Shoe in the Road

Where did it come from? How did it get there? Why is it there? Those are the questions I ask myself constantly. I know it has a story behind it. They all do. They are everywhere. Everywhere you look there is a shoe or a boot or some kind of footwear in the road. Each one has its own unique story to tell, a story that tells why it is there, where it came from, and how it got there. The stories range and are different for each piece of footwear. Some are just lost. Others are trash that just didn’t get out. Some can be involved in inhuman crimes. Crimes like cold-blooded, psychopathic murder. Murder so gruesome not many talk about it, but the shoe knows. The shoe knows because it is part of his story. It is part of its how, where, and why.

His name was Darren Hanford. He was an O5, Lt. Col. to the layman, in the United States Air Force. Darren was a jet pilot and said to be a good one at that. He been serving in the military some years now and had seen combat in Vietnam.

Darren had just moved in McChord, planning to finish his career and retire there. He was overstressed and overworked. He was still having trouble coping with the memories and flashbacks from Nam. No matter how hard he tried he could not be rid of them for good. He did cope better than most and continued his military career, although they were starting to interfere with his work and his life. He needed to get out of the military and just relax. Relax and spend time with his family. He hoped that that would help him ease back to what he believed to be a sound mind again.

Darren’s flashbacks didn’t bother him as much at first. They may not have been peaceful, but they were truthful to the events during his tour. They didn’t stay that way. After some years, the flashbacks began to grow more frequent. The flashbacks also changed from truth to gruesome, nightmarish things. They were so powerful that some times they seemed to be reality to Darren. Darren started praying for death. Then he started his family and the flashbacks stopped.

He didn’t have time for his family before. He hadn’t made time in his life before. He had only been married for six years. She was his psychiatrist. They had been seeing each other off and on for some years before they got married. They soon started a family. Their kids, both boys, were five and three.

For awhile the flashbacks seemed to go away and he had not problems. Then, about six months before his move to McChord, the flashbacks returned. He decided he needed to retire and be around family. That is why he chose McChord. He was close enough to his family in Spokane, but far enough to have his space.

Again the flashbacks subsided. Darren went a solid week without one. Things seemed to go back to what Darren believed to normal.

The flashbacks were no longing what they once were. They became altered realities. They came on so quickly that Darren felt as if he was thrown into the past. He spent days in bed to afraid to go out in public. He feared what people would think and do. He felt weak. A nuisance that he once had a grip on was controlling his life. One day his salvation did come, but at a cost.

Darren had been lying in bed for the fourth day straight. He refused to get up and do anything. He was alone in the house, but he felt as if someone was watching him. Then he heard it, a voice. A relax and calm voice that seemed to come from the walls. The voice addressed him by his rank and serial number. It told him things would be all right and that it could make the flashbacks go away. Darren knew he was losing his mind and tried to ignore the voices. For days the voice in the walls talked to him and he ignored them.

Then one day I snapped. I lost it the day that I decided to listen to what the walls had to say. They had a lot to say and I listened. I listened because they promised to get rid of my flashbacks. I would do anything to get rid of those damn flashbacks. I talked to the walls for weeks making plans for my release from my own private hell. The walls told me what I needed to do, and I did it.

The kids were asleep in bed that night and my wife was in the living room watching TV. Everything was normal. At least they thought it was. They may have had a different point of view if they knew I talked to the walls, but what’s wrong with that? I decided to get the hardest part of over with first.

I went out to the shed and grabbed my favorite hammer. I loved to build things and work with wood so on my birthday, one year, my wife got me the hammer. It was and will always be my favorite hammer.

When I got back in the house my wife was asleep on the couch. She looked so peaceful. It just made me mad. There she was sleeping peacefully when I can’t even close my eyes I am so afraid of the flashbacks. Something had to be done. So I woke her up. She woke up with no problem when I brought the hammer down on her kneecap.

She screamed. Boy did she scream. I just couldn’t have that. She might have woken up a neighbor. That would have killed my night’s works. So I pummeled her in the head with the hammer. Again and again it hit home, each time crushing her skull more and more.

When I got done, her eyes were still open. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive, but it didn’t matter. With the claw of the hammer I ripped out her eyes. I couldn’t stand them staring at me, watching me. She had no right to look at me in terror. She was at peace. I put her at rest in an endless world of peace.

The kids were no fun at all. Just two quick swings of the hammer and they were dead. They drifted from a land of dreams to death without ever knowing that they died. Better that way, they didn’t need to suffer.

With my family dead, I needed to get rid of the bodies. I didn’t know what to do. So I asked the walls. They knew what to do. I chopped up the bodies and put them in the dumpster outside, just like the walls said. But the walls didn’t count on one thing. That damn shoe.

The shoe that I still wonder about today caused my downfall. It belonged to my three-year-old son. A white tennis shoe with Velcro straps instead of laces. Somehow it managed to get outside. No problem, but when the garbage man found it the next day the shoe was covered in blood. Of course that caught his attention and he found what was left of my family.

When the cops broke down my door, I was sitting in front of the TV and eating lunch. I knew they would come. I had been expecting them. The walls told me early that the shoe was found, so I made an extra pot of coffee for them. I was arrested. When they asked me why I did it, I told them the truth, “The walls told me to do it.” The walls were right though. The flashbacks of Nam went away. I only wish I could get the nightmare of what was once my family to go away.

The courts didn’t decide to kill me. I wish they would have. The nightmares are driving me mad. I went from one hell to another. I begged to die and they took that into consideration. They considered me crazy. I knew that. So they didn’t kill me. Instead they locked me in a room.

Now I spend most of my day in the white room talking to the walls and wondering; wondering about that shoe. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Why is it there?