Annie wakes up after a long night, head hurting, feeling dizzy.
“Urgh… too much fun… too much alcohol.”
She forces herself out of her bed, stumbling like a toddler on her way to
the bathroom.
Sitting down she falls asleep again for a second.
Images from last night flash in front of her eyes, before she opens
her eyes again and what she sees looking down forces her to become
completely awake.
Her feet… are gone.
Thoughts start to craze through her mind as her brain tries to
explain what the eyes are seeing. Surprisingly calm she says to
herself, “This must be a dream…”
Annie brings one of her legs up for closer inspection.
Strangely fascinated and dazed she looks are her leg stump.
No signs of damage, no signs of violence, in fact, it ended in smooth skin,
making it look as if she never had feet to begin with.
Her heart starts racing… what happened last night?! How is that
even possible?! How will she explain this to anyone?! She rushes back
to her bed, almost falling over due to the new walking sensation,
grasping her phone.
“Linda? Linda! I have to come over...
Yes, now! Something… crazy happened. We need to talk.”
Linda was the host of yesterday’s party that Annie attended. They
were 4 last night… or 5? Annie lost most of her mermory of last
night.
She started to dress up ending up holding socks in her hand, “Uhm…
won’t be needing those…”
Getting her shoes to fit was a whole new ordeal, she ended up hastly trying to tape her shoes to her stumps in a way it wasn’t a dead giveaway what happened to her and
clumsily tried to get out to her car.
Being a few inches shorter, she now can’t reach the pedals and has
to move her car seat to the closest position. “Hope this will go
well.”
After almost causing a few accidents Annie manages to reach her friend Linda’s place.
“What will I tell her? How will she react? This sounds insane but… they are just gone.”
Her mind keeps on thinking in loops like that as she walks up to the door.
After knocking on the door Linda opens the door, wearing a sporty top and jogging pants like she was about to go running as she usually does, but as Annie musters her friend closer, she notices that her feet are gone as well.
“Wait… you too?”
“Yes! Isn’t it great?!”, Linda responds with a bit grin on her face, “Come in”
So Annie’s friend lost her feet too and… reacts positively?
Annie was more confused than anything about this reaction.
“Coffee?”
“Nah, not a fan, Linda.”
Linda motions for Annie to sit down at her dinner table as well.
“So uhm…the elephant in the room…”
“This is so amazing right, Annie? No worries about fitting shoes anymore, no more meaningless pedicures that noone really cares for anyway and being shorter is a
nice bonus too!” Smiling she takes a sip of her coffee.
“You...you’re joking right? Your feet are gone! My feet are
gone!”, Annie answers in disbelief.
“Well, not really. I try to see the upsides. I just wish to know
who did it, since I honestly don’t remember anything from last
night.”
“Same… at least the remembering thing. Do you remember who else
was there last night? Maybe they have an answer.”
Linda takes another sip thinking deeply, “Let me think…. You, me… Sara and
Tamara. Mandy didn’t show up… yes only us four. I haven't heard from anyone else
that something like this happened to them”
Annie gets up ready to leave, “Guess I’ll go ask them… Sorry
for crashing in like this this early.”
Linda laughs, “Don’t worry about that, it’s fine. I was about to go for a walk anyway.”
“...You really don’t have any issues with it?”
“Not really, I mean it’s very awkward to walk like this at first,
but you’ll get used to it quicker than you think.”
Annie waves Linda goodbye and heads back to her car.
She starts up her car, “How can she be so calm about this and… it
looks like she even likes it? This is kinda unsettling… I wonder
what happened to the others.”
Soon enough Annie reaches Sara’s place, this time without many hiccups
while driving her car.
A moment after ringing the doorbell Sara opens the door.
“Annie, what do you want?” Hair a mess, half asleep and only
barely holding onto the pyjama she’s wearing, she stands in the
door almost barking at her friend.
“Listen Sara, I have to talk to you for a moment…”, as Annie looks down she notices her friend’s feet are missing as well, “… well about your feet.”
“What are you talking about..? I must be dreaming, why would you come to me to talk about my feet?!”, Sara seems really annoyed at what Annie says until Annie pointed
towards and Sara followed to look down, finding her feet, just like Annies gone without a trace.
“What the hell?!”, Sara releases a scream falling back over in panic.
Pushing her friend a bit in and closing the front door behind her, Annie steps in.
“See, I didn’t want to cause any panic…”
Sara meanwhile is freaking out, “… how can this be?! Where are they gone?!”
“Calm down, it’s going to be okay, just calm down.” Annie can’t believe the words coming from her own mouth, calming down her friend after she herself freaked out about it.
A few minutes pass until Sara comes back to senses and they end up sitting in the
living room.
“...So I guess you also don’t remember anything about what happened last night?.”
Sara shakes her head, “...not really. Only that we were at Linda’s place and….
How did I even get back here like this?!”
“Sara, calm down… and what?”, Annie interrupts.
“...and I think Tam didn’t drink any alcohol last night, she
probably still remembers what happened.”
Back in her car, “Let’s hope Tamara remembers what happened last
night… This can’t be happening…”
Without much of a hassle by now Annie manages to reach Tamara’s place soon enough.
Tamara is a shy girl, it’s always almost a surprise that she even
shows up to the girls’ wild nights. Annie walks up to the door and
rings the doorbell. After a moment a few minutes Tamara opens the
door, looking kinda nervous.
“Hey, Tamara, sorry to arrive without calling in first…”
“Come in… I... kinda expected it.”
Looking at Tamara, Annie notices that she indeed is wearing shoes, but she also seems smaller than usual.
They sit down in the living room and Annie imediately speaks up.
“What happened last night? How come all our feet are gone?”
Tamara sighs deeply, with an expression of concern as well as worry
on her face.
“It might be all my fault… let me explain. The evening went as
usual, playing games, you girls drinking a lot of alcohol as usual.
Around midnight this guy… I think Alex was his name?… came over
and you girls greeted him as if he was invited so I didn’t say a
single word even though I never met him before.
We ended up playing strip poker and you know I’m terrible at poker games. Still
somehow you managed to lose first that’s when he…”
“What the hell did he do?! Tell me!”
“Well…. I don’t know where he took it from, but he suddenly put up a miniature guillotine like thing on the table and asked you to put your feet through the stocks to play another
round.”
Annie sits there completely dumbfounded.
“…if my feet weren’t indeed missing I would never believe what you’re
saying. So he just… chopped them off?”
Tamara looks to the floor as she starts speaking again.
“Yeah, it was so surreal to see and you… kinda moaning in the process and then admiring how awesome it was.”
“I did... what…?”
“Yeah, so we all kept playing and everyone of us ended up losing their feet. He said
he would give them back but he was gone suddenly.”
Annie shakes her head in disbelief.
“Why did YOU go through with it?”
--------------------
Back at his home Alex looks at last night’s yield… eight beautiful feet lined up in a row.
He quietly laughs to himself as he slowly puts them onto the shelf to the others.