Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Revenge of the Shoemaker's Elves

Storch-BadgeMaster Class 2013 #11: Desperation, Authority, and a Lamb
"It was Tara who set the bar highest this week with a fantastic tale of fatherly love in A Father’s Right.
Tara to chose the first line of the last paragraph from any book of her choosing. She chose Lamb by Christopher Moore. Your challenge this week is:
“That’s all I remember.”
You cannot use this line to begin or end your story. In fact, you have two choices this week. You can use the line anywhere else in your story or you can write a story based on the prompt without using the line at all. If you need an example, check out Words with Teeth‘s submission from last week. He did a fantastic job of using the prompt as the basis for his story without inserting the line at all."

I have no idea where I came up with this last minute silliness, forgive me...
I resumed awareness on the cold of a concrete floor.  The painful stripes woke at the same time.  The floor's penetrating chill was a blessing, I suppose.  A soothing balm against my skin.

Where did these welts come from?  They adorn my arms and legs in random pattern and size.  On my back I can feel burning tracks of raised flesh.  There is throbbing lump on my head.

I remember walking through the mall, shopping for shoes to match the new suit.  I tried so many pairs, none were right.  The colors were off, the toes pinched.  The heels were not the right height.  

The clerk was as frustrated as I was.  It seemed for hours, he brought box after box.  Measured and remeasured my feet.  He kept a smile fixed on his face.  Even when I waved the last half dozen away, he smiled.  There may have been a slight twitch in his left eye, though. 

That's all I remember.  The clerk stalking away with disarranged boxes of tissue paper and mismatched shoes.  

I wonder who puts them all back the way they were?

2 comments:

  1. I think this is really cute, especially at the end. I wonder stuff like that all the time. In fact, just yesterday I was wondering how the pharmacy seals the bottles with those little foil covers. Maybe they have elves too?

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    1. thank you, Professor! I was really struggling with this one.

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