Shoes

Editorial Note: this was originally written as a parodic response to a particular Christmas song I’m not wildly fond of. You know the one. Enjoy!

It was raining in the city by the bay, a cold hard rain, colder than the water than comes from your showerhead when you’ve inadvertently used up all your hot water. Sam Consonant hated when that happened. He hated a lot of things. Sam wanted nothing more than to go back to his poorly lit office and stare out at the rain, waiting for a client to come in and plead for his help in finding her lost husband or poodle or whatever. Preferably she would be blond, not unattractive, and wildly wealthy.

But he’d run out of fedoras and he had to go and buy one. A fedora was an absolute must in his business. That explained why he stood there glowering in a line that snaked slowly towards a register. In front of him was some kid holding a pair of shoes. The kid looked like he’d had a hard day. Well, it was a hard time. Various other gloomy thoughts flitted through Sam’s mind as the kid finally got to the cashier.

Then a problem developed. The kid didn’t have enough money to pay. He’d dumped all his pennies out and it still wasn’t enough. Tears flowed; apparently the shoes were for his mother who was about to meet the big goodbye. The guy right in front of Sam saw the trouble and paid for the shoes himself. Sam sighed; he hated hollow sentimentality. Then something clicked. Since when do people pay for things with pennies? Especially really pricey stuff like shoes?

Sam raced after the kid, who’d left the store and ducked into an alleyway. As Sam approached, the kid’s eyes flashed an otherworldly magenta and he showed tentacles. Sam froze. Kid was an alien. An alien squid, no less. Crap.

“Q’irpy snarp flaznik!” the squid said.

Sam didn’t speak alien. He guessed the alien’s meaning well enough, though, especially when it fired a high-tech phaser blast at him. The alien missed. Sam didn’t.  He packed away his lower-tech revolver and walked away into the night, as the cold rain turned into colder snow. Sam just hated snow.