Week Ten (Dec. 29 - Jan. 3) Topic: Slipper
Winners(tied) Paul and Janelle
RUNNING AWAY WITH IT.
By Paul
Poppy knew she had to have the slippers the minute she spotted them. They glittered and shorn like a million sparkling diamonds sitting upon the plush red cushion in the shop window. Trembling she felt the reassuring touch of her last ten pound note, scrunched up and sweaty in the deep pit of her ripped jeans. The slippers were the first positive things she’d seen in the mean city of London.
Looking in the window she imagined replacing the slippers with her old battered trainers; shoes that leaked water through a split in the sole. Purple blisters like angry volcano’s covered her feet; their constant rubbing driving her mad as she pounded the streets of her new found home.
She remembered the last time she’d had new footwear. Her Dad had brought her a pair of brilliant white Nike trainers costing over seventy pounds. She remembered the price because he’d gone on about how much booze he could have brought with seventy quid. It hadn’t stopped him from buying a bottle on the way home and being the usual asshole.
She had been fourteen years old and in the district cross -country running team then. Mr Willis, the games teacher said she needed proper shoes; it wasn’t safe to run barefoot. She merely nodded and smiled, thinking of the hundred-metre dash in the middle of the night when Dad decided to vent his angry and chase her round the house. It was only natural that she would be good as a runner; after all she’d had enough practice over the years.
Only trouble was the ten-pound had to last her until she could find someway of making more. Lizzie had boasted to her how easy it was for young girls of sixteen to make money when she first befriended her in ‘Slippery Sid’s’; a sleazy back street café near the Thames. She made it sound as easy as picking the crisp notes from a tree. Reality was something totally different. Climbing out of the window in the toilet, tiny legs pumping, sprinting down the street was her first good move. That had been two weeks ago. Now her belly ached with hunger; the harsh wind was chilling her to the bone and her back ached from sleeping on parked benches under the city stars. Lizzie’s proposal almost seemed romantic to this life.
Then her heart leapt as she spotted the price, over a hundred pounds. These weren’t ordinary slippers these were designer slippers. Her teddy bear money box at home had been stuffed full of tens and fivers; equalling a Kings ransom of hundred and fifty pounds which she had squired away for what she nicknamed the ‘great adventure’. She remembered double- checking the money before stuffing it deep in her holdall, swinging out of her window into the night, the darkness swallowing her.
She was going to have to steal the slippers. She’d never stolen anything in her life before, unless you counted the time three years ago when her and Debbie, her best friend raided the village store for pick and mix streets when Ronald, the owner wasn’t looking. She still remembered the cold chill as her blood froze, as he turned round and caught her literally red-handed, her hand stuck in the glass jar. Her heart was hammering, the blood pounding in her head before he smiled, ‘you only have to ask, and I’ll give you them sweets love. Never steal,’ he told her sweetly, before adding, ‘or your get your hands chopped off at the wrist, like this,’ he said, his bear like frame swooping down, his shovel like hands executing a chopping motion.
‘Hello love, fancy anything you see?’ A man’s voice asked beside her.
Without turning around she could see an elderly man in the reflection of the window. She could smell his cheap aftershave, sickly cologne that made her want to gag. His heavy breath sounded like sandpaper as it rattled and wheezed in her ear.
‘Girl like you shouldn’t be on the streets. It isn’t safe anymore.’
‘I can look after myself,’ she replied defiantly.
‘Course you can love. Look, why don’t I buy them lovely slippers you so desperately want, then come home with me. You can have a bath, hot meal, and a proper bed for the night.’
Turning round she sized the stranger up. He was old, ancient by her standards. With a slightly stooped frame he looked almost gentle in his grey windbreaker and trilby hat. But his bright close- set eyes and crooked nose spoke volumes to Poppy. This was a man not to be trusted.
‘How stupid do you think I am?’ she said. He looked blankly at her. ‘You’ll get me home and use me as some weird kind of sex slave. The whole city’s like a huge perverted vice den.’
His response was a deep- throated chuckle. ‘Hardly, lets just say I need a woman’s touch around my flat in exchange for a bed and board. No strings attached promise.’
‘Sounds reasonable, and I’ve nowhere to stay tonight. But the first hint of trouble and out of there,’ she told him, raising her voice. ‘Now, where are my slippers?’
A few minutes later they were back outside, a luxurious coloured box under Poppy’s arm.
‘Why don’t you put them on now?’ the old man said.
‘You sure?’ she said, cuddling the box like it was the crown jewels themselves.
‘Yeah, after all they belong to you now.’
The second she slipped them on she felt that she was literally walking on air. All the pain from her blisters disappeared. She started bouncing up and down on the pavement, before doing a little dance, spinning round like a ballet dancer from the nutcracker suite. She was an angel gliding through the clouds as she smiled at him.
‘My carriage awaits,’ he said, guiding her toward a waiting car, a jet black BMW. For the first in weeks she actually felt happy as she begun to climb into the passenger seat.
That was when she saw the blood. It looked like a beetroot stain that someone had fought hard to clean. It literally covered the backseat.
‘What’s the matter love,’ he said, racing round to catch her she as she tottered.
‘Get away from me!’ she screamed at the top of her voice as she feinted to one-side dodging his hands as he tried to grab up.
Then she was away her tiny pins pumping as she skated off down the street.
‘Come back!’ he screamed, pounding after her.
Poppy was fourteen again, her tiny frame proudly sporting the school colours of red and green as she torn down Cat’s hill, in her mind her drunk dad lumbering forever after her. Then she was flying past the adventure playground, kids playing happily on the swings. On and on she raced in her mind, the sweat glistening on her brow, the muscles straining and hurting she fought back the pain, racing ever closer to the finishing line of life and death.
Back in reality she flew past an underpass, her shadow skating across the darkened walls as her feet echoed a rhythmic beat. As she entered the underground station she vaulted the automatic ticket machine like an Olympic champion, before weaving through the crowd escalator like a human toboggan. And still she could hear her dad’s drunken breath rasping in her ear.
The faint smell of electrical discharge wafted up through her nostrils as she soared through the claustrophobic eerily lit curved walkways. Then she was on the platform as crowds of people jostled and pushed her. A hand grabbed out at her.
‘No Dad, you can’t have caught me!’ she screamed before falling backward, legs freewheeling into empty space.
As her head hit the track with a responding thud she could see her feet; she felt like laughing at seeing them at such an odd, before smiling as the diamonds twinkled in the cold darkness of her last finishing post.
Pauls other writing: http://www.goodreads.com/story...
* * *
(No Name)
By Janelle
She was a fish. One of the best the world had seen in a long time. She was able to slink through security to catch the thief’s, perfectly deceitful in order to get what she needed. That girl was a slippery little fish. So that’s what we called her, Fishy.
Fishy’s real name passed out of knowledge of any one. She was a small girl, about 5’5. Her long blond hair flowed perfectly down her back, her big navy blue eyes wide and innocent like, and she was just so pretty. It was no surprise that everyone fell for her on missions, or at a party.
Last August though, Fishy met her match. Well not like soul mate match, thief match. We needed to catch some guy who could disappear with out a trace, then show up again three states away from where he had disappeared from and it was only two hours later. Fishy was excited she loved a challenge. She had her hair products and guns ready to go before I finish briefing her on the assignment.
We left to where the guy was last seen. Fishy disappeared form my sight, then reappeared. She was amazing that way. No one else even noticed when she would slip past them, cutting in front of them in a line to get to the front for information. She slipped back to my side and whispered quickly.
“They haven’t seen anything, no one out of the ordinary, but this is not the most fanciest of places.” She said, and she was right, the thief was always noted to have stolen stuff form stores in malls, but the more expensive places. “Lets go next door, they have the good stuff.”
“Ok,” I set the jeans down and followed her out.
The next store was very fancy, small not that many people only the workers, but very fancy. The perfumes swirled around me and were slightly intoxicating. Fishy slipped away and disappeared. That was the last time I saw her.
Amazing how someone so good could pass out of all knowledge. She was MIA for about two years. After that she was declared dead. It was hard we had been partners in missions for 5 years. I didn’t really know what to think or say when the leader of our field told me. The news was devastating of course. The family refused to have a funeral, and refused to believe she was dead.
About a year after she was declared dead I returned to the store that she had disappeared in. The same intoxicating smell over came me. Something was strange about it. I wanted to sleep, man, why was I like this I had gotten enough sleep on the plane amazingly enough. My head hurt. That when it hit me. Groggily I stumbled out of the store, and pulled my phone out, calling for back up.
Within an hour more agent came the leader came to me looking me straight in the eye, naturally I felt like I should crawl under a rock and die.
“Sir,” I said, “Did you bring those gas masks like I suggested?”
“Of course,” He said and handed me one. Pulling the masks over our heads we entered the store. Immediately guns were fired at us, grabbing the leader I shoved him and my self down.
“Sir!” I yelled, “What do we do?”
Before he answered someone grabbed the back of my shirt.
“Gosh, can’t you stay out of trouble?” A woman’s voice yelled, then she slapped me upside the head and pulled her own gun out, a gasmask over her head but I could already tell who it was. “Put the guns down now!” Fishy hollered, “Now!”
Naturally fishy stared down the workers and they surrendered. And naturally she was the first to reach them and conk them out on top the head.
As it turns out the workers have been wanted for kidnapping and murder, the thief Fishy and I had been after, had ran into the store and didn’t make it. Now things were back to normal, or at least I hoped.
Read Janelle's other writing here:http://www.goodreads.com/story/list/1322613
Read other stories from this contest here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8842...
