Sock

"Try it on, Pete!" Jake urged. "I dare ya!" He elbowed Jimmy Watson to let him in on the private joke.

As for Pete, he seemed oblivious to the teasing. He held the cold, wet sock at eye level and examined it closely. They had found it in the gutter, saved from falling through the grate of the storm drain by a jumbled, twisted collection of weeds, mud, and cigarette butts. It could have been black or possibly dark brown. It was hard to tell through the thick, caked-on coating of dirt. There was a pattern on the sock. It looked like small squares, no, maybe there were circles.

The three boys had been walking single file along the curb enjoying the return of the sunshine. The winter had been the wettest in Pete's memory. It seemed as though the harsh back-to-back March storms would last forever, and when you're twelve, two weeks cooped up in the house is a very long time. That's two weeks of not riding your bike, two weeks of not playing ball in the park, two weeks of not even being able to shoot the breeze with your friends away from the prying ears of adults. But the sun had finally broken through--at least for a little while--giving the boys a chance to stretch their legs and go out of doors, the natural place for boys to be.

Pete tore his eyes from the sock and looked over at his friends. He still remembered the time Jake dared him to put a marble up his nose. It took the doctor an hour to get it out and he'd been on restriction for two weeks. Pete wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to stick this wet, you-don't-know-where-the-heck-it's-been sock on his foot.

But for some reason he couldn't put it down, either. There was just something about it, something special.... He could feel it in the tips of his fingers that gingerly held the smooth, silky material. In spite of the winter torrent that had left it wet and dirty, the sock felt warm, inviting. Pete grasped the sock and squeezed the remaining water out of it. A pincer bug frantically escaped from between his fingers and dropped to the ground.

Jake's eyes lit up in anticipation. He glanced conspiratorially at Jimmy. "You going to put it on?" he asked again. Pete was his friend, but let's face it, he wasn't too bright. He watched with expectancy as Pete shook the last of the water from the sock.

"Yeah, I'm going to put it on," he announced, "but not until my Mom washes it!" With a flourish he stuffed the sock into his sweatshirt pocket.

Jake looked disappointed, his moment of glee had eluded him, but he was pragmatic. With a shrug, he wondered if the kid was finally smarting up. "Come on," he said, suddenly bored with the whole thing, "let's go to my house and shoot a few hoops before dark."

The three boys headed up Stony Glen Drive, the storm drain and the sock forgotten. Pete had meant to throw it back into the gutter, but the invitation to play basketball had erased that thought from his adolescent mind. The sock lay forgotten in the depths of his pocket.

For Pete, basketball was a dirty game. When you're the shortest and the lamest, as Jake would point out, you try to make up for it by being the most aggressive, but being aggressive had its drawbacks--you spent a lot of time being knocked on your butt. And that's where he found himself several times during the next hour. Twice he had fallen into the flowerbed behind the hoop, and by the time he got home he was a mess.

"Don't you dare walk on my entry-way tile, Peter Thompson!" his mother yelled from the kitchen. She had heard him open the front door and caught him before he could place one grimy foot on the new tile his father had laid the previous summer. "You go around back and come in through the garage. And take off those clothes and put them in the hamper next to the washer."

Pete did as he was told and by the time he entered the house, he had stripped to his underwear. "I'm going to take a shower, Mom," he said, heading up the stairway that led to his room.

"Okay, sweetie," she replied. "Dinner will ready in about an hour. Daddy called. He has to work late again tonight. We'll eat and watch a little T.V., okay?"

"Okay, Mom," he yelled as he ran up the stairs.

It was another ordinary Sunday night at the Thompson house. His mother folded clothes from the dryer while Pete, attired in his flannel pajamas, struggled to complete his homework. Pete hated math more than anything, which was saying a lot since he didn't like school much at all. It took him an entire weekend to finish an assignment Jake Gellender finished on the bus coming home.

A little before 9:00 PM, Pete, frustrated by the mysteries of mathematics, retreated to his bedroom to seek solace in the latest Spiderman comic book before his mother made him turn off the light. Though his parents didn't approve of his reading material, Pete loved Spiderman more than anything. How he wished he had his powers, his bravery! Every night before he went to sleep, Pete prayed to God to let him someday be like Spidy.

Half way through the comic book, Pete heard his father come home, tired and complaining about the heat. The heating bill was a major bone of contention in the Thompson household. "Damn it, Flora!" his father complained as he turned down the thermostat. "You trying to turn this place into a sauna?"

A few minutes later his mother entered his room and plopped a large bundle of freshly washed clothes on top of his dresser. "I swear, Pete, I've never had a son who could dirty clothes like you," she said.

"I'm the only son you've ever had, Mom," he reminded her.

She turned and gave him that "don't sass me look" that quickly melted to a smile. She went to the bed and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Your father will be up to tuck you in. You can read until then, but then its lights off, mister. Understand?"

"Sure, Mom," he replied.

Moments later his father poked his head into the room, still dressed in his work clothes. "How's it going, sport?" he asked.

"Fine, Dad," he replied with a smile. His father had called him sport for as long as he could remember. Sometimes he wondered if he'd forgotten his name.

"Did you finish your homework?"

"Yeah, I finished it."

His father sat beside him and gently took the comic book from Pete's hands. He placed it on the bed stand and kissed his son on the forehead. Pete could smell cigarette smoke on his breath. His father supposedly quit smoking months ago; his mother had insisted on it. Well, he didn't smoke around the house anymore, but like his mother turning up the heat once his father left for work, Pete was sure there was a pack of Marlboro Lights somewhere in his life.

"Time to go to sleep, sport. Okay?"

"Okay, Dad."

His father reached over and turned off the reading lamp, tousled his son's hair for good measure and left the room, leaving the hall light on until his son fell asleep. Pete hadn't been afraid of the dark since the fourth grade, but he never told his parents. The light in the hallway was a little bit of childhood Pete wasn't quite ready to let go of....

****

When Peter Thompson woke in the middle of the night he was cold. Actually, it was his feet that were cold. He looked over at his dresser sitting dimly across the room. The bottom right drawer was what his mother called "the extra sock drawer". It was where she kept all the orphaned socks that had either lost their partners to holes or had mysteriously disappeared from the dryer. Pete liked to imagine that the dryer was some sort of time machine that occasionally jettisoned one of his socks into the future. Pete's mother would never throw away a sock just because it had lost its mate. They all went into the extra sock drawer to be used on occasions just like this--cold feet in the middle of the night.

The problem was one of logistics. In order to get the socks, he would have to run across the cold hardwood floor to the dresser and back without freezing his toes off. He had performed this maneuver often in the past, each time scolding himself that he should have put on a pair before he went to sleep. But since his feet were never cold at bedtime, the socks always remained forgotten in their drawer.

It was no use fighting it. Cold feet always kept him awake; he needed the socks. He didn't dare turn on his light. His mother, who he swore never slept, would be on him like a hawk scolding him back to bed. Pete threw back his covers and dashed through the darkness to the dresser. He slid open the drawer, randomly grabbed two orphans, closed the drawer and dashed back to the inviting warmth of his bed. Mission accomplished, Spiderman!

Pete slipped on the socks and enjoyed the warmth that was slowly returning to his feet. He couldn't see them in the darkness, of course, but the sock on his right foot that grabbed his attention. He spent a few seconds analyzing the feeling. He felt as if it his foot was swathed in luxury, the most comfortable, heavenly feeling he had ever experienced in his young life.

Moments later, as he drifted off to sleep, he thought how wonderful it would be to have an entire suit of clothes made out of the sock's exquisite material...

...Sharon Buckley was looking at him, not just looking his direction while waiting for him to embarrass himself once again in math class, she was looking at him. Her cool blue eyes bored into his. The inviting mounds on her chest, which had started to appear during the fifth grade, rose and fell with every breath. In his dream, he felt light-headed, giddy. Sharon smiled radiantly, and from across the aisle and two seats back she did the most extraordinary thing; right there in math class, oblivious to everyone but him, she began slowly to unbutton her pink satin blouse...

Pete awoke, bathed in sweat, his head spinning. He looked over his still silent alarm clock. 6:40 AM, it said. He pulled back the covers and sat at the side of the bed trying to clear his thoughts. He didn't think he was sick, but when he stood his underpants seemed to stick to his body, pulling painfully against his skin. Had he wet himself in the middle of the night? No, that wasn't it. It was something else. A wisp of his dream tugged at him, and he remembered....

Feeling flush, Pete hurried to his bathroom and removed his clothes, hoping a hot shower would wash away the dream. He stood in front of the tub, naked except for his feet, and looked down. On his left foot was a brown dress sock, on his right....

Pete stared in amazement, his nakedness, his erotic dream, and the chill of the morning forgotten. On his right foot was the sock, the one from the storm drain. How? His mother must have found it, he supposed, tucked away in the bowels of his sweatshirt pocket. She had washed it and tucked it away with the other lonely souls. The sock was definitely black. He wiggled his toes and the small circles embedded on its silky surface rolled up and down like small white sea birds riding on crest of the ocean.

Pete turned on the shower and while he waited for the water to warm, sat on the toilet seat and removed his socks, first the brown one and then reluctantly, oh so very reluctantly, the other. When his right foot emerged into the cool morning air it started to cramp. Pete dropped the sock to the tile floor and gingerly rubbed his throbbing arch.

"Pete, are you all right?" his mother asked through the bathroom door. It wasn't like her son to get out of bed without being prodded.

Pete stared at the door, momentarily at a loss for words. He could hear the concern in her voice, but he felt strangely detached. "I'm fine, mom," he said at last. "I just woke up a little early, that's all."

His mother hesitated. Did she dare believe such a simple explanation? Perhaps he's starting to grow up, she told herself with a shrug. "Well, come down to breakfast when you're finished, honey," she said.

Pete continued to stare. "All right, mom," he said. He gave the sock one last glance and jumped into the shower. The warm water refreshed him, and washed away the night. Later, after he had finished dressing, he returned to the bathroom to toss his soiled clothes into the hamper where his mother would surely have them cleaned and neatly folded by the time he returned from school.

As he picked up the bundle, he felt his hand brush against the unmistakable fabric of the sock. He dropped the clothes and held the sock eye level. In the clear morning light he discovered that the sock's design were not circles at all. They were triangles. Perfect angles of remarkable beauty. Perfect, he thought. How so very perfect.

Throw the sock away, a thought warned him. After all, clean or not, you found the nasty thing in the gutter! Who knew who had worn it or where it had been? But instead of hiding it in the wastebasket along with his discarded math homework, Pete slid it hungrily on his right foot. He closed his eyes and sighed. "It is as it should be," he heard himself whisper.

Pete went to his dresser and quickly selected a matched pair of white socks and slipped them on his feet, protectively covering his beloved sock. Once in place he put on his Nikes and headed downstairs for breakfast with the growing feeling that this would be a special day.

Yes, a very special day.
****
"Peter Thompson?" Pete's math teacher, Mr. Biggs, called out. He was a funny looking man with a flat top haircut and a bow tie, a man stuck in some sort of time warp.

"Peter Thompson?" he asked again.

Pete was staring out the window, chin cupped in his hand, lost in his own world. When the rest of the class started to giggle, he looked around to see what the joke was. To his dismay, the joke was him.

"Are you with us today, Mr. Thompson, or have you gone off to some desert island?" Mr. Biggs asked.

"Yeah, more like Gilligan's Island!" Greg Miller cracked from the back of the room. "How's the professor, Pete?"

The entire class broke up laughing. Pete turned beet red. "I'm here, Mr. Biggs," he said quietly.

Mr. Biggs stared at him a moment longer and shook his head. "Andy Vincente?" he called out, continuing down the roster.

In spite of his morning revelation, it had all the makings of another depressing day at Westfield Middle School. But Pete was to soon discover that this day would be far from normal. It began with a surprise math quiz.

When Mr. Biggs announced the test, Pete's his heart sank. It wasn't as if he was dumb. If given enough paper and enough time, he could figure out his math problems, but fractions--they were just beyond him. He looked around the room nervously, sure that everyone could see his panic. His eyes eventually fell on the lovely but aloof Sharon Buckley, the object of his adolescent desire and the reinforcement that, so far, his life had been a dismal failure.

But to his surprise, instead of her normal reaction to him, a general ignoring of his existence altogether, Sharon was looking back at him. Her bright blue eyes were wide, her mouth pursed as if she were about to speak to him from across the rows that separated their desks. The look on her face unsettled him, but before Pete could analyze it, Mr. Biggs announced that the test was about to begin.

Pete reluctantly tore his eyes away from Sharon and stared blankly at the quiz sheet, his worst fears confirmed. Fractions. "Great!" he muttered under his breath. "Another "F" for my father to yell at me about!"

"Ten minutes, people," Biggs announced. "Complete as many was you can, and remember neatness counts!"

Pete gawked at the series of utterly mysterious problems. For a while he could do nothing except twirl his pencil between his nervous fingers, feeling flustered and confused. But as he stared helplessly at the page something odd occurred: patterns began to emerge within the numbers. Pete's eyes widened, his mouth fell open in disbelief. Why hadn't he seen them before? If you took this number and this number and added them together....

Pete's pencil slipped through his fingers, clanging noisily on the desk. For the first time the fractions seemed understandable. No, that wasn't right. They were more than understandable; they were ridiculously simple! He picked up the pencil and even though he only had a little more than a minute left, he dashed through the test with ease.

The rest of the hour was equally unbelievable. Why was he wasting his time and intellect on this crap? And Mr. Biggs? He was nothing but an ignorant pig! Pete could tell at a glance that the man knew nothing about real mathematics, or about the things that held the fabric of the universe together. By the time the bell rang, Pete Thompson was seething. No wonder he hadn't been doing well in school!

He stood from his desk and stopped. Sharon Buckley was standing in front of him. She was hugging her schoolbooks and looking at him apprehensively.

"Hello, Peter," she said timidly. It was the first time Pete ever remembered her speaking to him.

"Hello, Sharon," he replied, feeling eerily confident. The stammer he assumed would come from his mouth hadn't materialized.

"Peter, I'm having a party at my house on Friday. I was wondering if you would come?"

Party? You're inviting me to a party? That was what he wanted to ask her, but instead, he found himself saying something very different. "I'm busy Friday, Sharon. Too bad you didn't invite me earlier."

Pete's mind screamed at him. "What are you saying, you idiot!"

“Oh I'm sorry, Peter, please forgive me!" Sharon said with panic in her voice. "I meant to invite you earlier, I truly did!"

Pete was shocked to see tears forming in her eyes. She was extremely distressed, almost on the verge of hysteria.

"You must come!" she implored. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Must!" she repeated.

He looked at her through liberated eyes. How pathetic she was! Had he really been in love with this? Had she no pride? "I'll think about it, Sharon," he said with disdain. "I'll let you know."

"Oh thank you, Peter!" she said with relief "Thank you!"

That's right! Grovel, bitch, he said to himself. He gave her a contemptuous sneer and strolled confidently to his next class. As he passed his classmates congregated in the hallway, conversations stopped mid-sentence, lockers stood half opened, books dropped to the floor. They all stopped to watch him pass. The boys looked at him with sudden awe, and the girls--they had thoughts most had never even imagined before, visions of acts they only barely understood. There was something about Peter Thompson, something they could only whisper.

Pete's second period class was History. There, he led the class in a lively discussion, displaying an amazing knowledge of cultures that astounded his teacher, Mrs. Grasse. It was so wonderful to have a prodigy in her class! At the end of the hour she thanked Peter profusely and hoped he might be free later to discuss tomorrow's lesson.

Next, came gym. It was the first day of intramural basketball. Pete had regretted this day because he knew, as usual, he would be chosen last. The humiliation was almost too much to bear. But shortly after they lined up to play, Mr. Mangin suggested that Pete be named team captain, replacing a shocked Greg Miller. To Greg's dismay the other boys all agreed it was a good idea. The selection of Pete Thompson seemed a perfectly, logical choice, a choice no one would regret. Pete's performance, of course, was brilliant, playing the game with a perfect combination of ability, ferocity and finesse. Mr. Mangin went home that night positive that Pete Thompson would some day make it to the NBA.

After the game, Pete sat in front of his locker, enjoying the afterglow of his play. He spent a few minutes fielding the congratulations of the other boys, who were thrilled to be in the presence of a player of his ability. Eventually, they wandered off to the showers leaving Pete to his thoughts.

He removed his gym shoes and socks, revealing his beloved sock underneath. It was time to take it off, shower and get ready for the rest of this wonderful day. He examined the fabric closely. What he thought were triangles were not triangles at all. It was some sort of design, circles with lines through them. As he watched the design started to slowly move counterclockwise around the sock. Pete was mesmerized. The design gained speed, whirling against the sock's solid black background.

"How beautiful," he whispered.

It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Pete stared for a moment longer, feeling let down, then reached to remove the sock.

"Don't!" a voice whispered in his mind. It was a harsh voice, evil. A voice that hinted of clogged sewers and a filthy death.

It would be ridiculous to shower with one sock on, Pete told himself, but when his trembling fingers touched the sock, pain streaked up his leg like a lightening bolt ending at his groin. Pete doubled over in agony, his watering eyes darting to the sock. He had only pulled it down an inch, but he didn't like what he saw. His ankle was raw as if he had been skinned. Veins stood out like the highways on a color road map.

"Pull me up, God damn it!" the voice demanded.

He opened his mouth but the scream he hoped would break the spell of pain refused to come. He could hear the other boys in the shower, talking loudly, laughing, ignorant of his anguish. Their voices sounded as if they were miles and miles away.

"Pull me up, fool! Now!"

With the last of his strength, Pete pulled up the sock. His leg felt as if it were on fire, but once the sock was in place, the pain vanished. Pete fell back to the bench, panting with relief when another sensation came, traveling up his ankle like the sun escaping from a storm cloud. Joy, euphoria, overtook him. It came in waves, erasing the memory of the pain, leaving him on the brink of ecstasy.

"I am meant to be!" he muttered to himself. "It was meant to be!"

"Hey, dickweed," a voice said.

Pete opened his eyes and saw Greg Miller staring at him. Greg was everything Pete Thompson was not. He had golden blond hair and striking blue eyes. His body was lean and muscled. He stood a full head taller than Pete, and played with the eighth graders on the Westfield Middle School basketball team.

"What's wrong, dickweed? Still stuck on Gilligan's Island?"

"Leave me alone, Greg," Pete said slowly. "I'm warning you!"

Greg waved his arms and looked around. "Oh! Oh! Someone protect me! The wimp is warning me!" He stopped and turned a complete circle. "Gee whiz, there's no one here to protect you, dickweed. It's just you and me."

Pete knew he should be scared out of his mind, but he felt strangely detached. As the bully ranted, he was amazed to see his right foot begin to rise--amazed because he was certain his brain was not giving the command.

It was the sock.

One moment, Greg Miller was standing in front of him, his face red with anger, the next moment Pete saw his leg lash out at Greg's crotch and kicked him ferociously. Greg gasped as if the air had been sucked out of him. He hit the ground and began to roll on the floor, his face a twisted mask of pain.

Pete watched him silently while calmly putting on his clothes. "The next time you will die," he said without a hint of emotion.

Greg looked up at Pete and saw something that he would remember the rest of his life. The whites of Pete's eyes had disappeared, replaced by black so total it was like staring into the depths of hell. For a second moment Greg was certain he would die. His bladder let go. He began to babble for mercy. But instead of killing him, Pete slowly stood and walked away, leaving Greg alone on the cold locker room floor.

The realization that he would live made the pain in Greg Miller's groin seem unimportant. He began to weep, and when the rest of the boys came out of the shower that was where they found him, lying in a pool of his own urine, refusing to talk to anyone.

There were now two Pete Thompsons. One walked to his science class reveling in his newly found greatness, while the other suffered from the growing realization that he was skidding down a path of evil. For a while he hoped that he could have the best of both worlds; be a whiz at math, play basketball with skill and courage, win the heart of Sharon Buckley, but he suspected it wouldn't be that simple. The sock wanted more, needed more than the simple yearnings of a twelve-year-old boy, and would do anything to get it. Pete knew that he was slowly losing control. Something in the sock he had so innocently found in the storm drain was taking over. And if he didn't do something about it soon, the old Pete would be gone forever.

What to do? What to do? Ah, that was the awful question. A question that had a ridiculously simple but dangerous answer--remove the sock. Did he dare? He remembered the agony in the locker room. What would happen if he summoned the courage to go all the way? If he ripped off the sock, would he also rip the flesh from his bones? Would freedom from the sock mean a life spent without his right foot?

"Oh, but you don't want to remove the sock, Pete!" the sock whispered in his ear. "I will show you things. I will help you achieve things you could never imagine! You will have it all, Pete. You will be the best! The brightest! The leader! The God!"

"NO!" Pete screamed out. He looked around, embarrassed. He was in his classroom, certain he was about to be laughed at again. But his classmates were not laughing. They were staring at him, adoring smiles frozen on their faces.

"Yes, Pete? Did I do something wrong?" his teacher, Mr. Doan, asked nervously. Anxiety was etched on his face. Anxiety and something else. Fear. "I did it just as you instructed, I swear. Do you know what you have done? It's gold son! Real gold! Do you know how many men have dreamt of this throughout the ages? Now, just tell me the last part of the formula and we'll be rich! Rich!"

But Pete wasn't listening. For a moment the spell that entwined him lifted. His head was fuzzy with a million thoughts, evil voices chattering in his brain. He looked into the anxious eyes of his classmates. Their gaze was full of love and admiration, but when Pete looked closer he saw something else: blank, cold loyalty. The eyes of the Nazis as they did the bidding of their fuehrer. The crazed mind of a serial killer. He saw the spirit of death and destruction. He saw the real face behind the sock.

With the last of courage and humanity left in him, Pete leaped from his seat and bolted from the room, running in blind panic down the echoing hallway, bursting out the side door of Westfield Middle School and into the cloudy day. Behind him he could hear Mr. Doan shouting for the rest of the formula. "Rich!" he babbled. "We'll be rich!"

Pete, the real Pete, didn't care about riches or power. For even with his faults, he knew deep inside his life was good; that he was loved, that he had place in that frightening adventure that is the future. But on this day felt as if his soul was being torn from his being. Death and madness was stalking him.

It was starting to rain lightly, but he didn't care. He ran and ran through the wet streets of the town hoping to find redemption.

"Go Back! Your destiny awaits you!" the sock echoed in his ears. Renewed agony flared up his leg.

Pete struggled to ignore the voice and the pain, but it was becoming harder and harder. If greatness was his destiny, why couldn't he just accept it? It would be so easy to give in for he had been chosen. Chosen by the sock. Given a chance never before offered to miserable mankind. He would become like God himself.

"Stop it Pete!" he screamed to himself. "Don't you listen! Don't you listen!"

He found himself near the city park and a desperate idea came to him. He knew what he had to do, if God granted him the courage to do it. The old Pete was dying and in a very short time would be gone forever. If he were to save himself, it had to be now. Lightening flashed as if to punctuate the point, and the rain turned into a howling downpour.

In the rear of the park, surrounded by a ten-foot high chain-link fence, was the entrance to Westfield's central storm sewer. It was here that the town's storm water was gathered before it was sent south of town to empty into the Green River. The huge drain was ten feet in diameter, and a raging current was being sucked into its dark depths.

Pete reached the fence and started to climb. Hail the size of marbles pelted his face. Half way up his feet betrayed him, and he slipped on the slick metal links. He fell to the ground with a grunt, but he was determined not to be defeated. He shot to his feet and with a single purpose climbed again, trying to blot all other thoughts from his mind. He had to be strong. He had to be brave and bold--like his beloved Spiderman.

But the sock refused to let him. As he climbed the fence he had a vision of a mathematical formula that could turn water into gasoline. As his leg went over the top he realized that he knew how to make nuclear waste inert. On the downward climb his mind designed an engine that could carry man to the stars and beyond.

"Stay strong, Pete! Don't listen! It lies! It lies!"

He fell to the ground panting--not out of physical exhaustion, but of mental overload--landing on the cement walkway that bordered the drain. Doubts ripped at him. Should he give in? He could use his knowledge to help mankind, he was certain!

"Power! You will have power!" the sock crowed.

"No, Pete! You will have power, but it will be the power to enslave not help!"

Pete grabbed his head and screamed. "God damn it! Leave me alone!"

To his surprise the voices stilled, and for the first time since his midnight raid to the sock drawer, his mind was clear. He looked down at his Nikes. As his shaking hand reached for the shoestring, his right foot began to throb in anticipation. Visions of Sharon Buckley once again came into his head. She was doing things, such delicious things.... Oh, God!

"No!" he screamed, shaking his head clear once again.

He fumbled with the shoelace but managed to untie it. The shoe seemed to be shrinking on his foot, getting tighter and tighter as it protected its silken master from harm. Pete thought he would pass out from the pain. With great effort he moved his left foot behind his right and began to pry off the shoe at the heal. The shoe grew tighter still. Pete pushed at the shoe, his face turning crimson with the strain. Waves of agony rolled up his leg, but he refused to let go. One way or another it had to end here. At last the shoe relented, flying off his foot, skittering across the walkway and falling over the embankment and into the torrent below.

Pete looked down at the sock, his vision blurred by pain and the raindrops splattering on his face. The designs embroidered on its surface were spinning, spinning. He began to feel woozy as the sock wove its hypnotic spell. He grabbed drunkenly at the sock. When he touched it a bolt of electricity jumped up his arm leaving it numb.

Pete pulled back, tears of pain mixing with his rain-soaked cheeks. His mind began to drift again and he knew he would soon be gone forever. He fell back to the ground and gathered the last of his remaining strength. The sock teased him; alternating pulses of blinding agony and pure ecstasy, flying over his body in waves, back and forth until he thought he would go mad.

"Sharon!" he muttered.

The part of Peter Thompson, the one that knew his fate in life was to be bad at math and basketball, took charge one last time. Like a person jolted back from death, Pete shot up and with both hands grabbed at the sock, and with his last remaining ounce of strength, Pete tore off the sock and hurled it into the boiling water.

Pete collapsed on the walkway, and as he lost consciousness, his last thought was that his foot was on fire, blazing like a road flare, or the eternal furnace of hell....

The sock tumbled into the water like a power line blasted by lightening. Sparks flew and smoke rose. The air filled with the pungent smell of ozone. But after a few seconds it was over. The sock now heavy with moisture, sank below the surface and drifted toward the drain where it entered the watery cave and disappeared.


Pete's eyes fluttered open. It had stopped raining. The sky was dark with the coming evening. For a few seconds he didn't know where he was. He turned his head one way, then the other. He was soaking wet and there was something else-- "Your foot is gone," his mind told him. It must be true. He had no feeling done there, only cold and numbness, but he was afraid to look. When he finally summoned his courage, he saw his bare foot, pale and cold, but in one piece.

Pete moaned with relief and peered over the side of the churning drainage ditch. The sock was gone. Where? Was it gone forever? Or would it do its evil to someone else, somewhere else?

Pete managed to stand and looked down at his bare foot. How would he ever explain to his mother how he had lost one shoe? With a shrug he hobbled to the fence and began to climb. The wire mesh hurt, but next to the torture inflected by the sock, it was nothing. He slowly limped home, realizing with a smile that he could no longer remember how to add and subtract fractions much less the grand inventions that could save or enslave mankind. He wondered, would Sharon Buckley still want him at her party?

And with a sigh, he reminded himself that it really didn't matter.