Linda Gibson sent the last actuarial table of the day to the last client of the day. Being a freelance accountant was a double-edged sword: on the one hand it meant she could work from home, but on the other hand it meant she had to work from home.
But for today she was done, and she could climb her way from the basement home office, through the kitchen, up to the master bedroom on the second floor, and collapse until her children got home from school.
At least, that had been the plan. As she passed her son's bedroom, she heard a noise coming from inside.
"Jon," she sighed into the air, "did you really leave your TV on all day again?"
Nobody else was home, and she wasn't expecting an answer. But she did expect she'd be able to turn off the television, so she pushed open her son's bedroom door and stopped.
When was the last time Jon had cleaned his room? It was a sty! Linda could hardly see any carpet! And she had to walk all the way to the far wall through this mess to get to the TV and turn it off. Well, she wasn't going to do it barefoot, but fortunately Jon had left a pair of Teva sandals right next to the door. She'd slip them on and step over the toxic waste dump that her son called home. Just one foot, and then the other, and--
"Mom!"
Linda turned around. Was Jon home from school early?
"No, mom, it's not me. I'm not home yet. It's my shoes. My shoes are talking to you!"
"How can your shoes bewhooaa--"
Linda found her feet moving of their own accord, seemingly instinctively finding the spots of open carpet between the piles of laundry and garbage. A moment later, she was sitting on her teenage son's un-made bed.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" Linda was not pleased by this turn of events.
"Magic shoes. I don't know. It's complicated! Jon isn't acting like I usually do, so he might not be reliable, but I do have a plan."
"What do you mean, you might not be reliable?"
"Not me. I'm, I don't know, I'm separate from Jon somehow. I'm just his shoes. I guess I'm his default? But Jon is being changed. Look, it's not important. What's important is we have a magic rock that can fix everything."
Linda paused a moment to decide whether or not she wanted to believe the talking shoes about the magic rock. "Okay, fine. Tell me where this magic rock is, tell me how to use it, and I'll do whatever you need me to do. Just let me turn off the TV first."
Linda's feet began to walk towards the television, which would have allowed her to do just that, but then she saw what was on.
"Last time, on Dragon Ball Super!" The baritone announcer called from the old TV speakers.
And suddenly, Linda's feet were standing still. "What's going on?" she asked her feet incredulously, "I need to turn off the TV so we can have some quiet while you let me fix whatever I need to fix."
"But this is the new episode. I need to watch it. There's no hurry, really, we have this under control. The episode will be over before Jon gets home, and we'll have plenty of time to use the rock."
"Just DVR the thing and we'll watch it after we fix things." Linda was starting to lose her mind.
"It's not that simple, Mom. You're seeing what it's like in Jon's shoes." Linda's feet found themselves navigating back towards the bed, and she found herself sitting on it, facing the television.
"Of course," Linda put her palm, which she could control perfectly well, to her forehead. "Of course Jon would procrastinate until the last minute. Of course Jon would stop everything to watch his cartoon, of course! This is just..." a fuzziness began in Linda's head. "This is just fine." She scrunched her eyebrows. What had she been thinking?
Right. She had to find that magic rock. But it could wait until after this episode was over.
