Feet- Short Story Idea/Blurb

I look at feet for a living.

I want to be absolutely clear about this: I don't look at them because they turn me on. Okay? I don't get some sick thrill from feet.
Nor does my looking at them have anything to do with improving them, aesthetically or otherwise; I'm not a pedicurist, polishing and painting toes, or a podiatrist (the word for 'foot doctor' where I come from).

No, the reason that I look at the feet of countless people from 8 in the morning to 4 in the evening (with a 45 minute lunch break, huzzah) is to make sure that - well, that they're people. Human, I mean.


Believe it or not, this wasn't my first career choice. One of the many perks of this reality is that each person is tracked from the day they enter the work force. Records are meticulous, rendering the days of people lying magnificently on their resumes firmly in the past (if they ever actually existed- note to self: look that up). Not surprisingly, it raises a few questions when a guy in his mid - to late twenties doesn't have anything on file. At all.

See, I'm not really from around here. Up until about (4? 5? 3?) years ago, I lived in a very different place. Having just finished obtaining my master's, I'd landed a new job at an awesome company, Able and Abel. I had a great apartment, a nice enough family that I visited on the holidays. I had a new girlfriend who I'd just started sleeping with - she was really pretty, too.. What was her name, again? Mary Marjory? Ah, doesn't matter.

And then somehow, I ended up here. Woke up in a park in the busier part of suburbia. Things were a bit hinky for a bit, there - someone called the police to report a shirtless man curled up in the wood shavings of a playground in the middle of a school day (thank God- I can't imagine what I'd have been charged with if there had been kids around). Naturally, I was taken back to their precinct for a 'talk'. Five hours, countless questions, and a consensual DNA swab later, it was official: I didn't exist. As it turns out, while not having any records is a bit suspicious, it is not, in fact, a crime.

I was released and left to my own devices, to find my bearings in this whole new world.

At least, it was new to me.