Quinn, a 25 year old writer.

The rhythmic tapping of keys echoed throughout the tiny Maddington apartment. Quinn ran a hand through her shoulder length brown hair as she reclined; the battered faux-leather desk chair cried in protest. A quick glance at her phone informed her it was nearing four o’clock, and the darkness pressing against her windows told her it wasn’t in the afternoon.

It wasn’t as if she had a schedule to adhere to. Rather, she simply wrote whenever the urge struck, promising vague deadlines at best and often delaying by several days. Her clients never seemed to mind too much though, probably preoccupied with other things. Nevertheless, Quinn could feel the exhaustion slowly encroaching as she took one last glance over the screen, a final vetting of today’s work. «Ctrl + S». Her fingers tactfully executed the familiar command, once to save her work and once more just for good measure. A firm button press, a quiet jingle, and click of her laptop lid later, her workday was over.

Quinn wrote erotic fiction for a living. Her online moniker «LadyLascivious» was well known on sites such as DeviantArt and Literotica in addition to a couple more niche forums. She’d get numerous weekly commissions from anonymous users looking to read their fantasies come to life in black and white. Quinn made it a rule never to judge her clients; after all, were it not for them and their unique inclinations, she wouldn’t have a job. Plus, she enjoyed a certain thrill from knowingly satisfying someone’s carnal urges without ever needing to know their name or gender. There was only one ironclad rule that her clientele had come to learn: no foot fetish.

Quinn had nothing against foot fetishists or people who enjoy feet. The appendages themselves were the problem; feet in general made here grossly uncomfortable. She could barely stand the sight of them on herself, despite having some objectively nice feet. Her pale skinned size 6’s bore light pink soles, high arches, and slender toes. But even in mid-July, whilst wearing no bra and a see-through blouse on top and only black laced panties down below, her feet remained firmly locked behind socks and slippers. The fact that they tended to sweat a lot, exposed or not, did little to assuage her aversion. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t herself to write a foot-oriented story in any satisfying capacity.

Every step on the short trek from her desk to her bedroom caused her feet to squish in their sweat soaked prisons. Quinn shuttered thinking about the unsightly task ahead. When she finally sat down on her bed, she took a few deep breaths before holding the last one in. She quickly but carefully freed her left foot from her slipper, lifting it onto her right knee, making sure not to let her damp socks contact her leg. Sliding the tiniest tip of her fingernail between her skin and the fabric, she peeled off the foul garment as fast as possible, trying her best to resist an urge to gag.

While turning towards her drawers to retrieve a fresh pair of socks, as sleeping with bare feet would be a living nightmare, Quinn glimpsed her newly freed toes wiggling. She figured it was probably just a flinched from how revolting this whole process was. Not wanting to waste any more time or oxygen, she went to slip the untainted pink sock over her foot. The usually simple process proved frustratingly difficult tonight. She had trouble angling her foot towards the mouth of the sock, and it took some muscling to jam it all the way in. However, her burning nose and lungs gave little time to dwell on the strangeness, so she quickly swapped to the right foot and repeated the process.

This time the trouble started with removing the sock. Her foot, as if undergoing a painless cramp, scrunched and refused to relax. As a result, the fabric kept catching on her toes. Since time and her small lung capacity were both working against her, Quinn reluctantly gripped the sweaty sock in her hand and sharply tugged it free. She desperately wiped the resulting moisture off her palm with the fresh sock before slipping it on, thankfully with little resistance this time. After tossing the soiled pair in her lidded hamper, she threw open her bedroom window and drew in a sorely needed breath of fresh air.

The whole ordeal took less than two minutes but they were two minutes Quinn dreaded every night, yet tonight was somehow different. Despite loathing the process of changing her sweat soiled socks, she had never had so much trouble with it. As the last remnants of the smell dissipated from her room, she stretched her feet to confirm everything felt normal again and chalked the ordeal up to exhaustion.

The rest of the night was comparatively mundane. She fixed herself a small cup of hot chocolate, added a dash of Hennessy from the flask on her nightstand, and got under covers ready to read some stories on CHYOA.com. Quinn wasn’t browsing the stories to get off, although she definitely did that on occasion, she usually just enjoyed them as light nighttime reading. As a writer herself, she could appreciate the work of her fellow authors and sometimes even drew a little inspiration from particularly intriguing ideas. Just as she was enjoying a well-written but outlandish story about breasts coming to life, she heard something clatter between her bed frame and wall.

Shit. Must have been my earbuds.

She sighed and rolled over towards the wall before trying to maneuver her hand down the tight opening. Quinn was too preoccupied trying to feel for the earbuds to notice that her left foot, somehow bare again, had slipped out of her covers. The rustling of sheets as she blindly felt around distracted her from the tiny splash from her nightstand or the clink of her flask being set back down. After a couple minutes of struggling, Quinn gave an exasperated huff before rescinding her arm.

Forget it. Tonight just isn’t my night. I’ll find them tomorrow.

A quick swig emptied the last third of her drink and less than ten minutes later, she was out cold. Unbeknownst to her however, the night was far from over.