Able's Worn Soles (A short story)

Aible's Worn Soles
Written '08/10/2009' by Leemonster

I tramped into town--- Silence. A slight humming from badly structured electric lines and radiator fans later chimed in, but nothing else. A breeze through the air being strangled still by the thick, hot wet air. Teenage daughters locked in their bedrooms staring to mirrors only reflecting faces of bone-hugged superstars. Fathers winding down on living room sofas.

My feet slip against the ground. Dead skin on my foot, toes almost extruding through the holes in my shoes, barely contained from piercing through by my wet socks. I sit on a milk crate in the middle of this universal mess… Searching for subjects to write. A pen between my grip as I hold it like an arrow pulled back ready to pierce the flesh, but the act of story and structure feels like the ideal of skinning and preparing the meat… To starve for the ease to avoid given preparation? Starved like the daughters about to sneak through their windows or staved like the life away from the single mothers all ugly to the eyes of entertainment.

One casual glance at Eden. It exists, out there. I’ve breathed it in. It is that breath where you can exhale freely without a large choking jolt or series of coughs from bad air. I look at the street signs and see wall street quotes. The phonebooks tell me “Obituary,” but I don’t write the books. No wonder I’ve remained forcibly unlisted for so long. An owl stares down from a flickering streetlight. Metal barricades and steel sheds, the broken lights within the letters of store names, all surrounding me. Drug houses and foolish musings of bar scenes are the only source of night activity, but no source of life.

I look up towards the owl then back down at the empty note page. I scribe the date “08/10/2009,” A start. I get up to continue walking… In a section like this it’d be miraculous to avoid a patrol car pulling over and interrogating me. My footsteps continue the count taken since I had learned to walk. I taught myself distance even though when learning to tie my shoes I was hesitant at young age. Well, we all have to graduate from velcro street light shoes someday. My thoughts meander me with a heavy crush while I walk away from the neighborhood to a less populated area, with frequent eye-jerks from peripheral vision as I swear to see shadows moving across the ground alongside my own.

Any novel about the horrors of mankind or any science fiction of the mind chamber are put to dust now. Who am I to partner the subject of these topics? The trance wears so heavy that we often forget or deny that it exists. Growing fat and weary, poisoned and forgetful to a ground down stump that once had branches, and leaves and life, now just a circle of rings to remind of times once lived and roots that grasp to the soil. Roots that grasp trying to remember. Starting from velcro then dying with velcro shoes. What use in tying knots?

CLICK,CLACK,CLICK,CLACK
Shoelaces keep tempo with my steps. Left, right, left, right. A marching man a-wol from this fantasy world, ridden from these projections but still stuck in the hoax. I pass factories still opened with lights glaring through caged windows. The sounds of loud fans drowning away small streams beyond highway signs. I swear there’s a shadow, but I look back… Nothing… Nothing but the stars in the sky that we gaze up upon to dream… Those left remembering they live.


Any normal man will die having nothing answered. The mysteries remain mysteries along the way and any ounce of respect must be either inherited or dodged from blackmail or heresy. To play in the game is to leave all of the bullets remaining in roulette, and this has become the standard.


I can look you up in the phonebook any time from anyplace, but the more I sore my own feet I see that my name is in there too. I just hadn’t looked hard enough, maybe afraid to browse the details. The thickness of the air holds me in it’s grip, like friction’s hand squeezing me. I take off my overcoat and roll it up into a ball then stuff it into my back pack. This shadow, this shadow! I breathe easy then laugh… There’s a brightness from a stop light, from red to green. I look up to see the owl peering down to my eyes. It is the owl that had been perusing… Following.
I stared back, deeply projecting my anguish, hopes and past, Slightly humored that there’s a feeling of better communication and understanding between different species than my own. We shared a depravity of need: To live in a different environment, A different world. The owl, Stuck within a platform built around it trapping it within and myself: wandering town and town again never being able to adapt. There was something I needed to write but I just couldn’t start it… Then I thought to myself, in explaining it all… A blank page was just enough. The date, and then nothing. The only change would be to update the scribbled date, once a day for eternity.

Luckily, my footsteps were untraceable. The soles were worn so scorned that they hadn’t a chance to leave a track. I’ve had my sins and I’ve had my charmings, Had ripped away winning tickets. The jackpot was not the answer nor the arrow or the angst. We’ve had a blank page to fill forever, but my footsteps were never there. I’d made it to Eden but each path had gone covered.
Call me,
Aible.