Glass Slipper Evidence
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Glass Slipper Evidence.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
The ballroom is empty. Dust lies on the marble in a thin even coat that shows every absence. One glass slipper stands in the middle of it, small enough to miss, and nothing else is on the floor. The heel is planted. The toe points toward the dark doors. Chandeliers are unlit. What light there is comes from somewhere low and does not glitter.
A fingerprint is pressed in the dust beside the heel, clear enough to be a print and not a smear. A card leaned on the sole reads two degrees, cold. The marble is colder than the card. A hairline break ticks through the glass, a sound like a small clock, and pauses. The slipper does not fall yet. Dust on the toe is undisturbed.
Two men stand far back at the doors, faces unclear in the dark, watching the slipper and not the doors. They do not cross the floor. A yellow tag is looped on the heel. A name on the tag is crossed out. A second name is crossed out under it. A note at the bottom says this is not the victim, and that the name stuck to the glass. The ink of the note is steady. The crossed names are not readable as names anymore. They are only strokes that refuse themselves.
The break finishes. The slipper falls into fragments and does not scatter far. The pieces stay inside the oval of cleaner marble where the dust was blocked by the glass. The men come only near enough to ease the fragments into a clear bag. The fingerprint remains visible on one shard. The tag stays on the heel piece. They set the bag on the marble and leave. Their steps fade. The doors ease and do not fully shut.
The two men are already shapes in the doorway and then not even that. Their breath, which showed once in the colder air by the doors, does not show again. Dust begins, very slowly, to find the edges of the cleaner oval and does not cover the bag. The yellow tag's string is loose and does not untie. Cold from the marble climbs the clear bag and fogs it for a moment. The fog clears from the top down. The fingerprint on the shard shows again, unchanged, a proof that does not acquire a person to match it. No second slipper slides out of the dark. No music starts. The chandeliers stay unlit over a floor that has finished with dancing.
The bag sits in the dust. Time passes as the card that read two degrees falls flat, the number unchanged, the lean gone. Inside the bag a shard shifts until it touches the tag, and the crossed-out names do not become readable for the contact. A hairline on a remaining shard ticks once more and stops. The print is still on the glass inside the bag. Both names stay crossed out. The ballroom does not receive another shoe, and the oval of cleaner marble keeps the shape of a slipper that is no longer standing.