Red Shoes (Flash Fiction)

Experiments in daily writing. Fiction. I hear some people write about things that never even happened… who knew?

Clicking down the street in her not-quite-too-high red pumps, she found herself thinking through the day ahead. Three meetings this morning, a demo just after lunch, and two reports due by tomorrow. Looked like another caffeine-fueled night at the office. She eyed her first double-tall-skinny latte of the day. Something tugged at her… didn’t this used to be special?

She remembered sitting at the cafe with her classmates, nursing a $5 cup for an hour to drag out the evening without breaking the bank. Now, between the coffee to speed her up and the daily yoga class to slow her down, she regularly dropped $20 before breakfast.

Of course, she thought with a small smile, she also got to wear $500 shoes. She paused for half a second to admire her footwear in a passing window and nearly caused a pileup on the sidewalk. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she heard a man mutter as he stepped around her.

Right. No time to pause. She stepped back into the flow… work to be done.