New day, new part baby! This time, the mystery deepens, and we set up for a big reveal... or not. Read now to find out!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part Two: Threads of Hunger
Morning arose as a bruised eye, blue and puffed, squirting a sickly light into the shoemaker's decaying workshop. He awoke with his back stiff in the groaning chair, the cold frozen in his joints like hinges of rust. His hands shook grasping towards the bench, and hesitated.
Before him was another pair of shoes. Not was. Hovered.
They were lovely once more, yes, but differently this time, long and pointed, as though fashioned for back, or sideward-streling, feet. The heels crooked unpleasantly. They reflected the dim light wetly, and the leather appeared moist, as though still oozing. They carried a copper smell with them.
He stepped back. The boots were staring at him. Or seemed to. The tiny stitches that kept the ankles secure were too neat, too human. He didn't even dare try to touch them for a few minutes, until the need to stay alive jostled his trembling fingers ahead. He lifted them up. The leather felt warm. Plush. Elastic.
And he knew it.
Not as cowhide.
Not as goat.
But as something else.
He looked to the edge of the table, where a needle remained stuck in a half-turned spool of thread, thread too red, too thick to be thread. He tugged on it. It gave a fleshy pull, sinewy and slick. His stomach revolted. He took a sniff at it once. Iron and rot. His heart slowed.
Veins. Somebody's veins.
He dropped it. It slapped wetly on the floor and wriggled just a tiny bit before lying flat.
He sold the shoes anyway.
A noble visited that morning, face white with powdered haughtiness, lips curled with disdain. He did not blink at the grotesque beauty of the shoes. If anything, he looked thrilled. He stroked gloved hands along the leather, breathing longingly.
"They look. alive."
He bought them for double the price.
That night, the shoemaker barricaded his door. He sealed his windows. He prayed. But the candle would not be lit. Shadows crept, pressed against the glass, and breathed.
And when he was taken by sleep, it came on dreams.
Dreams sewn with screams.
He stood in the woods behind his house, barefoot and chilled. The trees towered like ribs of a fallen god. The earth throbbed. Something shuffled through the underbrush, dragging a sack. No, not a sack. A bag. A full bag, drained but still convulsing. He ran, but his feet were snared by roots that curled like fingers. He fell face-first into the earth, and it opened.
He awoke with dirt in his mouth.
The shoes were there again.
Four this time. One for a child. One impossibly small, curled like hooves. One still wet.
And one that breathed.
The shoemaker did not sell them this time.
He barricaded them in the cellar, behind the shattered coal chute, under rusted spades and mildewed burlap sacks. He no longer cared about money. He bound his shoes with burlap, jammed wool in his ears, and tried not to listen to the sound of running feet in the walls.
The village began changing.
Children vanished. Their boots were left on doorsteps, empty, standing, tongues hanging out like a dog. The baker's boy was left hanging from the beams, his feet utterly missing, legs sewn together coarsely at the stumps in golden thread. The priest spoke of a curse. Of small hands that ran across ceilings.
The shoemaker remained silent.
Until he heard his wife screaming down from the cellar.
He hadn't heard her voice in five years. It was soft, sweet. Gentle.
"Erich…"
He staggered down the creaking stairs, candle held high. The cellar smelled of wet wood and dried blood. He saw her. Or something wrapped in her skin.
She sat among the shoes, smiling. Her eyes were all wrong, wide, unblinking, shiny like marbles soaked in tears. Her fingers were impossibly long, the tips frayed and dirty, and her dress, her wedding dress, once white, was thick with cobwebs and small boot prints.
Seated around her hummed the Elves.
But these were no fairytale sprites.
They were pale, twitching bodies, no taller than a loaf of bread. They were swollen-headed, stitched up the center of their heads, eyes that had been replaced by buttons, teeth filed down to pins. They chittered, like insects, on all fours, dragging scraps of skin behind them like dolls' quilts. Their fingers were needles. Their toes were blades.
They danced around it, her, squeaking as they rubbed new shoes against raw faces.
"Thank you for feeding us," she whispered, her voice now hollow, buzzing like a throat infested with flies. "They grow strong on your guilt."
The shoemaker dropped the candle.
It went out.
The darkness surrounded him.
He awoke days later on the workshop floor, his feet bare and bleeding, his hands raw from scraping the walls. The shoes were gone. The cellar was empty.
He tried to escape the village.
But all roads led back.
He tried to burn the shop down.
The fire capered but left no scorch marks.
He yelled into the evening. The wind carried it back, warbled-pitch and lost.
And then… they returned.
The Elves. Evening after evening.
Every evening, new shoes appeared. Every morning, he found himself wearing them, his own feet replaced by something a lot worse. Twisted hooves. Gnarled talons. One day, they stitched his mouth shut. Another, they removed his eyelids.
He could no longer scream.
He could no longer sleep.
He simply observed, as the shoes increased in number. As the village became still. As a flesh-and-lace castle rose up around his workshop, brick by brick, bone by bone.
And the Elves continued to work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more inquries, Message +65 81339859 today! (disclaimer: this is a joke. Please do not message any numbers that appear here. Doing so will definitely not lead to any relavations, nor will it give you an ARG spanning multiple Novels and Accounts.)