Relent<
1st Level Yellow Feather
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The Holiday Gamble (F/f, feet, all over- Happy Hanukkah!)
Bah! Late as usual. However, as promised, a story with pictures.
*****
Dec 19, Approx 0630 hrs
Aileen crept quietly down the stairs as she pulled her forest-green work shirt over her head; the rent was late again. If she’d only waited for her Christmas bonus before spending all that money on gifts and personal items…but they were nonrefundable, since they’d been on sale. Besides, her gifts had already been sent to France for Lady Marjane, and Bahbi. It was too late to go back on that, but no matter. To make matters worse, due to the stringent economic conditions, she had not only received a dock in her pay, but would not be receiving a bonus this year at all. So she’d accidentally spent all of her rent money.
All she had to do was sneak out unseen, and the ritualistic horrors between her and Mrs. Muffette could be avoided, at least for the 7 hours or so she was at work. There was a creak, a slowly moving shadow that made Aye lurch. In the parlor, near a window facing the west and the faint light of the sleepy sun, Muffette was rolling out some sort of padded mat. Aileen swallowed hard; she’d been tortured on it before, though the mat had proven little comfort given her “circumstances” then. There was also beside her a large, purple medicine ball. Aye stooped to look beneath the banister, peeking between the rails. Muffette appeared to be doing some sort of morning exercises. Yoga?
Aye had never been up this early, so she had no idea that this was a normal part of Muffette’s morning routine: brush teeth, use toilet, do yoga, eat breakfast. Aye had usually run by her eating breakfast, late to work due to her oversleeping, but not today. Muffette would see her for sure, and knowing she had the time to speak with her about the overdue rent, she’d start arranging Aileen’s funeral at the hands of her wicked little spiders, if not her own.
She couldn’t help, however, noticing the Mrs’ darling little crew-length socks as she lay on her stomach, with her back straight and her arms pressed firmly into the mat. Her toes pointed perfectly backward, like an Olympic swimmer, or a gymnast. Aileen moved closer to the doorway, watching as Muffette thrust her body upward, then reclined onto her chest, to pull her ankles toward her shoulders, though keeping her thighs against the mat and only raising her knees slightly. “I don’t imagine she’s still very flexible” Aye thought to herself with a bit of a smile, as Muffette’s toes curled inside her socks, pointing a little to the left of her due-direction. “Limited range of mobility…” she began to ponder.
Muffette sat up on her knees to drink some water, before tossing the bottle aside and laying on her hands in a most peculiar way; it was the kind of posture one would assume before attempting a handstand. Her fingers were pointed inward toward her breast with her thumbs outward and her palms flat on the mat, and her elbows opening to the front of her. Her hips were just a little higher than the mat, and the drawstring of her sweat pants lay between her slightly parted legs. Aye fidgeted her toes betwixt one another as she considered what she was about to do. “If I can goad her into a fight--an innocent plaything--I can set her mind on revenge, rather than money. If there’s one thing that can distract her from my rent, its torturing the day-lights out of me…” so she took action.
Faster than Muffette heard her coming, Aileen had snatched up the drawstrings of her sweatpants and pulled them tightly backward until they almost reached her knees. Muffette, in her surprise, faltered from her poised position and fell to her chest on the mat, her legs bending in response to the fling of her upper body. Maneuvering the drawstring between Muffette’s upper thighs and ankles, she managed to ensnare her in a sort of hogtie, with her toes pointed toward the back of her head. She was careful to keep her limbs out of reach of Muffette’s grasp, and proceeded to tickle the soles of her feet.
“Aye, what the hell??” Muffette gasped, a bit overwhelmed by the speed at which this had all occurred, though not out of her sorts. Her toes wiggled in irritation.
“Crap, I hadn’t counted on her not being ticklish!” Aye thought to herself, as a worried tremor shivered through her fingers. Then, as if accidentally, her hands shifted from Muffete’s arches to the tops of her feet, tickling each foot right beneath the first bend of each big toe. Muffette screamed, kicking her legs back and jerking her drawstring tighter about her waist. She’d found it!
Muffette’s feet weren’t ticklish on the bottoms; however the tops were another matter. Aileen quickly found her bearings, and alternated between the crest of her feet and the clefts of her toes, wriggling her strangely methodical fingers over Muffette’s kicking socked feet. For about half an hour, screams and shrill giggles filled the house, and possibly the street outside, but no one seemed concerned; such noises had become well affiliated with that area, though it had almost NEVER been Muffette’s voice expressing such horror.
Finally, Aileen relented; standing and straightening her long-hemmed sweater, she gathered her shoes at the door and proceeded to work with a deep sense of criminal mastery. Muffette undid her ankles in due time, after catching her breath and regaining her composure. This hadn’t been quite the aerobic exercise she had planned for that morning…..
***************************
As Aye walked home that evening, she couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of dread pooling coldly in the bottom of her stomach; she’d dissuaded the debt collection for now, but she’d only made it inevitably more horrific. She stopped near a gift store and decided to find something to apologize with, though knowing she didn’t have a lot of money it seemed a hollow gesture. Near the holiday cards, she saw one with that “funny-looking seven-legged candlestick” on the front that read “Happy Hanukkah”.
“Muffette is jewish!” she remembered. She asked the store owner if Hanukah was still going, and he said that it was the last night, and that the cards were on sale, as well as some wooden dreidels.” Aileen bought the card and the dreidels and began formulating her excuse as she finished the last leg of her homeward trek.
Muffette had not gotten in long before, and had just removed her heels to put on some comfortable socks when Aileen reopened the door behind her.
“Happy Hanukah!” Aye said merrily, presenting the card to Muffette with both hands, though she had the bag of wooden dreidels handing from her rear belt-loop as a surprise.
Muffette smiled and accepted the card, opening it to see Aileen had drawn her a little rabbi and signed her name. She seemed to have completely disregarded this morning’s incident.
“Well, thank you Aye; this is very sweet.”
“I thought you needed some seasonal cheering up, so I ambushed you this morning to make sure you stayed in a good mood while I got these for you.”
“These?”
“Oh, right.” she untangled the cord at the mouth of the cloth pouch from her belt loop and handed it to Muffette. She held them in her hand a moment before opening the sack.
“Aw, little dreidels…” she said almost reminiscently. She dumped one out into her hand and examined the four faces, each one blank.
“These are the kind you paint yourself! I didn’t think they sold them like this anymore.”
“Oh..uh…well I guess we should paint them.” Aye said with even more exuberant cheerfulness. She’d succeeded in saving her ass.
“Sure.” Muffette said with a docile expression. “I’ll show you how. Go wait in the living room, I’ll get some ink out of my desk.”
Aye took the bag into the living room, and saw that the TV had been taken off of the little knee high chest of drawers and replaced with a puter candlestick-thingy, and adorned with several photos and a long white and blue shawl. She kneeled in front of it and looked at each of the photos. There was a family of boys and a little girl on the eldest one’s knee. The boys all grinned and flexed their arms while the girl stared pensively into the camera. It didn’t take her long to see that it was a young Muffette.
Muffette entered the room holding a brush and a small inkpot, and painted a symbol on each face of the dreidel she had kept in her hand. Blowing on it carefully, she held it by its stem and showed each symbol to Aileen.
“Shin” she said in a scholarly manner, indicating the symbol that resembled a crooked “W”. “Its short for ‘shetl’ or ‘coin’. It means you put one coin in.”
“Coin?”
“Oh, yes; dreidels is a gambling game.”
“I see..” the cold, sinking feeling returned to line Aileen’s stomach.
“This” she said turning it carefully to the symbol resembling “pi” , “is hey, short for ‘halb’ or ‘half’. It means you take half the pot.”
Aye nodded, and positioned her feet tightly under her thighs.
“The next is Gimmel, the ‘gantz’ or ‘whole’ symbol. It means you take the entire pot.” she indicated the symbol that looked like a key.
“The last one is Nun, which means you take nothing.” she concluded so curtly that it made Aye instantly uneasy.
“So…why don’t we start painting?” she said with a shy laugh, reaching blindly for the pouch.
“Oh you only need one to play.”
“Play…?” Aileen couldn’t stifle the subtle tremor in her voice.
“Why would you paint a dreidel unless you were going to spin it?” Muffette said in an uncharacteristically good-natured way. “Oh, it’ll be fun. What shall we wager?”
Aye knew better than to propose anything; Muffette was a gambler by trade, though a landlady by vocation. The fact that she proposed a wager in the first place indicated that she had something specific in mind.
“Why not rent?” she said with a blatantly feigned epiphany. Aileen cringed.
“Oh, don’t you worry about putting up any actual money; we’ll play it like this: we’ll take turns spinning, and betting, and so on, and when my debt to you equals your debt to me, we’ll call it even?”
It sounded fair enough. Aileen nodded, knowing she didn’t have much choice.
“The only condition is that I keep the score; you barely know the symbols, let alone how to add them. But here,” she opened one of the drawers under the altar and retrieved two solar calculators. “This is where we’ll keep track of the money.”
She punched in Aileen’s preposterous sum into one, and her own opening wager into the other.
“Hm…but we will need something to keep track of the symbols rolled with…” she still held the inked brush in her left hand, tapping the unbristled end against her chin as if trying to think.
Only moments after the proposal, Aye had found herself helplessly bound…AGAIN…stuck in another of Muffette’s twisted games…AGAIN.
4 Hours after the game had begun, her due sum was still nowhere near equal to Muffette’s, who seemed to know just how to spin the little “jewish-dice” to land on “gimmel” almost 70% of the time. Her sum only seemed to increase, but Muffette was a woman of her word, and promised Aileen that neither of them would quit until they’re sums were equal.
Aye really doesn’t want to play anymore…
The End
Bah! Late as usual. However, as promised, a story with pictures.
*****
Dec 19, Approx 0630 hrs
Aileen crept quietly down the stairs as she pulled her forest-green work shirt over her head; the rent was late again. If she’d only waited for her Christmas bonus before spending all that money on gifts and personal items…but they were nonrefundable, since they’d been on sale. Besides, her gifts had already been sent to France for Lady Marjane, and Bahbi. It was too late to go back on that, but no matter. To make matters worse, due to the stringent economic conditions, she had not only received a dock in her pay, but would not be receiving a bonus this year at all. So she’d accidentally spent all of her rent money.
All she had to do was sneak out unseen, and the ritualistic horrors between her and Mrs. Muffette could be avoided, at least for the 7 hours or so she was at work. There was a creak, a slowly moving shadow that made Aye lurch. In the parlor, near a window facing the west and the faint light of the sleepy sun, Muffette was rolling out some sort of padded mat. Aileen swallowed hard; she’d been tortured on it before, though the mat had proven little comfort given her “circumstances” then. There was also beside her a large, purple medicine ball. Aye stooped to look beneath the banister, peeking between the rails. Muffette appeared to be doing some sort of morning exercises. Yoga?
Aye had never been up this early, so she had no idea that this was a normal part of Muffette’s morning routine: brush teeth, use toilet, do yoga, eat breakfast. Aye had usually run by her eating breakfast, late to work due to her oversleeping, but not today. Muffette would see her for sure, and knowing she had the time to speak with her about the overdue rent, she’d start arranging Aileen’s funeral at the hands of her wicked little spiders, if not her own.
She couldn’t help, however, noticing the Mrs’ darling little crew-length socks as she lay on her stomach, with her back straight and her arms pressed firmly into the mat. Her toes pointed perfectly backward, like an Olympic swimmer, or a gymnast. Aileen moved closer to the doorway, watching as Muffette thrust her body upward, then reclined onto her chest, to pull her ankles toward her shoulders, though keeping her thighs against the mat and only raising her knees slightly. “I don’t imagine she’s still very flexible” Aye thought to herself with a bit of a smile, as Muffette’s toes curled inside her socks, pointing a little to the left of her due-direction. “Limited range of mobility…” she began to ponder.
Muffette sat up on her knees to drink some water, before tossing the bottle aside and laying on her hands in a most peculiar way; it was the kind of posture one would assume before attempting a handstand. Her fingers were pointed inward toward her breast with her thumbs outward and her palms flat on the mat, and her elbows opening to the front of her. Her hips were just a little higher than the mat, and the drawstring of her sweat pants lay between her slightly parted legs. Aye fidgeted her toes betwixt one another as she considered what she was about to do. “If I can goad her into a fight--an innocent plaything--I can set her mind on revenge, rather than money. If there’s one thing that can distract her from my rent, its torturing the day-lights out of me…” so she took action.
Faster than Muffette heard her coming, Aileen had snatched up the drawstrings of her sweatpants and pulled them tightly backward until they almost reached her knees. Muffette, in her surprise, faltered from her poised position and fell to her chest on the mat, her legs bending in response to the fling of her upper body. Maneuvering the drawstring between Muffette’s upper thighs and ankles, she managed to ensnare her in a sort of hogtie, with her toes pointed toward the back of her head. She was careful to keep her limbs out of reach of Muffette’s grasp, and proceeded to tickle the soles of her feet.
“Aye, what the hell??” Muffette gasped, a bit overwhelmed by the speed at which this had all occurred, though not out of her sorts. Her toes wiggled in irritation.
“Crap, I hadn’t counted on her not being ticklish!” Aye thought to herself, as a worried tremor shivered through her fingers. Then, as if accidentally, her hands shifted from Muffete’s arches to the tops of her feet, tickling each foot right beneath the first bend of each big toe. Muffette screamed, kicking her legs back and jerking her drawstring tighter about her waist. She’d found it!
Muffette’s feet weren’t ticklish on the bottoms; however the tops were another matter. Aileen quickly found her bearings, and alternated between the crest of her feet and the clefts of her toes, wriggling her strangely methodical fingers over Muffette’s kicking socked feet. For about half an hour, screams and shrill giggles filled the house, and possibly the street outside, but no one seemed concerned; such noises had become well affiliated with that area, though it had almost NEVER been Muffette’s voice expressing such horror.
Finally, Aileen relented; standing and straightening her long-hemmed sweater, she gathered her shoes at the door and proceeded to work with a deep sense of criminal mastery. Muffette undid her ankles in due time, after catching her breath and regaining her composure. This hadn’t been quite the aerobic exercise she had planned for that morning…..
***************************
As Aye walked home that evening, she couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of dread pooling coldly in the bottom of her stomach; she’d dissuaded the debt collection for now, but she’d only made it inevitably more horrific. She stopped near a gift store and decided to find something to apologize with, though knowing she didn’t have a lot of money it seemed a hollow gesture. Near the holiday cards, she saw one with that “funny-looking seven-legged candlestick” on the front that read “Happy Hanukkah”.
“Muffette is jewish!” she remembered. She asked the store owner if Hanukah was still going, and he said that it was the last night, and that the cards were on sale, as well as some wooden dreidels.” Aileen bought the card and the dreidels and began formulating her excuse as she finished the last leg of her homeward trek.
Muffette had not gotten in long before, and had just removed her heels to put on some comfortable socks when Aileen reopened the door behind her.
“Happy Hanukah!” Aye said merrily, presenting the card to Muffette with both hands, though she had the bag of wooden dreidels handing from her rear belt-loop as a surprise.
Muffette smiled and accepted the card, opening it to see Aileen had drawn her a little rabbi and signed her name. She seemed to have completely disregarded this morning’s incident.
“Well, thank you Aye; this is very sweet.”
“I thought you needed some seasonal cheering up, so I ambushed you this morning to make sure you stayed in a good mood while I got these for you.”
“These?”
“Oh, right.” she untangled the cord at the mouth of the cloth pouch from her belt loop and handed it to Muffette. She held them in her hand a moment before opening the sack.
“Aw, little dreidels…” she said almost reminiscently. She dumped one out into her hand and examined the four faces, each one blank.
“These are the kind you paint yourself! I didn’t think they sold them like this anymore.”
“Oh..uh…well I guess we should paint them.” Aye said with even more exuberant cheerfulness. She’d succeeded in saving her ass.
“Sure.” Muffette said with a docile expression. “I’ll show you how. Go wait in the living room, I’ll get some ink out of my desk.”
Aye took the bag into the living room, and saw that the TV had been taken off of the little knee high chest of drawers and replaced with a puter candlestick-thingy, and adorned with several photos and a long white and blue shawl. She kneeled in front of it and looked at each of the photos. There was a family of boys and a little girl on the eldest one’s knee. The boys all grinned and flexed their arms while the girl stared pensively into the camera. It didn’t take her long to see that it was a young Muffette.
Muffette entered the room holding a brush and a small inkpot, and painted a symbol on each face of the dreidel she had kept in her hand. Blowing on it carefully, she held it by its stem and showed each symbol to Aileen.
“Shin” she said in a scholarly manner, indicating the symbol that resembled a crooked “W”. “Its short for ‘shetl’ or ‘coin’. It means you put one coin in.”
“Coin?”
“Oh, yes; dreidels is a gambling game.”
“I see..” the cold, sinking feeling returned to line Aileen’s stomach.
“This” she said turning it carefully to the symbol resembling “pi” , “is hey, short for ‘halb’ or ‘half’. It means you take half the pot.”
Aye nodded, and positioned her feet tightly under her thighs.
“The next is Gimmel, the ‘gantz’ or ‘whole’ symbol. It means you take the entire pot.” she indicated the symbol that looked like a key.
“The last one is Nun, which means you take nothing.” she concluded so curtly that it made Aye instantly uneasy.
“So…why don’t we start painting?” she said with a shy laugh, reaching blindly for the pouch.
“Oh you only need one to play.”
“Play…?” Aileen couldn’t stifle the subtle tremor in her voice.
“Why would you paint a dreidel unless you were going to spin it?” Muffette said in an uncharacteristically good-natured way. “Oh, it’ll be fun. What shall we wager?”
Aye knew better than to propose anything; Muffette was a gambler by trade, though a landlady by vocation. The fact that she proposed a wager in the first place indicated that she had something specific in mind.
“Why not rent?” she said with a blatantly feigned epiphany. Aileen cringed.
“Oh, don’t you worry about putting up any actual money; we’ll play it like this: we’ll take turns spinning, and betting, and so on, and when my debt to you equals your debt to me, we’ll call it even?”
It sounded fair enough. Aileen nodded, knowing she didn’t have much choice.
“The only condition is that I keep the score; you barely know the symbols, let alone how to add them. But here,” she opened one of the drawers under the altar and retrieved two solar calculators. “This is where we’ll keep track of the money.”
She punched in Aileen’s preposterous sum into one, and her own opening wager into the other.
“Hm…but we will need something to keep track of the symbols rolled with…” she still held the inked brush in her left hand, tapping the unbristled end against her chin as if trying to think.
Only moments after the proposal, Aye had found herself helplessly bound…AGAIN…stuck in another of Muffette’s twisted games…AGAIN.
4 Hours after the game had begun, her due sum was still nowhere near equal to Muffette’s, who seemed to know just how to spin the little “jewish-dice” to land on “gimmel” almost 70% of the time. Her sum only seemed to increase, but Muffette was a woman of her word, and promised Aileen that neither of them would quit until they’re sums were equal.
Aye really doesn’t want to play anymore…
The End
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![P[a]pi](/data/avatars/m/45/45669.jpg?1704922715){kind=avatar}
