Shoes

She wore those shoes rarely. They were expensive, a designer brand of the pretentious sort. The shoes, they’d seen three weddings, one particularly fashionable funeral, one birthday soiree for a very important boss, two Christmas cocktail parties, and now on the eve of the New Year, they saw their owner’s untimely death.

It started, although the shoes were unaware of this, with a glance exchanged, dark eyes under thick brows mingling with the owner’s blue ones under perfectly tweezed brows. It continued with a tipped glass, and later a drink bought for the “beautiful lady." Those shoes, they danced, they walked, and finally, towards the end of the night they stumbled home with Mr. Dark Eyes.

Had the shoes been animated objects of the thinking sort, they would have become suspicious at the perfectly solicitous ways of Mr. Dark Eyes. They would have been suspicious at his gentle cajoling voice, athis flawless manners. But the shoes, being only inanimate, expensive leather stayed silent.The shoes were kicked off in passion to the corner in Mr. Dark Eyes’ living room. If they had ears, they would have heard shouting and screaming. They would have heard bumping and bruising.

The next morning, the shoes, still blissfully unaware of their owner’s demise, were left in the corner. If they had eyes they would have seen Mr. Dark Eyes walking by with a blanket wrapped bundle, and while hewas fumbling for the door, they would have seen their owner’s pretty manicured hand flop out of the blankets. And if those shoes could feel, they would have felt the drop of blood fall on the tip of the toe ofthe right shoe.

Put in a box, and kept on a shelf, the shoes were in darkness for years. Some days after a body was discovered by an overeager dog on a camping trip, the shoes saw light for the first time in years. In that light, the shoes would have seen their owner’s justice. Mr. Dark Eyes, looking oh-so-handsome in a dark suit, sat on the defendant’s side in the courtroom. Oh, how confident he was, Mr. Dark Eyes, who had long been suspected in the disappearance of the shoe’s owner. He was finally caught, with a new search warrant, with the discovery of a woman’s pair of designer shoes. They were so fashionable that they were remembered by many of the owner’s friends. The owner would be proud of her expensive designer shoes now, to know that they were instrumental in the apprehension and successfulprosecution of her murderer.

The shoes now sit in a box marked, “evidence”. If the shoes could smile, they would do so.