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“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a Substack community writing project that Ben Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.

I can’t even begin to tell you how I got myself into this situation. But from a distance, of years and miles, I can begin to craft a palatable story for myself to believe. When I tell the story now I lean into the funny, how I skipped out instead of waiting to be evicted - or arrested. But the real funny part is that I almost got arrested for being raped. Say what?! Who does that happen to? This girl, that’s who. That part, so unfunny as it happened. So ludicrous in retrospect. But I can’t tell that part and call it funny because then people assume that what did happen wasn’t actually so bad. How could I laugh about it if it was really traumatic? Well, just sayin’ laughing is sometimes the saddest thing you can do and still survive.

I’d been uncomfortable around that guy before, but I didn’t have a lot of choices. The apartment was clean. The price was good. Just the landlord was a creep. And then…

So there I was, running from the local sheriff’s office; they said it was because I hadn’t paid my rent. But nobody mentioned the rape I had reported to that office. Who knew the landlord was the sheriff’s deputy’s cousin?

Say what you will about small towns, but they certainly look out for their own. And I was not one.

But I did have a couple friends. Thank god for Rita. That tipoff that they were on their way over to arrest me was my cue to beat it out of that town and not even look back.

But there was no time to think, let alone act in an organized way. So I left with only the stuff that I could quickly grab that had my name on it and might be used to try and figure out where I could be headed. Even that’s funny. Did I really think someone would follow me? Paranoia’ll do that to you.

What did I know? I’d never been in such a spot before.

Once I gained some distance though, I knew that leaving was enough. When I disappeared, so did my landlord’s problems. And he even got to make a couple bucks probably selling my stuff on Craigslist. I certainly was’t coming back to complain. And he damn well knew that.

I didn’t have much, a TV, a couch, some clothes, dishes. Or maybe he just left my stuff where I had left it and hiked the rent for a now furnished apartment. I started to realize I wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last in this guy’s scam.

Quite a side hustle he had going. What a world, where people at the bottom prey on others they think are even lower. I could imagine my junk being sold like those books at the library fundraiser. Fifty cents a book. Almost a slap in the face to the writers whose books no one wants, maybe never wanted. Just like my stuff, which hadn’t been anybody’s first choice new stuff in however many times it passed hand to hand. All that junk - just stuff I bought in thrift stores because I couldn’t afford anything new. Or nice.

Except for that one thing, that one thing that hadn’t cost me anything or maybe had cost me everything now that I didn’t have it anymore. That I had already ruined when I left it in my pocket and haphazardly put those jeans through the washer.

Turns out I never even had the chance to figure out if it could be salvaged because I didn’t even remember it until I was miles away and never turning back.

I had become a one-person witness protection program, making a list in my brain of all those things I might need to do based on all those made-for-TV movies about abused women trying to escape.

Amazing how all that time, which I seemed to be wasting in front of the TV so I wouldn’t have to think about the reality I was stuck in now might could save my future.

But it was gonna have to be a future with just her memorized face hanging in my memory and who knew when that might fade. Let’s face it, it was already hard to imagine what she might look like now. Kids change so much when they’re little.

At least for me, I knew her age, so every time I saw someone close in age to who she could be now, it made me think about what ifs. I guess that part’s never gonna change. Just like the rest of my messy life that just seems to get weirder and more out of control.

But as for her, I must have dropped out of her memory years ago already. Like a pair of faded jeans. Or a waterlogged photo. No doubt she got the better part of that bargain.