Funko’s Footwear - Makers of Genuine Boys...
Something strange was going on in town. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first. Several things were changing, slowly. First, was the addition of an awkward looking storefront that’d taken residence in the bottom floor of a dilapidated building everyone had thought was scheduled for demolition. The speed at which the store had cropped up was almost impossible.
One day, the windows were all broken, graffiti sprawled across the crumbling brick walls. Inside, it looked like the ceiling had collapsed, and the delinquents had taken to hanging out in the wreckage. Within what seemed like a day, the entire first floor was restored. The brick looked brand new, windows gleamed, through them, shelves upon shelves, and tables and counters lined the space, filled with colorful boxes. Everything looked pristine, that is, until you looked at the large sign hanging above the main display window.
“Funko’s Footwear: Makers of Genuine Boys…”
The sign was made of what looked like lacquered gymnasium flooring wood. The lettering was carved into it in scrawling emerald colored letters, looking almost fantastical in the way the glittering letters gleamed in the light. However, it looked as if the very end of the sign had already been vandalized. The wood was splintered, and it looked like words had gone with the end of the sign that had been broken off.
No one seemed to notice, or care. Curious people casually walked in and shopped. Patronage started slow, but within a week, picked up substantially. The oddity of the place after the initial rush seemed to ooze out into the public quickly. If you watched, you’d notice the target audience, parents taking their boys into the store for new shoes, typical of a place clearly marketed for that clientele. But as they left, if you looked closely, you would notice that the boys were awkwardly stumbling, walking out onto the side walk as if they had weights strapped to their ankles. Their parents ignored the pleas and complaints their kids were uttering, seeming to glaze over and push them along as if nothing was wrong.
This went on for what felt like a few months, boys of all ages walked in, the younger accompanied by their parents or older siblings, shopped for a bit, then stumbled and tripped from the store, looking concerned, or confused. One boy kept shouting at his dad that the shoes he’d bought were too big, his dad smiling down at him and ruffling his buzzed hair, mentioning that he was just being stubborn and that they couldn’t possibly be so, as they were brand new.
However, looking at the boy’s new purchase, there was absolutely no way to believe they were new. They looked to be a battered pair of Vans, the cloth worn, stained with set in dirt, and as the boy stumbled forward, the beaten rubber soles were separating from the tops! He had trouble with each step, using his arms to wobble down the road while his dad continued to shoot down any argument that they were not the best pair of shoes they’d ever bought.
Giving the confused boy a once over, it came to be clear that the shoes he was plodding down the street in, must’ve been at least 6 sizes larger than anything that would fit the poor kid. He could only have been about 14, short and lanky, with buzzed hair, long thin arms, and legs like a colt. It was clear that he wasn’t quite the type to be active, as his fair skin and lack of thickness showed the telltale signs of being an indoor type. The shoes however, were boats hanging off his legs, which were a pale white in contrast to the black cloth of the shoes. His voice was high, and cracked on certain vowels, while he tried to keep up his pace and not fall flat on the concrete. What should have been maybe a size 6 in boys, looked to be a monstrous size 14 in men’s. He gave one fine frustrated yelp as he tripped into the back seat of his dad’s car, and was off.
This scene repeated over and over, with every boy who bought from the mysterious new store. Happy new shoppers went in, frustrated, confused boys came stomping and stumbling out in shoes that looked far more worn and beat up, and absolutely oversized than what they arrived in, while their parent or chaperones took notice and were set on the fact that their new buys were the best they’d ever made.
It was about a month and a half later another odd event occurred. Walking down the street for lunch one summer afternoon, that first boy I’d noticed tripping was barreling down the sidewalk on a skateboard, doing little jumps and board flips over bumps and the curbs. Every time he landed a trick, he’d whoop and curse triumphantly, his voice cracked, but sounding deeper, more robust, and his verbiage that of your typical rebellious teenager.
He looked nothing like the boy I’d seen, confused, and frustrated the day he came out of the shoe store. He was wearing the same humungous Vans, which although still looked like boats on his gangly frame, seemed to mold and shape directly to his feet, rather than drape over them and cause the boy to trip. He was performing tricks as if he’d been doing them for years, looking in his element, like he belonged on the board, and his clothing was much different as well.
He wore a pair of cut-off jeans, the frayed ends going just below his knees. They were dirt crusted and ripped, clearly torn where he’d fallen and scraped the ground many times. He had band aids on his legs, and on his elbows, and wasn’t wearing a shirt. He had what looked to be a well-worn in white tank top haphazardly tied around his stronger looking waist, as well as a cloth checkered belt keeping his pants hanging desperately to his frame. On his hands, he had scuffed, fingerless leather gloves decorated with some sort of logo, and lastly, a sweaty backwards snapback covering hair that looked windswept, and curled slightly over the hem of the hat. Much, much different than the boy I’d seen earlier than month!
Until with a botched kick flip and a mighty crash, he plowed into a group of trashcans, swearing like a sailor, his voice breaking as he scrambled up and wiped the scuffs off his torso, looking worried but, more so about the likelihood of being caught. He looked around, giving a quick middle finger to those who may have seen him, and darted off with his board.
I knew I had to find out what’d happened to the boy, what made him almost the complete opposite to what he was when I’d seen him a month ago; and what was happening around town, to all the other patrons of this mysterious store!