by Kay Brandt
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “And why am I strapped down? Aunt Grace, please release me!”
“It's not your turn to speak, Rolie.” Aunt Grace exhaled through her nostrils, and I was transfixed by the perfect smoke rings swirling out. “Melinda had been so emotionally abused and neglected by him, it was really only humane to put her down.”
“Huh?”
She ignored me and kept talking. “And Jonathan was a walking corpse those last few years. I wanted to save him. I wanted to save us all.”
Shifting, yanking, twisting, I desperately tried to get free. Then I stiffened with fear. The eight demon shoes surrounded Aunt Grace, twitching and hissing.
“Look behind you!” I tried to protect her, protect us, but she wouldn't look. She didn't even hear me. “The shoes! They're right there!”
“What was I to do?” she went on. “I'd fallen under his spell, or the spell of something, Rolie. You've been here. You know the devil lives in the stitches and soles.” The shoes traveled across the floor, and bypassed her in favor of me. They lurched, landing on the fitting chair, and quickly mounted my body. Measuring the length of my bony torso, hips and measly chest, I felt their pending attack, and prepared to be impaled.
“Grace! Please!” I begged, unable to protect myself. “They're going to eat me alive!”
Aunt Grace slapped my face, once, twice, then a third and fourth time, thrashing my head side to side. Her sob story continued. “I loved him. I did. I fell in love the minute I walked into the store and saw him crafting the most beautiful shoes I'd ever seen. We shared the same passion, creative soul, eye for beauty. I didn't expect anything more, but he invited me in!” She cried furiously, oblivious to the shoes digging into my flesh, bit by bit. “He had me sit on this chair and manipulated the fuck out of my emotions until I was helplessly in love with my sister's horrible, loser husband.”
I yanked my strapped limbs, barely able to move an inch, back arching as all eight shoes took a bite of my stomach. “Help me! Aunt Grace, don't you see them?”
The scissors she held made sharp clanking noises as she opened and closed them. “He told me I was his muse,” she said, “an angel of creativity, inspiring him to greatness. And without me he'd wither, his life rendered meaningless.”
Disinterested in her pathetic confessions, I clenched my jaw as the shoes attempted to fillet me, chewing and cutting my clothes, my flesh, steadfastly working their way to my lungs and heart.
Aunt Grace took a long, lung-scorching final drag off her cigarette, swallowing the smoke. “Every weekend for four glorious months he was mine, all mine. Melinda never noticed the money dried up during that time, as he turned away the regular customers to be alone with me. That is, until she returned.”
“I don't want to know anymore!” I spit at her. “They're eating me, Grace! Do you want me to die, too?” Willing to pull my shoulders out of their sockets to get loose, I channeled my inner hulk, popping the worn straps with unknown strength, flailing like a wild beast. The evil eight flew from my chest, smacking into the racks and walls. I heard their seams and heels break, and the sound of hellish obliteration was beautiful.
Aunt Grace heard it, too, and thwarted my escape. Eyes lit like a witch, she jumped on me, ferocious in her need to strap me down again. “Where are you going, Rolie? Don't you love your Auntie Grace anymore?” She drooled on my face, snarling like a mad woman.
Bucking her off, I replied, “I did love you, but now I hate your fucking guts.” I punched her without guilt. She hit the workbench with a hard thud and crumbled to the floor.
She appeared to be out cold. “Auntie?” I asked, keeping a close eye on her while scrambling away from the chair. Between her and the shoes, I was trapped with only a slight chance of making it out. The shoes hissed from the racks, causing them to sway with their angry spasms. I tip-toed as fast as I could, unable to run. The shoes suddenly blocked my path, looking twice their normal size, and I sucked down a terrified laugh. “Get the fuck out of here,” I whispered, partially to myself, not wanting Aunt Grace to hear me.
Inhaling the stench of her musky perfume, I knew Aunt Grace was behind me. She croaked, “There's only one way for us to be free, Rolie.”
My spine went stiff, and my brain was numb, half-expecting her to stab me before I could face her. “Oh yeah?” I asked, “What's that?”
She gleamed, “Get him!”
In a blinding flash, we were hurled back in time.
The blood-covered stockroom flooded with that hideous yellow light. There, strapped to the fitting chair was my mother, cut and sliced, her toes and fingers missing. She screamed incoherently at the scissor-wielding maniac hovering over her.
I lunged to save Melinda, but my body was bounced across the room, hurled by an invisible force. My throat felt like a hand was gripping it, silencing my cries for help. My face was held in her direction, and my eyes were pulled open. Wanting to vomit, scream, cry, I watched my mother mutilated at the hands of this stranger—and then realized who the woman covered in Melinda's blood was.
Finally, like a blast of air filling my lungs, I yelled, “NO!”
The massive scissor threatening Melinda's torso was slammed into her body by none other than Aunt Grace. She held the instrument of murder down inside my mother's stomach as blood squirted and poured out. Her life leaked out all around the fitting chair, forming disgustingly thick puddles. Melinda's eyes were transfixed on the ceiling, consumed by the pain of death. I'd die with her, I thought, holding my mother's hands, and together we'll go to heaven or hell—it didn't matter as long as I was with her.
Then, I heard him. “Grace? I told you not to come here!” Jonathan's gravelly voice broke the madness, and the room was suddenly still, having caught his wife's killer in the act.
“Grace! Melinda! My wife!” His head was bludgeoned, hit by some object hurled from the shadows. He wobbled, then walked, dragging himself to Aunt Grace in a futile attempt to save Melinda. Grunting, unable to open his broken jaw, he reached out for the assailant, but his legs gave out.
Jonathan fell at Grace's feet. She was wearing the back strappy heels.
“I didn't mean to do this, Jonathan, “Grace hyperventilated like a spoiled child having a nasty tantrum. “The shoes...” she wailed, “they made me do it!”
“I told you not to wear them!” And then I saw a side of my father that terrified me. He broke out in deep sobs, and cried louder than hysterical Aunt Grace. Embracing her feet, Jonathan threw his body on the strappy heels, as if he could smother them to death. “I'm sorry, Gracie...”
“Why'd you make them for me, Jon?” She implored, “if you knew?”
“It wasn't me!” He ripped the straps from her ankles with his bare hands. “It's never been me!”
Aunt Grace reacted as if Jonathan was pulling her skin off, shrieking like a lunatic. “Stop it, stop it, STOP IT!”
But he persisted, shredding the material to bits as Melinda gurgled—drowned by her last breath. I witnessed my mother's hideous passing, and prayed for her soul. And then I thought to myself, the nightmare wasn't a dream. There wasn't any waking up from it.
Jonathan held his broken jaw open, and stuffed the torn material into his mouth. He shoved it down his throat with all four fingers. It lodged there, blocking his air, and he didn't try to cough it up. He wanted to die.
“Jonathan!” Aunt Grace dove for his heaving body and tried to save him. She forced her fingers into his mouth, but he clamped down, biting till she withdrew them. My father wasn't budging as he instigated his final moments. His chest shook violently as he fought to breathe, oxygen rapidly ceasing. Jonathan's skeleton locked, and his eyes bulged. Aunt Grace smacked his face and back, yelling, “Spit it out, Jon! SPIT IT OUT!”
And then it was over. The master shoemaker was dead, like his wife, and Aunt Grace stood there, wearing their blood, the unfortunate survivor.
“Jonathan!” she howled repeatedly at the stiff body on the floor. Th
e clank of his wedding ring hitting the cement in a rush of thick saliva was gruesome. It had come off his finger with the material he'd shoved down. Rolling away, the ring picked up speed as it flew across the cement and disappeared.
Aunt Grace shuddered like an electrocuted animal. She was barefoot and her feet were torn, stripped from the shoes that had possessed her.
“Grace,” I whispered in a shrunken voice, shriveled in the corner. Her sobs dominated the space around us. What came out of her was inaudible, and she threw herself against the racks. Clawing at the metal, Grace clung to the racks like a life preserver.
Then, I saw them. Impaled at the top were my dead grandparents, looking just as they did in the newspaper clipping. Aunt Grace saw them, too, and her mouth hinged open, releasing a screech from her horrified gut.
Her screams blended with mine. The walls rattled and the room shifted between decades, flashing back and forth through time, retracing the evil that took place within the four rotting walls.
The stockroom was spinning, and I was lost, swept up in the turbulence as the yellow light flooding in suddenly went dark. The bodies were gone and so was Aunt Grace. It was just me, alone again, left to deal with the horrible legacy.
****
The startling sounds of boxes crashing on the floor and on my head brought me back to the present moment―to the 1980's―and a stockroom filled with cheap sneakers from China. The bodies of my parents and grandparents dissolved, washed back to the past they belonged to.
Aunt Grace tapped the bat she'd hit me with on the cold cement floor, acting like I'd seen and knew nothing about what she'd done.
Hoisting boxes, I cleared a spot to stand and kept my distance from her.
“Did you want to tell me something?” I asked.
“It's time you wore the shoes, Rolie.”
“They don't come in my size,” was my quick reply, seeing all eight shoes twitching in a freakish way behind her.
Popping a rubber band around a clump of knotted red hair, she fluffed a ragged ponytail. “Oh, they're one size fits all, little boy. Trust me.”
Behind her on the desk I saw the dainty slipper, gleaming with new purpose. I clenched it, and threw it at her.
“Very funny, Rolie,” she growled.
“You killed my mother, bitch,” I replied, tasting venom in my throat. I hacked, and spit a wad that landed at her feet. “Why didn't you come clean when the police questioned you?”
“You don't know anything, stupid,” she insisted.
“I saw it,” I reminded her. “I saw you.”
“You tell stories, Rolie.” Bashing the bat against the racks, she agitated the spirits, igniting a riot of clashing metal. “Such a colorful imagination.”
“Did you kill your managers, too?” I pushed the subject, needing the truth.
“You know the answer, my dearest nephew,” she slurred with insanity. The shoes looked ready to attack, but I couldn't tell if they wanted me or her.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I implored with panic as she stepped closer to me. Her eyes were dark without a trace of love, guilt or remorse—just like Jonathan used to look. “Killing me is your best solution to this curse?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. Her feet clipped unevenly on the cement. Without looking I knew why. The single strappy heel was on her foot.
“Aunt Grace!” I yelled, pointing behind her. “Watch out!” A zombie-like figure slithered from the racks, deranged and starving for flesh.
She didn't bother to look.
The zombie had her in its grip before she knew what was happening. She tweaked her spine and faced the creature, crushing its head with the bat. “Die, you disgusting asshole!” She shrilled, “You didn't deserve me!”
Oh my god, I thought, seeing more dead things reborn from the racks. I wanted to warn her, protect her, but I kept my mouth shut.
“None of you deserved me!” Aunt Grace wielded the bat as the zombies descended upon her. She shrieked like a beast, swinging her arms erratically. “I hate your mother-fucking guts! Users! Shitheads! Low life pricks!”
I cowered, shrinking from her hell-bent rage.
Bashing their skulls till their dead bodies fell in defeat, Aunt Grace went on, “What did you expect would happen?” she asked the corpses. “You don't tell a girl you love her and then treat her like shit! I gave you jobs! I fed you, and showered you with affection!”
Stunned that the rotting dead had no power over her, I imagined escaping, and crawled for the back door.
“Don't you fucking move, Rolie!” Aunt Grace caught me in the act and came at me in a flash. “I should have gotten rid of you years ago!”
Her killing spree was halted by the other seven shoes, blocking me, snarling at the red-headed psycho woman. They surged at once, attacking her legs and arms. She dropped the bat as the slipper clamped onto her hand with its rusted nails, then ripped through her flesh, all the way up her arm till it embedded in her shoulder. “Tell them to stop!” she ordered me, but I was silent, shocked that the shoes didn't like her either.
“Rolie!” Limb by limb, the shoes devoured her, shredding her without mercy.
A lifetime of sadness and pain filled my soul. I accepted her fate as well as my own, helpless to change our destiny. The shoes would finally win, and rid the store of their creators. Our bizarre, unexplainable deaths were destined.
Aunt Grace squirmed on the cold cement. Her puncture wounds spurted blood and she coughed and gurgled, “Rolie... help me.”
“Sorry, Auntie,” I mumbled, “It's done.”
A sudden thundering crash broke the racks, shattering their metal frames. Steel flew haphazardly through the air and I covered my head.
Stephanie shuffled from the mess, and stood over Aunt Grace, bathed in nastiness, dripping pins and needles from her torn gut. Slowly, they impaled Aunt Grace's face and neck, sticking in her eyes, piercing her lips and tongue. Stephanie's revenge was brutal and horrifying, and perfect. She ended the demented bitch's suffering as a heavy hammer was expelled from her center, aimed for Aunt Grace's head. It found its final resting place, nested within my aunt's skull. Emptied of her torment, Stephanie collapsed on the torturer. The heap of death they formed called out to me, and I reached for them.
My heart thumped loudly, like it was pumping me back to life and I wasn't the only one who heard it. The shoes saw my extended arms and sprung at me. It was my turn finally, I thought deliriously, not fighting their stinging bites and ragged sawing of my muscles and bones. I relaxed as the shoes began their methodical slaughter, and cried happy tears knowing the end was near.
Then my mother's voice called out, “Roland!”
Through the blood swimming in my eyes, I saw Melinda's ghostly form coming towards me. “Mom?” A soaring sensation to live rushed through me, and I thrashed on the floor, trying to free myself from the shoes. “I can't get to you!”
In her hands she held golden leashes, each attached to a single shoe. The original eight—the ones that had disappeared decades ago without explanation—were in Melinda's possession. They looked brand new, undamaged and unworn, searching for their long-lost mates.
Their demonic matches clung to my flesh, refusing to let go. Veins bleeding out, I raised my head, and mouthed the words, “I love you” to my mother.
Her apparition darkened, and the room went silent. “You'll be with me soon, my son,” she rumbled. “But not yet.”
Melinda released the original eight and like a flood of wild energy, they slipped over the floor to connect with their other halves. I was overcome with my mother's nurturing spell, and her will to save me. Whatever my life was worth, feeling her near me, seeing her beautiful face, healed my tormented soul in an instant.
The evil ones left me in favor of their counterparts. It was strange witnessing the singles become pairs, and rekindling with their mates. Even the nasty strappy heel made peace with its match. There was an undeniable feeling of forgiveness floating between the shoes and
my mother and I.
“Mother,” I said, reaching for her, “take me with you.”
“You're a good boy, Rolie,” she winked at me. “Live a little, will you?”
In a whirlwind of other-worldly light and dust, her ghost faded into the ether, and so did the shoes.
It was quiet and still in the stockroom and I laid there, listening, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the bad, like always. But the only sound coming through was Melinda's voice singing me to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A hint of spicy, sexy perfume wafted over me, and I awoke from a catnap at my workbench. It was late afternoon, the usual time of day when the buzz of the caffeine pills wore off.
“Were you up all night again, Roland? I thought you said you wouldn't do that anymore?” said a sultry young woman. Peggy, my dedicated store assistant, patted my head and rubbed my sore, overworked shoulders.
“Did I?” I asked, playing coy. “Yes, I must learn when enough is enough and give myself a night off on occasion.”
“True,” she replied. “You didn't forget our movie date tonight, did you?” She kissed my hot cheek, instantly cooling it with her soft breath. For the past few months since Peggy appeared, I've been lavished with gentle hugs and affectionate kisses. I'm not sure what I did to deserve this transformation, but it's happened, and I've learned to stop asking why.
“How could I possibly forget our date?” I had totally forgotten, but she forgave me without fuss. Repeating the sins of my lineage was unacceptable, and I tried my best to not neglect personal time. As my mother's ghost had said, “live a little.”
Peggy wasn't “real,” but she's real enough for me, filling my lonely soul with unconditional love. Having been sent from the heavens to stay by my side, I'm forever grateful to her, and to whoever sent her to me.
“You have a customer,” Peggy informed me. “She's new, and was referred. You came highly recommended.” Handing me a cup of water, I drank it in one thirsty gulp. My mind was refreshed and I straightened out my dress shirt to greet the new client.