Anonymous - Miss High-heels:the story of a rich but girlish young gentleman under the control of his pretty step-sister and her aunt

"Oh, Oh!" I cried. "Helen, the specks of brown dust are fleas! My stockings are full of fleas! Oh! They're torturing me. It's horrible."

And in a frenzy I worked my feet; I twisted and clenched my fingers. It was all in vain. My ankles, my insteps, my hands were at the mercy of these obscene insects and they were devouring me.

Lady Hartley was in raptures.

"What a delightful punishment for a pretty, disobedient girl!" she cried. "To tie her into a chair in her lovely evening frock and then to give her satin-slippered feet and slender little ankles in their exquisite stockings to fleas to devour and bite! I think you are wonderfully clever, Helen."

Helen smiled in acknowledgment of the praise.

"It is, at all events, an appropriate punishment," she answered modestly. "Denise is being punished for her vanity in making a coquettish display of her little feet. To hand them over in their finery to fleas seemed to me the best way of teaching her humility." She looked at me pointedly.

They stood and watched me with vicious joy as I writhed and twisted in my bonds. The fleas were driving me mad. They got inside my stockings, down under my slippers, round my ankles and bit me terribly. They were ravenous. The fleas were inside my gloves, between my fingers, everywhere. My feet and hands twisted in their glass prisons. The mirrors reflected back to me the irony of my flashing buckles, my dainty bows and heels, and the tightly fitting elegant long gloves.

"Oh, oh! It is excruciating," I cried. "Oh, Helen, you are cruel! I am being eaten up. The irritation is driving me out of my senses." I burst into tears, I tugged at my legs and arms to break the glass and free myself. I felt the blood rush to my face. I was growing delirious.

"It's a disgusting punishment," I moaned. "Please, please, stop it. Please!"

Helen simply laughed at me and stood among the other women, just watching me.

"Is it indeed, Denise? I don't allow young ladies to use such language about my punishment which I feel it my duty to inflict upon them. If the fleas are disgusting to your delicate sensibilities, what I wonder will you say to this?"

Into the tops of the glass boxes little silver boxes were let in, one over each gloved hand, one over each satin-slippered foot. Helen touched a spring in each of these boxes and the bottom, which in each case was inside the glass box, fell down upon a hinge. And to my inexpressible loathing, from each box, there dropped a horrible fat, big, slimy worm. There were four of them. One dropped on to the kid-gloved palm of each hand, one on to the pearl-embroidered toe of each of my slippers. I uttered a piercing scream of horror. I suppose that it was very feminine of me, but I couldn't help it. The sight of those loathsome fat worms on my pretty gloves and shoes filled me with nausea. I shuddered. I felt that I was going to be sick.

"Oh, take them off! Take them off," I screamed. I shook my hands and feet in a panic. Then the worms began to crawl! Oh, it was revolting. They crawled over my toes leaving a disgusting brown trail of phlegm on the dazzling sheen of my white satin shoes. They mounted onto the buckles and bows. They were crawling toward my open-worked stockings. Oh I could feel them on my flesh. Perhaps they were poisonous too, I thought in my panic. They were crawling about my fingers as well. I touched one with the tips of my fingers as I closed one hand spasmodically and the soft feel of it as it moved and wriggled caused me to shriek again.

"Oh, Helen! Please set me free!" I moaned. "It's a horrible punishment."

The tears poured down my face. My slipper buckles flashed and flashed in a thousand many coloured rays as I arched and bent my feet to shake them off.

"That's a wonderful punishment," said Lady Hartley. "It appeals to the imagination as well as to the body. Ugh! The slime on the dainty slippers and the shining tight white kid gloves! How ashamed of herself Denise ought to be!"

I interrupted her with a scream. One of the worms had crawled inside my left glove and I felt it wriggling on the flesh of my palm. It was unendurable. Then I felt something wet and soft crawling over my insteps. The worms were on my stockings, feeding on the silk and lace. My screams redoubled. The chair shook with my frantic struggles. All the while, too, the fleas were biting and torturing me!

Helen watched me complacently. She was delighted with the success of her bizarre experiment. She listened to my sobs and screams; she watched my tear-stained face, revelling in my abasement and suffering. Then, with her hypocritical kindness, she said, "The lesson, darling, you have to learn is this: If you were wearing high boots and thick stockings you would not mind the worms. Therefore the more daintily you are dressed, the more careful you must be to be obedient and modest." And then she and her friends laughed heartily, at my expense.

I interrupted her sermon with another scream. One of the worms had crawled through the open-worked pattern and was inside my stocking clinging to my flesh. It was the last straw. I went into a fit of hysterics. I screamed, and laughed, and sobbed all at once. My face flushed red and I convulsed. I was going mad. Even Lady Hartley was terrified by my appearance.

"She has been sufficiently punished, Helen," she said, nervously.

Helen took a little tube with an India rubber ball at the end. She pressed the tube through a tiny hole in the glass. Squeezing the ball at the end of the tube, she discharged a strong insecticide powder into the boxes one after the other, which at once killed the fleas and worms. Phoebe immediately stripped my stockings off my legs. Helen released me from the stocks, and my gloves, shoes, and stockings were taken off and left in the glass boxes to be destroyed. I was still sobbing bitterly, shaken with convulsions and shivering fits and tormented by the irritation of the flea bites.

Lady Hartley said good-night and took her daughter away, while Phoebe brought a basin of warm water in which some herbs had been soaked. She bathed my inflamed and swollen hands, ankles, and feet.

"There's no reason for you to go into hysterics, Miss. Denise," she said with a rough kindness as she knelt at my feet, bathing me. "This infusion will soon cool your legs and remove the irritation, and tomorrow morning there won't be a mark on your pretty white skin."

By this time, Helen herself was a little alarmed. She brought me a large glass of champagne saying, "I did not realize how completely soft and girlish you had become, dear."

"But you meant me to become soft and girlish," I said between my sobs. "You and Miss. Priscilla sent me to a girls' school for two years and you knew what would happen to me."

"Oh yes, darling," said Helen patting my bare shoulders affectionately. "Of course, we meant to punish you by permanently giving you the figure, the pretty breasts, and the lovely face of a girl. It pleased us to dress you in exquisite clothes suitable to your looks. But we did not dream that the system would be as delightfully successful as it has

been in changing your haughty spirit into a timid and shrinking disposition. However we know now, and I promise you that we will not punish you with the glass boxes again; unless you should make it absolutely necessary."

"Thank you, Helen," I said gratefully. Even at the time I felt a strange and significant change in me. I was not angry and resentful because she had punished me and thrown me into hysterics. I seemed to recognize that I wanted her to do what she pleased with me.

The irritation was soothed by the healing infusion of herbs with which Phoebe bathed me; I recovered from my hysterics and my sobs ceased. Phoebe dried my legs, and put on to them a fresh pair of silk stockings and satin slippers and I stood up.