The Return of the Red Shoes

As a child I read and loved "The Red Shoes" by Hans Christian Anderson. It is from this love that I wrote the "Return of the Red Shoes." It is a modern sequel to the original. If you have not read "The Red Shoes" this will still make sense, but please for your own sake, read the original- it is great! I hope you enjoy my story.

I would like to thank The Divine Miss M. She helped me edit this story- she is a champion!

Prologue

Doctor Jane Robinson's throat burned, her stomach heaved, and her eyes watered while fixated on the drain hole of the surgery sink.

'Damn, what is it about this corpse?' she pondered.

Back when she was studying she was the only intern who never threw up during her entire training. Twelve years later and the esteemed Dr. Robinson stood in the morgue’s bathroom, regurgitating like a drunken prom date. She felt pathetic. She had seen maggots crawling from corpse's ears. She had seen eyes gouged, bodies crushed,  faces pulverised. Yet she had never seen anything like  what was lying on her table.

Ever.

Nurse Ginny Smith continued rubbing the Doctor's back. “Jane, are you okay?”

“I have been a forensic investigator for twelve years, but that cadaver makes me feel ill for some reason. It’s her face. She is so bloody relieved but how could she be, after what happened to her?”

Ginny had no answers for Jane. All she could do was hold the Doctors hair back and ready a clean washer for the older woman to wipe the spew from her face once her stomach emptied. Of course there was one other thing Ginny could do. That was to never, ever look at that body. Anything that made Dr Robinson, the tough as nails bitch of the morgue, throw up was more than Ginny‒or any other semi sane person‒should see.

No matter what Doctor Robinson did she could not get that face out of her head. The girl on the slab was a hacked and bloody mess. It looked as though she had been through a mincer. Jane decided that it was probably some guy who claimed to love her. It was always love that did the most damage.

Jane considered what it was causing her to have such a reaction to the corpse. It was not the severed flesh, nor the bones poking through skin, she decided, nor the blood or dangling tendons that was particularly upsetting.

It was the girl's face. She appeared happy. Her face revealed that in the final moments of death she was grateful, truly relieved. How could anyone in that state be thankful.

How could you die with a smile on your face while someone is hacking at you with an axe?