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The missing sandal

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Demneta the wife of a certain Eukrates died, was correctly cremated and her ashes properly buried. Seven days passed from her burial when on the seventh night she appeared to her husband and enjoined him to give her a beautiful golden embroidered sandal, that, as she explained to him, had not been burnt on her pyre. As a matter of fact the elegant shoe had ended up under a piece of furniture and when the moment of the funerals came had not been found. Nobody knows if someone noticed it. Probably also if one of the relatives remarked the lack of the sandal, and certainly tried to retrieve this fine shoe he did not succeed to do it. Then he must have thought that a sandal more or a sandal less couldn’t change very much the things. What was the loss of a little shoe when one was in the hand of death?
Then, put in the tomb the ashes of poor Dementa, nobody thought or remembered the little sandal. But if there was something that Demeneta would absolutely not accept was the idea to go limping around for all the eternity. Therefore, waking up at night, Eukrates saw her standing all luminescent at the end of his bed. To find oneself in front of a phantom and what is more a luminescent one has always been a shocking experience. And such it was for the careless widow. A good lesson for him however. The lost sandal was immediately recovered and duly reduced to ashes, the best effective, the most quick and also the only existent method to dispatch something to one’s late dear ones who dwelled in the after life. Demeneta now perfectly and elegantly fitted with shoe was entirely satisfied and she never again went back to visit her relatives who from this moment on lived happy and at peace.