patheticus555
04-06-2007, 3:47 PM
Part 7 – The servants’ servant
Following the announcement of his sentence, Patheticus was, quite properly, required to complete the pedicure of Madam Ramelan’s feet, which she had been forced to suspend because of his outrageous rudeness about miss Sujatmi’s sneakers. Both Awa and Sujatmi, on Madam Ramelan’s invitation, stayed to watch the still sobbing Patheticus finish off painting Madam Ramelan’s toenails with the bright red paint, before the trio of the Indonesian Laundry maid, the African cook, and the white, European male footslave made their way back to the kitchen – the two female servants walking upright as the respected human beings that they were; the male footslave crawling behind their heels on his hands and knees as the inferior male animal that he was.
As they did so, you might think that there would have been something of an ‘atmosphere’ between the three servants.
You could be forgiven for thinking, for example, that miss Sujatmi, who had been entrusted with Patheticus’s training as a footslave, might have felt somewhat aggrieved at her protégé’s poor performance in front of the lady of the household -showing her up, as it were, by angering Madam Ramelan by his inappropriate comments – especially when those comments were insulting towards her own favourite pair of scruffy old blue and white sneakers!
But you’d be sadly mistaken! Sujatmi was, in fact, feeling elated. After all, the mistress had expressly exonerated her from all blame for Patheticus’s unacceptable behaviour, and had even done her the honour of allowing her to decide whether he should be punished or not. Furthermore, following Sujatmi’s guilty verdict on Patheticus, Madam Ramelan had decreed that, for his insolence and disrespect, he would be whipped not only in Sujatmi’s presence, but also with those very same sneakers, about which he had been so disparaging, wrapped around his nose whilst the sentence was being carried out – an ingenious touch by the mistress, and one which pleased Sujatmi greatly.
Yes – Sujatmi felt elated, and rightly so.
And as for miss Awa, was she, perhaps, kind-hearted soul that she was, feeling just a little bit guilty at having lied about Patheticus occasionally brushing his lips against her bare footflesh without permission – thereby earning him a further 15 lashes on top of he lashes he was to receive at Sujatmi’s behest?
No! Miss Awa did not have a guilty conscience and was feeling completely at ease. After all, she knew that in the Ramelan household a female can do and say no wrong. Patheticus must indeed have allowed his dirty, slave lips to brush against her bare African foot – because she had said that he did! And miss Awa, like Sujatmi her fellow maid, was very much looking forward to seeing Patheticus’s punishment being carried out that coming Saturday evening – especially the part where he would be made to kiss her sandaled feet in front of the entire household a total of 200 times. She would feel like an African princess having her feet worshipped by a lowly, captive male prisoner – her prisoner!
Yes – Awa was at ease with herself and the world, and rightly so.
As for the guilty footslave, Patheticus – his feelings were, of course, of no consequence, but, just for the record, if you think he may have been harbouring any feelings of resentment towards either miss Sujatmi or miss Awa – again, you’d be wrong. On the contrary, as he crawled behind miss Sujatmi’s dirty blue and white sneakers and admired the backs of her short, navy blue ankle socks, Patheticus felt nothing but humility and resignation: humility, that he was such an incompetent and disrespectful slave towards his mistresses – as Madam Ramelan had clearly shown to him; and resignation to the fact that he was going to receive a well-deserved flogging for his misdemeanours.
Yes – Patheticus felt ashamed of himself, and rightly so.
As they entered the kitchen miss Awa offered to make Sujatmi a fresh cup of tea, as her first cup had been so rudely interrupted by Madam Ramelan’s need to summon her back to the master bedroom at short notice. Awa decided that she could do with a cup of tea herself before starting to prepare Madam Ramelan’s, and then her own and Sujatmi’s, lunch. Needless to say she would not have to prepare any lunch for Patheticus (the footslave only had one meal a day which was his evening ‘meal’ of the ubiquitous stale bread and tap water), nor did it even cross her mind to offer the male footslave some refreshing tea.
In any case, Patheticus had work to do – his usual morning chore of scrubbing the kitchen floor, using the special scrubbing brush that had kindly been made for him by miss Awa’s husband, the household chauffeur master Komi. The scrubbing brush, or ‘mouth-brush’ as the other servants liked to call it, fitted neatly into Patheticus’s ugly mouth, thereby enabling him to effectively scrub the floor with his mouth whilst simultaneously allowing him to examine the dirt on the floor close up. As master Komi had pointed out when he had first presented Patheticus with the ‘mouth-brush’, it left him with no excuse for missing any of the dirt, and would therefore earn him the severest punishment if the tiled kitchen floor wasn’t sparkling by the time he had finished this particular daily chore.
At first, the inexperienced slave Patheticus had allowed himself to feel somewhat aggrieved at being required by the African cook and her husband to carry out the chore of scrubbing the kitchen floor! Believe it or not, he actually thought that, as a family footslave, such tasks should not be part of his job description! However, a few beatings from master Komi had soon helped him to se the error of his thinking, and, the more he carried out the filthy, back-breaking task, the more Patheticus had come to realise that it was, actually, an entirely appropriate chore for a household footslave to scrub the kitchen floor with a mouth-brush – after all, he was already well positioned for the task as he was permanently on his hands and knees staring at the floor, and the vast majority of the dirt on the floor came from the soles of his superiors’ shoes. So why wouldn’t he be required to clean off that dirt?
Miss Awa filled a bucket with lukewarm water and threw the mouth brush down at Patheticus for him to insert into his filthy, slave mouth:
‘Slave, clean the floor – and make sure you remove all of the dirt near the doorway,’ she ordered Patheticus in her melodic, west African accent, before joining her fellow, hard-working maidservant, Sujatmi, with two steaming hot and refreshing cups of tea.
As the two women noisily sipped the refreshing, hot beverage, Patheticus inserted his mouth-brush and lowered his own lips towards the lukewarm bucket of water. He then began scrubbing the floor whilst Awa and Sujatmi engaged in small talk and friendly chit chat with each other.
The two women ignored the male scrubber completely as he toiled away at his routine task, taking particular care, as he had been ordered to do by miss Awa, to clean the thick mud off the tiles that were located immediately inside the kitchen door – mud that could have come from the soles of any of the other servants’ shoes or boots. As he repeatedly dipped the mouth brush into the water and scrubbed the tiles the lukewarm water not only turned colder, but blacker. Inevitably, he swallowed some of it – he swallowed the superior servants’ shoe and boot mud.
After some twenty minutes Patheticus faced a bit of a crisis – he was nearing the area of the floor under the kitchen table where miss Awa and miss Sujatmi were sitting. He came to Sujatmi’s blue and white sneakered feet first. Even as he was admiring the way one of her short navy blue sneaker-socks was now lower than the other inside her scruffy blue and white sneakers, he realised that she, deeply engrossed as she was in her frivolous conversation with miss Awa, was apparently unaware of his presence close to her feet, and she was showing no signs of moving her feet out of the way of his mouth-brush. Yet he had to scrub the entire floor – including the area directly under miss Sujatmi’s feet.
Patheticus eventually decided that he had no option but to interrupt the ladies’ conversation and politely request miss Sujatmi to kindly lift her feet. It was not an option he relished, but to merely clean around the superior mistress’s feet, ignoring the dirty floor directly under her feet, at least without her express permission to do so, was not an option at all. He therefore removed the brush from his slave mouth temporarily, braced himself, and then dared to interrupt miss Sujatmi’s conversation with miss Awa:
‘Oh pray, miss Sujatmi, please forgive this dirty slave’s intrusion, sweet mistress Sujatmi, but this slave humbly begs his superior mistress to be so kind as to lift her divine feet so that he may scrub the dirt from under her feet, if it so pleases you, most kind and merciful mistress Sujatmi.’
It was, by any stretch of the imagination, a polite, and not unreasonable request, from a busy male footslave to, it has to be said, a rather lazy female fellow-servant. It was a request which fully acknowledged the female servant’s superiority over him and profusely apologised to her in advance for any inconvenience that would be caused by compliance with the humble request.
Unfortunately for Patheticus, however, Sujatmi was not in the mood to oblige him. She adjusted her black headscarf and tutted:
‘Tch! Sujatmi busy – not want move feet! Slave go away – clean under Sujatmi sneakers later!’
Miss Awa, too, was apparently angered by the footslave’s grovelling interruption:
‘No talking, slave. Do not disturb miss Sujatmi! She is my guest in this kitchen and you will obey her or you will feel the end of my rope across your back. Get on with your work, dirty footslave, and come back to the area under the table later. ’
Miss Awa was referring to the thick, heavy rope which she kept hanging on the back of the kitchen door and, rather mischievously, used to beat the slave with. She was being mischievous because, technically speaking, only master Ramelan, the head of the household, or his wife, Madam Ramelan, could authorise the slave to be beaten – but Awa liked to have the rope to hand as it was, as far as she was concerned, the only language Patheticus understood – and even the threat of it could instil him to visibly greater efforts – as it did now: no sooner had miss Awa mentioned the dreaded rope than Patheticus inserted the mouth-brush back into his mouth and did what he was told – he scrubbed around both her and miss Sujatmi’s feet – taking care not to splash any dirty water onto their respective african and asian feet, and not to disturb his female superiors again. He did not wish to feel the wrath of miss Awa’s rope – even across his slave-tunic covered back it stung and bruised.
Miss Awa and miss Sujatmi did, eventually, deign to end their tea-break and to move away from the kitchen table – allowing Patheticus to mop up the dirt on the tiled floor which had come from the soles of miss Awa’s brown leather sandals, as well as that from miss Sujatmi’s dirty sneaker-soles, with his pathetic scrubbing-mouth.
Later still, after the two women had lunched, Sujatmi led Patheticus on his hands and knees into the nearby laundry where there was yet more work for him to do under her supervision. A pair of miss Lastri’s dirty black boot-socks which she had been wearing to work the previous day inside her shiny, black, zip-up ankle boots, were lying, somewhat forlornly, in miss Lastri’s dirty linen basket awaiting the attentions of the footslave’s mouth by way of a pre-wash.
Miss Sujatmi sat on the edge of a table from where she could closely observe the kneeling slave, again adjusting her headscarf, her pretty, sneakered feet dangling in the air, as she gave him his next orders:
‘Slave clean miss Lastri dirty socks. Suck out sweat – dead skin. First kiss socks – worship! Obey!’
It went without saying that Patheticus was expected to pay homage to miss Lastyri’s discarded boot-socks by humbly kissing them before placing them in his mouth – but Sujatmi had said it anyway.
The slave respectfully lifted the pair of dirty black, ankle-length, female socks out of the laundry basket before gently placing them on the floor and then lowering his lips to kiss them on the toes. As he did so he caught a vinegary whiff of miss Lastri’s day-old foot sweat, but, wisely, he didn’t baulk at the smell or show any signs of distaste for it – ‘that is the smell of your master’s daughter’s socks,’ he told himself, ‘and you are honoured to be given the privilege of not only smelling, but also tasting, your superior young mistress’s dirty, sweaty, black socks.’
Patheticus noticed that the young woman’s socks were, in actual fact, more grey than black with wear around the area of the toes – by far the smelliest area – as he humbly and respectfully kissed both the socks, prior to lifting one of them and inserting it, toe first, into his mouth.
It may have smelt vinegary, but it tasted salty.
Miss Sujatmi gave a wry smile as she observed the entire sock disappear into the slave’s mouth and watched him suck out of it the girl’s footsweat and little pieces of sock lint and toe jam.
For her part, the 20 year old trainee lawyer Miss Lastri, as she was standing up in court and arguing a complex point of caselaw before the presiding magistrate, was blissfully unaware that her humble footslave was at that very moment cleaning by mouth the thick, sweaty black boot-socks she had been wearing the day before inside her ankle boots. Nor did it even cross her mind that, tomorrow, he would be kissing, sniffing and sucking clean the toes of the dark, nylon stockings she was currently wearing inside her black, suede, knee-length boots. Lastri had more important things to think about – like how to get her self-evidently guilty client off on a technicality.
Patheticus spent some thirty minutes pre-washing miss Lastri’s dirty, black socks in his mouth before miss Sujatmi decided they were ready for the washing machine. She had Patheticus place them in the machine himself – for she had no desire to touch the dirty, now saliva-sodden socks with her own fingers – before ordering him to pay his attentions to the favourite pair of shiny, black, spike-heeled and pointy-toed, zip-up ankle boots miss Lastri had been wearing over those same socks the day before.
Although they were made of shiny patent leather, the boots were showing some signs of wear and tear – a slightly dislodged stitch here; an indelible scuff mark there. They were boots with which Patheticus had become very familiar over the months since he had been enslaved in the Ramelan household – and it was, seemingly, that very over-familiarity that was about to get him into trouble. For Patheticus committed the cardinal sin of a footslave – on being ordered by miss Sujatmi to lick clean the boots he momentarily forgot to first pay his respects to the right boot by kissing it, instead grabbing it rather roughly and immediately setting about lathering it with his coarse, slave tongue.
Sujatmi was outraged at his behaviour. She suddenly jumped down from the table on which she had been sitting and slapped Patheticus hard across the right cheek – sending the boot crashing back down onto the floor:
‘Slave pay respect to boot before start licking! Dirty slave! Slave not fit to lick miss Lastri boot without boot permission. Miss Lastri boot angry! Shocked! Boot want Sujatmi punish slave hard!’
Patheticus realised his error straight away, and could have kicked himself. He didn’t have to however, for, obligingly, miss Sujatmi was now kicking him in the ribs on behalf of miss Lastri’s offended boot:
‘Slave apologise miss Lastri boot! Beg boot forgiveness for slobber over boot!’
Patheticus duly retrieved the feminine boot he had so ungentlemanly manhandled, and begged its forgiveness:
‘Oh pray, miss Lastri’s boot, please forgive… this dirty footslave… for not showing you proper respect by first kissing you… and begging your permission to clean the dirt off your leather soles!’ he whimpered, periodically gasping for breath as Sujatmi continued to wind him by kicking him with her sneakered feet in the stomach and rib-cage.
The latter was enjoying herself immensely. She loved the position of absolute power she was in – of being the only one who could interpret what the boot was thinking and saying, presumably because the boot was, like her, female:
‘Miss Lastri boot say slave not forgiven! Boot want slave whipped! 12 lashes. Sujatmi get rope. Slave continue to kiss miss Lastri boot and beg boot forgiveness.’
Even in miss Sujatmi’s temporary absence Patheticus found himself begging the inanimate object’s forgiveness – begging it not to have him whipped. He had no choice. If miss Sujatmi said the boot felt violated – it did.
As Patheticus was dutifully begging her ankle boot for forgiveness, miss Lastri was celebrating her client’s totally undeserved acquittal in court. She was completely unaware that at the very moment her client had been cleared of all charges on a technicality, thanks to her complex legal arguments, back in the laundry room her shiny, black ankle boot had been sentencing Patheticus to 12 lashes with the rope.
Perhaps more to the point, even if she had known, she wouldn’t have cared. She wouldn’t care if Patheticus was suffering repeated blows across his tunic-covered back with miss Awa’s thick, heavy punishment-rope – for he was just a slave, and slaves often got whipped.
Having delivered the twelve strokes demanded by the aggrieved boot, miss Sujatmi continued with Patheticus’s humiliation:
‘Miss Lastri boot say slave woo boot; flatter boot; beg boot allow dirty slave touch it!’
So the feminine boot now wished to be wooed by the slave? Then wooed it would be!
‘Oh pray miss Lastri’s boot, most beautiful and feminine black boot, please permit this dirty boot-slave to touch your beautiful skin with his dirty fingers, and to place his lips respectfully on your exquisite and shiny black leather, if it so pleases you, mistress boot.’
Sujatmi laughed at the slave’s feeble attempts at wooing a female boot:
‘Ha! Ha! Miss Lastri boot say slave not forgiven. Boot still angry – say slave dirty pig! Boot make slave wait until tomorrow – maybe let slave touch boot and clean boot then. Slave thank miss Lastri boot for show mercy!’
And so Patheticus was obliged to thank the pointy-toed, spike-heeled, shiny black ankle boot for possibly allowing him to touch ‘her’ and lick ‘her’ clean the following day by which time ‘she’ may have calmed down. He would have to hope against hope that miss Lastri did not decide to wear that particular pair of favourite boots the following day – for she undoubtedly would then care about what had happened, and further punishment would doubtless ensue.
In the meantime, miss Sujatmi ordered Patheticus to instead kiss and lick clean the beige ugg-style boots of miss Lastri’s twin sister, miss Merpati. They, rather like their owner it has to be said, were apparently less fussy about who touched and kissed them.
As the failure Patheticus obediently kissed and licked the dirty soles of miss Merpati’s discarded uggs, the successful young fashion student who owned the boots, and who was currently wearing the leopard-print ballet flats and black ankle socks with the multi-coloured polka dots so lovingly put onto her pretty feet by Patheticus earlier that day, was charming the middle-aged, distinguished male fashion designer who was visiting her college into taking on at least one of the designs from her personal portfolio.
Meanwhile, back in the laundry room, Sujatmi had decided of her own accord, without even consulting miss Lastri’s black ankle boot, that Patheticus was deserving of further punishment for his male roughness:
‘Sujatmi go now to kitchen for evening meal. Slave not eat tonight. Not deserve eat. Ha! Ha! Slave eat only miss Merpati boot dirt and drink only miss Lastri sock-sweat!’
And with that she left him for about an hour whilst she tucked into a delicious beef curry prepared for the other servants, and the Ramelan family, by miss Awa. Patheticus’s stomach rumbled as he smelt the delicious aroma of the hot food wafting in from the nearby kitchen. But in his heart of hearts he knew that miss Sujatmi was right to deny him any food – he had not earned his, quite literal, ‘crust’ today – he had made so many unforgivable mistakes! Such ineptitude and disrespect on his part!
He desperately tried to extract a mud-encrusted stone from the tread of miss Merapi’s left ugg-style boot as a means of filling his empty stomach with something.
When she returned from the kitchen, fully satiated by her well-earned evening meal, miss Sujatmi happily informed the slave that it was time for him to stop licking miss Merpati’s ugg-boots and to get ready to go out on the streets of Jakarta as a foot-whore.
This was another daily task which Patheticus the footslave had to perform every evening. It was his way of paying back the Ramelan family for all their hospitality – by earning them some money which would help to pay for his keep i.e for his hole in the barn and his bread and water rations. He did this by tongue-shining the boots and shoes of lady pedestrians on the streets at night for a dollar a time. Sujatmi went with him – in her capacity as his ‘pimp’. Patheticus was the ‘whore’.
As it was raining outside that particular evening, Sujatmi decided she would change out of her sneakers, which often leaked and let the rain through, into her chunky-heeled, brown leather, zip-up ankle boots – or rather she decided that Patheticus would change her footwear for her.
She sat in a chair in front of him and ordered the kneeling slave to crawl over to her personal shoe-rack and fetch the brown leather boots. As she gave him her commands, she inadvertently let out a little belch, sending a waft of delicious beef curry up Patheticus’s nose. He felt even more hungry, as he carefully and respectfully first kissed, and then removed miss Sujatmi’s blue and white sneakers from her feet, kissed and straightened her dark blue sneaker socks, and then kissed and placed each of her chunky heeled brown leather boots onto her socked feet, before adjusting the bottoms of her blue denim jeans over the tops of her boots the way he knew she liked him to.
Patheticus always regretted seeing a mistress’s socks disappearing inside her boots. He much preferred to be able to see his mistress’s socks whilst she was wearing them, as it reminded him that he was the servant of her inner, as well as her outer, footwear. Perhaps he was also a bit jealous of the socks, being able to serve their mistress by absorbing her foot-sweat and keeping her feet nice and comfortable inside the privacy of her warm boots. But he consoled himself with the pathetic thought that only he and his mistress knew in such circumstances what sort of socks, if any, she was wearing on her feet.
Like anyone else would care?
Sujatmi also liked to take miss Awa’s rope with her whenever she pimped Patheticus as a ladies’ foot whore out on the streets of the city. It allowed for instant discipline should he display the slightest disrespect for any of his female ‘customers’. She therefore attached it discreetly to a belt around her waist, before grabbing a dark blue anorak with a hood which she would wear over her traditional, peasant-girl headscarf in the rain.
However, miss Sujatmi was not the only one who had to get dressed for going out. In addition to his plain, brown slave tunic, Patheticus was required to wear black leather blinkers on either side of his face – to better enable him to concentrate on the feet and footwear of the women he would be serving out on the streets without any distractions. In addition, attached to the blinkers by means of two small chains, was a wooden footblock which swung beneath his chin as he crawled along on his hands and knees – but rested conveniently on the ground whenever he lowered his head to service a lady’s foot. The lady concerned could therefore position her foot directly under his nose by resting it on the ‘portable’ wooden footblock. It was another of master Komi’s helpful inventions.
Master Komi would also be the one who would drive Sujatmi and Patheticus into the town centre - the latter kneeling in the back of the limousine at Sujatmi’s booted feet - leaving them off near the red-light district where Patheticus was required to ply his trade.
However, although he would be leaving them off in the red-light district, Komi the chauffeur had no idea that Sujatmi would, as soon as he had driven off, and as she did every night, make a slight detour on foot, with Patheticus in tow at her heels, towards a dirty squat in a nearby alleyway in the town centre.
Patheticus, however, knew exactly where Sujatmi was going. The chaste and traditional peasant girl was off to see her ‘secret’ boyfriend, master Budi, before pimping Patheticus out on the streets.
Naughty Sujatmi!
Following the announcement of his sentence, Patheticus was, quite properly, required to complete the pedicure of Madam Ramelan’s feet, which she had been forced to suspend because of his outrageous rudeness about miss Sujatmi’s sneakers. Both Awa and Sujatmi, on Madam Ramelan’s invitation, stayed to watch the still sobbing Patheticus finish off painting Madam Ramelan’s toenails with the bright red paint, before the trio of the Indonesian Laundry maid, the African cook, and the white, European male footslave made their way back to the kitchen – the two female servants walking upright as the respected human beings that they were; the male footslave crawling behind their heels on his hands and knees as the inferior male animal that he was.
As they did so, you might think that there would have been something of an ‘atmosphere’ between the three servants.
You could be forgiven for thinking, for example, that miss Sujatmi, who had been entrusted with Patheticus’s training as a footslave, might have felt somewhat aggrieved at her protégé’s poor performance in front of the lady of the household -showing her up, as it were, by angering Madam Ramelan by his inappropriate comments – especially when those comments were insulting towards her own favourite pair of scruffy old blue and white sneakers!
But you’d be sadly mistaken! Sujatmi was, in fact, feeling elated. After all, the mistress had expressly exonerated her from all blame for Patheticus’s unacceptable behaviour, and had even done her the honour of allowing her to decide whether he should be punished or not. Furthermore, following Sujatmi’s guilty verdict on Patheticus, Madam Ramelan had decreed that, for his insolence and disrespect, he would be whipped not only in Sujatmi’s presence, but also with those very same sneakers, about which he had been so disparaging, wrapped around his nose whilst the sentence was being carried out – an ingenious touch by the mistress, and one which pleased Sujatmi greatly.
Yes – Sujatmi felt elated, and rightly so.
And as for miss Awa, was she, perhaps, kind-hearted soul that she was, feeling just a little bit guilty at having lied about Patheticus occasionally brushing his lips against her bare footflesh without permission – thereby earning him a further 15 lashes on top of he lashes he was to receive at Sujatmi’s behest?
No! Miss Awa did not have a guilty conscience and was feeling completely at ease. After all, she knew that in the Ramelan household a female can do and say no wrong. Patheticus must indeed have allowed his dirty, slave lips to brush against her bare African foot – because she had said that he did! And miss Awa, like Sujatmi her fellow maid, was very much looking forward to seeing Patheticus’s punishment being carried out that coming Saturday evening – especially the part where he would be made to kiss her sandaled feet in front of the entire household a total of 200 times. She would feel like an African princess having her feet worshipped by a lowly, captive male prisoner – her prisoner!
Yes – Awa was at ease with herself and the world, and rightly so.
As for the guilty footslave, Patheticus – his feelings were, of course, of no consequence, but, just for the record, if you think he may have been harbouring any feelings of resentment towards either miss Sujatmi or miss Awa – again, you’d be wrong. On the contrary, as he crawled behind miss Sujatmi’s dirty blue and white sneakers and admired the backs of her short, navy blue ankle socks, Patheticus felt nothing but humility and resignation: humility, that he was such an incompetent and disrespectful slave towards his mistresses – as Madam Ramelan had clearly shown to him; and resignation to the fact that he was going to receive a well-deserved flogging for his misdemeanours.
Yes – Patheticus felt ashamed of himself, and rightly so.
As they entered the kitchen miss Awa offered to make Sujatmi a fresh cup of tea, as her first cup had been so rudely interrupted by Madam Ramelan’s need to summon her back to the master bedroom at short notice. Awa decided that she could do with a cup of tea herself before starting to prepare Madam Ramelan’s, and then her own and Sujatmi’s, lunch. Needless to say she would not have to prepare any lunch for Patheticus (the footslave only had one meal a day which was his evening ‘meal’ of the ubiquitous stale bread and tap water), nor did it even cross her mind to offer the male footslave some refreshing tea.
In any case, Patheticus had work to do – his usual morning chore of scrubbing the kitchen floor, using the special scrubbing brush that had kindly been made for him by miss Awa’s husband, the household chauffeur master Komi. The scrubbing brush, or ‘mouth-brush’ as the other servants liked to call it, fitted neatly into Patheticus’s ugly mouth, thereby enabling him to effectively scrub the floor with his mouth whilst simultaneously allowing him to examine the dirt on the floor close up. As master Komi had pointed out when he had first presented Patheticus with the ‘mouth-brush’, it left him with no excuse for missing any of the dirt, and would therefore earn him the severest punishment if the tiled kitchen floor wasn’t sparkling by the time he had finished this particular daily chore.
At first, the inexperienced slave Patheticus had allowed himself to feel somewhat aggrieved at being required by the African cook and her husband to carry out the chore of scrubbing the kitchen floor! Believe it or not, he actually thought that, as a family footslave, such tasks should not be part of his job description! However, a few beatings from master Komi had soon helped him to se the error of his thinking, and, the more he carried out the filthy, back-breaking task, the more Patheticus had come to realise that it was, actually, an entirely appropriate chore for a household footslave to scrub the kitchen floor with a mouth-brush – after all, he was already well positioned for the task as he was permanently on his hands and knees staring at the floor, and the vast majority of the dirt on the floor came from the soles of his superiors’ shoes. So why wouldn’t he be required to clean off that dirt?
Miss Awa filled a bucket with lukewarm water and threw the mouth brush down at Patheticus for him to insert into his filthy, slave mouth:
‘Slave, clean the floor – and make sure you remove all of the dirt near the doorway,’ she ordered Patheticus in her melodic, west African accent, before joining her fellow, hard-working maidservant, Sujatmi, with two steaming hot and refreshing cups of tea.
As the two women noisily sipped the refreshing, hot beverage, Patheticus inserted his mouth-brush and lowered his own lips towards the lukewarm bucket of water. He then began scrubbing the floor whilst Awa and Sujatmi engaged in small talk and friendly chit chat with each other.
The two women ignored the male scrubber completely as he toiled away at his routine task, taking particular care, as he had been ordered to do by miss Awa, to clean the thick mud off the tiles that were located immediately inside the kitchen door – mud that could have come from the soles of any of the other servants’ shoes or boots. As he repeatedly dipped the mouth brush into the water and scrubbed the tiles the lukewarm water not only turned colder, but blacker. Inevitably, he swallowed some of it – he swallowed the superior servants’ shoe and boot mud.
After some twenty minutes Patheticus faced a bit of a crisis – he was nearing the area of the floor under the kitchen table where miss Awa and miss Sujatmi were sitting. He came to Sujatmi’s blue and white sneakered feet first. Even as he was admiring the way one of her short navy blue sneaker-socks was now lower than the other inside her scruffy blue and white sneakers, he realised that she, deeply engrossed as she was in her frivolous conversation with miss Awa, was apparently unaware of his presence close to her feet, and she was showing no signs of moving her feet out of the way of his mouth-brush. Yet he had to scrub the entire floor – including the area directly under miss Sujatmi’s feet.
Patheticus eventually decided that he had no option but to interrupt the ladies’ conversation and politely request miss Sujatmi to kindly lift her feet. It was not an option he relished, but to merely clean around the superior mistress’s feet, ignoring the dirty floor directly under her feet, at least without her express permission to do so, was not an option at all. He therefore removed the brush from his slave mouth temporarily, braced himself, and then dared to interrupt miss Sujatmi’s conversation with miss Awa:
‘Oh pray, miss Sujatmi, please forgive this dirty slave’s intrusion, sweet mistress Sujatmi, but this slave humbly begs his superior mistress to be so kind as to lift her divine feet so that he may scrub the dirt from under her feet, if it so pleases you, most kind and merciful mistress Sujatmi.’
It was, by any stretch of the imagination, a polite, and not unreasonable request, from a busy male footslave to, it has to be said, a rather lazy female fellow-servant. It was a request which fully acknowledged the female servant’s superiority over him and profusely apologised to her in advance for any inconvenience that would be caused by compliance with the humble request.
Unfortunately for Patheticus, however, Sujatmi was not in the mood to oblige him. She adjusted her black headscarf and tutted:
‘Tch! Sujatmi busy – not want move feet! Slave go away – clean under Sujatmi sneakers later!’
Miss Awa, too, was apparently angered by the footslave’s grovelling interruption:
‘No talking, slave. Do not disturb miss Sujatmi! She is my guest in this kitchen and you will obey her or you will feel the end of my rope across your back. Get on with your work, dirty footslave, and come back to the area under the table later. ’
Miss Awa was referring to the thick, heavy rope which she kept hanging on the back of the kitchen door and, rather mischievously, used to beat the slave with. She was being mischievous because, technically speaking, only master Ramelan, the head of the household, or his wife, Madam Ramelan, could authorise the slave to be beaten – but Awa liked to have the rope to hand as it was, as far as she was concerned, the only language Patheticus understood – and even the threat of it could instil him to visibly greater efforts – as it did now: no sooner had miss Awa mentioned the dreaded rope than Patheticus inserted the mouth-brush back into his mouth and did what he was told – he scrubbed around both her and miss Sujatmi’s feet – taking care not to splash any dirty water onto their respective african and asian feet, and not to disturb his female superiors again. He did not wish to feel the wrath of miss Awa’s rope – even across his slave-tunic covered back it stung and bruised.
Miss Awa and miss Sujatmi did, eventually, deign to end their tea-break and to move away from the kitchen table – allowing Patheticus to mop up the dirt on the tiled floor which had come from the soles of miss Awa’s brown leather sandals, as well as that from miss Sujatmi’s dirty sneaker-soles, with his pathetic scrubbing-mouth.
Later still, after the two women had lunched, Sujatmi led Patheticus on his hands and knees into the nearby laundry where there was yet more work for him to do under her supervision. A pair of miss Lastri’s dirty black boot-socks which she had been wearing to work the previous day inside her shiny, black, zip-up ankle boots, were lying, somewhat forlornly, in miss Lastri’s dirty linen basket awaiting the attentions of the footslave’s mouth by way of a pre-wash.
Miss Sujatmi sat on the edge of a table from where she could closely observe the kneeling slave, again adjusting her headscarf, her pretty, sneakered feet dangling in the air, as she gave him his next orders:
‘Slave clean miss Lastri dirty socks. Suck out sweat – dead skin. First kiss socks – worship! Obey!’
It went without saying that Patheticus was expected to pay homage to miss Lastyri’s discarded boot-socks by humbly kissing them before placing them in his mouth – but Sujatmi had said it anyway.
The slave respectfully lifted the pair of dirty black, ankle-length, female socks out of the laundry basket before gently placing them on the floor and then lowering his lips to kiss them on the toes. As he did so he caught a vinegary whiff of miss Lastri’s day-old foot sweat, but, wisely, he didn’t baulk at the smell or show any signs of distaste for it – ‘that is the smell of your master’s daughter’s socks,’ he told himself, ‘and you are honoured to be given the privilege of not only smelling, but also tasting, your superior young mistress’s dirty, sweaty, black socks.’
Patheticus noticed that the young woman’s socks were, in actual fact, more grey than black with wear around the area of the toes – by far the smelliest area – as he humbly and respectfully kissed both the socks, prior to lifting one of them and inserting it, toe first, into his mouth.
It may have smelt vinegary, but it tasted salty.
Miss Sujatmi gave a wry smile as she observed the entire sock disappear into the slave’s mouth and watched him suck out of it the girl’s footsweat and little pieces of sock lint and toe jam.
For her part, the 20 year old trainee lawyer Miss Lastri, as she was standing up in court and arguing a complex point of caselaw before the presiding magistrate, was blissfully unaware that her humble footslave was at that very moment cleaning by mouth the thick, sweaty black boot-socks she had been wearing the day before inside her ankle boots. Nor did it even cross her mind that, tomorrow, he would be kissing, sniffing and sucking clean the toes of the dark, nylon stockings she was currently wearing inside her black, suede, knee-length boots. Lastri had more important things to think about – like how to get her self-evidently guilty client off on a technicality.
Patheticus spent some thirty minutes pre-washing miss Lastri’s dirty, black socks in his mouth before miss Sujatmi decided they were ready for the washing machine. She had Patheticus place them in the machine himself – for she had no desire to touch the dirty, now saliva-sodden socks with her own fingers – before ordering him to pay his attentions to the favourite pair of shiny, black, spike-heeled and pointy-toed, zip-up ankle boots miss Lastri had been wearing over those same socks the day before.
Although they were made of shiny patent leather, the boots were showing some signs of wear and tear – a slightly dislodged stitch here; an indelible scuff mark there. They were boots with which Patheticus had become very familiar over the months since he had been enslaved in the Ramelan household – and it was, seemingly, that very over-familiarity that was about to get him into trouble. For Patheticus committed the cardinal sin of a footslave – on being ordered by miss Sujatmi to lick clean the boots he momentarily forgot to first pay his respects to the right boot by kissing it, instead grabbing it rather roughly and immediately setting about lathering it with his coarse, slave tongue.
Sujatmi was outraged at his behaviour. She suddenly jumped down from the table on which she had been sitting and slapped Patheticus hard across the right cheek – sending the boot crashing back down onto the floor:
‘Slave pay respect to boot before start licking! Dirty slave! Slave not fit to lick miss Lastri boot without boot permission. Miss Lastri boot angry! Shocked! Boot want Sujatmi punish slave hard!’
Patheticus realised his error straight away, and could have kicked himself. He didn’t have to however, for, obligingly, miss Sujatmi was now kicking him in the ribs on behalf of miss Lastri’s offended boot:
‘Slave apologise miss Lastri boot! Beg boot forgiveness for slobber over boot!’
Patheticus duly retrieved the feminine boot he had so ungentlemanly manhandled, and begged its forgiveness:
‘Oh pray, miss Lastri’s boot, please forgive… this dirty footslave… for not showing you proper respect by first kissing you… and begging your permission to clean the dirt off your leather soles!’ he whimpered, periodically gasping for breath as Sujatmi continued to wind him by kicking him with her sneakered feet in the stomach and rib-cage.
The latter was enjoying herself immensely. She loved the position of absolute power she was in – of being the only one who could interpret what the boot was thinking and saying, presumably because the boot was, like her, female:
‘Miss Lastri boot say slave not forgiven! Boot want slave whipped! 12 lashes. Sujatmi get rope. Slave continue to kiss miss Lastri boot and beg boot forgiveness.’
Even in miss Sujatmi’s temporary absence Patheticus found himself begging the inanimate object’s forgiveness – begging it not to have him whipped. He had no choice. If miss Sujatmi said the boot felt violated – it did.
As Patheticus was dutifully begging her ankle boot for forgiveness, miss Lastri was celebrating her client’s totally undeserved acquittal in court. She was completely unaware that at the very moment her client had been cleared of all charges on a technicality, thanks to her complex legal arguments, back in the laundry room her shiny, black ankle boot had been sentencing Patheticus to 12 lashes with the rope.
Perhaps more to the point, even if she had known, she wouldn’t have cared. She wouldn’t care if Patheticus was suffering repeated blows across his tunic-covered back with miss Awa’s thick, heavy punishment-rope – for he was just a slave, and slaves often got whipped.
Having delivered the twelve strokes demanded by the aggrieved boot, miss Sujatmi continued with Patheticus’s humiliation:
‘Miss Lastri boot say slave woo boot; flatter boot; beg boot allow dirty slave touch it!’
So the feminine boot now wished to be wooed by the slave? Then wooed it would be!
‘Oh pray miss Lastri’s boot, most beautiful and feminine black boot, please permit this dirty boot-slave to touch your beautiful skin with his dirty fingers, and to place his lips respectfully on your exquisite and shiny black leather, if it so pleases you, mistress boot.’
Sujatmi laughed at the slave’s feeble attempts at wooing a female boot:
‘Ha! Ha! Miss Lastri boot say slave not forgiven. Boot still angry – say slave dirty pig! Boot make slave wait until tomorrow – maybe let slave touch boot and clean boot then. Slave thank miss Lastri boot for show mercy!’
And so Patheticus was obliged to thank the pointy-toed, spike-heeled, shiny black ankle boot for possibly allowing him to touch ‘her’ and lick ‘her’ clean the following day by which time ‘she’ may have calmed down. He would have to hope against hope that miss Lastri did not decide to wear that particular pair of favourite boots the following day – for she undoubtedly would then care about what had happened, and further punishment would doubtless ensue.
In the meantime, miss Sujatmi ordered Patheticus to instead kiss and lick clean the beige ugg-style boots of miss Lastri’s twin sister, miss Merpati. They, rather like their owner it has to be said, were apparently less fussy about who touched and kissed them.
As the failure Patheticus obediently kissed and licked the dirty soles of miss Merpati’s discarded uggs, the successful young fashion student who owned the boots, and who was currently wearing the leopard-print ballet flats and black ankle socks with the multi-coloured polka dots so lovingly put onto her pretty feet by Patheticus earlier that day, was charming the middle-aged, distinguished male fashion designer who was visiting her college into taking on at least one of the designs from her personal portfolio.
Meanwhile, back in the laundry room, Sujatmi had decided of her own accord, without even consulting miss Lastri’s black ankle boot, that Patheticus was deserving of further punishment for his male roughness:
‘Sujatmi go now to kitchen for evening meal. Slave not eat tonight. Not deserve eat. Ha! Ha! Slave eat only miss Merpati boot dirt and drink only miss Lastri sock-sweat!’
And with that she left him for about an hour whilst she tucked into a delicious beef curry prepared for the other servants, and the Ramelan family, by miss Awa. Patheticus’s stomach rumbled as he smelt the delicious aroma of the hot food wafting in from the nearby kitchen. But in his heart of hearts he knew that miss Sujatmi was right to deny him any food – he had not earned his, quite literal, ‘crust’ today – he had made so many unforgivable mistakes! Such ineptitude and disrespect on his part!
He desperately tried to extract a mud-encrusted stone from the tread of miss Merapi’s left ugg-style boot as a means of filling his empty stomach with something.
When she returned from the kitchen, fully satiated by her well-earned evening meal, miss Sujatmi happily informed the slave that it was time for him to stop licking miss Merpati’s ugg-boots and to get ready to go out on the streets of Jakarta as a foot-whore.
This was another daily task which Patheticus the footslave had to perform every evening. It was his way of paying back the Ramelan family for all their hospitality – by earning them some money which would help to pay for his keep i.e for his hole in the barn and his bread and water rations. He did this by tongue-shining the boots and shoes of lady pedestrians on the streets at night for a dollar a time. Sujatmi went with him – in her capacity as his ‘pimp’. Patheticus was the ‘whore’.
As it was raining outside that particular evening, Sujatmi decided she would change out of her sneakers, which often leaked and let the rain through, into her chunky-heeled, brown leather, zip-up ankle boots – or rather she decided that Patheticus would change her footwear for her.
She sat in a chair in front of him and ordered the kneeling slave to crawl over to her personal shoe-rack and fetch the brown leather boots. As she gave him her commands, she inadvertently let out a little belch, sending a waft of delicious beef curry up Patheticus’s nose. He felt even more hungry, as he carefully and respectfully first kissed, and then removed miss Sujatmi’s blue and white sneakers from her feet, kissed and straightened her dark blue sneaker socks, and then kissed and placed each of her chunky heeled brown leather boots onto her socked feet, before adjusting the bottoms of her blue denim jeans over the tops of her boots the way he knew she liked him to.
Patheticus always regretted seeing a mistress’s socks disappearing inside her boots. He much preferred to be able to see his mistress’s socks whilst she was wearing them, as it reminded him that he was the servant of her inner, as well as her outer, footwear. Perhaps he was also a bit jealous of the socks, being able to serve their mistress by absorbing her foot-sweat and keeping her feet nice and comfortable inside the privacy of her warm boots. But he consoled himself with the pathetic thought that only he and his mistress knew in such circumstances what sort of socks, if any, she was wearing on her feet.
Like anyone else would care?
Sujatmi also liked to take miss Awa’s rope with her whenever she pimped Patheticus as a ladies’ foot whore out on the streets of the city. It allowed for instant discipline should he display the slightest disrespect for any of his female ‘customers’. She therefore attached it discreetly to a belt around her waist, before grabbing a dark blue anorak with a hood which she would wear over her traditional, peasant-girl headscarf in the rain.
However, miss Sujatmi was not the only one who had to get dressed for going out. In addition to his plain, brown slave tunic, Patheticus was required to wear black leather blinkers on either side of his face – to better enable him to concentrate on the feet and footwear of the women he would be serving out on the streets without any distractions. In addition, attached to the blinkers by means of two small chains, was a wooden footblock which swung beneath his chin as he crawled along on his hands and knees – but rested conveniently on the ground whenever he lowered his head to service a lady’s foot. The lady concerned could therefore position her foot directly under his nose by resting it on the ‘portable’ wooden footblock. It was another of master Komi’s helpful inventions.
Master Komi would also be the one who would drive Sujatmi and Patheticus into the town centre - the latter kneeling in the back of the limousine at Sujatmi’s booted feet - leaving them off near the red-light district where Patheticus was required to ply his trade.
However, although he would be leaving them off in the red-light district, Komi the chauffeur had no idea that Sujatmi would, as soon as he had driven off, and as she did every night, make a slight detour on foot, with Patheticus in tow at her heels, towards a dirty squat in a nearby alleyway in the town centre.
Patheticus, however, knew exactly where Sujatmi was going. The chaste and traditional peasant girl was off to see her ‘secret’ boyfriend, master Budi, before pimping Patheticus out on the streets.
Naughty Sujatmi!