It sat in the back under a pile of other items that had been discarded. It was old and wrinkled, stained with use and yellow with age. Many years of foot odor, medicated powers, dust and, more recently, rodent droppings had given it a distinctly unpleasant smell and a sour disposition. It resented its condition and longed for the day when it would no longer be pressed down by the weight of broken toys, discarded clothes and water-logged textbooks.
Sometimes when it was being chewed by a mouse searching for nesting materials, the shoe would dream of the day when it would be thrown out, taken to the dump and incinerated. Its sole was loose anyway, painfully pulling away from its body. The complete release would be momentarily painful but, the shoe believed, the joy of the separation would be well worth the one brief stab of pain.
It was a melancholy shoe with little life remaining.
Time passed and the junk pile shifted. The shoe felt a breath of moving air and a shock of realization. It was out of the pile and the closet door was open. A glimmer of hope began to pulse in its insole, but the shoe ignored it. Hope is an illusion, it thought curmudgeonly.
The shoe could hear faint noises in the room beyond the closet. There was the sound of wood scraping; a chair or stool was being moved across the floor. Footsteps moved in an out of the room. A window opened, and a broom was put to use. Cautiously, the shoe peered out of the closet. It couldn't see much, but it was obvious that the room was being cleared out and cleaned up.
The shoe wondered if the closet would be cleaned as well. There was no reason that it should be ignored. At last, thought the shoe, the junk pile will be thrown out!
As that thought struck, the she experienced a tingling sensation running up and down its laces. A knot of fear formed just above its aglets and lodged between its tongue and eyelets. In a shock of uncharacteristic shoelessness, it realized it was going to die - and it wasn't ready.
