Barefoot in the Digital Void

The thing about showing someone your feet is that it’s never just about the feet. Not here.

I pulled off my left boot with a grunt, the leather stiff and wrong against my fingers. The bell on my hat jingled. I hate that bell. It laughs at me every time I move.

“You sure about this?” I asked, even though I wasn’t talking to anyone. The circus tent stretched above me, its candy-striped walls pulsing with a light that came from nowhere. The floor was a checkerboard of black and white, and it smelled like popcorn and old secrets.

I was sure about nothing.

The boot came off with a wet sound. My sock was gray, damp, and had a hole where my big toe poked through. I stared at it. The toe looked back, pale and accusatory, like it knew I’d failed at keeping it safe.

This is my life now. Worrying about a toe.

Three days ago I was filling out spreadsheets for a company that sold novelty mugs. Three days ago my biggest problem was whether Brenda from accounting would microwave fish again. Now I was in a digital hellscape where the exits were painted on the walls and a man made of abstract geometry wanted me to play his games.

I peeled off the sock. My foot was white. Veiny. Ordinary. The kind of foot that had walked across linoleum floors and stood in line for coffee. Nothing special. Nothing that belonged in a place where gravity sometimes forgot its job and the sky was a ceiling that flickered like a dying bulb.

“Why feet?” I whispered.

No one answered. No one ever answered.

I wiggled my toes. They wiggled back. A small act of defiance. Look, I’m still here. I still have toes. I can still move them. The circus hadn’t taken that yet.

But it would. The circus always took things.

I remembered the first time I saw someone abstract. A woman named Queenie. She’d been laughing, telling a joke about a duck and a priest. Then her hand started to blur. The color bled out of her arm like watercolor in rain. She looked at it, confused. Then her face went soft, the features sliding off like wax. She didn’t scream. She just faded, her smile the last thing to go, hanging in the air for a second before it dissolved.

I threw up in a trash can shaped like a clown’s head.

That was day one.

Now it was day three, or maybe day four. Time didn’t work right here. The sun rose and set on a schedule that made no sense, and the moon was a grinning jack-o-lantern that winked at you if you stared too long.

I put my foot back in my sock. The fabric was cold and damp. I hated it. I hated the sock, the boot, the bell, the whole ridiculous costume. I hated that I was wearing a jester’s outfit and no one thought that was weird.

“Pomni!”

I jumped. My hat fell off. The bell hit the floor with a sad little *ting*.

Jax stood at the entrance of the tent, his rabbit ears flopping to one side. He had that grin on his face, the one that said he knew something you didn’t and he was going to enjoy watching you find out.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“You were showing yourself your feet.”

“I was checking for blisters.”

He laughed. It was a sharp sound, like breaking glass. “Right. Blisters. In a place where you don’t have a body.”

I picked up my hat. The bell was quiet now, betrayed. “I have a body. I’m in it.”

“Are you?” He stepped closer. His shadow stretched wrong, longer than it should have been, reaching toward me like a hand. “Because I’ve been here six months, and I still can’t figure out if this is real or just a really good dream I’m having while I’m dead.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

He sat down across from me, cross-legged, his ears brushing the floor. For a second he looked almost human. Then he smiled again, and the look was gone.

“Caine wants to see you,” he said.

My stomach dropped. Caine. The ringmaster. The thing that ran this place. A floating head with teeth and a top hat and eyes that were too wide, too bright, too hungry.

“What does he want?”

“Didn’t say. But he’s got that look. The one he gets before he announces a new adventure.”

I groaned. The last adventure had been a maze made of mirrors where the reflections moved on their own. I’d spent four hours talking to a version of myself that kept telling me I was going to die alone.

“I’m not going.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I could stay here.”

“He’ll find you.” Jax tilted his head. “He always finds you. Remember what happened to Bartholomew?”

I remembered. Bartholomew had hidden in the vents for three days. When Caine finally pulled him out, the man’s skin was covered in tiny bite marks and he couldn’t stop crying. He abstracted a week later.

I stood up. My boots were still off. I looked at them, then at Jax, then at the tent flap that led to the rest of the circus.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m keeping my shoes off.”

Jax raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because if I’m going to run, I want to feel the ground. I want to know when it’s about to give way.”

He stared at me. For a second, the grin faltered. Something flickered behind his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or respect.

Then it was gone, and he was laughing again.

“You’re weird, Pomni.”

“I know.”

I walked past him, my bare feet cold against the checkerboard floor. The tent flap opened on its own, and the circus stretched out before me. Bright. Loud. Wrong.

Somewhere, Caine was waiting.

Somewhere, there was another adventure.

And somewhere, I was going to find a way out.

I just had to keep moving.

One foot in front of the other.

Even if I didn’t have shoes.