No Place Like It

“I want to go home” was all she had whispered.

He angrily turned around and came toward her as the racks of clothes and walls of the little Kansas consignment shop fell away, melting into the ethereal mists now engulfing her.

Her head swam, and nausea swept over her as the hushed scream in her throat finally gave birth to actual sound, echoing off the brick walls of the nearby buildings.
She felt faint as the fog slipped away, somehow leaving her alone on a dark and deserted street.

Her back was pressed against the cold metal of a lamp post, and the sound of distant lumbering locomotive cars accompanied the subtle vibrations her feet felt in the ground beneath.

Her feet.

She quickly slipped off the red shoes as if they had bitten her.

She remembered that he had stopped for a break from the road; from the endless driving and running in the little town of Cherokee, Kansas. Images of her morning began to align themselves in her head.

She recalled he had taken her into the consignment shop to find some cheap, used clothing and shoes that wouldn’t match her last description.
Yes. She remembered now.

She had been trying desperately to be noticed by someone, anyone, without alerting or angering him.

She had been looking at clothing and trying on a pair of shoes . . . beautiful red slippers that glittered like rubies in the dim light of the shop.
Surprisingly, they had fit so wonderfully. As she looked at herself in the mirror, the heels inadvertently clicked together as she turned to the right, then again as she turned back to the left, and a final time as she moved back to center to see them from the back.

It was then that she had uttered the whisper, “I want to go home” and he had turned toward her.

But where was she now?

Reaching back to steady herself on the lamp post, her hand came to rest on a flyer. She turned for a look. It was one of those washed out, photocopied flyers of a missing child made by a frantic family. She looked closer at the paper, realizing it was her face.

She sank to the ground, exhausted and paranoid, looking over her shoulder and down the street, in every doorway, every shadow for him.

She drew her knees up to her chest and gathered the shoes up in her arms, happening to notice a worn name label inside the heel of one. It read, D. Gale.

It was at that moment that a slow-cruising police car turned the corner, its floodlight cutting across her. It quickly pulled to the curb alongside her, and the officers stepped out to help.

As the shaking girl caught sight of the name of the city on the car door, tears streamed down her face, and she clutched the ruby slippers close to her chest.

She was safe.

She was home.