SLUDGE attacks the goddess

The following is a Writer's Cramp challenge: podiatrist narrates about his favorite foot patient and writes horrible poetry about toe jam.

Note to readers: This is meant in fun. It is tongue and cheek. Don't expect to be enlightened, enthralled, or transported into a delightful scene. This is a foot doctor's office, for goodness sake. Expect FEET! LOL


         She had the most beautiful feet -- satin skin, lined in smoothness and of the most perfect dimensions. Its daintiness made me swallow hard each time I took one gently in my hand to study it. If I’d been Leonardo de Vinci, I would have created a masterpiece to soar in fame, far above Mona Lisa’s smile. If I‘d been Michelangelo, I would have reproduced her feet in the purest marble and saved for all posterity the image of such perfection. And if I'd been Remington, bronzing the horses and riders of the West, I would have set the world aflame with a giant statue of Madeline’s foot.

         Ah, goddess of the podiatrist, so many times I wondered if you sent this creature of exquisite foot beauty to torture my days? I spent my nights in contemplation and recall for years, but no likeness could I ever summon that came come close to the reality of Madeline’s feet. They were utmost in perfection.

         Such were my thoughts until that fateful day when she came to see me with her frazzled, worried look. I remember how I brushed the others aside, and took Madeline into my office. But don’t you see how it would have been beyond my control to inspect the feet of others, knowing that Madeline’s soled perfection, those exquisite soft pads, those delicate arches, those non-cramped toes awaited me?

         So I took her into my office, and I began to disrobe her feet. First her shoes, the smallest specimen of shoe one could imagine. Size three, she’d told me once, laughing at her difficulty in finding shoes.

         The shoes, softly-healed and sleek with pleasant lines that emphasized the dainty, trimness of her ankles, were removed one at a time.

         I was trembling by then. My mouth filled with saliva. I had to repeatedly swallow. I found myself licking my lips in anticipation of that moment when... Carefully I placed each shiny black shoe beside her on the counter. Then with hands that shook in desire so suppressed that I could not even admit it to myself, I slowly began to remove the first of the special anklet socks she wore.

         No, she was not a child, this buxom woman sitting on the examination couch; she was the pearl of women -- fully developed in all ways, yet diminutive and refined of parts. And her foot with its Mickey Mouse red-and-white socks was forcing incredibly lustful thoughts into the depths of me.

         I drew a studied breath, holding it a moment as I sought for calm. My face, showing none of my feelings or of the wildness inside me that craved her foot-perfect body, pretended to a calmness my racing heart denied.

         Madeline was talking all this while. The sound played about the room. She had a quiet voice, the kind one could shut out easily and allow to swirl around harmlessly amid the background’s gentle music. I know I should have been listening, but her foot was on the brink of unveilment. It was the moment I had anticipated for weeks, the moment I had dreamed of, imagined, lived for...

         Mickey Mouse was wadded up, crushing his giant ears, and in a moment I would see the wonder of her perfect foot; almost it was before me. I paused, and I waited.

         It was such delicious torture ... to have her foot in my hand, to know that at any moment I could reveal the eighth wonder of the world, and the sight would be for me -– only for me ...

         My eyes met Madeline's. For the first time, it dawned at me that perhaps she was not there for her usual trimming. Perhaps I should have listened to her words, but the power of that foot in my hand was too strong. I could not hold off any longer. I slipped the last fragment of Mickey off her foot...

         Ay! What had been a miracle, a work of art, a Gaughin of feet, was layered in green powdery dust. She had the SLUDGE.

         There are moments in our life when we almost cannot go on, moments when tragedy sneaks up from behind, and we cannot accept the horror of it. We ask, “Why? Why has this happened to me ...?"

         Such a moment occurred in my office that day. The sun had slid behind the clouds ... no, the sun had perished, and all life on Earth had ended. Or so it seemed.

         Madeline had SLUDGE. Do you know what that does to a podiatrist? Hell has no more fitting punishment than for a podiatrist to treat a foot with SLUDGE.

         I blinked and looked again. How had this happened? How had perfection turned to rot?

         Nausea swept over me. I dropped her foot, letting it bang against the couch. I could not stop to apologize. I threw my head into the metal garbage can, and emptied the remnants of my lunch.

         Madeline was not angry at my betrayal. She apologized for causing me my momentary loss of physician’s etiquette. For five minutes we batted blame back and forth, and then I brought out the spray that would start the healing process.

         Madeline left with a smile on her face. I did not have the heart to tell her the beauty of her feet would be gone forever. They would never again be soft and fragile. SLUDGE left scales of pitted green pigment. Forevermore, Madeline would be a marked woman, a SLUDGE patient...

         A podiatrist has few memories to carry with him as he journeys in this world. Beautiful feet are that rare. Yet once I saw the feet of Helen, the feet of a goddess. I have preserved that memory, not as an artist or a sculptor, but through the only art that I have skill in -- my poetry. I dedicate this poem to the feet of Madeline:

                   Small and dainty with skin unjammed
                   Her loveliness was the instep
                   Of the feet of Madeline.

                   She never jammed her feet,
                   No toe jam for her
                   Were the feet of Madeline.

                   I held her toes, I held her ten toes,
                   What ecstacy since they were unjammed,
                   Were the largest toes of Madeline.

                   Rounded with toes so neatly cut,
                   Slender with skin but no jam
                   Were the nails of Madeline.

                   A hot fudge sundae with nuts
                   Could never compare, even with a cherry on top,
                   To the delicate pads of Madeline.

                   What sober moment in toe-jammed shoes
                   Could ever compare
                   To the unjammed toes of Madeline?

                   Then fate uglied.
                   The skin on the top of
                   The unjammed arch of Madeline...

                   Frosted flakes like
                   Seaweed slime
                   Would be the feet of Madeline.

                   Now I weep and weep, jammed by grief,
                   Never more to want to see
                   The unjammed feet of Madeline.