Hardy Soul

It’s late at night and pouring with rain. The streets are deserted – apart from one hardy soul.

No – not you, stupid slave! I mean Ms Arabella madam, the dirty stop-out and local Gynarchy goddess. See her walking towards you in her hoodie. At first she stoops down to feign feminine sympathy for you. She asks you if you aren’t feeling cold, miserable and lonely out here on your own at your public footlick stand? (even though she knows that, by law, you are unable to answer her, as you are forbidden to converse with your customers about anything other than their boots, shoes and socks!)

Her attitude soon shifts to one of genuine contempt for you, however, and, just like all the rest, she demands that you kiss her boots – 20 times on each cold, wet boot-toe, as it turns out. And all the while her thick, ribbed white bootsock towers over your humble head.

After humiliating you in this way, she crouches down again to laugh in your face, before asking ‘how do you like them apples, slave?’. On the assumption that by ‘them apples’, goddess-mistress Ms Arabella is referring to the taste of her boots, you decide that you can, indeed must, dignify her answer with a suitably slavish response. You therefore thank her kindly for allowing you to taste where she has been walking in the rain, and confirm that you like the flavour of her wet boots, but not that much, if she would be so kind and understanding?’

She laughs out loud at you, her mocking female laughter echoing across the empty square, before turning her back on you in order to leave you alone in the damp and the rain, where she found you. And rightly so – for you are a nothing and a nobody; a slave; a lickspittle. Whereas she is a proper human being – a person who is going places. And, right now, she’s going back to the warmth of her apartment, and the bosom of her loving boyfriend.