Up For Review:
The Shoebox
The following story is the first submission for one of our faithful participants to the FishTank. I think anyone that shows such loyalty deserves loyalty in return. This is a complete short story at 1,579 words. The author prefers to have no set up for the story. He would appreciate our thoughts.
FishTank guidelines apply:
1) 2 positive comments
2) 2 suggestions for improvement
3) Try not to repeat!
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The Shoebox
By Bradley Stoke
bradley_stoke@hushmail.com
Shopping was never much of a chore for Danielle. After
all, there wasn't that much she needed to buy in the way
of clothes. That might change as she got older, of
course, but as her reflection in the mirror inside the
shoe shop reassured her, she still looked pretty good for
a married woman in her mid-thirties. It might have been
different if she and Paul had had kids, but that just
wasn't going to be.
Danielle spun round on the shoes she was trying on.
Her body otherwise naked from ankle upward: a fashion
statement she'd persevered with ever since her teenage
years. But at least she kept herself looking trim. She'd
been shaving her crotch smooth from before she'd ever met
Paul and she still found it slightly odd when she passed
younger women with their pubic hair totally unshaven. Not
even trimmed into shape. But Danielle couldn't answer for
fashion. She'd probably have been much the same herself
if she were younger. And her breasts were still comely
and proud. Why should she want to hide them? Like so many
of her friends did these days. Well, she'd wait until her
breasts sagged or her stomach started jutting out until
she started wearing clothes all the time.
She smiled at the shop assistant, who was holding
the shoebox that until a moment ago had contained the
shoes she was trying on. She was a young girl, probably
only in her twenties, wearing just a plain orange tee
shirt and some rather clumsy shoes that Danielle, for
one, would never dream of wearing. And that crotch! So
much hair! More than on the shop girl's head, where the
hair was kept quite short. What Danielle wouldn't do to
tidy up that messy light brown scruffy mess. At least, to
trim the edges of it!
"What do you think of the shoes?" asked the girl.
"I really like them. They go well with my hair.
Black." Danielle ran a long strand of hair through her
fingers and let it fall gracefully onto her bare
shoulder. "But I'm not sure about the fit. Next size
down, perhaps?"
"Okay. Let's try it out."
So Danielle sat down on the low shoe-shop chair with
her leg stretched out, while the shop assistant eased off
her shoes and returned them to their box. She then pulled
out the other shoes, and, using a shoehorn, gently fitted
Danielle's elegant foot into a shoe while her customer
watched from above.
And then, without warning and totally unexpectedly,
the shop assistant leant forward towards Danielle's
shaved crotch and gently placed her lips on Danielle's
vulva. It was brief, gentle and dry. But when the shop
assistant's head rose up with a bland smile, Danielle's
sensitive lower lips retained a distinct and vivid memory
of this moment of intimacy.
And that was that.
Somehow, the rest of Danielle's shopping trip
vanished into a hazy swirl of forgetfulness. The shop
assistant made no reference to her kiss on Danielle's oh!
so private parts. She smiled in the same way as before,
no wickedness in her expression at all, nothing to
suggest a shared secret. The shoes she'd tried out were
fine. Perfect, in fact. She'd heard that one's feet grew
bigger as you grew older, but perhaps not yet. Danielle
paid for the shoes by credit card, her hand somehow
hotter and damper than it should be, and she was sure
that the world could see a flush of deep red burning from
her cheeks and shoulders. She took the card from the
assistant, who acknowledged her smile with no hint of
knowing the confusion in which her kiss had engulfed her
naked customer.
Danielle had no recollection of the rest of her
shopping trip. She must have somehow bought some wine and
cake and a few magazines, because when she got back to
her car on the third floor of the multi-storey car park,
she had them in the plastic bags in addition to the one
containing the shoebox with her new shoes. All the way
though, she could feel the imprint of the shop
assistant's lips on her crotch. She occasionally glanced
at herself down there, to see whether on the bare, shaven
skin there was any physical trace of the kiss. But of
course there wasn't. And anyone watching her as she bent
down to regard herself would have seen nothing out of the
ordinary at all.
Her drive back home was uneventful, though she
fancied she could still feel those lips between her legs
as she shifted in and out of gear and steered her car
along the suburban streets. Untypically she forgot to put
on the radio, so she was almost alarmed when she parked
the car in the drive to find that when she attempted to
turn off the radio it was already switched off. What had
she been thinking about? Danielle wasn't sure, but a tape
loop of that moment of unexpected tenderness had been
playing and replaying itself in her mind.
The shop assistant was looming larger in her memory,
but not all the details. Was her hair light brown or a
dark blonde? Were her eyes green or blue? Did she wear
earrings? Why was Danielle bothered by such details?
There'd been no evidence that this was a prelude to
further intimacy, of even the most innocent kind. And
Danielle had no excuse to return to the shop in the near
future to re-establish any contact. She had all the shoes
she needed.
Danielle entered the hallway.
"Paul! Are you at home?" she cried.
"Yeah. I'm in the lounge!"
Of course, she already knew the answer. The sound of
the television broadcasting the soccer could be heard
from the garage when she was taking her bags out of the
car boot. Danielle made her way to the lounge, taking
with her just the bag with the shoebox in it. The other
bag she quickly dropped off in the kitchen.
Paul was loafing on the sofa in front of the
widescreen set, with a can of lager in one hand and the
remote in the other. He slightly lowered the volume of
the football match so that he could be heard. He was
wearing the soccer shirt he always wore when there was a
match, but of course nothing else.
"What d'you buy, Danni? D'you get those shoes you
wanted?"
Danielle nodded her head. She could see that Paul
hadn't just been watching the match. There was a gleam
from his flaccid penis that trailed over the upholstery.
He'd been masturbating again. And almost certainly to one
of those DVDs that Danielle had found in that shoebox
once at the back of one of his drawers.
Of course, when they were younger, she and Paul had
often watched porn movies together. It was a way to get
the juices going before those marathon sex sessions that
marked their first year or so together. But as time had
gone by, there'd been less fucking, less cuddling even,
and somehow those porn movies had got forgotten. Although
Danielle knew that they were still on the shelves hidden
amongst the DVDs of the non-pornographic movies they
would still watch together.
But these weren't the kind of porn movies that Paul
stored in his shoebox. In fact, Danielle was quite
alarmed by even just the titles. And the pictures on the
sleeve made sure that she understood perfectly well what
they were about. None of the well-filmed fuck films she
and Paul used to watch, featuring wholesome couples
working out their sexual desire with a combination of
partners, including that inevitable scene of lesbian
passion that always left Danielle dissatisfied and
slightly perturbed. No, the DVDs in Paul's shoebox
featured sex with dogs, sex with urine and faeces, sex
with men who'd had operations to look like women, sex in
the mouth, up the arse and with a veritable freak show of
sexual gymnasts. Was that what Paul was like now?
Danielle wondered. Someone who wanted his arse fisted
while fucking a dog? Or someone who wanted to piss on her
face and shit in her mouth?
"Yeah, I got the shoes," Danielle answered. "They
weren't cheap though."
"Well, give us a twirl then."
Danielle obliged by changing into her new shoes and
spinning around. She could feel Paul's eyes following
her. A horrid thought crossed her mind. Perhaps he wanted
to bugger her and shit on her and get her to have sex
with a horse like the women on the DVDs. Yeurgghh! Gross!
"They look very nice," Paul remarked with a smile.
Then with no further comment, he pressed the volume
control on his remote and the roar of football commentary
filled the room.
Danielle changed back out of her new shoes and made
her way up the stairs to the bedroom where it was
expected she'd stay while Paul watched the rest of the
match. As she went up she passed the bathroom where
normally she'd have a shower after a day out shopping.
The town centre was so dusty and grimy! If you weren't
going to wear any clothes you had to clean off the dirt
as soon as you could.
But Danielle resisted her normal impulse to shower.
The sweet memory of the shop assistant's tender kiss on
her crotch was still vivid on her flesh.
And she wanted to be reminded of it for just a
little longer.