Soles

by Kay Brandt

  Crawling to my spot—the corner of the sales floor where the small, portable TV was—I slunk into the wall and zoned into the static visuals. There was a scratching sound behind me, like rusted nails scraping cement. The scratching wouldn't stop, and I looked over my shoulder, witnessing a freaky sight. A boot—that same one I faced off with in the stockroom before—and two unmatched strappy heels. My first reaction was to jump, then I reached out to grab one... and it lurched at me... like an angry dog. They twitched and shook, making a vibrating sound.

  “Mom?” I called out.

  “What is it, Roland?” Melinda reached in her purse, searching for a snack to shut me up.

  “Look!” I responded, backing out of my corner as the shoes came at me. “They're scaring me!”

  “Who? She asked. “What?”

  “Can't you see?” My voice cracked as I scrambled towards her. “The shoes!”

  She shook her head, catching me in her arms. “Honey! You mean the ones on display?”

  “No!” I kept pointing at them, slowly moving across the floor, snapping and scraping. “Them! THEM!”

  Aunt Grace muttered a sarcastic laugh. “You're silly, Rolie-poly. Silly, silly boy.”

  “Roland,” Melinda said, sufficiently disturbed by my outburst. “There are no shoes on the floor! Your imagination's gotten the best of you, son.” Melinda's worry was laced with love, but I felt the truth—she saw them, too.

  “They're going to get me, mom!” About to clamp on to my sneaker, I kicked at the shoes, swinging my legs, hurting my mother instead of the aggressors.

  “Roland!” Melinda yelled, bracing my legs with hers. I was screaming and screaming, and then Jonathan appeared, throwing the stockroom door wide open. He didn't say a word, but stood in the threshold between his world and ours and glared. Seeing nothing but unnecessary chaos, he disappeared again, slamming and locking the door behind him.

  The shoes were suddenly gone, too, and I was motionless. Melinda kissed my hot cheek and set me on my feet. “Don't do that again, Roland,” she warned. “It wasn't funny.”

  “Let's order a pizza.” Aunt Grace suggested.

  “Good idea,” Melinda replied, sending me back to the corner. “Go sit. Your shows are on.”

  I obeyed her, and returned to my corner, but while Melinda called for delivery, the shoes were behind me again, nipping at my ankles. Making sure I wasn't being heard or observed, I flicked my fingers at the boot and heels, whispering in my quietest voice, “Go away! Leave me alone!”

  The strappy heels dug into my legs. “Get off of me!” I flung my arms at the shoes, and hit the high-heeled body snatcher. It flew, splattering against the wall. My head spun, terrified I'd been caught, but Melinda and Aunt Grace were lost in Melinda's “training” which consisted of thin, powdery lines vanishing up their noses.

  It was me versus the shoes, and it didn't matter if they weren't real to them or not. Blood beaded from the hole the strappy one cut into my leg. That was real.

  “Why do you want to bite me?” I asked the shoes, barely breathing.

  A startling hum shot through the room as the front door rattled. Visible through the blinds, the delivery guy knocked.

  “Oh my gosh, he scared me,” admitted Aunt Grace. “Let him in, Melinda. He looks like a stud.”

  Before Melinda got to the door, a flood of yellow light poured in from the stockroom. A stunning woman, dripping with jewels stood there, finding her balance in her new shoes. Ample cleavage spilled out of her wrap-around dress's low neckline, taking careful steps onto the sales floor. Jonathan assisted her, holding her arm as she adjusted to the custom footwear. She wore a silky, elegant, modest-heeled slipper, crafted perfectly to fit her dainty feet.

  I didn't see the look she gave Melinda or Aunt Grace, but I still recall the verbal exchange.

  “All finished?” My mother's voice was thin, obviously not a fan of this woman.

  “No, Jonathan isn't quite done with my second pair,” the stunning woman said. “I'll need to be fitted for my third. I have at least two more visits.”

  “Let's make an appointment for you now.” Melinda gritted her teeth, scanning over the calendar.

  “Jonathan, I thought you said I didn't need an appointment? That I could drop by whenever I wanted.”

  “That's not how we do business, I'm sorry.” Melinda held tightly to her last shred of control over her husband.

  Jonathan avoided everyone's eye contact, accept for mine. We looked at each other for a lingering moment. His eyes were blank—dark holes leading to an empty place where a man used to live.

  “If you want my business,” the stunning women retorted, “then yes, it is.”

  Melinda gave the woman the finger as she exited, not caring if she saw the gesture. Aunt Grace giggled, “You're so naughty, Mel. Next time say it to her face. She can't talk to you like that.”

  “Believe me, she's one of the nicer ones. You sure you want to work here?” Melinda poked a finger into Aunt Grace's ribs. “You can't give attitude to the paying clientele, or act like you know more about design than they do. Kissing ass is mandatory.” Melinda paid the delivery guy, who'd been standing there helplessly with two steaming pizza boxes.

  “Whatever. I've dealt with bigger divas,” Grace stated.

  “I can see you now.” Jonathan said to Grace.

  Melinda sent Grace a concerned and confused look. “Huh? You?”

  “Oh no, that's okay.” Waving Jonathan off, my aunt cleverly sidestepped the invitation. “We can reschedule.”

  “See her for what?” Melinda asked Jonathan.

  “He, um, he offered to fit me, in case I wanted a pair.” Grace blurted out before Jonathan could speak.

  Melinda cleared her throat. “When did he ask?”

  “I don't know... sometime, like last week,” stuttered Grace.

  “I'm not comfortable with you being fitted.” Melinda placed pizza slices on four plates, handing one to me first.

  “It's a kind gesture,” Grace defended. “But if you don't want me to have a pair, Mel, then no big deal.”

  “If this was your intention, to be fitted behind my back, you can forget about working here.” Melinda's mood shifted, handing a plate to Jonathan, which he declined. “I would also suggest you find overnight accommodations elsewhere, too.” Having reached her intake capacity for excusing Jonathan's extramarital activities, Melinda enforced her will.

  Biting into the hot pizza, Aunt Grace told her, “I'm cool.”

  With an odd reluctance, Jonathan skulked to the stockroom without dinner and the conversation was dropped.

  ****

  Melinda took her time training her sister, not in a rush to set her free. I was dragged along, like always, and time after time, the three shoes found me, and instigated attacks. The incidents ranged from mild bumps to full-on bites and scratches. From sales floor to stockroom to the bathroom, they were on my tail, not leaving me be for a second—and no one else saw them. They even grew in numbers, from three shoes to four and five―none having a matching partner. Eventually, eight shoes showed up, and became my unwanted and unfriendly shadows.

  The game of me versus demon shoes wasn't one-sided. I spied on them, too, when they weren't on my ass, and witnessed the culprits “feeding” on discarded scrap material―fabrics, leather, buttons, bobbles, and threads. They loved to nosh, sometimes devouring freshly finished shoes, still reeking of toxic, potent glue, thriving on the poison.

  This is when I understood some of what was driving the master craftsman insane―his newly made shoes were vanishing, or left destroyed, doubling his workload. Jonathan probably convinced himself the damaged shoes were his doing, but they weren't.

  One afternoon while hanging out at the store, I wandered into the stockroom, and watched Jonathan sew and glue. He wasn't bothered by my presence, so I boldly decided to confront him point blank about the weird happenings at the store.

  “Daddy, why do those shoes keep bothering me?”
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  “You don't like this design?” Holding up an eccentric style, he admired his own handy work.

  “No, I mean, the other ones.” I pointed towards the “locked” cabinets.

  “Roland, stop being so vague. The store is filled with shoes.” Two of his fingers were glued together. Without wincing, he ripped them apart.

  “The ones that bite.”

  “There is no such thing as biting shoes,” he said lucidly, correcting my lame question.

  “Yes there is,” I insisted. “And they live in here with you. I counted eight of them. Are they your pets? I don't think they like me.” My innocence caught him, and he took a long moment to look into my face.

  “I don't live here, Roland.”

  “I mean, you almost do,” I replied. “You're never at home.”

  “I think you need to go play with your Aunt.” His dismissal and denial felt like an emotional prison, keeping me locked out with no one to protect me from the evil energy festering and pestering.

  “They're not very nice,” I continued, naively thinking I deserved an answer.

  “Roland, enough! I need quietness to work. Do you see how many pairs I have yet to make?” His question was punctuated with the slam of a glue bottle on the desk.

  “Why do you lock them in that drawer? Are they bad?”

  He replied by grabbing my wrist and making a beeline for my mother. Dropping me off on the sales floor, his eyes burned with anger. “He's not allowed in the stockroom anymore, Melinda,” Jonathan told her. “And neither are you.”

  ****

  Relics from my grandfather's special collection, that's what the eight demonic shoes were. I uncovered my grandmother's scrapbook after my parents died. Right there on the first page the eight shoes were highlighted as William's most loved offerings, but the singles were paired with their matches in the pictures. As I turned the pages, the snapshots of the store's facade boasted the eight pairs, front and center in the window display. The shoes were clear representations of my grandfather's wide range of talent, from dressy to casual styles, boots to dramatic heels.

  In the scrapbook my grandparents' wedding pictures were also pasted. And on my grandmother's feet were a pair of princess slippers that resembled one of the single demonic shoes. The last page had newspaper cutouts of the store when it was deemed a murder scene—the first time, because of my grandparents.

  I didn't want to look at it, but I did. The black and white photo of their bloody bodies hanging from hooks in the stockroom had been pasted, too. Someone put the pictures in there after their deaths.

  A few months before my parents' still unexplained murder-suicide, I was nine years old, playing Chinese jacks on the stockroom floor. He'd forgotten about banishing me from the stockroom, and if I wanted to spend any kind of time with my father, the only choice was for me to sit behind him on the cold cement and quietly occupy myself. Jonathan was totally absorbed in his work, unsurprisingly, and didn't see me suddenly surrounded by all eight shoes. The sharp metal buckle on the boot scraped the floor, and I saw Jonathan react ever so slightly to the sound.

  “Dad, look!” The urgency in my voice was real, and yet he didn't turn.

  “Shhh...”

  Facing the shoes, I stared them down, smashing one with a handful of jacks, and it bit me in return. I swung my fists, bent on annihilation, but they scattered back to wherever they came from before I could deliver lethal blows.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I was in my early teens when Aunt Grace systematically turned the store into a wasteland, having no craftsman at the helm, and no clue about running a business. She'd been taught very little by Melinda, and our outlook was bleak, to say the least.

  It'd been years since my parents died. Aunt Grace claimed zero incidents or encounters with the shoes when I'd ask her if she'd seen them. Then I stopped asking. I had bigger things to worry about, like being a misunderstood, troubled teenager with no friends, swimming in the depths of a dark depression. Aunt Grace and I were broke, barely getting by. We lived on gum occasionally. I missed my mother's terrible cooking. I just missed her, and I missed Jonathan, too.

  For my own mental salvation, I put my mind in another universe when my thoughts would drift to the shoes. I'd imagine the shoes were from deep Space, not the pits of hell or “from” the cabinet, and associated them with my belief in the existence of aliens. If the shoe “thing” really happened, then anything was possible.

  The shoes were planted by some other life form, I'd tell myself; like the creatures people claim to find standing at their bedside in the middle of the night. No one knows how the gray men got in, but they did, ever so quietly. For some bizarre reason the aliens had picked me out of millions as their pawn. Maybe one day they'll vaporize me from the store? They should abduct me. Maybe they have? I'd rather be taken to Space than back to the store.

  Why were the shoes not strangled or destroyed by my father, mother or anyone else? It's a miracle I wear shoes at all, having been this traumatized by them. The mere thought of seeing the demon shoes again brought on severe panic attacks, which is why I've not returned to the store since I was ten.

  No matter what I've been told, I know what I saw and experienced, and the fear is real. I know the shoes still exist, quietly hiding in a cabinet that can't be locked forever.

  ****

  I sat in my beat-up sedan in the store parking lot for what felt like five hours, but only three minutes had passed. Sucking on a cigarette would be fantastic if I wasn't allergic to smoke. The street on the other side of the lot called out to me like an aggressive dare―hit the gas hard and brace for impact. Driving directly into traffic seemed like a great alternative than going inside the store. If Aunt Grace wasn't losing her mind, screaming at me on the phone every day to report for work, I would be blazing across the median at this moment. Instead, I bit my nails and pulled my dyed black hair out, strand by strand.

  I'm cool with being bald at nineteen. I won't go in the store until every last strand of hair is pulled out of my head. That's what I'm going to do―buy myself a few more minutes of freedom, and no one, not even my aunt, can stop me. My court-ordered guardian and I haven't seen each other much the past two years. She saved me from going to foster homes at ten but with no money, and no options, it's been a dark decade for both of us.

  I love her, and I know she loves me, however, our relationship is toxic―which is a popular buzzword these days on the daytime talk shows. If she could rewrite her chosen path, she'd never have made the trip to visit so long ago, and stayed clear of the mess. She doesn't blame me for what happened, well, yeah, she does. And I feel responsible for somehow ruining her life.

  The putrid burn of acid reflux rising up into my mouth shook me back to reality. I've been pounding coffee on an empty stomach, too tense and broke to eat. The outside of the store is dingy and spray-painted with graffiti. What was once an affluent, urban neighborhood is now overrun with laundry mats and Chinese fast-food. Mini-malls are regurgitated at every corner of the mile-long strip the store is on, yet there's little foot-traffic.

  Opening the car door, a waft of rotting trash smacked my face and I forced my feet down on the burning asphalt. Stand up, Roland, I told myself without conviction. You can't sit in the car forever. But, I could. I really, really could.

  The first few steps taken towards the store hurt more than an ax to my skull. My aunt saw me through the window and smiled grimly. She looked like a blaze of teased, red hair and bright purple eyeliner even through the tinted glass. Trendy, I thought incoherently with each agonizing step, she looks like an aging pop star. If Madonna and Cyndi Lauper had a daughter, she would've looked like Aunt Grace.

  “Oh hello, Roland.” Aunt Grace greeted me, looking frazzled. “Good of you to show up, you lazy little brat.”

  “Don't start,” I replied, tired of her usual rant. “I'm here, okay?”

  “I was wondering how long you'd sit out there in your car.” She covered me in maternal kisses, sti
nking of cigarettes and something else I couldn't identify. Only thirty-seven years old, I thought. The store had aged her in the worst way. “You got here just in time.”

  “For what?” The store looked nothing like it did when I was a boy. Jonathan and Melinda kept it as my grandfather had―like a quaint boutique offering unique designs on wooden shelves and hand-carved displays. It once had the vibe of a European cottage―now it's a cheap outlet for mass produced sneakers from China.

  “To witness my reality,” she said, motioning towards a gang of teen boys looking suspicious.

  “Oh?” The stained carpet had unraveled from the walls and the fine displays were replaced by filthy, flimsy rows of stacked boxes. I didn't know which bothered me more, the idiots snickering on the other end of the store or the shitty way the store looked.

  “Excuse me, assholes?” She clapped her hands at the gang, momentarily silencing their obvious plotting. “Repeat offenders in the corner? I can only let you steal one pair a week, okay? Do you think that's fair? If so, drop the backpack and unload the three you're attempting to steal now,” Aunt Grace said with an ineffective, passive tone.

  The gang doesn't listen, grabbing what they can and making a run for it.

  I blocked the door as if my lanky structure could stop them and got body slammed out of the way. My back hit the wall and I clutched my chest, feeling my heart thump rapidly as I tried to scream, but wheezing was the sound I made.

  Next thing that happened was equally hysterical and moronic—Aunt Grace blanketed me in a web of gooey fluorescent substance. Opening my eyes, I realized I'd been shot with a can of silly string.

  “What the hell?” Totally stuck in the tacky junk, I flailed to get free.

  Out of the window, I saw the brightly plastered group running like lightning with heavy backpacks filled with stolen goods. Angrily, they yanked at the silly string covering their bodies, falling on themselves in the process.