by Kay Brandt
Jewelbox Publishing
Soles © January 28, 2016 by Kay Brandt
Kindle Edition
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First Edition January 2016
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Soles
Kay Brandt
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
I hate the store. It's been the family business for two generations and my unfortunate inheritance, but I’ve wanted nothing to do with it. A putrid, ugly, pathetic hole in the wall in need of bulldozing—that's what the store is. The store is responsible for the horrible tragedy that's become my life and I've no recourse against it, either. It has a vicious vice-grip on my balls, on my soul, and no one cares. No one.
A quirky, only child with an active imagination was how my mother and Aunt Grace labeled me when I spoke about my fear of the store. They'd laugh and pat my head, then scoot me along in total avoidance of the truth. They saw it—they saw them—and they were afraid, yet it remained a taboo subject. My mother took the ugly truth to her grave. And so did my father. But I won't—fuck it—the truth is all I have.
Insanity runs deep on both maternal and paternal sides of my family. It's possible, and I'm hoping, my overwhelming childhood fear of the stockroom and handmade foot apparel is a sign of mental illness—my second unfortunate inheritance. If I'm mentally ill, the wicked memories of what happened when I was a boy are really nothing more than fantasy—the byproduct of being sick and twisted in the head. The horrifying visions that have caused debilitating anxiety, among my other emotional and mental issues, wouldn't be based on anything real. The horrors were created by my mind because I'm ill. But I've never seen a doctor for a diagnosis. I'm afraid of being told there's nothing wrong with me.
Concrete answers or explanations for the haunted stockroom and the terrible things that went on there, like my father's demonic possession, or the suicides and murders, don't exist. Like living a nightmare in total denial is normal. Maybe it is? I haven't been outside enough to know.
At nineteen, I'm proud to be a self-proclaimed loser with no ambition and fuck-you-world tendencies. College, my own career path—that's a joke and totally not about to happen. And there's no way in hell I'd follow in my father or my grandfather's footsteps... but I've felt the predestined path willfully pull my legs in that direction, like falling into quicksand.
My personal plan's been penciled out for a few years and it's time to execute on it. The grand plan of sticking my face against a wall, and randomly piercing my body wherever I want needs to be unveiled. Blasting heavy metal incessantly, or until the bombs go off and the planet blows up, like bands sing about, is part of the plan, too. And that's about it. Being an only child and heir to a hellhole plagued by demons in the guise of one-of-a-kind footwear, gives me no reason to aspire to anything more. I've known one day I'd have to go back to the store. It's fated, whether or not anyone but me can admit it. And that day's tomorrow. Fucking tomorrow.
I'd shut up about my fears in social circles. Having friends hadn't worked out. The vat of terror in my gut mixed with a dark family history worked like a charm against other kids getting too close. Aunt Grace, my mother's depressed younger sister, was assigned as my guardian since the passing of Jonathan and Melinda. She resented me and I didn't care much for her either, so, there wasn’t any point in continuing a one-sided conversation about how screwed up I am. She'd only nod and shrug, and share her wisdom, “Aren't we all.”
The few elementary school friends I'd managed to score in my childhood heard bits and pieces about what I'd experienced at the store. I was hoping they'd experienced things like that in their existence, too. My shoe stories didn't go over well, though. They didn't believe me, and then one by one they stopped wanting to play. I'd witnessed demons, held them in my hands, while other kids played with pogo sticks and battled over board games.
Aunt Grace is a nut job. We all are, or were, I guess. My aunt and I learned to deal with each other, we had to or else neither of us would've survived. The older I got, the further she drifted and went deeper into the never-ending workload at the store. She took the business over when I was ten, forced into the position as well as being my caretaker. Just like my father and mother—the store overtook her, and eventually she stopped coming home after working long days. I don't blame Aunt Grace for not being there for me—I don't blame anyone for making me a virtual orphan. I can't. It wasn't their fault.
Last year, right after my eighteenth birthday, I tried to sell the store. It was recommended by Aunt Grace to list it for a bargain price and dump the evilness on some other pathetic fool. That was my plan but not one offer to buy went through. The twisted history of what's happened in the stockroom, the death-by-stiletto legend, still circulates, I think.
The store’s rotting cement walls and stained concrete floors reek with death. My grandparents met their gruesome fate there, and so did my parents. It's a graveyard fertilized with my family's blood. Aunt Grace has driven the store to the brink of bankruptcy and now it's on my shoulders to fix her mess. There's no complaining allowed unless I wanted to face her whining wrath.
“I've kept the store from going out of business for you, Rolie,” she'd say when we used to eat meals together. “Every day of my life since you were ten has been dedicated to making sure you had a little something for when you were older.”
“I know, but you didn't have to,” I'd assure her, wishing for the store to magically burn down.
“Yes, I did,” she'd remind me. “It was in your grandfather's Will, remember? The store must remain open until his last remaining heir dies.”
My belly would shake, rattled with nervous energy over the subject of the store and my death, considering I was thirteen when she'd talk like this. “And that's me?”
“That's you.” And then she'd go silent, pondering a disturbing thought that she always had to put out there. “Unless there are others. You know how your father was.”
I knew, kinda. But I had no idea if there were “others” besides me. And I wasn't interested in finding out.
I was too young to be in charge after my parents met their untimely departure and Aunt Grace carried the burden. She'd kept the store open for almost nine years—a responsibility she'd never wanted or asked for. Lately, she's been begging me to come work there, but I've managed
to dodge the bullet. Down deep she knew it was best if I stayed away from the evil place—although she claimed not one weird incident had happened in nearly a decade. Not one. I have no choice now that I'm nineteen and totally unemployed but to return to the store and relieve Aunt Grace of the burden.
“It's time for me to finally have a life,” she proclaimed over the phone. We don't see each other often, even though we shared an apartment. I hide when she's home at night, and she doesn't dare knock on my bedroom door. “I've been your sole caretaker since you were ten.” Aunt Grace reminded me constantly. “And I'm done working at the store, Rolie, done, done, done.”
“Fine,” I replied, fingering the rotary dial, wanting to hang up on her. “When do you need me to start?”
“Five years ago,” she snorted. Her nose was always running—a consequence of using too much blow, she liked to confess. “No, Rolie, tomorrow. You can start tomorrow.”
And then I hung up, my heart sinking to my groin and beating in my gut. This was my last day alive, I thought to myself. The gates of hell are about to open and no one cares. No one.
All I wanted was to disappear off the face of the planet, like get vaporized by an alien invasion―a better fate than having to deal with this doom-ridden reality. At least there's hope with aliens—I might be their civilization's salvation. What am I here? A sitting duck and nothing more.
Nursing my fear with visions of setting the store on fire kind of helps. I've played out the scenario in my mind many times, but the visions constantly end with the store rebuilding itself from the ashes. There's no escaping. I have to face what I fear the most. No one can save me from the nasty spirits that manifest within the seams and soles of shoes from a forgotten era. I'm scared to my bones over seeing them again. Aunt Grace promised the old shoes are locked up in a cabinet, yet I have no faith in a rusted lock suppressing an uncontrollable force. I've seen the cabinet drawers open on their own, and how the shoes come alive. I know. I know.
Huddled on my bedroom floor with the stereo blaring my favorite fuck-you-fuck-off heavy metal bands, I can feel each pair lying dormant, waiting for the opportunity to finish me off.
CHAPTER TWO
For Jonathan, my father, his dream as a young man wasn't the art of making shoes―it was an inevitable skill he ultimately acquired due to unfortunate circumstances. He wasn't an ambitious businessman like his father, William, nor was he born with the natural gifts of a craftsman. The challenge of creating high-style footwear didn't excite Jonathan in the slightest, and he turned down William's proposal to join him at the store and expand the business when he was in high school. Jonathan wasn't into the father-son bonding experience and he wasn't into footwear. He was a hippie who liked cars, motors, flip-flops and his wild girlfriend, Melinda. Basically, he was William's embarrassment of a son born into a rebellious generation.
And my father embodied the seventies. The pics of Jonathan and Melinda saved in old scrapbooks are hilarious, typical of the decade, dressed in love beads, blouses and worn jeans.
I remember Jonathan in his dirty smock and heavy leather apron working long hours without stopping for breaks. Long gone was the hippie as he harbored over meticulous details and hammered leather into smooth material with a desperate and serious look on his face. He was hollow, void of substance—the puppet of someone or something else. Happiness wasn't in him, and neither was sadness. Just an emptiness fueled by the impossible task of living up to William's standards.
My mother, Melinda, hadn't expected Jonathan to become an obsessive workaholic when they were first dating and falling in love. He'd convinced Melinda shoe-making wasn't for him and he'd no interest in being like his father―a neglectful, arrogant man who'd never take time for his wife and son. William put the shoe store and his unique designs above all.
“Jonathan had different passions, separate from the direction of the family business,” is what my mother used to proclaim when she glorified her husband's existence. She'd continue with, “His dream was to run his own garage and build custom cars. Jonathan knew his father would disapprove, even cut him out of the family, and he didn't care.” Sometimes she'd weep when she spoke of their naive courting days, depending on her mood, or how much she'd had to drink. Her ending statement was usually, “Jonathan didn't get the chance to live his own life. He was their only child.” And then Melinda would give me this look, like she was planting a seed in my brain—an early alert to my fate.
Their independent path was abruptly halted the day Jonathan found his father and mother dead in the stockroom, victims of a vicious murder. He and Melinda were newlyweds swept up by the disorderly and drug induced vibe of the early 1970's when the gruesome act occurred. Weird things were going on back then, and my grandparents’ death seemed to flow with the times, with the Manson family and other mass-murder groups dominating the news. Mom and Pop stores were targets for theft, vandalism, and murder, and the store had been broken into on several occasions. My grandfather was found beaten in the stockroom many times before he was killed. Not every assailant got away with beating and stealing. No. A few were found shredded in the stockroom when police arrived at the scene. William had been investigated for murder, but he was never prosecuted.
In the wake of losing both his parents, the store fell on Jonathan's unwilling shoulders. The mammoth responsibility of saving the legendary product William dedicated his whole life to was suddenly his. An avalanche of guilt over not being the prodigy son consumed Jonathan, amplified by the drinking and the drugs. His own dreams dissolved as he swallowed the guilt day after day.
Before her very eyes, Melinda watched her husband change, then disintegrate. Against Melinda's pleas for Jonathan to sell the business and start a new path, he committed himself to carrying on the legacy without her consent. Melinda held faith that her husband would stand by his pre-marital words and not neglect her, especially during her pregnancy.
Slowly but surely, he was sucked in by the ominous task of living up to William's greatness, and left his wife to her own devices.
My mother was not a strong, independent woman. Melinda was good as Jonathan's arm candy, and his solid drinking companion. She was someone a nice, aimless guy could date and hang out with in garages, and snort a little blow followed by joint after joint. Melinda was also prone to manic episodes and random addictions. Being left alone to sit on a couch while her belly grew, unable to drown her neediness in pills or booze, transformed Melinda into Jonathan's useless volunteer. I was almost born in the awful stockroom because of her inability to be home alone. She spent her days restlessly hanging out at the store, not knowing how to help a man haunted by his father's ghost.
“Jonathan doesn't speak when he works,” Melinda informed me after my father didn't answer my mindless kid questions one day. I was often forced into being at the store, too young to be without supervision at five years of age. “He gets in a trance-like state, that's how he functions.” She'd sit silently with him, his babysitter, and I'd read books in the corner, thinking my dad was some type of magician who didn't perform in public.
Jonathan was inept as a master shoe-maker. William's gift wasn't passed down and the lack of skill drove Jonathan to behave in weird ways. He'd punch the stockroom walls, and hammer the cement floor. He'd seethe with anger, as if a demon had taken him over, but couldn't make the puppet it possessed function.
Melinda once informed me with tears in her eyes, “William made shoe-making look as easy as making a sandwich. The truth is, your father didn't pay attention to how your grandfather built custom shoes when he was in his youth. He didn't care.” Her sad, lost tone sent shivers through me back then, even in the sweltering heat of a non-air conditioned store.
“It's a dying art, not worth the effort,” the long-haired hippie Jonathan confided in Melinda when they were dating. “My father's dream isn't mine and I'd die if I had to spend the rest of life stuck inside that stockroom.”
But there he was, the aspiring mechanic turned sullen, de
pressed man, soaked in his own blood, having used himself as the cutting board night after night as he learned the trade.
There weren't any customers, just me and my mom and the terrible sounds my father made in the back—usually some type of painful yell or excessive cursing. The business almost went under, considering Jonathan lacked William's gift and no product was being made. Melinda wasn't going to help him save it, either. She wanted the store gone.
Somehow, as if by a miracle, William's dedicated clientele that vanished after his death, began to trickle back to the store. News of the craftsman's son taking over the business spread among the women who bought shoes by the dozens, with open wallets, and greedy intentions. They'd look at Jonathan as if he was their savior—the only man on the planet who could make their shoe fetishes come true. And they had many.
****
It's been nine years since the murder-suicide of Jonathan and Melinda. Nine, long, painful years of missing my parents, of being chronically lonely and misunderstood, labeled a “survivor of homicide.” I've listened to Aunt Grace tell her stories of what went down with my parents, and what exactly drove my father to madness. The stories changed slightly with each retelling, and especially when she'd had too much wine for dinner.
Aunt Grace tells it like everything was fine until the day Jonathan politely asked Melinda to leave during the fitting appointments—the sessions where he'd size a client and sketch out a custom shoe pattern for them.
Having assumed the master's seat, Jonathan supposedly stated he needed privacy while sizing and fitting the clientele. Melinda agreed, leaving him be, until a bad dose of wifely intuition changed her mind and lead her back to the store. She decided to interrupt one of his recurring afternoon appointments with a bodacious and lively lady. It was then that Melinda became rudely aware of Jonathan's extramarital affairs, catching them in the act.