Very nice shoes drabbles.

In honor of having finally caught up in this thread (Yay! Fairy Tales! Murder! Brrr, ita!) I have a drabble!

Shoes

Our therapist is laughing at me as I tell her about the pediatric orthopedist and how he says the baby shouldn’t wear shoes unless they’re very soft-soled and then only when necessary for protection. I’m so excited, I babble, “Babies with poor vision use their feet, like eyes, to provide information about their world.”

She’s still laughing as she says, “I know that, but, I’ve never seen any of you in shoes anyway, so I didn’t think to tell you about it.”

This is true. My feet can’t breathe in shoes. My baby’s feet breathe and see for him, too.

Love that, Deena.

Thanks, Astarte. I think maybe I should have named it the anti-shoe. Why can't I drabble fiction? S'weird. At least I got something out this week.

Deena, that's a beautiful, beautiful take.

She looks him up and down. Quickly up, skimming his face, his shirt, his tattoos, papers he has clutched in his fist. And back down again, where her gaze rests on his feet.

She has those boots. Not in black, in maroon.

But they're the same shoes. Maybe he'd gone to X20 too, spoken to the same clerk with the vapid smile.

Maybe he used a credit card, like she had, broke.

Part of her wants to ask these things - but most of her wants to run. Most of her doesn't care where a Neo Nazi buys his Doc Martens.

That's good, ita. Nice twist. Funny too. Deena, I like that one. I feel like a real cheater, writing something fannish, but Kay has such a strong personality, she wouldn't be denied.

ita, you just took me right back to the Rock Against Racism free concerts in South London in the late seventies, with the Clash and Elvis Costello. And Joe Strummer waving one foot and yelling, "Don't let the National Front make you think everyone wearin' Docs is a fucking Nazi!"

Another interesting challenge! Mine comes, kind of, from Saturday's NY Post, which mentioned Hemingway's famous micro-fiction, which is the notice posted in the drabble.

• **

The notice is posted to the bulletin board outside the market. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

She hefts her daughter on one skinny hip. She’s come looking for a room, or even a roommate. They need a place to crash, and the peanut toddles over the boardwalk just fine on her sturdy bare feet. A guitar would be nice, though, or a few books.

She wonders what happened to that other baby. Dead? Never born? Maybe neither—maybe she was as happy as her little monkey, sand between her toes and the waves a cool kiss on her ankles.

• **

Off to read the others...

They're all so good this week!

It's like some LSD-addled exercise in spatial reality

This cracked me up. And the other one, Deb, the courtroom room, was perfect.