Once upon a time, there was a rug.
This rug had lain on the same ground for eternity. Well, not actually eternity. It had been there for as long as I have been aware of it, and being a teenager, that means it was definitely not an eternity. However, every fifteen year old sees their life as eternity, with anything before the time they were born being a fog of myths. So, for our purposes, we'll stick with the assumption that the rug was there for eternity.
As rugs do, this rug had grown quite accustomed to getting stepped on. Shoe after shoe had been left on it. Some shoes had stepped in great places. They had been on stage in front of hundreds of people. They had been by the side of someone who cried and lifted them up. Other shoes had stepped in not-so-great places. One particular shoe had found the feelings of a particular individual and stepped on them. It found metaphorical bugs and, regardless of the strength of their exoskeleton or their mission, unfailingly managed to render each one as a mangled pulp of a corpse. Since these are metaphorical bugs, this is supposed to make you said.
The rug might have been aware of this; I don't rightly know if it was or was not. What I do know is that it didn't care. It supported any shoe, and any person who was slotted into that shoe, no matter who they were.
However, there was one thing that the rug hated, more than anything else. You can call it a pet peeve. It was when the owners of the shoes kicked each other. The rug couldn't fathom why they did this, but sometimes the owners would force their shoes into collisions, and it made such a mess. There was dirt everywhere, all over the rug, and it remained there until someone vacuumed the rug or threw it out.
Since we've established that the rug has feelings, let's just assume that the rug has other abilities, as well. In fact, it can do anything a human can do. Being a rug, however, it prefered to lay on the floor and let people step on it. That was its job, right?
When people kicked their shoes like this, however, the rug just couldn't take it. So, like any other sentient rug, it would stop the kicking by confiscating the legs of the feuding humans, by wrapping them up and rendering them unable to fight for what they believe in.
Now that you and the rug have been properly introduced, let us begin the story.
Once, there were two such shoe-owners. One was a heavyset man from downriver, with a nose so prominent that the rug could see it from its unfavorable position. The other was a lightweight, pockmarked lesbian from upriver, where all the mean people hide. The two had met downriver, for whatever reason, and currently stood on the rug, discussing a matter.
"So, how-eh, was your, eh, weekend?" The large-nosed man's speech was sporadic at best, in which he began speaking, but stopped, as if he had been driving but fell of the embarkment, screaming "eh" on the way down. Typically a sign of emotional abuse, this speech meant that he felt like he didn't belong in the situation, and people often told him that they didn't care what they said. I know this because I too have this type of punctuated speech, a recent development resulting from association with people like the large-nosed man.
"It was, um, good," replied the upriver girl. She wanted to say "great," to elaborate, but doubted herself and revised it. Noticing the awkward silence that ensued, she tried to fill it. "I went to pride. Hanging out with some L, G, B, T, I--aw, shit, I forgot Q, I, A, plus people."
If you think it's bad that this person couldn't remember all the letters...I'd like to see you try to remember them all. Besides, her home life had indoctrinated her into saying "LGB," and recent exposure to social media had encouraged her to update her beliefs.
"That's a lot of, eh, letters," the large-nosed man replied. "Why-eh, are there so many?" He seemed annoyed, for this type of man was always annoyed.
