Battle the Beast: The Muddy Shoes

The Muddy Shoes

Margo stopped.

"These shoes."

She pointed at a pair of shoes on a shelf in the front room of the house. "Eliot, whose shoes are these?"

Eliot was pretending to read, pretending the images he saw were letters and not tiny, ink-black devils determined to split his brain in half. Thus was the power of his hangover.

"Eliot!" Margo tossed another book at him that missed his head by inches, if that. Her shout, the resultant thud of the book and his subsequent "What?!" made his head throb in a way he, in other circumstances, found delicious. When the room stopped spinning and Margo's twin vanished back into her body he slithered to his feet, hands outstretched as if trying to grip gravity itself. "What is it?"

Margo was still pointing. "Whose. Shoes. Are these?"

Why he agreed to get up and look he'll never know, but when he finally stopped next to Margo somewhere in the back of his brain he understood why she was so insistent. The shoes were small. Too small to be any of theirs, even Quentin's. To say nothing of the fact that they were covered in mud. The house may have been something of a free-for-all, rules wise, but no one would be so brazen as to put mud-caked shoes on a shelf. Even if they were, it wasn't anyone who still went to Brakebills. They clearly didn't belong to anyone old enough to go to Brakebills, save some child prodigy.

They were so out of place, even in this house of all houses, almost to look like a prop. Like some scenic designer—or their intern—put in many hours distressing a pair of child's dress shoes to get them to look the right amount of worn, the right amount of dirty. The effect would have been impressive if it weren't...

"Sad."

"Hm?" Eliot swayed as he turned to Margo.

"Why am I sad? Why are these shoes making me sad?"

Eliot turned back to the shoes. "It's like that short story. You know. The one about the shoes."

"Oh, right," Margo agreed dryly. "That one."

Still they stood, staring at them.

"These weren't always here," Margo continued.

"Right—I think even we'd notice a pair of shoes on a bookshelf."

"No," she slapped his arm, making Eliot wince all the way down to his toes. "I mean I've seen them before. But not here."

Whether he was too hungover or too curious he didn't know, but Eliot didn't refute her. Instead he turned back to the shoes. Was there something familiar about them, or was his brain squishier and more malleable than usual?

"I'm not..." Margo clutched her forehead in a way that made Eliot whimper. "I've seen them..." Eliot was about to offer words of encouragement when Margo nearly made his brain leak out of his ears. "QUENTIIIN!" The shout echoed through the house, unaided by magic, and soon enough Quentin was practically falling over his long legs in an attempt to answer. Alice was hot on his heels, both stricken as if the house was on fire.

"What?! What?! What is it?" Quentin and Alice exchanged looks between themselves and Eliot and Margo, looking for an emergency. Eliot shrugged and gestured vaguely to Margo and the shoes. "Have you seen these shoes before?" Margo asked. Quentin looked to Alice as if to say, Really? This? Questioning, but obedient, Quentin moved toward Margo and Alice followed, tugged along by curiosity.

Upon seeing the shoes, Quentin's first instinct was to say no, but he found his words caught in his throat until he just offered, "...Huh."

The four of them stood there, staring at the shoes, bound to them.