The Thrill of Defeat

Chapter Seven: A Slave By Any Other Name

With a sense of unmitigated dread, I make my way down the garden, and towards the entrance, of Alia's mansion. And not as a guest, this time.

I climb the stairs to the front door, feeling like a passenger in my own head. I can barely believe I'm about to do this, to consign my entire life into the hands of the two sisters. But I know that trying to change course would be futile, and I don't even try.

I really am being broken down, if I can't even muster any kind of resistance when I am alone. I can't even look behind me, to throw one last glance at the outside world, before I step into the maw of servitude to this spoiled, rich household.

With a defeated sigh, I ring the doorbell, and then descend to my knees.

Absurdly, I think that Alia and Anbar both hate having to get up to answer the door. They will never have to suffer the annoyance henceforth, I suppose. They'll have me, living under their roof, scurrying to obey them.

The seconds stretch into minutes. My knees have gotten used to kneeling for long periods of time, but the marble beneath me is hard and cold, and in my revealing slutty maid outfit, every gust of wind sends shivers down my spine. So it's almost a relief when, at last, the door opens.

Goddess Anbar and Queen Alia stand at the threshold, contemplating me like I'm literal dirt under their shoes. Anbar is in her PJs and slippers, while Alia is in comfy yoga pants she would only wear around the house. I can smell her naked, sweaty feet from here, and the heady aroma immediately sends me even further into subspace.

But what really kills me is the absolute lack of surprise in their eyes. They took it absolutely for granted that I would show up here to become their maid on a 24/7 basis.

And to be honest, were they wrong?

Silently, I shuffle forward on my knees, ready to begin the ritual. We usually do this upon coming inside, but I know I need to earnaccess to the house where I'm meant to serve them.

Incredible. I'm the one being enslaved, yet I have to earnthat. Like it's a privilege. It drives a confused spike of outrage, humiliation, and... mild arousal... through me.

I lean forward, towards Alia's sweaty, naked feet, and pay my dues to the former friend who has so thoroughly asserted her superiority over me. I place soft, humble kisses on the tip of each toe -- much different from the slutty tongue bathing, deepthroating, and toejam eating I will have to perform later, I'm sure. This gesture is more worshipful than anything else.

I move along the length of the arch, kissing as I go, letting the sweat stain my lips, and the scent bind my will to hers. Politely, Alia lifts her feet one at a time, so I can rain demure kisses all over the bottom. The sweat is worse here, and I feel less and less a human as the smell violates my nostrils and seems to make a beeline straight for my brain.

Wordlessly, I move to Anbar. I rub my cheeks against her slippers like a cat or any kind of affectionate pet, then sneak my lips beneath the hem of her PJ trousers, just so I can rain tiny kisses all over her ankle.

Once again, it kills me to realize a part of me really appreciates these moments. I'm not being abused, or insulted. My life isn't being destroyed. This is the one instance of somewhat affectionate physical contact I have with any human being these days. Feet aren't so bad, really, especially next to everything else the sisters keep doing to me.

But it does make me feel like I'm being reduced, cut down to size under the onslaught of these two girls' inexorable superiority. I'm starting to think of myself as Zainab the maid, Zainab the foot girl, Zainab the dumb maidservant who's only good enough to do the bidding of her betters.

Alia and Anbar are young women. Me, I'm just a girl. A dumb peasant girl.

"Alright, I'm getting bored," Alia says, effortlessly killing the atmosphere with a quip and a giggle. "Let's get it on, we have so much we need to discuss!"

"Right behind ya, sis," Anbar says, before actually walking past Alia and disappearing down the hallway. Alia arches an eyebrow in my direction.

"As a maid, you're supposed to keep my floor clean," she says, looking meaningfully towards her sweaty feet. "I forgot my slippers, and I'll be leaving footprints all over this floor. We don't want that, do we?"

I gulp, buckling under the realization -- but not hesitating to obey. The latest intake of foot scent has blasted away all residual free will I might have had this morning. "Yes, Your Majesty," I whisper, bracing myself for this new humiliation.

"See, you're not so stupid after all when you listen to me," Alia says with a giggle. Then, she turns her back to me, walking towards the hallway, and the stairs behind.

I crawl in Alia's wake. And, at every one of her steps, I bend forward, and wash her sweaty footprints off the floor. With my tongue.

A part of my mind, the residual part from the studious and nerdy girl I used to be, remembers the strong connections between smell and taste. As I obediently lap Alia's sweat off the floor, I feel more and more domesticated. It takes this little to drug me, just a few drops of foot sweat on the floor.

Can I really blame Alia for deciding to subjugate me? What would I do, if I had a friend who went completely stupid when exposed to my foot scent? My traitorous brain keeps bombarding me with these thoughts and feelings as I lick.

That a girl who truly loses her intelligence and her spine over feet kinda deserves to be beneath other girls. It's her rightful place in life.

I'm so stupid. I'm a loser. I truly am so easily led. It was silly of me to think myself as Alia's equal. I deserve to be her maid.

Before I know it, we're at the far end of the hallway, and entering Anbar's room, the foot scent fortress of this house. I think it's truly overkill this time -- I've never felt this utterly docile -- but I'm not about to tell the sisters what to do.

I kneel in my usual corner, rocking gently back and forth on my knees as the foot daze descends on me, sapping me of all higher intellect. Anbar sits down in her gaming chair, and Alia carefully sidesteps the empty energy drink cans and strewn socks on the floor, to carefully sit on the edge of Anbar's bed.

"Crawl to us," Anbar says to me, in her usual cruel tone. "Beg to kiss our feet. Treat us like fucking goddesses."

"Yes, Goddess," I whisper breathlessly, and I adhere to the floor with my entire body, inching my way closer to the sisters like I'm a worm. Alia laughs out loud, finding this incredibly amusing, but Anbar simply looks on with a stern expression. She's so scary at times.

"That's it," she says. "Bow the fuck down to us, maggot. You were so haughty before, look at you now. Beg for the gift of our feet. Beg us to drive you stupid, to take everything away from you."

I whimper in fear at the violence behind Anbar's words, and a part of me wonders in terror what's going to happen to me by living under their roof -- but the foot fog has me in its claws, and so I immediately obey.

"Please, Goddess, please, Your Majesty. Destroy my brain cells with the smell of your feet. Deconstruct my life piece by piece for your entertainment. You get to say how I live, not I. Demolish everything I cherish. Make me into something less than a person. Please let me drool all of my IQ over your feet as I lick them!"

My words astonish even me. I realize of course that on some level, they're just an example of perfect obedience. Anbar supplied all the clues of what she wanted to hear, and my enthralled mind did the rest.

But the sisters find it hilarious. Even Anbar can't contain herself this time. They're both bent over, crying in laughter, while I open and close my mouth in absolute horror at everything I've just said... and at the unmistakable arousal now building within me.

Oh no...

"I think she's earned a foot session with that," Alia says, wiping the tears from her eyes as her laughter subsides. "What do you say?"

"Definitely," Anbar says. Both sisters extend a leg in my direction, their naked feet on the floor, mere inches apart from one another.

"Bitch," Anbar says, and I hate how I immediately perk up, responding to "my" name by instinct. "Feast on these feet while we spell out the rules of your employment here."

I lunge forward with a mechanical imitation of enthusiasm, which I definitely don't feel -- my arousal notwithstanding. I throw myself at their feet like I'm famished, lapping at them with my tongue like an eager dog.

I stick my face in between them, getting crushed by a foot sandwich that makes me feel dumber than a brick. I lick at the sweaty bottoms of Alia's feet like an eager dog. I take Anbar's toes into my mouth like a wanton slut.

I'm so far gone into the foot fog that I listen passively, as they outline a series of rules so dehumanising that the old me would have judged them to be completely criminal.

"First of all," Alia says, "we've gotten you many more maid outfits, just like this one! You should never wear anything else, only real people deserve real clothes. That's the treatment you've asked for, isn't it? Haha!"

"Yes, Your Majesty," I say under my breath as I scoop up every bit of Alia's toejam into my mouth. Real clothes are for real people, and I'm not a person. I'm Alia's foot basin.

"You'll have to give up your bank account," Anbar says, drying the sweat off her feet onto my matted hair. "You're not responsible with your money, we saw that with your gift to Yasmin. Our roof, our rules, and we'll take care of your money from now on. Nothing for your dull peanut brain to worry about."

That does make me wince. My heartbeat accelerates rapidly as a bout of anxiety washes over me. We have so little money, and I've been saving for years, and I might need it after college, and they were the ones who forced me to buy the shoes for Yasmin, and...

Incredibly, words do come to me this time. Such an absolute and devastating level of financial domination scares me down to my core. They're saying I'm too stupid to run my own bank account, and they might be right... But...

I'll never have a chance at regaining an independent life if they run my finances. I'll be fully dependent on the sisters forever. I'll spend the rest of my life as their pet.

And isn't that what I deserve?

But I've worked so hard, and I've always wanted a real job, and so I find myself whimpering and pleading.

"Please, Your Majesty," I say, addressing Alia in between laps of her foot with my tongue. "Please no, don't take away my bank account, that's, that's..."

"What?" Alia asks, cutting me off. "Serfdom? Modern slavery? How else would you call everything you've been doing for the past few weeks?"

I open and close my mouth, unable to come up with a rejoinder, because she's right. And this is when the sheer magnitude of the truth actually hits me. Slavery is a concept to most of us, because it's rare in the developed world. But it does exist. And I'm in it now.

I'm a slave.

Not a sex slave, or a kinky slave, because this isn't a game -- I'm a real slave, someone who's lost their freedom and become property of another human being. Somehow, the thought of this being real makes my heart race like crazy.

It isn't a game. It has real consequences. It's real, modern-day slavery.

I stupidly turn towards Anbar, as if I could ever possibly find any relief from that quarter. She has even less patience for my independence than Alia does.

My attempt to voice an objection is swiftly silenced by Anbar's foot, plugging my mouth like a pacifier. Despairing, I suck demurely, hollowing my cheeks around her toes.

"God I love shutting you up like that," Anbar says, with a lustful edge to her voice. "Take it, slave. That's what you are. We play for keeps, you should know that. We'll never let you go. You don't deserve to be free."

"Mmmpphhh," I moan as I take as much of her foot down my mouth as I possibly can.

"We're not completely heartless," Alia says, caressing my hair with her foot, while Anbar facefucks me into serfdom. "We'll give you some study time each night."

"But you have to use it properly," Anbar interjects. "You have to write down all your rules every night, and explain why they matter, why they're right, and why you deserve to have them imposed on you."

I close my eyes, fighting to hold back the tears. Graduation isn't that far away. All these years of toil and struggle were about to see coronation. How will I finish my college career now? They won't even leave me a few hours to myself each day to study! Worse than that, they'll make a mockery of it, by having me use my study time for this!

But I suppose slaves don't get to choose how their time is used, much less their education. And, as my foot-dazed brain and my lubricating cunt keep reminding me, I've been reduced into slavery. God, even the words sound hot -- reduced into slavery. It's the verbal equivalent of someone planting their feet in your face and pressing it down against the ground until you stop struggling.

Turning your cheeks into their doormat.

"Besides," Alia says, "we're generous enough to let you live here. The least you can do is write a nice essay about it every day, and let us own all your money."

All my money is less than the allowance Anbar used to get for a summer holiday when we were fifteen years old. But I suppose the amount isn't the point. It's proving that they can take it, because I'm property, and there is no limit that they will respect.

And it's hard to argue with that, while I'm slobbering all over their feet.

"You'll have to earn your keep working as a maid," Anbar says, pushing her foot deeper, until her toes are tickling the entrance to my throat. Alia's foot is now pressing against the back of my neck, regulating my pace as I suck. "And of course, you'll do so to our specifications."

I try to look up at Anbar in puzzlement, but my eyes roll at the back of my skull as her foot plunges even deeper into my mouth.

"Cleaning duties must be done the old-fashioned way, with no appliances," Anbar says. "On all fours scrubbing floors and toilets the old fashioned way, picking up crumbs, dust and sock lint from the carpet with bare fingers..."

"Much like actual medieval peasants," Alia says with a giggle. I make no effort to hold back the tears now. I will be physically exhausted at the end of every working day. Bar that, I will be destroyed. And I won't get paid for it either -- in a way, I'll be the one paying them for the privilege, by handing over their bank account.

This truly is my unconditional surrender. My physical, emotional, and mental defeat. The irreversible end to anything resembling a normal life.

Anbar's foot withdraws from my throat and mouth with a plop. I draw breath, wheezing and coughing, wiping the tears from my eyes. But Alia grabs me by the hair like it's a leash, pulling harshly.

I whimper in pain as she forces me to look at her. God, she's beautiful. The molten gold in her eyes fills me with a kind of quasi-religious awe at this point. Intellectually, I almost admire the extent to which this girl has broken me down to something less valuable, less fierce, and less worthy than a person.

"There will be more rules to follow," she says, with an evil glint in her eye. "But we've left the juiciest ones for tomorrow, so you get a whole day to just be yourself... that is, a maid! Haha!"

"Wouldn't want to overload your poor brain," Anbar says, scrubbing the top of my scalp with the palm of her hand like I'm a dog that's just learned to play fetch.

Humiliatingly, I lean into the touch, but I also whimper in sheer terror.

They've taken my right to a bank account, my time, and my physical energy. I spend more time slobbering all over their feet than I do anything else in life.

What else could they possibly do to me?

"Alright," Alia says, clapping her hands together. "That's it for now. Get to work now, maid."

I bow in submission and worship, showing my conqueror that I do know my place, and kissing her feet with the utter humility of a low class girl before a proper monarch. I know I have the first of many devastating days ahead of me. But it's hard to resist the idea that it's where I was always meant to be.

"Yes, my Queen," I say.

Like a slave should.

***

I'm exhausted.

Every single muscle in my body aches. The entire day has passed, and I've gotten maybe one floor done out of the entire mansion. The combination of my inexperience, and the strict rules on cleaning everything on hands and knees and with no tools, has made my work excruciatingly slow, and profoundly humbling.

I thought I could be someone, with hard study and work. I always resented Sanae for not treating me as her daughters' equal. And yet here I am now, back in my proper place, slaving away at the rich family's feet, while they get to enjoy their day without a care in the world.

It's crushing on a personal, psychological, emotional level that words can't do justice to. It has fundamentally reshaped how I think of me. Zainab, the peasant foot girl. It's such mind-numbing and gruelling work, that I feel actively stupider after having done it for a full day.

I've had to shut down my mind and go on autopilot, cleaning and cleaning. And a part of me almost appreciated the fact that I was left alone with my thoughts and such simple, mentally undemanding work -- which tells me everything I need to know about how the sisters plan to train me to perfection.

It's working. Truth be told, I'd rather spend a thousand more hours cleaning, than spend another minute having my "dinner" with the rest of the family.

Sanae is sitting at the head of the table, as befits the matriarch of the household. Her complete indifference to my new status as a live-in maid drives me even deeper into slave mentality. She takes it so in stride, like of course her daughters have enslaved me, and of course I was always going to end up here at their feet.

She increases the feeling that this was all utterly inevitable. And maybe she's right.

Alia and Anbar also sit by the table, picking elegantly at their food, which smells delicious from down here.

Yes, down here. I'm kneeling under the table, like a dog, with my own "meal" set before me, in a pink dog bowl with my name written on it with a crayon.

It's hard to describe the effect of seeing my name, Zainab, written onto a dog bowl. It feels right, and horrifying, and somewhat arousing. But all of it is undercut by the disgusting content of the bowl itself.

It's a mix of table scraps from their previous meals -- half gnawed bites of meat, stale bread, floppy vegetables, all of it liberally coated in Alia and Anbar's gobbles of spit. It's all mixed with truly bizarre add-ons, like butter sticks, and whole spoonfuls of ketchup and mayonnaise.

I say truly bizarre, but the grim, soul-rending reality is that I know exactly what the purpose of all this is. It was the same at "lunch break", which consisted in eating a few chips straight out of Anbar's hand, like a trained animal.

It's part of the strict diet the sisters have devised for me.I will get no nourishment from this meal, and my stomach will grumble all-day long, sapping my strength and focus as I work...

But at the same time, it's all high calories.

Alia and Anbar want to starve me, without actually slimming my figure. They like me thick and ungainly, while they are lithe and beautiful and slender. It's yet another reminder that I'm a lesser girl, not even a real girl at all, while they are real women, worthy to be served.

I'm poorer. Dumber. Fatter. Uglier. No one could ever possibly want anything to do with me, except to boss me around for something anything remotely useful to themselves. I exist to serve my betters. I'm putty in the hands of real girls. Of course they should control what I eat too, and of course my nutrition should come second to their amusement.