The Bereaved Sneaker

Chuck's back with our Flash Fictions!  And the prompts this week to go onto a site and look up a phrase generator and use it in our most current Flash Fiction... mine is in the title... 'Bereaved Sneaker'. 

Enjoy!


It’s time…

It’s time for her to go running!

Yay!

Riley’s home and it’s time we went running! I heard her come through the front door, have something to eat, text on the phone to her friends – her fingers moving at lightning speed across that screen – and then, it’s time to go running.

Riley loves to run around the streets with us on her feet.

But there is a slight problem… Right isn’t around.

You see I’m Left… and Right is usually where I am – as we’re together in this. We came in our box at the store together… we were made side by side at the factory, our eyelets never leaving each other on the conveyer belt.

But today, I’ve lost sight of Right, and she’s going to be upset because we need Right to go running – because you Humans needs pairs on your feet to go anywhere, or you’ll look weird with odd ones on your feet and it’ll feel weird too.

Anyway, Riley’s come into the room, dumped her school port next to her desk and has pulled out her running gear.

Oh dear!

She’s going to be looking for Right really soon.

She’s pulled on her sweats and attached her mobile to her arm in another band (with her music ready to go). Now, she’s pulled on her socks, grabbed me and pulled me over her foot.

It smells like leather – her school shoes are made of that – and bi-carb powder. Yep, she’s got really bad food odour.

Ties me up and then… she starts looking around, moving things around near the wardrobe.

Right isn’t there… I’d know. We’re always together; I’d tell her, but I can’t do that, she’d freak out that her shoes are talking to her.

“Dad! Have you seen my right sneaker?” she screams with her head still inside the wardrobe, my God, she’s loud!

“What’s that?” he pokes his head inside her bedroom door, “Jeez, Riley, it’s a wonder you find anything in this room… let alone your left sneaker… you did find that one, right?”

She shakes me in front of him, “Yeah… I’m asking if you’ve seen my right one.”

“Oh… um… clean up, you’re sure to find it.”

“But my run… I’ll miss it.”

“Hey, we’ve been tellin’ ya to clean up your room for weeks, and now this has happened.” He turns around and walks out, “Hey, honey! Have you seen Riley’s right sneaker?”

“Last I saw it was in her rubbish bin.” We both hear her step-Mum answer faintly from the kitchen, and she races to it, only to find it empty, “But I emptied that this morning… and the rubbish truck’s been.”

“What!?” Riley’s voice breaks as we both realise we’ve lost something and someone really important to us, “I need that sneaker!”

Kat walks into her room holding up Right by the laces, “But I thought you might need it, so I pulled it out before tossing it out…” she smiles, “How it got out into the lounge is beyond me… but it does have dog slobber all over it.”

Riley takes Right off Kat as she grabs a handful of tissues and begins to wipes the slobber off it, “Yesh, wish the dog would stop eating my shoes. Well, at least I run through worse things than what his mouth slobber does to my shoes.” She pulls it onto her right foot, ties it up and we’re ready.

Three weeks later, Riley comes home to go on her run, pulls on Right and me and finds her toes are too tight in us. The next day, she goes out with her Dad and step-Mum to the store, returning with a new bag with a box inside it big enough for a shoe box…

Our time with Riley is done.

My laces are worn through, as my tread isn’t as good as it used to be… and we’re too small for her anymore – yep, Riley is a growing teenager.

Right and me… we weren’t a permanent thing in her life; and she probably won’t remember us in years to come, just that her shoes for running were comfortable… nothing to write home about; and that she lost a few pairs once in a while.

And oh yes, that I nearly lost my partner in crime… I nearly lost Right to the horrible Rubbish Truck.  Now, she’s happily packing us away in the shoe box where her new running shoes came from. It smells nice, new and fresh inside here. The paper is pushed in all around the sides of our oldness and we’re made as comfortable as possible to be put into the wheelie bin.

The lid is closed and we’re carried out to the place where we will end our lives…

…the sun shines through the holes in the sides for a stark moments as the birds sing their lost and lonely songs to us…

…as we hear the lid of the large plastic bin open...

...and …

…darkness engulfs our world …