The Shoe of Revelations

This morning I visited Lucy in her attic (it’s my my house arrest, but, I’ve admitted, the attic, and the transistor radios, are all hers). She’s there before I wake each morning and still tweaking dials when I rest my head to sleep. But this morning she was conducting a symphony – it was a glorious chorus of crackles, static and hissing pops. I shouted to her, “You’ve done it! You’ve found a frequency!”

Without patience she shoved back her safety goggles. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m transmitting.” Then she offered me her first smile. “Transmitting like I’ve never fucking done before.”

Luckily, Aliss arrived at the moment and took my hand. She led me down the flights of stairs to the ground floor of my house-prison and out into our small garden, where we came up to the rich bush – an azalea – from which she came. The exact spot where I first found the girl, clutching her rope doll. She pointed at the dirt and said, “Please. Smell. Take a sniff, Ol’ Uncle Charles.”

I dropped to my knees and did this very thing. And I’m not sure if I liked what I smelled. The smell of salt and fish and oxygen-rich air. Apparently we were living in a seaside town. It was the wrong place all together for a truly glorious house arrest.

When I stood back up she was holding forth a shoe – three stripes along the side. Nambo’s shoe – from my trunk.

“How did you get that, my girl?”

“I opened the trunk.”

Things were not going right. The house arrest was not holding together. “Then, am I right to assume you’ve taken possession of the mollydoll? My mollydoll.”

She nodded. And pushed Nambo’s shoe into my arms.

“What do I want with this fool’s shoe?”

“Before Nambo wore that shoe, it was loved and worn by another man. He told me to call him Horace.”

“Horace? Dear Aliss, do you know who Horace is? He is Ol’ Uncle Charles’ twin brother.”

She hadn’t known and she didn’t seem to find this fact remarkable. Instead, she told me to put on the shoe. “It will carry you out,” she said. “With this shoe on, you can walk through the hedge and straight to the sea.”

“What? But Aliss, this is the Golden Age of my house arrest.”

I stared through a gap in the hedge and feared what lay beyond.

“And, please, Ol’ Uncle Charles. It’s time you call me Alicia. I believe that name has become available once again. Alicia.”

And with that a scream came from the attic, the voice of 1,000 transistors in unison. The girl and I looked to the sky and watched the blue atmosphere shiver. It was in this moment that Lucy led the world in prayer – a prayer in my name.