The God of Shoes

The god of shoes finally ran out of money. It seemed like only weeks ago that everyone was driving him nuts with all the checks they had to mail him! “More money?!” he would angrily shout as he opened another envelope with his special pinky nail that he grew out for opening envelopes of money. “More money?!? Just put it back in the mailbox. Who has time for this?!” he would grate, covering the pile of money from an hour ago with a fresh layer of how-do-you-do. He would even try to give the shoes away, but nobody would take free shoes. “Just put a price on them already!” was the complaint. So he would slip a Sharpie from behind his ear, lick a finger, work a sticker out of his vest pocket, write some ridiculous number on the sticker, and before the smell of the ink had even quieted down, there was another sack of wherewithal to deal with. He would make the ugliest shoes Mankind had ever seen. He would make a shoe and put it next to a turd rolled in hay, and compare. “Yep, that shoe is uglier!” he would chuckle. And he would put a price on it so humongous that the poor sticker would just wheeze and wilt. Just zero after zero, after five, after nine after seven, and then he would cap the Sharpie, and then take the cap off and add some more numbers. “There aren’t enough of these shoes!” was the complaint. “How did I run out of money?” he asked himself, watching all of his shoes strolling past him. Sometimes someone would stop, slide a coin between his toes, and wink at him.