Chapter 1 to Soul Shoes (Working TItle)

A Chapter by BurkeLerch

Just started writing this. A somewhat dark, yet comedic, journey.

One More Stop

By: Burke Lerch

“Now what?”

“Just one more stop.”

“Right, right. Fool me once. You used that one already, try again.” Derek was an impatient man, part of the reason he was here in the first place.

“You got somewhere to be?”

Derek glared.

“Too soon?” The car’s laughter crackled out of the old radio.

He leaned back into the leather seat, kicking his grey suede boots up onto the steering wheel. He shrugged, “anywhere has to be better than a ride along in the morbid mobile.”

The old Chevy’s engine rumbled to life, and Derek’s feet fell from the wheel as it steered onto the dark street. The speedometer stayed at a cool forty, but the scenery changed in a blur.

“You lied. I’m not getting used to that.” Derek’s face had taken on a greenish hue.

“You will. Eventually.”

Derek snorted. He wasn’t planning on sticking around long enough for eventually.

The car rolled to a stop outside of a pillbox suburbanite home. Derek groaned.

“That’s right,” the radio said. “Same as the last one.” The car lifted and floated across the lawn. Derek leaned his elbows on the steering wheel as they passed through the wall and into the living room.

A family was sitting on the couch, eyes vacant as they watched the television.

“Which one is it?” Derek asked.

“Upstairs.”

The car passed through the ceiling as it rose, stopping outside of a bathroom door.

“He’s in there,” the radio said.

Derek stepped out of the car and walked to the bathroom, the floor creaking with each step. The shower was running. He hesitated at the door, looking back to the car. The chrome grill of the Chevy stared back. Cold. Derek stepped into the bathroom.

A teenage boy was lying in the tub, an empty pill bottle gripped in his pale fist, and he was naked except for a clean pair of tennis shoes. Derek sighed as he pulled the shoes off the boy’s cold feet.

Derek looked out the window as the car pulled away from the quiet neighborhood.

“Nothing to say this time?” the radio asked.

“Why shoes?” Derek asked.

“Some kind of supernatural metaphor, I guess.”

“You guess?” He rolled his eyes. “I imagined the Reaper to be more...”

“Ominous? Prolific?” The radio burst into static laughter. “Too cliché. Here we are, our next stop.”

Gravel crunched as the Chevy pulled into the parking lot of a by-the-hour motel.

Derek snorted, “this isn’t ‘too cliché’ for you?”

The car didn’t answer as it rolled to a stop in front of a green door with a brass 320 hanging above a peephole. For a moment he thought he’d seen the glass fish-eye go dark, someone looking out at him as he reached for the doorknob.

Derek paused. “We can’t be seen?” he asked.

“Far as I know,” the radio squawked.

Derek shrugged and opened the door. The heavy, coppery scent of death hung in the air like a fog, cloying and thick. He wanted to vomit but knew the Chevy would never let him hear the end of it. A briefcase full of bills lie open on the dirty mattress, just out of reach of a potbellied man in white underpants that smelled like he may have voided his bowels after suck-starting the shotgun in his lap. He was wearing a pair of crocks, coated in mud. Derek rolled his eyes as he pulled the first one off the dead man’s foot.

“Who are you?”

Derek jumped. A girl, couldn’t have been older than twenty, was standing silhouetted in the bathroom doorway. She was wearing a grey pair of sneakers.

“You can see me?” he asked.

“Of course I can see you,” she said. “Why are you stealing Phil’s crocs?”

Derek could only gape, mouth working like a fish at feeding time. The Chevy’s engine turned over with a roar in the parking lot, and the radio-alarm clock on the bedside stand burst into life.

“Grab the crocs and tell the girl to get in the car,” the radio said. “We have to make one more stop.”