Shoe Souls

You know it. Don't you? That feeling.

That feeling. When you are positive it's only a few months ago — OK, 'few' might in this case mean eight or even eleven — that you invested in a new pair of shoes, and already you have a problem with the sole.

It's up front. Just where the tips of each toe meet the ground. Just on the spot — or rather on the five single spots — which are supposed to be your body's outmost contact points with Earth. Or wherever you are.

And there, right there, your sole actually seems to have been eaten up by acid. It must be that so-called butter acid, as you remember from school that what makes your feet smell, er, less appetising, is actually referred to as butter acid. 'Cause apparently butter will start to smell like that if you leave it for too long. Really long, that is.

But so... here you are. With your soles — your new soles — eaten up by acid. By eleven-month butter. You wash every day. You wash under your feet. Every day. Using soap. Every day.

And still... your soles are eaten up. Your shoes are getting less and less bearable to wear.

Your soul is being devored. Your life is getting less and less bearable to live.

Whaddayado?

What do you do?!

You cross the street from work, keeping an awake eye on red and green pedestrian lights. You enter that shoe shop, the one you don't like, but this has become a matter of life and death, and you actually do step up to the counter, to that disappointingly not-particularly-good-looking girl behind the counter — still you notice her first name, which most probably ends on an 'a' as artificially exotic forenames were oh so popular about 22 years ago when her parents welcomed her to this planet — and you actually ask to buy a new soul. Er, sole. For your shoe. Size this'n'that.

And you get it after asking just twice and answering her unexpected detail-questions about the intended purpose of the sole and your feet's anatomy (not anatomies in plural, 'cause soles come in pairs, and there is no place for having two too different feet in our standardised World. That might be diagnosed as schizophrenia).

And you pay for it. And the not-particularly-good-looking about 22-year-old girl with the name probably ending on 'a' hands you the receipt and you leave.

And you're alive.

Now you are a sole survivor.

You are the sole survivor.