she sipped her coffee in a rather noisy and un-ladylike manner.
Aware that time was of the essence, Sujatmi pressed on with finding out her mistress’s specific clothing requirements for the day:
‘What clothes miss Merpati like to wear to college today, miss?’
‘Erm… I think I’ll wear my yellow top and black leggings. They should be in the wardrobe. And the slave can fetch my black sneaker socks – the ones with the polka dots – and my leopard-print ballet-flats,’ responded Merpati.
This was quite a conservative choice of clothing for miss Merpati – perhaps she didn’t wish to appear too outrageous in front of a top fashion designer?
‘Yes, certainly, miss Merpati,’ replied Sujatmi, ‘Sujatmi fetch clothes from wardrobe.’ She then turned her attention to the kneeling slave:
‘Slave fetch miss Merpati shoes from shoe-cupboard and miss Merpati socks from sock-drawer. Slave obey! Quick!’ she yelped.
The slave knew exactly where to go, and he remembered to ‘slither’ rather than crawl, as, even though it had originally been her sister’s idea, miss Merpati still liked to see him slither across the floor of her bedroom on his belly like a giant slug, rather than crawl on his hands and knees like a normal footslave. And what miss Merpati liked, miss Merpati got.
Equally he knew exactly which pair of shoes and which pair of socks Miss Merpati had selected. He had, after all, been a footslave in this household for some six months now -- it was only to be expected that he would have familiarised himself with all the footwear of the various ladies in the household whom he served. That was his job.
He now knew, for example, that his task-mistress, Miss Sujatmi, except when it was raining, nearly always wore her scruffy old blue and white sneakers and short, low-cut, sneaker socks -- usually fairly plain, light-weight cotton socks, albeit of varying colours, such as the dark blue ones she was wearing today. He had to take particular care of Miss Sujatmi's white sneaker socks, as they inevitably stained easily inside her sweaty sneakers. During the monsoon season Sujatmi preferred to wear her brown, chunky-heeled, zip-up ankle boots as they were more water-resistant than her scuffed and, in places, holey sneakers.
Miss Lastri had a preference for wearing ankle or knee-length leather boots with dark ankle socks or thick boot-socks, although she also frequently, as was the case today, wore dark nylon stockings or tights inside her boots instead of socks. Not that the dark colours of her tights made them any easier to keep clean - a footslave has to be ultra-careful when mouth-washing a young woman’s delicate, nylon stockings lest they snag and tear on his teeth. The punishment for laddering a mistress’s tights in this household was too terrible to describe in words.
Miss Awa, the family cook who originally hailed from West Africa, rarely wore hosiery – preferring to go barefoot in her leather sandals – although she did have a few pairs of mainly white ankle socks which she would wear, somewhat bizarrely still with her sandals on, on cold days, not that the Indonesian weather was ever particularly cold, even during the rainy season. The slave always found it particularly humiliating to have to stare at miss Awa’s white-socked feet inside her sandals. It was as if she was saying to him ‘you are not worthy to look at my beautiful, brown bare feet, so I am wearing these socks not just to keep my feet warm, but also to hide my superior bare feet from your view. You are not worthy to be an African woman’s footslave – only her sockslave’. Miss Awa did have a few other pairs of shoes and a pair of black, leather calf-length boots, but clearly preferred to let her feet breathe inside her sandals whenever possible, even if they were occasionally hidden inside her socks.
Mistress Ramelan, the twins’ mother and mistress of the house, never wore socks – only stockings or tights of the sheerest denier and highest quality, although she too often went bare-legged. She also had a particularly large collection of very expensive designer shoes with high heels and pointy toes which the footslave had to spend hours polishing and cleaning with his slave tongue – even those pairs mistress Ramelan never actually wore.
And then, of course, there was miss Merpati in whose sock-drawer Patheticus was now respectfully rummaging in order to find the correct pair of black, low-cut ankle socks with the multi-coloured polka dots. They were fairly typical of miss Merpati’s taste in hosiery. Unlike her twin sister Lastri, Merpati only had about 3 pairs of tights, and no stockings, preferring instead to wear ‘funky’ socks – never plain socks like miss Sujatmi or miss Awa, but always with brightly-coloured logos or patterns on them. Miss Merpati had over a hundred pairs of socks of various differing materials and lengths – over-the-knee socks, knee-high tube socks, calf-length socks, slouch socks, ankle socks, frilly, laced socks and low-cut ‘no show’ socks. The one thing they all had in common was that they were unmistakably ‘girly’ and feminine. She was, to use the jargon of footslaves, a real ‘sock-girl’, almost as obsessed by her sock collection as the humble footslave was.
Patheticus found the black socks with the multi-coloured polka dots fairly easily amongst all the other socks in the drawer. The multitudinous socks were all neatly rolled up in pairs and laid out in the drawer. That was because it was one of Patheticus’s responsibilities to take care of miss Merpati’s sock-drawer, and he always took pride in his humble work, however degrading and demeaning it was.
Patheticus, the girls’ sock-slave, put the rolled up pair of female socks into his mouth, taking care not to wet them with his saliva. There had been many occasions in the past when those same socks had been in his mouth and required copious amounts of his saliva to help wash out miss Merpati’s footsweat, but they were currently clean and fresh and ready for her to wear on her pretty, brown feet, and the last thing miss Merpati would want would be soggy socks on her feet first thing in the morning.
He then slithered over to miss Merpati’s shoe cupboard to retrieve the equally familiar leopard-print ballet-flats, so beloved of miss Merpati. Some might say that leopard-print shoes wouldn’t go with black and multi-coloured polka dot socks, but on miss Merpati, the fun-loving and rebellious young fashion-designer they somehow seemed to work. The footslave, at any rate, had come to appreciate miss Merpati’s taste in footwear. It was, undoubtedly, an ‘acquired taste’, but it did help to brighten up a footslave’s life. If you’re condemned to hours of staring at and caring for a young woman’s footwear it might as well be esoteric and unusual footwear.
Patheticus had particularly grown to like the flat, ballet-style shoes, although they were showing the signs of wear and tear despite his best efforts to keep them looking fresh and new. Some of the leopard-print pattern, for example, had worn off the area around the toes. They also, close up, smelt quite musty – the result of many sweaty days on miss Merpati’s feet, not that the smell would ever bother anyone else – only the humble footslave was ever close enough to the shoes to have to smell them.
He carried the pair of sweaty, ballet-flats in one hand as he slithered awkwardly, with miss Merpati’s socks still in his mouth, back to where she had been sitting on the edge of her bed.
Miss Merpati was now, temporarily, in her en-suite bathroom where miss Sujatmi was helping her to wash and get dressed. Having washed miss Merpati’s feet with his mouth, Patheticus wasn’t needed to assist her with the rest of her morning toilet. He was required merely to await the return of his mistresses from the bathroom, when he would doubtless be ordered to put miss Merpati’s socks and shoes on her feet.
Patheticus placed the socks and shoes on the carpet next to the bed and knelt humbly to await miss Merpati’s return.
Sure enough, after some fifteen minutes, the two young women emerged from the en suite bathroom, Merpati now looking much less disheveled and in her yellow top and tight, black leggings which came down to just above her shapely ankle bones.
She sat on the edge of the bed again in front of the kneeling footslave.
‘Slave put miss Merpati socks on miss Merpati feet!’ came the abrupt but anticipated order from his task-mistress, miss Sujatmi.
Miss Merpati, who was definitely in a good mood that morning, unusually for her
actually deigned this time to lift her right foot ever so slightly off the carpet to facilitate the slave in rolling the first sock onto her foot. The slave concentrated on the stitching of the sock as he first separated it from the other sock, then rolled it up in his fingers, before carefully stretching it over miss Merpati’s toes and then gently pulling it up her delicate and petite 20 year-old foot as far as it would go, which was to just below her ankle. He took particular care to smooth out any wrinkles or creases in the sock - it was important that the sock should do its job of keeping miss Merpati’s feet comfortable inside her sweaty shoe.
As he examined the stitching the slave could see signs of wear in the sock, particularly around the heel area, which was a pity as he liked this pair of miss Merpati’s socks very much and did not like the idea of miss Merpati having to get rid of them. As he put the remaining sock on her outstretched left foot Patheticus knew he could soon expect an order from miss Merpati to kiss her socked feet, and he wasn’t wrong:
‘Slave, I want you to pay homage to my socks. Begin by kissing my right sock – but only the red polka dots. You will kiss each red dot 3 times. Do it now!’ barked miss Merpati.
This was a favourite ‘game’ of miss Merpati’s – to specify certain areas of her socks which the slave was permitted to pay homage to. It gave her a wonderful feeling of absolute and arbitrary power, and was, perhaps, one of the main reasons why she preferred patterned as opposed to plain socks.
Patheticus heard miss Sujatmi laughing above him as she reinforced miss Merpati’s orders:
‘Ha! Ha! Slave obey miss Merpati. Kiss only red dots. Slave make sure lips not touch black stitching!’ she warned ominously.
Fortunately for the footslave the polka dots on the sock were quite large –large enough for him to be able to place both lips on a single dot without inadvertently touching the surrounding black cotton. There were precisely 7 red dots on each sock. He knew that because he had had plenty of opportunity to study the socks and count the dots on previous occasions. There were 7 polka dots of each colour – yellow, red, white, green, blue and purple – on each sock, making 84 polka dots on the pair of socks in total.
He remembered how, during one evening whilst she was watching television in the lounge with her parents, her feet resting on the end of the opulent sofa, miss Merpati had ordered him to kiss each and every coloured dot on these very same socks 100 times. Needless to say, it had taken him two hours to perform that particular degrading act of devotion – 8, 400 kisses to one pair of socks whilst miss Merpati was still wearing them! But he did it, much to Mr and Mrs Ramelan’s amusement, and at least this morning he was only being ordered to pay homage to one colour of polka dot, presumably because miss Merpati had a seminar to go to.
The only difficulty presented by the task was that two of the red dots were located on the sole of the sock, one near the toes and one near the heel, meaning that miss Merpati would have to assist him by raising her socked foot quite high off the ground to enable him to reach them with his slave lips. Perhaps the phrase ‘would have to’ is a bit misleading. Miss Merpati, after all, didn’t ‘have’ to do anything to help her slave to comply with her orders. If he failed to comply – he would simply be punished. The impossibility of fulfilling a mistress’s command was no defence for a slave in this household. But, fortunately for Patheticus, as has already been observed, miss Merpati was in an unusually good mood that morning, and she did, graciously, lift her foot up to enable him to kiss the two red polka dots on the bottom of her black sock three times each.
The two superior young women, both mistress and maid, watched intently as the humble, male footslave performed the humiliating task of worshipping the red polka dots on miss Merpati’s black sock whilst taking care not to let his dirty, slave lips stray onto the surrounding black material.
When he had completed the worship of her right sock, miss Merpati held up her left socked-foot, and gave him the following order:
‘Slave, you will now kiss the green polka dots on my left sock three times each. Again, make sure you don’t touch the surrounding black stitching or any of the other coloured dots.’
‘Yes, miss Merpati. I obey you, miss Merpati’. The slave felt it appropriate at that point to reassure his young mistress verbally that her every wish was his command, but miss Sujatmi seemingly felt that his words were superfluous and that he should be simply getting on with the task in hand:
‘No talking, slave. You a slave. Slave obey miss Merpati. Not talk, or feel whip!’ she spat.
The slave needed no further prompting. He kissed each of the seven green dots on miss Merpati’s left sock – three times each.
The women appeared satisfied with Patheticus’s efforts for miss Merpati next ordered him to put her shoes on her socked feet.
The slave could both see and smell the dark sweat-stains on the well-worn inner lining of the leopard-print, flat ballet shoes as he gently slipped miss Merpati’s socked feet into the soft shoes, first her right foot, then her left. He witnessed also how the tops of the shoes creased as she wiggled her toes inside them in order to make herself comfortable in them before standing up.
Miss Sujatmi reminded the slave that miss Merpati’s act of rising to her feet was a signal for him to kiss the latter’s feet:
‘Slave pay homage to miss Merpati shoes. Slave kiss! Worship!’
In fact, the slave did not need any encouragement to kiss and worship the shoes and feet of miss Merpati. Although he profoundly respected and admired her more intelligent and erudite twin sister, miss Lastri, for her sophistication and innate superiority, he had to acknowledge that miss Merpati quite simply looked ‘the business’ – a highly attractive and beautiful young asian goddess at whose feet he was fit only to grovel and fawn.
And so that was exactly what he did. He kissed the tops of miss Merpati’s leopard-print ballet shoes as she stretched out first her right foot, then her left, under his kneeling nose. As he did so he had a terrific sense of being completely in this young asian woman’s power as, relatively petite in stature though she was, she nevertheless towered above him. With a humble footslave’s sense of awe he admired the various contrasts between the elasticated bottoms of her black leggings, the smooth, brown skin of her shapely ankles, the elasticated tops of her short black socks just below her ankle bones, the various coloured polka dots on the main body of her now slightly creased black socks, and the leopard-print pattern on her short, toe-scuffed ballet-flats.
His humble kisses to her shoes were in genuine appreciation of all the above.
Merpati laughed as she sensed the slave’s awe:
‘Ha! Ha! What a lucky slave he is to have a mistress who wears such nice footwear for him to kiss and admire!’ she commented to Sujatmi.
‘Yes, miss Merpati. Dirty slave not deserve honour of serving beautiful young Indonesian woman like miss Merpati. Slave not worthy kiss miss Merpati socks and shoes!’ agreed Sujatmi.
‘I want to see him pay his respects to your feet as well, Sujatmi. After all, you may only be a servant, but as a woman you are better than him too!’ opined miss Merpati, somewhat graciously.
Sujatmi now laughed with delight and, somewhat coyly, readjusted her black headscarf:
‘Ha! Ha! Yes, miss Merpati. Sujatmi like have slave kiss her feet in front of miss Merpati. Make slave humble!’
The two girls duly swapped positions so that it was now the maidservant’s familiar, scruffy, blue and white sneakers, and dark blue low-cut sneaker socks beneath her blue denim jeans, that presented themselves under the kneeling footslave’s nose.
‘Patheticus, I want you to pay homage to my maid’s socks and sneakers by way of praising her for turning you into such a pathetic, humble footslave. Start by kissing the tops of her socks and sneakers. I want to see your upper lip touching the sock and your lower lip simultaneously touching the top of her sneaker. Make sure your upper lip doesn’t brush against her bare flesh,’ ordered miss Merpati.
‘Yes, mistress Merpati. As you wish, most merciful goddess-mistress Merpati,’ groveled the slave, bringing a satisfied smile to miss Merpati’s face. It was nice to hear that the slave recognized she was a ‘goddess’, for she often thought of herself in those terms.
For her part, Sujatmi beamed every bit as much as she stretched forward her right foot for the slave to pay homage to in the very specific manner ordered by miss Merpati. She was pleased because, not only had the difficult-to-please miss Merpati just complimented her on her slave-training skills, but also because it felt nice to have someone else ordering the slave to kiss her feet for a change, rather than having to order him herself.
As he carefully lowered his lips and felt the soft, warm, elasticated material of the top of miss Sujatmi’s short, dark blue sock on his upper lip, and the colder, more abrasive material of the sneaker on his lower lip, Patheticus was struck by the contrast between the co-ordinated, but relatively plain colours of miss Sujatmi’s footwear, and the exciting profusion of colours that had just a few moments ago assailed his senses as he had been kissing miss Merpati’s shoes and socks.
But he was nonetheless just as respectful of miss Sujatmi’s footwear – for, like miss Merpati before her, she was a superior and beautiful young woman who deserved and demanded his utmost respect and obedience, and it was a privilege to taste and to smell her chosen footwear.
He was, after all, nothing more than a girls’ foot, shoe and sock slave.
Miss Merpati was not an ‘early riser’, nor was she accustomed to being in a good mood in the mornings. One thing the family footslave known as ‘Patheticus’ had learnt very quickly was the need to be ultra-submissive towards Miss Merpati when she was in one of her crotchety early-morning moods.
Even miss Sujatmi was nervous as she waited with the kneeling footslave outside Miss Merpati's bedroom door. Merpati did not treat the servants with the same respect that her twin sister Lastri did. However, at least the male slave would be present to take any of the flak -- Miss Merpati despised male slaves much more than she despised female servants.
At 09:00 a.m. precisely Sujatmi adjusted her plain, black headscarf and knocked somewhat tentatively on the bedroom door. She had been given instructions the previous evening by Merpati’s mother, Madam Ramelan, to awaken Miss Merpati at that precise time if the latter had not already stirred from her slumber as she had to be at college by 10:30 a.m.
There was no response.
Sujatmi swallowed hard and knocked on the door again, this time harder and louder. It appeared as though Miss Merpati was indeed still asleep.
Still no response.
Sujatmi knew she now had no option but to open the door and awake Miss Merpati as gently as possible by shaking her as she lay in her bed. It wasn't an unusual scenario, but given Miss Merpati's unpredictable mood-swings, Sujatmi was always nervous about doing it. With the footslave kneeling humbly and obediently behind her blue and white sneakered feet, Sujatmi, the erstwhile laundry-maid and now 'footslave trainer and taskmistress', gently shook Miss Merpati, gently beseeching her to wake up.
Merpati awoke with a start, her tousled red and black hair and sleepy brown eyes emerging from under the duvet:
‘What time is it?’, she grumbled.
‘Good morning, Miss Merpati,' chirped Sujatmi. 'It nine o'clock and beautiful day outside, miss,’ she continued, evidently trying to put the young mistress in a good frame of mind.
The footslave, of course, was not permitted to speak to miss Merpati unless he was directly spoken to by her. Although she was just a 20 year-old girl, she was his master’s daughter, and therefore his mistress, and therefore way too superior to engage in small talk with the likes of him. He knew he was privileged just to be allowed into her bedroom, – particularly when she was still in her night-clothes. Not that he was any kind of sexual threat to the superior young woman. Indeed, he was allowed into her bedroom precisely because he was a mere slave - impotent as a eunuch, completely in her power and at her mercy (and, for that matter, at the mercy of her maidservant, miss Sujatmi).
‘Fetch me a cigarette!’ ordered miss Merpati, somewhat perfunctorily.
This order was directed at Sujatmi – the footslave was considered unworthy to serve miss Merpati in any way other than as her personal footslave. There would be plenty for him to do in a moment.
Sujatmi knew exactly where miss Merpati hid her cigarettes. She ‘hid’ them because her parents, especially her father, didn’t approve of her smoking. Her mother smoked herself and therefore had less moral authority on the matter. But, whether her parents disapproved of it or not, Merpati just had to have a cigarette first thing in the morning. She often skipped breakfast, but never her early morning fag.
As she lit the cigarette for miss Merpati who was now sitting up in her comfortable bed, Sujatmi enquired politely as to what her mistress’s requirements were for the morning:
‘Miss Merpati want tea, coffee?’
‘Just a coffee, please,’ replied Merpati, more relaxed now that she had had her first fix of nicotine.
‘Yes miss. Sujatmi fetch now. Leave slave to serve miss Merpati feet,’ replied the maidservant, happy that Merpati appeared to be in a reasonably good mood.
‘Thank you, Sujatmi,’ said Merpati, yawning and stretching her arms as she did so.
‘Please’ and ‘thank you’. Yes! Miss Merpati is in an unusually good mood this morning, thought the smiling Sujatmi as she left for the kitchen to fetch Merpati’s coffee.
If the footslave, who during this exchange had remained kneeling, head bowed to the floor by the side of Merpati’s bed, had any hopes of the young mistress being as kind and polite to him, they were soon dashed:
‘You, the slave, I haven’t got time for you to wash my bare feet properly this morning so you’re going to clean them with your dirty, slave tongue!’ she informed him in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, twisting herself around to sit on the edge of her bed whilst taking another drag on her illicit cigarette.
Miss Merpati’s pretty, soft, brown feet were now resting on the fluffy white carpet under the kneeling slave’s nose. Her floral-patterned, white pyjama bottoms had risen up slightly to reveal also her shapely brown ankles. The middle-aged, white slave felt genuinely honoured to be so close to the 20 year old Indonesian girl’s beautiful, petite, bare feet, and was, pathetically, excited at the prospect of sucking her overnight toe-jam from between her delicate toes and swallowing any dead skin that had accumulated on her feminine feet.
‘What are you waiting for, lazy pig! Get on with it!’ she barked, reaching down to slap him hard across his left cheek with her cigarette-free left hand and waking him abruptly from his reverie of adoration for her bare feet.
‘Yes, mistress Merpati! At once, sweet mistress Merpati!’ blubbered the chastised slave, angry with himself for upsetting miss Merpati by his seeming reluctance to obey instantaneously her perfectly reasonable order.
Miss Merpati was doing nothing to help the slave – she rarely did – so her feet remained firmly on the carpet waiting for him to lift them to his kneeling lips.
He gently raised her right foot first. It felt so small and soft in his man-sized hand. What a privilege! What an honour to hold such a precious, beautiful thing in his hands! But it did also feel a little sweaty and a little sticky.
Merpati continued to smoke on her cigarette, exhaling the smoke onto the top of the kneeling slave’s head as he ever so gently inserted her big toe into his slave mouth.
As usual (for miss Merpati’s toes were often inside the footslave’s mouth first thing in the morning) it tasted a little salty, and he could feel tiny pieces of girl toe-jam coming off the toe and onto his tongue. He could also feel her big toe-nail scraping the roof of his mouth as he manipulated the toe inside his mouth in order to better clean it.
He did the same for each individual toe on both her divine, asian feet – one toe at a time, making sure his lips sucked the whole way down each of her bare toes removing any residual sweat from the day before and extracting all the night-time toe-cheese.
Merpati just puffed away on her cigarette enjoying both the feel and the sight of the footslave’s degradation down on the floor at her feet.
Just as he was finishing the last toe – the little toe on miss Merpati’s left foot – Sujatmi re-entered the bedroom with her mistress’s coffee.
Sujatmi smiled at the sight of ‘her’ slave sucking miss Merpati’s toes:
‘Ha! Ha! Slave clean miss Merpati toes good?’ she enquired of the young mistress.
Merpati took a last drag of her cigarette, extinguished it on the top of the middle-aged, male slave’s head, and took the cup of hot coffee from the tray proffered to her by Sujatmi:
‘It’ll have to do. I haven’t got time for him to wash them properly this morning – I have to get to an important seminar today. One of our country’s top fashion designers is coming to speak to us at the college!’ replied Merpati with girlish excitement, extracting her foot from the slave’s mouth and pushing him away with the ball of her foot – indicating that that particular task was at an end.
Although Sujatmi was of a similar age to her mistress (just five years’ her senior), she did not share her mistress’s interest in fashion – perhaps because she couldn’t afford nice clothes on her servant’s wages. Merpati and Sujatmi were complete opposites in that regard – the rich, spoilt fashion design student, who was accustomed to wearing rather garish and, some would say, outlandish outfits and the humble country-girl come laundry-maid, who nearly always wore the same old blue denim jeans, scruffy blue and white sneakers, and traditional, black headscarf. Nevertheless, Sujatmi was an astute enough maid to know when it was in her own best interests to feign excitement in empathy with her mistress’s evident excitement:
‘Really, miss? Miss Merpati very fortunate to be at such good fashion college with top designers!’
Merpati smiled and nodded her agreement. She was now rubbing her feet dry on the slave’s hair as she sipped her coffee in a rather noisy and un-ladylike manner.
Aware that time was of the essence, Sujatmi pressed on with finding out her mistress’s specific clothing requirements for the day:
‘What clothes miss Merpati like to wear to college today, miss?’
‘Erm… I think I’ll wear my yellow top and black leggings. They should be in the wardrobe. And the slave can fetch my black sneaker socks – the ones with the polka dots – and my leopard-print ballet-flats,’ responded Merpati.
This was quite a conservative choice of clothing for miss Merpati – perhaps she didn’t wish to appear too outrageous in front of a top fashion designer?
‘Yes, certainly, miss Merpati,’ replied Sujatmi, ‘Sujatmi fetch clothes from wardrobe.’ She then turned her attention to the kneeling slave:
‘Slave fetch miss Merpati shoes from shoe-cupboard and miss Merpati socks from sock-drawer. Slave obey! Quick!’ she yelped.
The slave knew exactly where to go, and he remembered to ‘slither’ rather than crawl, as, even though it had originally been her sister’s idea, miss Merpati still liked to see him slither across the floor of her bedroom on his belly like a giant slug, rather than crawl on his hands and knees like a normal footslave. And what miss Merpati liked, miss Merpati got.
Equally he knew exactly which pair of shoes and which pair of socks Miss Merpati had selected. He had, after all, been a footslave in this household for some six months now -- it was only to be expected that he would have familiarised himself with all the footwear of the various ladies in the household whom he served. That was his job.
He now knew, for example, that his task-mistress, Miss Sujatmi, except when it was raining, nearly always wore her scruffy old blue and white sneakers and short, low-cut, sneaker socks -- usually fairly plain, light-weight cotton socks, albeit of varying colours, such as the dark blue ones she was wearing today. He had to take particular care of Miss Sujatmi's white sneaker socks, as they inevitably stained easily inside her sweaty sneakers. During the monsoon season Sujatmi preferred to wear her brown, chunky-heeled, zip-up ankle boots as they were more water-resistant than her scuffed and, in places, holey sneakers.
Miss Lastri had a preference for wearing ankle or knee-length leather boots with dark ankle socks or thick boot-socks, although she also frequently, as was the case today, wore dark nylon stockings or tights inside her boots instead of socks. Not that the dark colours of her tights made them any easier to keep clean - a footslave has to be ultra-careful when mouth-washing a young woman’s delicate, nylon stockings lest they snag and tear on his teeth. The punishment for laddering a mistress’s tights in this household was too terrible to describe in words.
Miss Awa, the family cook who originally hailed from West Africa, rarely wore hosiery – preferring to go barefoot in her leather sandals – although she did have a few pairs of mainly white ankle socks which she would wear, somewhat bizarrely still with her sandals on, on cold days, not that the Indonesian weather was ever particularly cold, even during the rainy season. The slave always found it particularly humiliating to have to stare at miss Awa’s white-socked feet inside her sandals. It was as if she was saying to him ‘you are not worthy to look at my beautiful, brown bare feet, so I am wearing these socks not just to keep my feet warm, but also to hide my superior bare feet from your view. You are not worthy to be an African woman’s footslave – only her sockslave’. Miss Awa did have a few other pairs of shoes and a pair of black, leather calf-length boots, but clearly preferred to let her feet breathe inside her sandals whenever possible, even if they were occasionally hidden inside her socks.
Mistress Ramelan, the twins’ mother and mistress of the house, never wore socks – only stockings or tights of the sheerest denier and highest quality, although she too often went bare-legged. She also had a particularly large collection of very expensive designer shoes with high heels and pointy toes which the footslave had to spend hours polishing and cleaning with his slave tongue – even those pairs mistress Ramelan never actually wore.
And then, of course, there was miss Merpati in whose sock-drawer Patheticus was now respectfully rummaging in order to find the correct pair of black, low-cut ankle socks with the multi-coloured polka dots. They were fairly typical of miss Merpati’s taste in hosiery. Unlike her twin sister Lastri, Merpati only had about 3 pairs of tights, and no stockings, preferring instead to wear ‘funky’ socks – never plain socks like miss Sujatmi or miss Awa, but always with brightly-coloured logos or patterns on them. Miss Merpati had over a hundred pairs of socks of various differing materials and lengths – over-the-knee socks, knee-high tube socks, calf-length socks, slouch socks, ankle socks, frilly, laced socks and low-cut ‘no show’ socks. The one thing they all had in common was that they were unmistakably ‘girly’ and feminine. She was, to use the jargon of footslaves, a real ‘sock-girl’, almost as obsessed by her sock collection as the humble footslave was.
Patheticus found the black socks with the multi-coloured polka dots fairly easily amongst all the other socks in the drawer. The multitudinous socks were all neatly rolled up in pairs and laid out in the drawer. That was because it was one of Patheticus’s responsibilities to take care of miss Merpati’s sock-drawer, and he always took pride in his humble work, however degrading and demeaning it was.
Patheticus, the girls’ sock-slave, put the rolled up pair of female socks into his mouth, taking care not to wet them with his saliva. There had been many occasions in the past when those same socks had been in his mouth and required copious amounts of his saliva to help wash out miss Merpati’s footsweat, but they were currently clean and fresh and ready for her to wear on her pretty, brown feet, and the last thing miss Merpati would want would be soggy socks on her feet first thing in the morning.
He then slithered over to miss Merpati’s shoe cupboard to retrieve the equally familiar leopard-print ballet-flats, so beloved of miss Merpati. Some might say that leopard-print shoes wouldn’t go with black and multi-coloured polka dot socks, but on miss Merpati, the fun-loving and rebellious young fashion-designer they somehow seemed to work. The footslave, at any rate, had come to appreciate miss Merpati’s taste in footwear. It was, undoubtedly, an ‘acquired taste’, but it did help to brighten up a footslave’s life. If you’re condemned to hours of staring at and caring for a young woman’s footwear it might as well be esoteric and unusual footwear.
Patheticus had particularly grown to like the flat, ballet-style shoes, although they were showing the signs of wear and tear despite his best efforts to keep them looking fresh and new. Some of the leopard-print pattern, for example, had worn off the area around the toes. They also, close up, smelt quite musty – the result of many sweaty days on miss Merpati’s feet, not that the smell would ever bother anyone else – only the humble footslave was ever close enough to the shoes to have to smell them.
He carried the pair of sweaty, ballet-flats in one hand as he slithered awkwardly, with miss Merpati’s socks still in his mouth, back to where she had been sitting on the edge of her bed.
Miss Merpati was now, temporarily, in her en-suite bathroom where miss Sujatmi was helping her to wash and get dressed. Having washed miss Merpati’s feet with his mouth, Patheticus wasn’t needed to assist her with the rest of her morning toilet. He was required merely to await the return of his mistresses from the bathroom, when he would doubtless be ordered to put miss Merpati’s socks and shoes on her feet.
Patheticus placed the socks and shoes on the carpet next to the bed and knelt humbly to await miss Merpati’s return.
Sure enough, after some fifteen minutes, the two young women emerged from the en suite bathroom, Merpati now looking much less disheveled and in her yellow top and tight, black leggings which came down to just above her shapely ankle bones.
She sat on the edge of the bed again in front of the kneeling footslave.
‘Slave put miss Merpati socks on miss Merpati feet!’ came the abrupt but anticipated order from his task-mistress, miss Sujatmi.
Miss Merpati, who was definitely in a good mood that morning, unusually for her
actually deigned this time to lift her right foot ever so slightly off the carpet to facilitate the slave in rolling the first sock onto her foot. The slave concentrated on the stitching of the sock as he first separated it from the other sock, then rolled it up in his fingers, before carefully stretching it over miss Merpati’s toes and then gently pulling it up her delicate and petite 20 year-old foot as far as it would go, which was to just below her ankle. He took particular care to smooth out any wrinkles or creases in the sock - it was important that the sock should do its job of keeping miss Merpati’s feet comfortable inside her sweaty shoe.
As he examined the stitching the slave could see signs of wear in the sock, particularly around the heel area, which was a pity as he liked this pair of miss Merpati’s socks very much and did not like the idea of miss Merpati having to get rid of them. As he put the remaining sock on her outstretched left foot Patheticus knew he could soon expect an order from miss Merpati to kiss her socked feet, and he wasn’t wrong:
‘Slave, I want you to pay homage to my socks. Begin by kissing my right sock – but only the red polka dots. You will kiss each red dot 3 times. Do it now!’ barked miss Merpati.
This was a favourite ‘game’ of miss Merpati’s – to specify certain areas of her socks which the slave was permitted to pay homage to. It gave her a wonderful feeling of absolute and arbitrary power, and was, perhaps, one of the main reasons why she preferred patterned as opposed to plain socks.
Patheticus heard miss Sujatmi laughing above him as she reinforced miss Merpati’s orders:
‘Ha! Ha! Slave obey miss Merpati. Kiss only red dots. Slave make sure lips not touch black stitching!’ she warned ominously.
Fortunately for the footslave the polka dots on the sock were quite large –large enough for him to be able to place both lips on a single dot without inadvertently touching the surrounding black cotton. There were precisely 7 red dots on each sock. He knew that because he had had plenty of opportunity to study the socks and count the dots on previous occasions. There were 7 polka dots of each colour – yellow, red, white, green, blue and purple – on each sock, making 84 polka dots on the pair of socks in total.
He remembered how, during one evening whilst she was watching television in the lounge with her parents, her feet resting on the end of the opulent sofa, miss Merpati had ordered him to kiss each and every coloured dot on these very same socks 100 times. Needless to say, it had taken him two hours to perform that particular degrading act of devotion – 8, 400 kisses to one pair of socks whilst miss Merpati was still wearing them! But he did it, much to Mr and Mrs Ramelan’s amusement, and at least this morning he was only being ordered to pay homage to one colour of polka dot, presumably because miss Merpati had a seminar to go to.
The only difficulty presented by the task was that two of the red dots were located on the sole of the sock, one near the toes and one near the heel, meaning that miss Merpati would have to assist him by raising her socked foot quite high off the ground to enable him to reach them with his slave lips. Perhaps the phrase ‘would have to’ is a bit misleading. Miss Merpati, after all, didn’t ‘have’ to do anything to help her slave to comply with her orders. If he failed to comply – he would simply be punished. The impossibility of fulfilling a mistress’s command was no defence for a slave in this household. But, fortunately for Patheticus, as has already been observed, miss Merpati was in an unusually good mood that morning, and she did, graciously, lift her foot up to enable him to kiss the two red polka dots on the bottom of her black sock three times each.
The two superior young women, both mistress and maid, watched intently as the humble, male footslave performed the humiliating task of worshipping the red polka dots on miss Merpati’s black sock whilst taking care not to let his dirty, slave lips stray onto the surrounding black material.
When he had completed the worship of her right sock, miss Merpati held up her left socked-foot, and gave him the following order:
‘Slave, you will now kiss the green polka dots on my left sock three times each. Again, make sure you don’t touch the surrounding black stitching or any of the other coloured dots.’
‘Yes, miss Merpati. I obey you, miss Merpati’. The slave felt it appropriate at that point to reassure his young mistress verbally that her every wish was his command, but miss Sujatmi seemingly felt that his words were superfluous and that he should be simply getting on with the task in hand:
‘No talking, slave. You a slave. Slave obey miss Merpati. Not talk, or feel whip!’ she spat.
The slave needed no further prompting. He kissed each of the seven green dots on miss Merpati’s left sock – three times each.
The women appeared satisfied with Patheticus’s efforts for miss Merpati next ordered him to put her shoes on her socked feet.
The slave could both see and smell the dark sweat-stains on the well-worn inner lining of the leopard-print, flat ballet shoes as he gently slipped miss Merpati’s socked feet into the soft shoes, first her right foot, then her left. He witnessed also how the tops of the shoes creased as she wiggled her toes inside them in order to make herself comfortable in them before standing up.
Miss Sujatmi reminded the slave that miss Merpati’s act of rising to her feet was a signal for him to kiss the latter’s feet:
‘Slave pay homage to miss Merpati shoes. Slave kiss! Worship!’
In fact, the slave did not need any encouragement to kiss and worship the shoes and feet of miss Merpati. Although he profoundly respected and admired her more intelligent and erudite twin sister, miss Lastri, for her sophistication and innate superiority, he had to acknowledge that miss Merpati quite simply looked ‘the business’ – a highly attractive and beautiful young asian goddess at whose feet he was fit only to grovel and fawn.
And so that was exactly what he did. He kissed the tops of miss Merpati’s leopard-print ballet shoes as she stretched out first her right foot, then her left, under his kneeling nose. As he did so he had a terrific sense of being completely in this young asian woman’s power as, relatively petite in stature though she was, she nevertheless towered above him. With a humble footslave’s sense of awe he admired the various contrasts between the elasticated bottoms of her black leggings, the smooth, brown skin of her shapely ankles, the elasticated tops of her short black socks just below her ankle bones, the various coloured polka dots on the main body of her now slightly creased black socks, and the leopard-print pattern on her short, toe-scuffed ballet-flats.
His humble kisses to her shoes were in genuine appreciation of all the above.
Merpati laughed as she sensed the slave’s awe:
‘Ha! Ha! What a lucky slave he is to have a mistress who wears such nice footwear for him to kiss and admire!’ she commented to Sujatmi.
‘Yes, miss Merpati. Dirty slave not deserve honour of serving beautiful young Indonesian woman like miss Merpati. Slave not worthy kiss miss Merpati socks and shoes!’ agreed Sujatmi.
‘I want to see him pay his respects to your feet as well, Sujatmi. After all, you may only be a servant, but as a woman you are better than him too!’ opined miss Merpati, somewhat graciously.
Sujatmi now laughed with delight and, somewhat coyly, readjusted her black headscarf:
‘Ha! Ha! Yes, miss Merpati. Sujatmi like have slave kiss her feet in front of miss Merpati. Make slave humble!’
The two girls duly swapped positions so that it was now the maidservant’s familiar, scruffy, blue and white sneakers, and dark blue low-cut sneaker socks beneath her blue denim jeans, that presented themselves under the kneeling footslave’s nose.
‘Patheticus, I want you to pay homage to my maid’s socks and sneakers by way of praising her for turning you into such a pathetic, humble footslave. Start by kissing the tops of her socks and sneakers. I want to see your upper lip touching the sock and your lower lip simultaneously touching the top of her sneaker. Make sure your upper lip doesn’t brush against her bare flesh,’ ordered miss Merpati.
‘Yes, mistress Merpati. As you wish, most merciful goddess-mistress Merpati,’ groveled the slave, bringing a satisfied smile to miss Merpati’s face. It was nice to hear that the slave recognized she was a ‘goddess’, for she often thought of herself in those terms.
For her part, Sujatmi beamed every bit as much as she stretched forward her right foot for the slave to pay homage to in the very specific manner ordered by miss Merpati. She was pleased because, not only had the difficult-to-please miss Merpati just complimented her on her slave-training skills, but also because it felt nice to have someone else ordering the slave to kiss her feet for a change, rather than having to order him herself.
As he carefully lowered his lips and felt the soft, warm, elasticated material of the top of miss Sujatmi’s short, dark blue sock on his upper lip, and the colder, more abrasive material of the sneaker on his lower lip, Patheticus was struck by the contrast between the co-ordinated, but relatively plain colours of miss Sujatmi’s footwear, and the exciting profusion of colours that had just a few moments ago assailed his senses as he had been kissing miss Merpati’s shoes and socks.
But he was nonetheless just as respectful of miss Sujatmi’s footwear – for, like miss Merpati before her, she was a superior and beautiful young woman who deserved and demanded his utmost respect and obedience, and it was a privilege to taste and to smell her chosen footwear.
He was, after all, nothing more than a girls’ foot, shoe and sock slave.