Bottom Marks

My master, 40 year old master-sir Marcus, has got to be the laziest, free man in the office. He never lifts a finger - except to discipline me, the office footwear-slave.

Having said that, that is his role – he is officially employed as the office footwear-slave overseer! And yet, despite his relatively lowly and unskilled position; his beer belly; his unfortunate halitosis problem; and his naturally indolent disposition, he is much admired by the ladies of the office; partly just because he is a free man; partly because he is, I suppose, what you might call ‘conventionally good-looking’, albeit in a portly sort of way; and partly because he is, when all is said and done, very good at his job of slave-overseer – very masterful.

He must be, for I am a very hard-working and conscientious office footwear-slave. Indeed, I feel I deserve top marks from taskmaster Marcus for my never-ending efforts in cleaning and attending to the office-ladies’ feet and footwear, even if I do have to say so myself!

However, although my obnoxious taskmaster can do no wrong in the eyes of the office ladies, I, despite all my best efforts, can seemingly do no right! I am very much despised by womankind; partly just because I am a man in bondage – a male bondslave; partly because I am skinny and what you might call ‘conventionally ugly’; and partly because my talents, such as they are, are limited to tongue-cleaning and lick-shining the superior office-ladies’ footwear.

They are meagre talents which are very much taken for granted by the surrounding office ladies – as, indeed, they should be. For a footwear-slave is just a thing – an object; part of the office furniture designed to perform the lowliest of lowly tasks – that of caring for his hardworking female betters’ feet and footwear.

Of course the office footwear-slave should be taken for granted!

Which is why the office ladies need to employ a taskmaster to supervise me. I am too lowly and insignificant a being for them to be bothered to supervise my activities themselves. Such an office role is a very junior one – suitable for a second-class citizen of the Gynarchy i.e. a free male like master-sir Marcus.

I regret to have to say that - hard-working and conscientious though I may be - because I am just a stupid slave I am always making mistakes and annoying or irritating my female office superiors, meaning that my indolent and lazy, superior taskmaster frequently has to get up out of his chair in order to discipline me with the whip or cane.

How the office ladies admire and appreciate the stout and handsome master Marcus when he is swinging the office whip or cane down cross my bare back or buttocks – and how they utterly despise me as he marks my ugly and scrawny, maleslave-body on their behalf with painful red marks!

It is, unfortunately (but deservedly) for me a daily experience – and as I start my work this morning I know that today will be no exception. Indeed, I can categorically state that at some point or other during the course of this day I shall inevitably feel the righteous sting of my taskmaster-sir’s whip or cane – for my female betters are forever finding justifiable, pernickety fault with my humble efforts at their smart, office feet.

Moreover, it is snowing outside today, and those ladies who actually make it into the office despite the inclement weather will not only be in a bad mood because of the extra effort required to get into work, they will be expecting – nay demanding – that I clean the snow and grit off their outdoor, winter footwear most assiduously as they enter the building.

My fat, lazy taskmaster has cleverly positioned me in the cold and draughty lobby entrance to the office building for just such a purpose and, even though my master Marcus himself is currently relaxing in the adjacent coffee-room, watching breakfast television and enjoying a heart-warming cup of early morning coffee, I know he shall not hesitate to interrupt his pleasant relaxation in order to come out to the lobby and physically chastise me if and when I fail to mouth-clean the office ladies’ footwear to their complete satisfaction.

The opportunity to display his machismo by physically punishing me is just about the only thing guaranteed to get my master Marcus up out of his comfortable coffee-lounge chair!

But it’s bound to happen sooner or later, and I am bound to be whipped or caned today – literally bound, for I am currently chained to the inner wall of the office-building lobby by means of a long, steel chain. The chain is long enough to enable me to crawl on my hands and knees throughout the area of the lobby, but nowhere else, for, given the inclement weather outside, my taskmaster has wisely decided that I shall be required to clean dirty and snow-stained female boots and shoes as they enter the building throughout the entire day. I shan’t, therefore, be ‘doing the rounds’ today – crawling from desk to desk inside the office and offering my services to each and every female office-worker as they sit at their desks.

No, today I shall be confined to the draughty lobby. I therefore brace myself for the cold inside, just as my female betters have had to brace themselves against the cold outside, though at least they can wrap up warm. I am restricted to wearing nothing but my chains and my flimsy, white slave-shorts.

To make sure I am kept permanently busy in between the ladies’ arrivals, my taskmaster has ingeniously ordered me to also scrub clean the floor of the lobby. I might as well do so since I am confined on my hands and knees anyway, with my face close to the floor. My master-sir has kindly supplied me with a special slave-adapted scrubbing brush which inserts painfully into my mouth, and a metal bucket of warm, soapy water.

This is slightly awkward, of course, because it means I must repeatedly remove the jaw-stretching scrubbing brush from my ugly slave mouth as and when each lady enters the lobby, so that I may not only verbally bless and greet her, but also attend as necessary to her dirty outdoor-footwear with my slave-tongue, prior to reinserting the scrubbing brush into my mouth and resuming my equally humbling floor-scrubbing duties until the next office-lady arrives.

But taskmaster Marcus doesn’t care if my life is awkward! He has given me my orders for the day, and expects them to be carried out whilst he relaxes with his warm coffee in the office coffee-lounge surrounded by his various female admirers as they too warm themselves up with a hot drink after their footwear has been dutifully attended to by the wretched office footslave outside in the cold and draughty lobby.

I have been diligently mouth-scrubbing the cold, tiled, lobby-entrance floor for some 15 jaw-breaking minutes when the first office-mistress of the morning appears.

It is 25 year old, bleach-blonde haired mistress Katya from the Finance Department – one of master Marcus’s biggest admirers.

Not that superior mistress Katya is particularly big in stature. She is, in fact, quite a petite slip of a girl – unusual perhaps, given that she originates from Russia where many of the beautiful, young women stand tall and proud!

I think I can get away with describing her as a ‘slip of a girl’, given that she is some 25 years’ my junior.

She totally despises me, of course, the ‘elderly’ (in her eyes) male slave scrubbing the floor with his ugly, stretched mouth beneath her superior, Russian-girl feet. I, on the other hand, have nothing but admiration and respect for mistress Katya, given that she is my female younger and better.

Mistress Katya is clearly not all that bothered by the snow falling outside, for, as she enters the office lobby I can see from my humble, kneeling position that she is wearing a flat pair of plain, black leather, slip-on shoes beneath the hems of her plain, black office trousers. I suppose she is used to coping with much colder weather, and much heavier snowfall, than we ever get here in the Gynarchy – being from snowy Russia!

Having said that, she has made some concessions to the wintry weather. She is wearing a pale, pink woolly hat; a matching pink scarf; and pink woolly gloves along with her black, knee-length overcoat. I must say, she looks very fetching!

She stamps her feet as she enters the lobby in order to shake some of the wet snow off her black leather slip-ons. In point of fact she has no need to – for I will happily lick the snow off her shoes for her (as per my master Marcus’s standing orders to me) should she so wish me to.

But the impulsive, young Russian woman has clearly not stopped to think of utilizing me in this way. A mistress less accustomed to snow on her footwear would perhaps have been more likely to order my tongue onto her shoe-leather – straight away so that I, the office footslave, could quickly remove the offending, and potentially damaging, snow by mouth.

I suppose I should, really, be grateful to blonde mistress Katya, for I actually don’t like the taste of snow on a lady’s shoes. Or rather, it’s not so much the snow I object to, but the horrible grit that is used to melt the snow on the pavements. It gets stuck in my teeth - just as it gets stuck in the ladies’ shoe and boot treads. And it can be very hard to get out – both from the aforementioned treads as well as my teeth.

Not that anybody gives a damn about the state of my teeth! Indeed, I often wonder if I too suffer from bad breath – like my esteemed taskmaster, master-sir Marcus!

Mistress Katya, meanwhile, laughs at me as she unwraps her pink scarf from over her pretty, Russian mouth:

‘Ha! Ha! Good morning, the dirty scrubber!’

It is very nice of the attractive, young, Russian office-mistress to greet me in this semi-friendly way. Mistress Katya always has a very cheery disposition with everyone she comes into contact with – even me! That’s why it’s such an honour to serve her and grovel at her feet.

Now that she has acknowledged my humble presence on the floor at her feet, I must immediately stop my scrubbing, remove the painful scrubbing-brush from my mouth, and praise and acknowledge the superior mistress.

I also shuffle forwards on my hands and knees keeping my head respectfully bowed in mistress Katya’s presence so that it is conveniently hovering just a few inches above her snow-dampened, black leather, low-heeled, slip-on shoes:

‘Oh pray mistress Katya! Good morning mistress Katya. God bless you mistress Katya for gracing me with your superior, female presence, if you would be so kind to a dirty scrubber at your feet, most respected and beautiful mistress.’

I have to be so obsequious to all the office ladies – otherwise my master-sir will whip me, if he gets to hear about it!

The most respected and beautiful mistress Katya laughs out loud at me again, and graciously stretches forward her, petite, right foot directly beneath my humbly-bowed face:

‘Ha! Ha! Kiss my shoe, you the filthy slave!’

I love her Russian accent.

I immediately cup my wizened old slave hands around the 25 year old Russian mistress’s imperiously outstretched foot and lower my lips to the rounded, leather toe-end of my Tsarina’s damp shoe.

I can clearly see where the wet snow has darkened the black shoeleather. More importantly, I can equally now see clearly, thanks to the imperial outstretching of her dainty foot, the individual stitches in the young Russian mistress’s bright, luminescent, pink cotton ankle sock!

Knowing women as I do – from the ever humble perspective as a women’s footwear-slave - I suspect that the pink socks are meant to match her other pink accessories, her pink, woolly hat, scarf and gloves. But the sweet, feminine socks are actually a much brighter pink than the hat, scarf and gloves, quite apart from being cotton rather than wool!

No matter, I admire mistress Katya’s right sock very much as I lower my lips respectfully to the damp, rounded toe of her black, slip-on shoe, for I feel the sock reflects her bubbly and blonde personality. Who knows, she may even be wearing this fun pair of brightly-coloured socks in order to bring some warmth and joy into my humble world! Mistress Katya is such a kind and giving person – I wouldn’t put it past her!

One thing is for certain – the incoming, outgoing Russian mistress is not stupid, and she instantly detects the pink-girlsock admiration written all over my stupid and gormless, middle-aged slave face:

‘Ha! Ha! Do you like my sock, slave?’ she gleefully enquires as I pay adulatory homage both to her, and to her wet shoeleather with my eager mouth and lips.

How the disdain is palpable in her soft, Russian voice! How she, quite rightly, despises me, the office footslave, for admiring her humble, pink sock, even if she is wearing her bright, pink socks for my pathetic benefit!

I must, by law, answer the mistress’s rhetorical question:

‘Yes thank you, mistress Katya! God bless you for asking, mistress Katya! This slave truly does admire the sight of the superior mistress’s bright, pink sock whilst he is kissing your shoe, mistress Katya, if it is so pleasing to you sweet and kind mistress Katya!’

I then kiss the rounded toe of her proffered, slip-on shoe another 3 or 4 times just to emphasise my respect and admiration for the superior mistress and her footwear. I dare not kiss her actual sock however – not without her explicit permission – even though my poor mouth is aching to do so.

Or is my mouth just aching from having had the scrubbing-brush inside it?

Whatever, I’m sure her soft, cotton sock would ease my mouth-pain and help warm up my cold lips.

But it is not to be. Mistress Katya just continues to laugh at me, and mock me, as is her wont:

‘Ha! Ha! Well, in that case I’d better let you kiss the other shoe, so that you can admire my other sock, yes?’

‘Oh yes please mistress Katya! God bless you mistress Katya! Truly this slave is blessed by the sweet and considerate mistress!’

Well, if I can’t kiss sweet girlsock the next best thing is to look at sweet girlsock, and it takes two sweet girlsocks to tango!

True to her mocking word, mistress Katya withdraws her right, pink-socked and black-leather-shoed foot from underneath my kneeling nose only to replace it with her left. She even appears to graciously hitch up the hem of her left trouser leg just that little bit more in order to afford me an even better view of the pink sock covering her shapely, left, Slavic ankle.

I truly am blessed by this kindly, young, Russian woman’s superior presence – and I’m not just saying it! I genuinely don’t deserve her!

I cup my hands worshipfully around Russian-girl shoeleather and once again lower my lips to the toe of her equally snow-dampened left shoe, kissing it several times – all, whilst admiring and internally worshipping the stitching, and the tiny creases and folds, in divine mistress Katya’s exposed, bright pink, luminous sock.

Before she leaves me, my pink-socked, Slavonic goddess mocks me further:

‘Ha! Ha! That’s enough distraction for you this morning, slave! Now get back to the floor scrubbing or I’ll tell your master that you’ve been doing the skiving! Ha! Ha! I will be enjoying seeing you get the cane from your master for slacking at the work! Ha! Ha!’

I know she means what she says, for a mistress never lies. This is no idle threat – she would, undoubtedly, enjoy watching me get the cane.

What young woman in her right mind wouldn’t?

‘Yes, mistress Katya. Thank you, mistress Katya. At once, mistress Katya. Please don’t tell on me, mistress Katya!’

Of course, in kissing mistress Katya’s black leather slip-on shoes and admiring her bright pink, luminescent ankle socks, I have not really been ‘skiving’. I have been obeying orders! I have merely interrupted my ‘main’ task of mouth-scrubbing the lobby floor in order to perform another of my humble, footslave duties – that of attending to one of my female better’s shoes. But if mistress Katya wishes to accuse me of skiving, she is perfectly at liberty to do so. I am in her power and at her mercy - as I am with all the sweet, young women of the office!

Therefore I bite my tongue and obey my superior mistress. I quickly resume scrubbing.

Mistress Katya duly leaves me to get on with my back and mouth breaking chore and enters the neighbouring coffee lounge where she can settle down for a well-deserved cup of fresh, morning coffee in the presence of the hunky slave-overseer – my taskmaster, master-sir Marcus, a man whom she truly fancies and likes to please. I can hear their warm words of greeting and mutual laughter as I reinsert the scrubbing brush inside my mouth.

I only hope mistress Katya is not carrying out her threat of accusing me of ‘the skiving’ to master-sir Marcus, for, as I said before, the one thing that would be guaranteed to get him out of his seat is the opportunity to show off with a cane or whip in front of one of his many female admirers!

At least, as I scrub the floor with my increasingly sore mouth, I still have the charming image of mistress Katya’s pink, luminous socks and flat, black, slip-on shoes imprinted on my pathetic and weak footslave-brain, as I also try to concentrate on the areas of the floor where mistress Katya has just been standing and walking, so that I can scrub up her dirty treadmarks from the soles of her shoes.

I literally worship the ground she walks on, you see.

I’m not scrubbing Russian-girl shoedirt for long, however, before the next two superior mistresses arrive – mistresses Pranati and Naseen.

They are mother and daughter – Indian, I believe. Mistress Pranati is in her mid to late forties and miss Naseen is in her late teens. Miss Naseen is, as far as I am allowed to be aware, the office junior, responsible for the office filing and photocopying. Her mother is some sort of section supervisor. They are both very intelligent, with female brains that are, naturally, vastly superior to my male brain.

That’s why I am scrubbing floors on my hands and knees whilst they walk proudly above me.

Once again I can tell from the two ladies’ respective footwear that the impetuousness and nonchalance of youth has triumphed over wisdom – for it is only the older Indian lady who is wearing footwear which is actually suitable for the snow. Mistress Pranati is wearing a pair of heavy, beige-coloured, timberland-style, lace up ankle-length boots with thick treads on the soles, beneath the hems of her black office slacks. Her daughter, miss Naseen, on the other hand, is still wearing her ubiquitous, soft black ballet flats with plain black ankle socks on her pretty Indian feet beneath her slacks!

Being a girlsock-junky, I’m shamed to say that I am glad miss Naseen has chosen to display her socks to all and sundry with such flimsy and inappropriate footwear – even though I know she should be protecting her precious and delicate, Indian feet from the elements by wearing much sturdier footwear on a day like this; as her much more sensible mother is doing.

But for the young, fashion takes precedence over the sensible and practical – praise be!

The two superior Indian goddesses, like the Russian goddess, mistress Katya, before them, stamp their pretty feet immediately upon entering the lobby in order to shake off some of the snow. It must be an instinctive, feminine reaction – to stamp one’s feet!

Mistress Pranati, however, then moves over towards a nearby desk in the lobby and perches herself up on top of it so that her timberland-booted feet are swinging in the air, prior to calling me over to her in her cute Indian accent:

‘You there, the slave-coolie. Be coming over here this instant and removing my outdoor boots!’

Once again I hastily remove the scrubbing brush from my mouth and shuffle over on my hands and knees, my chain clanking behind me, towards where goddess-mistress Pranati is sitting so dominantly on the table.

It is, of course, deeply humiliating to have to kneel in front of a superior, middle-aged Indian lady and remove her boots or shoes from her feet when she is perfectly capable of performing such a mundane task for herself! But that’s the whole point – to give the lady a buzz from knowing that she has a humble, male slave to carry out such demeaning little footwear-tasks for her.

I can sense her equally beautiful daughter, miss Naseen, watching me with utter young-womanly contempt etched on her petty, Indian face as I obediently crawl across the lobby floor in order to attend to her mother’s heavy boots.

When I reach her feet, mistress Pranati kindly reminds me of the protocols in such situations:

‘Be kissing my boots before you are touching them, dirty slave-coolie boy!’

She has a strong Indian accent, but her calling me a ‘boy’ is no grammatical error. Even though I must be some ten years’ her senor, I am a boy and not a man, in the sense that my role is to serve.

I acknowledge the Indian lady’s orders, and assure her of my adherence to such widely-practised protocols, in my plain old boring, English accent:

‘Yes, mistress Pranati. Of course, mistress Pranati.’

I kiss the snow-stained, heavy, thick rounded toes of both mistress Pranati’s lace-up, beige coloured, timberland boots whilst they dangle in the air beneath her. Worryingly, I can see several little pieces of the dreaded grit stuck in her thick boot treads. I hope, selfishly, that this Indian goddess does not order me to extract that grit with my mouth – foul-tasting stuff that it is!

But I needn’t worry, for she seems not to notice. Having respectfully kissed the damp, beige boot-toes, I start to unlace the ankleboots from mistress Pranati’s pretty, Indian feet. They come off with a whoosh of warm, superior Indian-mistress foot-air – air fit for a footwear-slave to breathe. It assails my nostrils filling them with the aroma of mistress Pranati’s personal body chemistry – not that the smell is especially unpleasant, for mistress Pranati does not exactly have sweaty feet so early in the morning on such a cold, winter’s day.

Nevertheless, there is the distinctive and unmistakable aroma of sweet, feminine foot.

It must be permeating through the thick, woolly, ankle-length bootsocks which she is wearing on her precious Indian feet. The socks are another statement of the practical, over the fashionable, for they seem positively dull in comparison to the bright pink, cotton socks of mistress Pranati’s antecedent, mistress Katya.

Mistress Pranati’s thick, woolly bootsocks are patterned with dark grey and green triangles – a kind of paisley effect. But they do not inspire devotion in the same way that mistress Katya’s had done, perhaps because in my heart of hearts I know they are being worn for the purely practical purposes of keeping the Indian mistress’s feet cosy and warm inside her timberland-style boots, rather than for my entertainment and delectation!

Nevertheless, being a sock-aficionado, I am still fascinated by the grey and green female bootsocks - particularly as I cannot recall ever seeing mistress Pranati wearing socks before. She always, to the best of my footslavish recollection, wears dark-coloured nylons to work. To see her delicate, soft brown Indian feet clad in thick, warm woolly sock is, therefore, something of a rare, footslave treat!

I am somewhat concerned that, in my clumsy pulling off of her timberland boots, I have disturbed the socks on the Indian mistress’s feet. The left sock, in particular, has been inadvertently pulled down off her still shapely, middle-aged, Indian anklebone, and is now quite seriously creased on her lower foot.

I brace myself for some possible criticism, and even physical punishment, at the hands of the Indian lady, as causing a superior lady’s socks to crease whilst pulling off her shoes or boots, even inadvertently, is considered a serious criminal offence here in the Gynarchy – especially for a supposedly fully trained footwear-slave!

Fortunately for me, however, either she has not noticed, or she does not care, or she just doesn’t know the law, for mistress Pranati again says nothing. She merely wriggles her grey-woolly-socked, Indian toes beneath my kneeling, mesmerized face, in order to humiliate me for several minutes, before eventually giving me her next degrading order:

‘Now be kissing my socks, dirty footslave, before you are taking them off my feet and replacing them with my nylons!’

She rustles with her hands inside a carrier bag she has with her, and chucks a packet of dark nylon popsocks down onto the floor beside me.

Ah – so mistress Pranati has sensibly brought her usual office footwear with her! She no doubt also has with her favourite and familiar pair of shiny, black leather, office courts – the ones with the smart, highly attractive, two-inch heels. I fully anticipate that these shall be the next items to come out of her carrier bag!

‘Yes mistress Pranati. At once, mistress Pranati!’

Relieved not to be being punished, I lower my lips to the reinforced stitching of the beautiful Indian mistress’s grey and green, woolly-socked toes and endeavour to kiss them – not the easiest of footslave-tasks given that mistress Pranati is still wriggling her toes inside her paisley-patterned, hiking-boot socks.

The socks smell musty this close up.

Removing the mistress’s thick, grey and green triangled, woolly bootsocks is easy enough, and I get to admire the tank-tracks left by the upper stitching of the socks on the mistress’s soft, brown Indian ankles. But all too soon I must open the packet of fresh, sheer, black nylon, knee-length popsocks and unfurl them so that they may be delicately stretched, one after the other, onto the mistress’s now graciously outstretched, dangling feet.

I’m not totally stupid – even though I am a slave. I realise that the mistress Pranati’s soft, Indian feet must be cold here in the lobby without their protective, woolly socks, and therefore I pull the nylons over her bare, unpainted toes and up her divine, Indian lower legs as quickly and efficiently as I can.

‘Be making damn well sure my popsocks are straight on my legs, dirty slave-coolie!’ barks mistress Pranati down at me.

She is never one for polite chit-chat with a slave – not like mistress Katya before her. I am much too lower caste for mistress Pranati to engage in polite conversation with me.

‘Yes mistress. Of course mistress. Please don’t have me beaten, mistress Pranati. This slave fears the mistress.’

Always best to remind a stern mistress like mistress Pranati that I am acutely conscious of the fact I am at her mercy and in her power as I kneel on the cold floor of the lobby at her dangling, Indian feet and apply the fresh pair of dark, nylon popsocks onto her shapely Indian legs, up as far as her knees, prior to respectfully kissing them – on the black, reinforced stitching of the soles, for I am not worthy to kiss mistress Pranati’s nylon-covered, lower legs on her divine shinbones or calve muscles.

The soles of her dark nylon popsocks are fresh and clean now, but they will doubtless be hot and sweaty after a whole day inside her shiny, black leather, court shoes.

A humbling thought!

Having dutifully straightened her popsocks, and readjusted the hems of her black office slacks, I am then, as I had predicted, obliged to put the aforementioned, all-too-familiar, black office courts onto mistress Pranati’s pretty Indian feet, prior, of course, to respectfully kissing them on the pointy toe-areas also, though I would prefer to kiss the insteps of her court shoes, rather than the toes. I just love the feel of that smooth, shiny black leather on my footslave lips, and there is so much more of it along the sides of her shoes!

Kissing and licking the sides and insteps of smart, patent leather, officewear, court shoes is one of my few real pleasures in life – that, and being close to office girls’ socks!

I do hope that mistress Pranati doesn’t think I am taking liberties in imagining kissing her shiny black, court shoes so enthusiastically, but I now know her well enough to know that her bark is usually worse than her bite!

Mistress Pranati’s stunningly beautiful 18 year old daughter, miss Naseen, meanwhile has been very quiet. In fact, I am only reminded that she is still in the lobby when she suddenly replaces her mother on the desk in front of my kneeling face.

Mistress Pranati heads on into the coffee lounge whilst her daughter flicks back her long, black hair and hitches up the hem of her right trouser-leg directly in front of my face:

‘Slave, the side of my sock is being wery dusty. Be dry-cleaning it with your mouth this instant!’

I can see clearly now what the younger Indian mistress is talking about. The outside of the short, black cotton, below-the-ankle sock on her now dangling right foot is marred by a light grey, dry dusty stain. God only knows how it got there on such a wet day walking through the snow – but we all now know how it is going to be removed – for I have been ordered to remove it with my slave mouth!

‘Dry-Cleaning’ a young lady’s sock involves me first of all wiping any moisture off my lips (including any splashes of dirty water from the scrubbing brush and any traces of melted snow from her mother’s beige-coloured hiking-boots) and then rubbing my dry lips all over dusty sock-stain, lifting all the dust particles and bacteria off the superior, short, feminine sock and into my mouth – where they belong.

It is important that my lips are perfectly dry as wet lips would only hide the stain temporarily with their moisture – especially on a dark-coloured sock such as this. And that would be unacceptable. The offending dust must be properly wiped off with a dry lip, otherwise it will only reappear on the superior, young Indian woman’s sock within a brief period of time, much to her undoubted annoyance and chagrin.

I reassure the beautiful and arrogant, young Indian mistress, miss Naseen, that I know exactly what I am doing, and will soon be able to spruce up her short, black ankle sock so that it is once again looking its very best on her pretty, brown, Indian foot inside her soft, black leather ballet-flat:

‘Yes, mistress Naseen. At once, mistress Naseen. This slave obeys the mistress and will soon have all the dust off the side of the mistress’s most beautiful and respected ankle sock, so that it is looking as good as new inside the mistress’s pretty shoe, if it is so pleasing to you most sweet and kind mistress Naseen!’

The Indian girl does not respond. She just cocks her pretty, Indian head to one side in order to get a better view of my humble lip-work on the side of her sock.

Her black ballet-flats remain on her feet at all times whilst I suck sock.

My eyes are level with the elasticated top of her short, semi-ankle-length sock as I dry-lip the side of the sock just below her prominent, outer anklebone. I can feel the dust coming off on my lips as I focus in on the fetching contrast between the stretched, black, elasticised stitching at the top of her sock and the soft, brown skin on the top of the Indian girl’s shapely, and ultra-smooth looking, bare ankle bone.

Yes, miss Naseen takes after her mother. She shall have shapely feet and ankles for many years to come!

And, hopefully, a dust-free sock for many hours to come!

……………………………………………………………….

The next office mistress to grace me with her presence is 23 year old miss Shantel – or ‘lady Shantel’ as she prefers to be known - a black girl of Jamaican origins who works on the office switchboard.

Lady Shantel is an extremely supercilious and demanding young woman – as well she might be – and I am therefore always extremely nervous in her presence.

I am once again busily mouth-scrubbing the lobby floor when I spy her familiar, plain black, low-cut, lace-up leather sneakers and pink and white tracksuit bottoms entering the lobby from outside. She is also – entirely sensibly given the weather conditions prevailing outside – wearing her pink and white chequered ‘hoodie’ top, though I note she doesn’t bother to pull down the hood on entering the building.

Lady Shantel often wears her tracksuit and hoodie to work – even during the summer months. I think the other young women in the office regard her as a bit of a ‘chav’, but chav or not lady Shantel still has my undying, footslavish respect. And not least because she often, as today, wears plain, white sneaker socks inside her black trainers. I can just see the elasticated tops of one such pair of socks out of the corner of my eye beneath the scrunched-up, pink and white hems of her tracksuit bottoms.

You have to respect a sassy, black girl in white socks – at least, you do if you are a humble footwear-slave in the Gynarchy of Barbaria!

Predictably, perhaps, I am ordered by the self-obsessed and self-important gangsta-mistress Shantel to lick clean her chavvy, plain black sneakers just as soon as she has stepped into the lobby:

‘Yo, batty-boy! Get your ass over here and lick the crap off my kicks, yeah?’

Lady Shantel is standing dominantly in her hoodie, with her hands on her hips as her right sneakered-foot is stretched out in front of her, ready for cleaning. She is much taller and more athletic than any of her mistressly predecessors this morning, and her feet, correspondingly, are much larger too. So there will be lots of powerful and arrogant black-girl sneaker to lick clean!

The ‘crap’ she is referring to is a mixture of snow, grit, and mud. For once I don’t mind having to remove grit from a superior young woman’s ‘kicks’, as I myself get a kick out of the nice, close-up view of the elasticated tops of her aforementioned short, white sneaker socks on her smooth, black skin.

Ebony and ivory go together in perfect harmony – or, at least, they do when it is a question of soft, white, feminine sock on soft black, feminine footskin!

It is therefore truly an honour to lick out the disgusting-tasting grit from lady Shantel’s chavvy, black sneaker-treads.

I spend some five minutes licking each sneaker. Lady Shantel is in no hurry to start work. She is never in a hurry – not even to answer the phones, despite being the office telephonist. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether she ever gets any work done at all!

But that’s her prerogative as a free, young woman – to ‘skive’ at will, as her colleague ‘lady’ Katya might put it.

I, on the other hand, despite what mistress Katya might have suggested earlier, can never skive, for I am a full-time skivvy!

My hardworking mouth is filled to overflowing with the strong flavour of indolent, black-girl sneaker leather by the time she struts off into the neighbouring office coffee-lounge without so much as a by-your-leave, only to be warmly greeted by her female co-workers, and, of course, by my taskmaster, the beer-bellied master-sir Marcus – an excellent role model for any free person who doesn’t like hard work!

I, meanwhile, resume my humble mouth-scrubbing of the floor over which lady Shantel’s superior kicks have just walked.

………………………………………………………

Some twenty minutes later a furious lady Shantel, accompanied by my equally furious taskmaster, and all the other office ladies whom I have been privileged to serve thus far that morning, re-enter the lobby from the coffee lounge.

‘Yo, batty-boy! Look at the state of my kicks!’ bellows the angry Afro-Caribbean mistress at the top of her Jamaican voice. ‘I thought I is told you to clean them, yeah?’

I can instantly see what the problem is – snow marks! The wet snow which had previously seeped into the lower parts of the Jamaican girl’s black sneakers has now turned them white – a white line now runs along the side of each sneaker! White to match her white sneaker-socks!

But it’s a fashion statement the Jamaican girl clearly doesn’t appreciate! My heart sinks – for I know I shall be publicly punished for this! Indeed, my master Marcus already has the dreaded punishment cane to hand – the main tool of his trade.

Oh pray don’t mark us, master-sir Marcus. We humbly beseech you!

He reaches down, grabs me by the hair, and pulls the scrubbing brush (the main tool of my humble trade) unceremoniously out of my slave-mouth, before dragging my frightened face over towards the young black mistress’s snow-soiled sneakers:

‘Well, slave? What have you got to say to lady Shantel? How do you explain the snow-marks on her trainers?’ he snaps at me, in an angry and ominous tone.

I can smell my esteemed master’s halitosis as he shouts into my face.

I blubber for my superiors’ forgiveness and mercy:

‘Oh pray master sir! Oh pray mistress madam! Please forgive me mistress and master. Truly this slave regrets the damage to the mistress’s sneakers, and his failure to remove all the traces of snow! Oh pray master! Oh pray mistress! Pray have mercy on a poor and incompetent footwear-slave!’

I then throw my face onto lady Shantel’s sneakers, and shower them, including the thick, black laces, with penitent kisses, endeavouring in vain to now kiss away the offending, white, residual snow-marks on the bottoms of the young black woman’s otherwise plain, black sneakers.

As I do so, master Marcus enquires of lady Shantel as to whether she wishes to forgive me my insolence and incompetence towards her sneakers, or whether she wishes to see me punished.

Her young ladyship, still wearing her hoodie up, magnanimously replies that she does forgive the ‘batty-boy’, in spite of the damage to her prized pair of sneakers, but that she nevertheless still wants to see me punished.

The master then asks her how she wants me punished, and to everyone’s delight, apart from mine, she replies that she wants to see me beaten here in the office lobby with the cane.

Master-sir Marcus was only too happy to oblige her, since he already had the office punishment-cane to hand, and the next thing I knew he had mockingly ordered me to pull down my slave shorts and raise my bare ‘batty’ up into the air whilst I remained kneeling with my face still blubbering into lady Shantel’s snow-stained Jamaican sneakers.

He then delivered six stinging cuts of the cane to my exposed buttocks.

Yet again – bottom marks from master Marcus for the useless and incompetent office footwear-slave; witnessed by enthusiastic female representatives from Eastern Europe, the Indian sub-continent, and the Caribbean; humiliating marks for each of the four women-witnesses to see, feel with their dainty fingers, and enjoy.

Stinging, red marks that mark me out as worthless!

The End