The Right Direction

I came up with the idea for this one after musing on what magical shoes might be like.

Sam walked into Milo’s Shoes, an old-looking shop whose front faced the alleyway. Sam’s Nike’s were terribly worn, the insides frayed, and he’d finally decided that it was time for a replacement. He wasn’t planning on discovering anything unusual or particularly interesting. He’d just had enough of his friends teasing him about looking like a bohemian.

The clerk, meanwhile, was behind the register, halfway through a bottle, when Sam walked in. He caught a glance of the vessel, one that read “Miller Light.” The clerk looked up, blinked twice, and quickly busied himself with examining the cash register.

“Welcome,” the clerk said timidly, eyes downcast.

There was a long, awkward silence in which both felt stymied.

The clerk reacted first, trying to mask his panic and not doing so well. He leaned across the counter, grabbed a box from under it, and sputtered something out.

“You need these. These are special shoes. Magic. They’ll keep you away from danger. Trust me. Take them.”

Only his phrases ran together, making them borderline incomprehensible.

“Huh?” said Sam.

Sam, who wouldn’t even correct a waiter for bringing him the wrong food, understood the clerk’s temerity, but didn’t think he heard him exactly right.

“They’ll…what?” Sam asked.

“My boss says they’re only for the right person. I think you’re the right person. Take them. They’ll protect you from damage. Just please don’t tell my boss. Please. Take them.”

Sam’s mind wasn’t exactly persuaded, but his heart was. If this kid wanted him to take a free pair of shoes off his hands, he was willing to oblige. He wasn’t sure what he meant; perhaps he’d “get it” once he put them on.

Once outside, he opened the box. Inside were two white shoes--too white, as if they were glowing. There were no markings on it whatsoever that communicated the name of the company that produced them. He shrugged and put them on.

They fit perfectly. They were by far the most comfortable shoes he’d ever worn.

He walked outside into the street, narrowly avoiding a pothole. He hadn’t even seen it. He stood there wondering, eyes on the ground. Suddenly, he jumped to the side, and a cyclist passing by cursed, narrowly missing him.

For a while, Sam remained incredulous of the young man’s claims and of the supernatural nature of the shoes. “Coincidence,” he’d say when he’d walked away from what later became a murder scene, or when a nearby restaurant caught fire right before he was about to enter. But the more the “coincidences” stacked up, the more readily he began to accept that there was more to these shoes than met the eye. Soon he had to acknowledge the obvious: they were magical, and they were alive.

Over the next few weeks, Sam was always wearing them. He was able to avoid anything, whereas before he’d been nicknamed “Grace” due to his clumsiness. Near a construction site, he stopped in his tracks just as a heap of loose scaffolding dropped one foot ahead of him. He backtracked at the right time to avoid a traffic collision. The thrill of coming so close to death over and over electrified him.

Then the shoes began to get rather possessive. Whenever he’d been close to danger, his shoes had tightened slightly. Now they were doing it all the time, and for longer periods. The shoes, if they were sentient (as he came to believe they were), grew positively obsessed with his preservation. Before they had stopped for life-threatening phenomena only; now everything was a threat. A stormy night brought thunder, and with that the small possibility of being struck by lightning. The shoes prevented him from going outside. A feral cat in an alleyway might pose a threat if it were diseased. In this case, the shoes stopped his feet, and they remained planted at the opening, disallowing him his momentum.

“This isn’t life,” he said one day. “Some risks are worth taking. Makes a person feel free.”

He gave one shoe a tug. It remained on his foot. He gave the other shoe a tug. No go. He tried with all his might to remove them from his feet, but couldn’t. Out of breath and close to panic, he practically ran back to the store where the phenomenon had begun.

Sam caught the clerk mid-drinking again.

“Please don’t tell,” the young man said pitifully.

“I will if you don’t tell me how to get these off right now!” Sam threatened. And he felt he just might do that.

“You been wearing them long? The entire time?”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted angrily, “They were a big help. But they’re stifling me. I want them off!”

“Then they care about you now. You have to convince them.”

“Convince them of what?” Sam asked, unsure as to whether he’d heard him correctly.

“That you’ll be safe without them,” said the clerk, finally making eye contact.

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Talk to them. Tell them you’ll be safe.”

Sam looked at his shoes. They are alive, then, he thought. It just sounded absurd when said aloud.

“I’m going to be safe without you.”

“Mean it.”

“I’m going to be safe without you!”

The laces came undone, the grip on his feet loosening. He shook them off onto the floor. Their whiteness dulled. The stench of his sweaty, sock-covered feet filled his nostrils. He suppressed a gag.

The pair of shoes stepped from the floor onto the desk and into their box. The cardboard box shut itself.

“They are alive!” Sam marveled.

“Please don’t tell now,” said the clerk, sobbing, “Please don’t tell my boss. I tried to help you. They did.”

Sam dismissed the young man’s plea with a wave of his hand.

“I won’t tell. But I don’t think you should keep those shoes. They should be burned.”

That was that. He took off his socks, threw them in a garbage can, and went for a walk outside.

Sam’s life was seemingly restored to normalcy. The moniker “Grace” began to suit him again. Now he went outside when lightning was present, and adopted the stray cat the shoes had made him avoid. A flying puck ejected from a game of street hockey struck him in the temple, and he’d just smiled. He felt more free than he had in years.

One day, he was crossing the street with a crowd of people he’d been talking to. Suddenly, they all stopped walking with him and hastily departed the walkway. Confused, he looked around, but not in time to save himself. A black Volkswagen careened towards him, its tires squealing without traction. There was a heavy thump, and then Sam lay lifeless on the road. The automobile hit a wall, and then the driver too was dead.

The driver, a young man familiar to Sam, had been drunk behind the wheel, just after he’d been fired from a shoe store due to a woman reporting him for drinking on the job. Said woman was on the scene, observing it in shock. She wore the magic shoes. The clerk had been wrong; the shoes had been created for her and her alone.