George Fox Chronicles: Sock Flinging (Chapter 3)
(Note: The beginning of the story may require people to know the backstory of George Fox)

Anika wasn’t working any jobs yet. She was mostly in the house and only went to social gatherings only when she felt like it. Her day was mostly spent on the TV and on her laptop, fixed up by her friend across the river since it frequently broke down.
George, still in her rainbow sock, expected nothing more than resting comfortably inside for the rest of the day. While browsing the Internet, Anika was starting to feel boredom come over her and started talking to George. “So, what you said earlier about your movie watching experience, did you know it was Carmelita at the time?” 
George, who was caught off guard, started talking. “For what? Me? Nope, I couldn’t see her face from down there and my young self just wanted to climb in there.” She pointed to the boots she put to the side of the sofa. 
“Do those boots have historical significance? Were they the ones you clung onto?” said Anika. 
“No, those are newer issue, but they looked identical.” said George. Without thinking, Anika’s feet started to move again and it looked like she was bringing the boots to her foot again. George anticipated this, and kept his protection mode on the entire time, even after she took the boots off. He wasn’t amused.
Her left foot with George inside slipped in, followed by her right foot. Anika only just remembered his belongings were in there as she was doing up the laces. “Oops! I’m sorry! Is everything still okay in there?”
George yelled from inside the boot, which sounded muffled outside, but was still intelligible. “Yes, I never turned my protection off.” Anika slipped her feet out and George was blinded shortly by the sudden light.
“I can’t imagine someone that actually enjoys this, are you sure you really like these situations?” said Anika. She looked like she was about to take off her socks, and had already set her laptop aside.
George wanted her to not take them off, but he didn’t deny that he doesn’t like being surprised. “I like them when we both know what we’re getting into. Unexpectedly using Carmelita’s boots when I didn’t know you were her new roommate was a little nerve wracking.”
“Did Carmelita never tell you? I guess she was just too busy... Sorry about almost wrecking your place.” she said.  Anika already took off her right sock, then started taking off her left one with George inside. The fabric started to scrunch up near her heel and soon George’s face was no longer in her paws, but rather the fabric of the freshly worn sock. It still had its “new in box” smell which George admired. He took a breath and let out a sigh of admiration. Anika almost blushed, then chuckled. “I’m guessing all little foxes like this, right?”
George, still lost in the fabric, started swimming in it. The tiny bump in the sock would have looked like a bug to anyone else. Anika knew it was her newfound friend though, and let him enjoy the moment for a short while.
Anika then picked up the sock by the toes and pointed the open end at her nose. “Time to slide out!” said Anika. George suddenly felt gravity pull him down the fabric as the colors whizzed past him to the opening of the sock. George landed on her nose, sliding for a short while before stopping.
“Wow! You sure know how to impress a guy!” said George, slightly dizzy from the fall. George’s experience with Carmelita was usually that her sock would just be left on the ground and she would step to another corner of the room, then come close to loom over him. Anika took it one step further by actually picking up the sock to make it a fabric slide. He turned around to try to see the laptop screen. “So, what do you do on the computer usually?”
Anika brought the laptop over. “Oh, just checking up on my friends online… I could show you some of the stuff me and Gabe have been doing.” Anika pulled up a social media site. They spend the rest of the day browsing the internet together, showing things both of them liked, up to supper time.
It was 5PM, Gabe called Anika on her cell phone, A Celestial C3. The ringtone was the default that every single C3 had, an electronic symphonic song that ramped up in intensity. George heard this everywhere since the phone was introduced, along with the bird sound it always makes when a message comes in. He was slightly annoyed, but didn’t mind it too much. “Hello? Hey Gabe, you mind bringing home dinner? Pizza? Okay. An extra half-an-hour’s fine. See ya at home.” George was wandering the keys of her laptop’s keyboard. It was unbelievably dirty.
“Do you usually take a vacuum to these keys? There’s so many crumbs on this keyboard…” said George. He was throwing crumbs like rocks to the side of the computer while Anika was on the phone.
“Oh, you don’t have to do this, George. It still works, and if not, my friend David can fix it.” said Anika. George persisted on cleaning the keyboard, sometimes stepping in dried fruit juice by accident. George was cleaning for an hour straight and was at wit’s end. He got his phone out and called “Eggleston.”
“Hey Eggleston, you mind fixing up my friend’s laptop? I’ll send its Universe Object ID as an attachment…” George said. With the push of a button, a white flash enveloped the laptop, and just as quick as it disappeared, it came back, looking brand new and running faster.
“What just…” Anika paused. Everything looked the same when it came to her operating system, but the computer looked brand new.
“Magic!” George replied. With button push and a flash, George snuck out of the living room and teleported into the shoe closet. Anika started using the “new” computer, slightly shocked at how fast the web browser loaded.
In the shoe closet were the usual boots, heels, and canvas shoes. What he noticed about the canvas shoes were that they had art painted on, albeit faded due to wear and tear. “She’s an artist huh? Cute ducks and bunnies on these shoes…” George ignored the skater shoes presumably of Gabe’s possession.
Next on George’s list was the sock drawer. Naturally, being closed, he had to turn on a light after teleporting inside. The landscape of rainbow colors and grey tones meant that this was a shared drawer between Gabe and Anika. As is usual, George swims in Anika’s socks for as long as he could, each different colored fabric brushing against his fur.
Anika was still playing with her laptop, completely ignoring the fact George had wandered off. She was instant messaging her friend David, the person who would usually fix up her laptop. “Holy crap, one of my newfound friends fixed up my laptop so that it looked and ran completely new!” she typed. “He pressed a button on his phone, and in a flash he fixed it up so that it was brand new!”
“What? A flash of light? You sure it wasn’t a UFO?” David typed. David expected wacky stories from Anika, most of which came from first hand experiences with Gabe. Nights out on the town was what he usually heard coming from Anika.
“No, it really disappeared shortly and came back running faster than ever.” Anika typed. “I’ll bring it over one day so that you can see what he did to it.”
“Okay…” David typed. It was only then Anika realized that he wasn’t in the living room anymore.
“Uh oh, he wandered off…” Anika said to herself. With his backstory fresh in her mind, Anika checked the shoe closet, but didn’t find him. She did remember her own boots were still sticky and needed a washing.
Anika then checked the only other place he would be, the sock drawer. Sure enough, inside one of the colorfully patterned socks was George.
George felt the drawer sliding open. The light shined the colors of the sock onto him and he was able to barely see out of it. Anika held up the sock with George inside.
“Now I can tell you really like this…” said Anika. “Tell you what, stay in there while we eat supper, I still need to think up how to introduce you to my boyfriend.” Anika took the sock and started walking.
George gulped. Being around food was a thought he cringed at. Paws were ok, but being around snacks such as popcorn was usually his biggest fear of being unintentionally eaten. He was invulnerable, but that didn’t apply to his clothes’ cleanliness… Being somewhat of a neat freak, being eaten means all his clothes would have to be washed. “Can you leave this sock away from the food? You know, so that I don’t accidentally land on a pizza slice?” George said nervously, as Anika carried it to the dining room.
“Huh? You never mentioned about not liking being around food. How are you gonna eat dinner?” Anika said, looking puzzled at the bump in the sock.
“Have some leftovers at the open end of the sock, I’ll have a chunk later.” said George. The sock was laid on the dining room table next to Anika.
As soon as the sock was laid down on the table, Gabe unlocked the door and came in with two large pizzas. “PIZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” He shouted.
Anika grabbed the pizza boxes and set it down in the center of the table. The smell started to penetrate the sock and George had conflicting thoughts in his mind. For one, he needed food, as normally he could grow to 5’ 9’’ and grab a few slices. That was not true though, he had a month to spend at the size of the nail on a thumb and food was going to be hard to deal with, unless he used up his supplies in Carmelita’s boot, which coincidentally, lasted a month.
Then he remembered his teleportation lab had size change ability. “Stupid me!” he thought. “Why didn’t I just use that to revert me back to size? Now it’s stuck at Carmelita’s place!” At the same time, he remembered trying to revert back to size would destroy the shoe the lab was teleported to along with the shoe itself being ripped to pieces by his growing body. “I just gotta find a way to integrate the newer technologies into my phone. Then I can size shift me and anyone else if I wanted to.”
Strings of cheese started pulling from the pizza as George resisted the temptation to take a peek or to crawl out of the sock. Anika was kind enough to pull out a string of cheese and leave it by the opening of the sock. “How was today, Gabe?” Anika said.
“Alright, a Fresnel light needed a bulb change 4 stories up, I tried to use the scaffolding to get there at first, but it was too far to change it out safely. We had to bring in a lift.” Gabe said, chomping down at his pizza whilst talking. He didn’t notice the sock on the table as their basement suite was generally full of messy clothing everywhere.
George dared to take a tiny peek outside the end of the sock, and found the cheese string left by Anika. Did he dare to go for it? He knew the first thing Gabe would see is a bug crawling out of Anika’s sock. He didn’t care. He lept out, grabbed the string and returned inside the sock. Anika happened to look while this was happening and chuckled.
“What’s so funny? The tomato sauce all over my mouth?” said Gabe. Anika shook her head and snapped out of it.
“Huh? Nothing… was thinking back to the night we hung out with Steve.” she quickly said. Gabe chuckled and started a rant on how much fun they had on “the night the world was supposed to end.”
Anika half listened to Gabe rant, and half paid attention to the sock. Her being unsure about introducing George was starting to tug at her to the point where she was actually feeling stressed… She needed to introduce him the only way she knew how.
Anika took the sock and threw it at Gabe. It landed on Gabe’s nose with the open side facing his face. George flung out and landed inbetween his eyes.
“Ow… Can’t you find a different way, Anika? Also, can I have my cheese back, please?” George said. The Border collie was motionless, until he took a hand and slowly grabbed the cheese string on his forehead to put it near George. George then sat down to eat the cheese.
“What is this sorcery?” Gabe whispered to Anika. Gabe was then careful to perform a balancing act walking from his seat up to Anika.
Anika pointed her finger between Gabe’s eyes and George. “Gabe, George. George, Gabe.”
George stopped eating for a bit and stood up. “Surprised?” Gabe nodded his head, but doing so almost knocked George off his feet.
“Careful Gabe! He’s really small and could be unexpectedly crushed like a bug…” Anika said whilst making puppy faces.
“Where did you come from? A UFO? Am I on something right now?” Gabe was confused, he swore he kicked his habits about a year ago when he met Anika, but he wasn’t as sure now.
“I came from Carmelita’s boots. I have a home inside there.” George said. Gabe was further confused, since Anika was wearing the boots the last time he saw her.
“But, Anika was wearing them… your home’s probably crushed by now…” Gabe said. “There’s no way your furniture could survive Anika’s sheer weight.” Gabe chuckled at the sarcastic comment he made, but Anika didn’t find it funny.
“Ha ha ha… he has protection spells to protect his belongings inside the boot.” Anika said sarcastically at first. “I checked. All the furniture’s still there.”
“BS. Give me proof, Anika.” Gabe said. Anika then brought over the boots. Anika took a finger to let George get off of Gabe’s nose and onto her nose. When Gabe looked inside, sure enough, a small table, some refrigerators, and a TV were inside the left boot. The right boot contained a surround sound system and a projector. Gabe’s initial shock went away and accepted the fact it was real. “Sweet sound system you got in there…” Gabe said. “Can it play HD?”
“Yes. The selection’s not that great cause my collection is at Carmelita’s house and there’s no cabinet to store the discs in the boot.” George said from Anika’s nose.
“I’d love to shrink down to check out that theater room. Means we can finally watch movies together, Anika.” said Gabe. Then he smelled the boot and the scent of Anika’s foot was present. “Whew… Maybe when the stink clears though…”
“I don’t mind it at all.” said George. “If you really want to use it, I can get noseplugs.” George was half joking, half serious when he made that statement.
“That’s fine, I think we’ll air it out for a few days.” said Gabe. George now wasn’t sure if they were serious, but proceeded to ask anyways.
“Say, you guys aren’t heading back to Carmelita’s house anytime soon, are you?” said George.
Both replied at the same time “Not really, no.” George knew this was his chance to obtain his technology and lab inside Carmelita’s running shoe.
“See, there’s a running shoe I need to get in order to complete construction of my digs.” said George. “It’s very specific and it’s only at Carmelita’s place.”
“Well, if you need shoes to build a house inside, we could always buy you a pair…” said Anika. George wasn’t sure how to approach this, he needed the specific sneakers, but telling the truth with both of them around in his mind wasn’t the right thing to do. He’s spent more time with Anika to trust her enough to carry out the deed. He needed to distract Gabe.
“Well Gabe, I’m sorry to say that you and Anika currently don’t have the means to shrink down into the home theater system.” George told him. “But me and Anika could figure out a way if we put our brains into it.”
Normally Gabe wouldn’t let another man near Anika alone, but he was tired and George’s size in his mind discounted any fact of anything intimate. “Fine, you guys had fun all day at home, and I have a 2AM start time tomorrow. I need to get to bed.” said Gabe. “Call me when you’ve figured it out.” Gabe slammed the door closed to his bedroom and went to bed.
“That was short. Is he always that grumpy?” George said. Anika grabbed her laptop and started walking to her bedroom.
“He’s far more sarcastic than grumpy towards others, must have been a long day at work. He did act quite surprised to your home theater system.” Anika said, beginning to lie in bed.
“Yeah, see, if he was actually serious about that, the specific sneakers in Carmelita’s house… We need to get those.” said George. Anika opened her laptop up and was paying attention to her wall posts on her social media site.
“Yeah, sure…” Anika said unenthusiastically. George knew Anika wasn’t paying attention. He needed her attention somehow. Time for “Eggleston” to jump in.
George pretend dialed the phone. “Hey Eggleston…” George said in a pretentious voice. Anika just remembered what those words meant. She violently closed the laptop and yanked the power.
“No! You are not messing with my laptop again! I need David to look at it first!” Anika shouted and chuckled.
“Will you help get the sneakers with me tomorrow?” said George. “It’ll help me unshrink to hang out with your friends.”
Anika first hesitated, but gave in. “Fine. But Gabe is the only person that can drive and he’s going to the film studio at midnight. We’ll have to take transit.”
George wasn’t ready for this… Public transit… The bane of shoes and socks. He had the technology to slip in unnoticed, but with a friend around that knew his habits, the dynamic changed…
“Um… sure… Public transit…” George said reluctantly. George’s previous experiences with Public transit were that he never saw the bus. He just teleported directly into random shoes.
“Great! I’ll look up a route and then we wake up tomorrow to take the bus to Carmelita’s place.” Anika opened her laptop and looked up a route. “Ooh, says here we can take the light rail to cross the river!”
George was still dizzy from being flung from a sock. He jumped down from her nose, and walked to the area around her paws. Being so small, it took him 3 minutes to walk down her body to the gigantic paws. Ironically, he needed to find a sock to sleep in. “Where’s a sock I can sleep in? I know it’s early but I want some rest.”
Anika chuckled. “You were in my rainbow socks all day. You sure you want to go back in again?” George saw her bare paws and toes wiggling. He was a sucker for paws, and he knew it. His face was red, and his eyes fixated on the wiggling paws.
“Of course, Anika. Anything for you sweetie…” George said. He was tired from walking the distance, and he completely forgot Anika already had a boyfriend. It might have been because he was dizzy, but logic for him flew out the window when she threw that sock.
Anika didn’t mind having her little friend compliment her paws. After all, once she sat up, she could clearly see he was looking at them. “I suppose another night with my paws doesn’t hurt… You’ve survived an evening in Carm’s boots and a day in my rainbow socks. What’s another night in different socks going to hurt?”
George was so ready to hug her toes, he was inching in ever so closer. Anika had no hesitation. She put her foot down and George hugged on tight to one of her toes. Anika knew he couldn’t be hurt, and walked over to the sock drawer. She picked out the light blue no show striped socks and put them on with George inside.
“Sleep tight little fox, tomorrow’s going to be a big day.” Anika said. She sat back in bed and put her feet at the end of her bed. With her focus on her laptop, Anika went back to browsing the internet.
George inside the sock was unsure of how to take what she just said. A “Big” day? Well, nothing gets bigger than a whole crowd of shoes and socks on public transit. What would she think of him if he still did his stunts, teleporting inside of different strangers’ shoes to try them out? Only tomorrow on the bus was going to tell. For now, the warmth of the foot and the softness of the sock was all he could think about, as he started to doze off.
TO BE CONTINUED
(Next chapter: Public Transit. How will George survive shoes in public?)