The Misadventures of an Elephantine Foot

Date: 12/30/2025

I’m wandering through the town centre with my friend Ash, and everything seems to hang its head, ashamed of lingering past its welcome. Christmas is technically over, but its corpse is still on display. Decorations hang on out of habit rather than hope. Lights flicker weakly, like they’re taking their last, performative breaths. Tinsel droops as if it’s lost the will to cling on. I recognise myself in the hopelessness — the quiet desperation, the aching desire to be unseen. Ash is talking, filling the air with threadbare conversation, carefully sewing over the gaps where my thoughts should be. I let her. My mind has drifted upwards, into the bruised clouds pressing low over the town, heavy with rain that refuses to arrive. The pressure sits in my skull, in my chest — that familiar, waiting weight. Nothing happens, yet the stillness somehow feels louder than noise. She stops mid-sentence. Squints at me. “Mand… what’s wrong with your foot?” I haven’t noticed, but Ash’s eyes speak in urgent whispers. I follow her gaze, bracing myself. My foot has doubled in size and is pouring out of my trainer like sourdough with an inflated ego. Even my shoe looks embarrassed to be associated with it. I crouch down and pull it off. It’s wrong. Not injured — rearranged. Distorted. Folded inwards on itself with unnatural poise. Toes tucked beneath, bones bent into compliance. As if it’s been trained over time. Bound. Curated. A spikeless hedgehog curled into a ball, waiting out a long winter. Something that learned survival by becoming less. Ash’s face drains of colour. “Perhaps you should see a doctor about that?” she offers, softly. “It’ll be okay,” I say too quickly. I force my elephantine foot back into a trainer five times too small — smooshing it, squishing it, negotiating with it — pretending this is absolutely normal. Finally, it resists. I win. I always do. I stand and limp on. Now I feel it — the weight of eyes. People notice. They always notice weakness. The imbalance. The effort. Sympathy clings to me, thick and unwanted. I feel observed, pitied, quietly sorted into a pile of social cast-offs. “Shall we look for some jumpers?” I say, desperate for normality. Ash is gone. Vanished. No puff of smoke, no explanation. Just gone. In her place is Tom. Tom Forshore. A boy — no, a man — I went to school with. We’re linked arm-in-arm, apparently mid-date. He’s painfully thin, skin stretched over bone, like he’s been rationing himself for years. A walking famine. A mere skeleton of his former self, as though life has been eating him slowly, and he’s stood still enough to let it. We both know we’re uncomfortable. Neither of us knows how we got here. I’m a married woman. I don’t do Tinder. I certainly don’t date. “You’re as stiff as my husband,” I tell him, and I don’t know if it’s humour or an accusation. He stiffens further, affronted on several levels. The space between us snaps cold, brittle as glass. This date is as dead as a cadaver laid out and forgotten. The scene blinks out in a dying christmas light. I’m in a gymnasium with my work colleagues. Royal Mail red everywhere. There’s mania in the air — squeals of excitement, too loud, too much for an ordinary day at Royal Mail. “We can go home an hour early!” Kate beams. “If we dance!” Kirsty adds. “Dance?” I repeat. The manager bursts in wearing full Lycra, sweatband tight, authority glistening. He’s basking in the glow of a hundred eyes on him. Attention whore that he is. “Dance for me, my monkeys!” “This is ridiculous,” I say. “I won’t be dancing.” I glance at my foot. “Especially not with this.” So I watch. It’s cheap entertainment, if nothing else. I just wish I’d brought popcorn. I set my handbag down among a sea of carbon copies — obedient, unremarkable, quietly mocking me with their perfect uniformity. And then — treacherously — I feel an urge to join in. To fit in. To belong. I half-raise my arms to the beat of — A toilet flushing. Again. And again. Aggressive. Hopeful. Futile. Someone trying the same solution over and over. The sound burrows into my skull. I laugh. Too much. Too long. It feels inappropriate and medicinal all at once. Relief flashes — brief and artificial. “Go clean the showers!” the boss barks, hands on lycra-clad hips. “You’re not taking this seriously.” I’m handed a mop and bucket and herded to the shower block. It’s flooded. Brown water laps at my ankles, alarmingly warm. I kick my shoes off and step in. My feet are perfect. Whole. Proportionate. Normal. The filth has done what nothing else could. I wade freely, almost lightheaded. I wave at an old colleague who mops beside me, but he doesn’t see me. Earbuds in, sealed off. His soul is roaming elsewhere. Always elsewhere. The scene corkscrews down the drain. I’m home. Alex is small again. Nappy small. He points at the skylight above. “Monkey.” The cat is on the roof. Naturally. The scallywag has a knack for getting stuck in awkward places. “He’ll come down,” I say. “He’s a cat.” Alex is already climbing. Every footstep on the glass roof sends fresh terror shattering through my chest. I can almost hear it crack — stilettos on an ice-thin lake. “Alex, come down!” He doesn’t listen. He continues to chase Monkey on the precarious glass roof. Maxi enters, carrying the weight of responsibility, and starts listing things he needs as if each one is urgent, non negotiable, a matter of life or death. “I need a new PE kit. New trainers. New bag. New coat.” Each item pings in my head like a till. Ker-ching. Ker-ching. Ker-ching. “You’ll have to wait,” I say. “We don’t have much money.” Translation: what if I can’t hold this together? Alex swings down from the roof like a nappy-wearing Tarzan, Monkey clutched triumphantly in his arms. It’s ridiculous. Heroic. Entirely unnecessary. He grins — then freezes. “What’s wrong with your foot?” I look down. It’s enormous. Not swollen — ballooned beyond reason. Like Hulk tearing out his T-shirt, my trainer lies shredded around my feet. My foot resembles something closer to an elephant's hoof than a human foot — thick, heavy, built to carry a weight I don’t remember agreeing to. My foot. My monstrous, traitorous foot. I thought the dirty water had shrunk it. Dissolved it. Carried it off to some shadowy place where forgotten things fester and whisper. Instead, it has returned with a vengeance. Bloated, unrepentant. Thicker than memory allows, heavier than guilt. As if my brief relief had been nothing more than a lullaby — giving it time to shape itself, to strategize, to claim its rightful place. It doesn’t throb. It doesn’t ache. It simply is — a hulking, absurd monument, unapologetic, claiming space like a truth that has stopped asking permission long ago. And I realise, with a twitch of dark amusement and a stab of dread: It never followed me home. It was never gone. It has always been here. Waiting.