The Red Shoe

By Jashith Singh

Harsh, a skinny boy in his 20’s, was in his father’s old car, riding down a road which was seemingly never ending. The road was empty and surrounded by a big forest. He was alone in the old Maruti ambassador.

He was driving from his old house to the new one. This was one of his attempts to make his father talk to him.

Harsh and his father had not been on talking terms because of a fight that took place almost a year ago. His father didn’t agree with his choice of a university in England. They had a big fight on this topic and harsh, who was really angry at his father, left for England on the night of the feud.

A few months later, he dropped out of the university and came back to apologize to his father, who still was ignoring him. It had been a month or two after Harsh’s return.

He was driving on the road half asleep, when he noticed something unusual. There was a shoe in the middle of the road. He stopped his car a few steps away from the shoe. He got out of the car and inspected the shoe. It was a bright red shoe with the Ferrari logo on it and it looked quite expensive. He wondered why it was there. He just thought that it might have fell out of somebody’s foot and the person wouldn’t have noticed it.

He got back in his car and just drove off leaving the shoe there. A few minutes had passed and harsh couldn’t stop thinking about the shoe. He kept thinking about where it came from and why was it there. Almost an hour had passed and Harsh couldn’t still stop thinking about the shoe. He was half an hour away from his house. He stopped the car again. This time it was because of something even more unusual, a big puddle of blood.

He was too scared to get out of the car or even move. He was staring at the big puddle of blood. He was sure a murder had taken place there and the shoe he found before was that of the victim. He gathered some courage and pulled out his phone. He started dialing 100 but before he could do that some kind of force pushed the car into the left side of the forest.

The car got wrecked and Harsh was heavily bruised. Suddenly, an invisible force pulled him out of the car and took him to the right deep inside of the forest leaving only one of his shoes. The wrecked car also got pushed deep into the forest and was barely visible from the road. Somehow, the big puddle of blood also disappeared.

All that was left on the road was a white and blue shoe.

By Jashith Singh