Collateral Damages: The Heel

What torture it must be to be a human mind stranded in an object, without the ability to simply dream away your immobile life? Would you, after almost a century of existence as nothing more than an object, even consider yourself a human? Would you wish for the release of death, whatever form it might take?

Another, and much more unfortunate victim of the strange fight between wizard and witch. Gotta say, I'd take Brian's fate over this one.

TEXT

The sun rose on the partially collapsed building, thin, gray light filtering through the overcast sky and filling the previously dark and dangerous interior of the building. Once it had been a luxury department story, it's now crumbling facade a work of art almost a century ago. But time, economic shifts, population collapses and then a fire had wrought a fierce toll on the structure and it now only stood due to the lack of funds needed to knock it's once proud, now eyesore, frame to the ground. Where there were once floors of elegant dresses and tailor made suits and furniture was now just dirty, trash filled hollow spaces and faded walls covered in graffiti. Once gangs and the homeless had used the building as hideouts, drug stashes and homes, but the building was now in such poor condition that even the most desperate had left for questionably greener pastures of urban decay. The only resident, save for the insects and vermin, that called the building home was a ruined red heel. It was covered in mold, the shiny red leather of it's exterior cracking and peeling away and dust and rubble and ash filled it's internal hollow. It had been old even before the fire had exposed it to the elements, having sat ignored and discarded in the silence of the store decades. Nested in by mice, kicked around by trespassers, when the fired had caused the front of the building to collapse the heel had been exposed to the elements and spent even more time enduring countless winters and rainstorms as it was buried under snow and then the long dampness from constantly being wet.

And now it groaned mentally as a stray beam of sunlight pierced the cloud cover and fell directly onto the heel, stirring the dormant mind within from it's long psychological torpor.

"Oh great. I'm still here. It grumbled as thought processes, long dormant, stirred back into motion despite it having no brain or any other biological functions. The heel hadn't wanted it's conscious mind to resurface, why couldn't the stupid sun just go out already? Or better yet, why couldn't whatever magic had done this to the heel in the first place finally run out and let it cease to exist?

The heel's nihilistic thoughts were well earned. Long ago, it had once been human. It couldn't remember what kind of human, only that it had been one. Had it been a woman, looking at new shoes to go with a fabulous new dress? Or had it been a man dutifully carrying a woman's purchases? Or simply a child that had grown bored and had been darting through the store as a means of entertainment? The heel no longer knew, the endless passage of time had merged all these possible realities into one unreliable memory. But it did remember the moment this had happened to it. Whoever the heel had been had been yin the wrong place at the wrong time when a strangely dressed man and a strangely dressed woman had appeared in front of it, screaming in a strange language at each other. They had the most peculiar looking sticks in their hands, out of which shot fantastical beams of light! The heel had been terrified but intrigued as the robed man and shawl draped woman had literally flown through the store, the lights from the sticks flashing outwards and changing whatever it hit...Until a beam had hit the heel!

The sensation of becoming inanimate had been strange. Not painful, but strange. Unable to move, the heel's ability to see had expanded in every direction, watching in terrified silence as the world grew around it. Then suddenly the feeling of being pulled in two directions as it's former human body was divided into two pieces as another red heel appeared beside it! That hadn't helped things, as the heel's mind felt as if it lost something as it stared at the new heel...and got the distinct impression that the other heel was staring back! But in the end there was nothing the new footwear could do but simply watch as the strange man and woman zoomed around the store one more time before vanishing into the air as quickly as they had arrived! And they had left the heel trapped as a shoe! The heel had called out as loud as it could, but there was no sound to be made. Footwear didn't talk, after all. And eventually the two small pieces of red leather and padding were picked up by one of the store employees, looked at quizzically as the heel screamed as loud as it could...and deposited it without a second glance next to other heels in the store's shoe department. And there the heel sat, slowly coming to the realization that not only could it not move or make any sound, but that as nothing more than women's footwear, it had no ability to sleep. It couldn't even close its weird new eyes as they stared, unblinking, out at the department store. All night. All day. All night. All day. The endless cycle of light and dark as new customers came in and left day in and day out.

Sometimes a woman would stop and gush over how delightful the heel looked and an employee would pull the heel and it's strange twin off the display. The first time it happened the heel screamed, as if it would do anything to save it as the ruby-tipped and horrible large foot slid inside of it! The crushing pressure as the woman stood on it, pressing down on it's tiny body with all of her weight! The heel felt like even the slightest movement would cause it's fragile body to snap! But after a few moments the woman sighed and slid her foot out, returning the heel to the eager young employee that stood there to help her. And back to the display it was, a tormenting span of time of doing nothing but observing the store around it with it's...sister? Brother? Child? Whatever the other heel was to it. It was always the same, long periods of nothing until slight interest was shown, the heel would have some stranger's foot shoved into it for a brief moment before the same look of disappointment put it back on the display. Never the right foot (or the left one) it seemed as the heels around it slowly sold away, the styles changing as the years passed. Eventually, the nonstop crushing of reality caused the heel to mad as it's once human mind snapped under the weight of inanimation. Of being nothing more than a thing, a product. Had...had it ever been anything else, it wondered as the years rolled past. At one point the heel, whoever it had been before, began silently begging the women that walked past it to try it on, that it was just the heel for their feet! And when it was lucky enough to be tried on...It promised that it would be a good heel, if only they would give it a home to live in! To be part of the strange, mobile lives that humans lived! But no, it seemed it's fate to stay there, to draw the eye to other, more fortunate heels. The store's interior changed, the fashions changed and eventually the store was emptied of anything of value...save for 'worthless' merchandise like the heel. Eventually the store closed and the lights went off forever. And if the long nights had been hell for the heel, the isolation that followed next was something worse entirely.

The lack of anything had eventually allowed the heel to divorce it's conscious mind, drifting into some form of dreamlike state where it no longer thought, it simply existed as the wheel of time turned. The only time it resurfaced was when the strange looking teens and their desheveled fashion had shown up and terrorized the heel's floor, taking it's partner heel and kicking it down an elevator shaft. And then the next time, years later, when the fire had failed to reach it despite the hell yearning for the burning oblivion. Or that the snow and rain would melt it, or the vermin would tear it apart for nests. But still, despite the mold now clinging to it's slowly rotting frame, the heel persisted. Maybe one day it would die, but for now it needed to focus.

"God, it's going to take forever to get back to that" The heel thought to itself as it ignored the human and natural world it was no longer part of as it tried to sink back into mindlessness. Luckily, or unluckily it seemed, it had all the time in the world.