But a Walking Shadow - A Flash Fiction Collection

Voices in the Static

Anonymous Young Child

Bench Outside Greggs

Dad wouldn't have noticed Ben's shoes started talking yesterday, the tongue flapping on the school playground flap flap flap, but I did.

Linda from Greggs said I'm too small to be shopping by myself but she gave me a sausage roll and winked at me all secret so I think that we're friends now and she won't tell Mrs Carter I ran away. I wish she'd given me a fairy cake. I've never had one and Lucy always draws them in our art class on Tuesday's, which I should be at now but I crept through the gates on the playground whoosh like Scooby Doo. Lucy's cakes are pink and fluffy, just like the one's Linda is selling today. I can see them from here, in their little rooms with the lights switched on, all warm like my sausage roll but nicer, and the crumbs wouldn't get all over my skirt like this does but I don't mind because Linda gave it to me and we're friends now.

Lucy says dad doesn't love me because I've never had a fairy cake, but that isn't true because I love Ben and he hasn't had one either. Dad might buy one for both of us one day, when he isn't tired anymore and doesn't need to drink the water from the glass bottles to make him sleep all day. But he didn't wake up again today, so he doesn't know that the shoes are licking the floor and Mrs Carter says that's unhygienic.

I asked the lady in the shoe shop to swap my sausage roll for the light-up trainers that would make Ben smile. I liked the Dora shoes best though. They were white with glitter on the bottoms that wouldn't wipe away. Dora sat on the heels with Boots and waved at me hola. Ben would like them. Boots the monkey was his favourite because his fur was blue and mom bought him a furry blue monkey when he was small and bald like the eggs in Tesco. I was going to pick them up but then I remembered that dad would shout because Dora the Explorer is for girls and boys can't wear shoes with girls on, they have to wear boy shoes. They can't wear pink either, because the boys at school will laugh. It's all very confusing. I found the light-up shoes in the end, they were black and when I dropped them on the floor the bottoms lit up blue like magic. All the older boys wore them on the playground, but not Ben, because dad didn't go to the shops since mom went away with the nice TV that made Dora and Scooby look bigger than me.

The lady wouldn't give me the shoes. She said they cost money and not sausages (she must have liked the fairy cakes better,) and then she sold Ben's shoes to a little boy who cried because he liked the green ones more.