HornucopiaCaleb Puckett
The shoe was red, something Dorothy would wear to her 10 year high school reunion to convince some chisel-chinned Dick Tracy of a dream date from way back when-- that he had missed out on a good thing their junior year when he had forsaken her awkward advances in favor of that other girl. That was the year, of course, that the witch had come back and taken more subtle measures against her, had blown in with less terror, less vehemence (in the conventional sense), and had succeeded in winning the cartoon heart of her assumed paramour with a lot of naïve posing and smooth talk. That was the year Dorothy had really been forced to hit the bricks, analyzing her image, her rejection, her prospects, pacing the demolished blocks of Wichita up and down like a desperate junkie looking for a fix. That was the year she had been disgraced, white high heels in hand and peach dress hiked up for hoofing it home after he laughed at her frantic overtures on the side of some country road while the backbeat of a Nancy Sinatra song cudgeled the prairie stars. That was the year she was finally left to her motley assortment of freakish friends who could do little more than attempt to comfort her with stupid songs and banal books about beneficent wizards who would make it all right in the end. Now that she was rid of that mortifying clique, and the witch had taken off to San Diego with some notorious reverend, she could stride confidently in such a shoe and bat her eyelashes at a man who had long since been forced out of syndication due to the taste for anime that had taken hold among the fickle youth. So she donned her devil red pump and stood certain that the stage was set for a rich reunion. Life was full, lovely, fertile, and she had a home to wreck by 10:30.