Jack’s Shoes

By: Caelen Mahoney

   Jack trudged groggily through his nice house, with his nice room, and his nice friend with the lights off. He didn’t usually spend so much time there, but recently he was constantly drawn to one room, sitting on the floor. He looked up at the ceiling with glowing stars stuck to it and imagined who was up there in the real night sky among the stars. He saw shapes in the patterns, a tossed ball, a big smile, and even a puppy dog! He sighed a long sigh pondering, implanting himself into those patterns, joyously playing with the ball and the puppy dog with a big smile on his face.

   Something was calling out to him. A pit rose up from his stomach to his chest and throat and he instinctively lurched forward to find a small blanket to wrap himself in. He tossed his overgrown hair to the side and gazed fearfully at the closet. He didn’t dare go in there for he knew that if he opened it, something inside it would overwhelm him and drag him to a place where he could never return from. Cowering away from the doors, he covered his face and wept powerlessly.   

   Suddenly the lights flashed on and Jack’s wife was standing in the doorway. With worry in her tortured eyes, she crouched down beside a small pair of sneakers that their brain dead little boy would never get to wear. Closing them back into the closet, she knelt down beside Jack and took his pained, tear streaked face in her hands. “It is not your fault” she assured him for the thousandth time. Still in disbelief, Jack stood up with his wife, turned the lights back off and closed the door to the nice room in his nice house.