It was unbelievable. The boots smelled like a maggot hole at the bottom of a trash dump. Smothering them in waste bags underneath a huge pile of clothes in an ice box behind his closet door hadn't diminished the stench a bit. His olfactory nerves felt like they were on fire and if you really tasted through smell, he should be throwing up for the rest of his life by the sheer memory of the malodor. He was tempted to throw the boots away, but that part of himself that had told him to stand was also telling him to at least investigate, first.
Taimu swallowed his revulsion, took a deep, unhelpful breath and plugged his nose as he lifted the boots out of the bag. He was in his backyard. The natural flora of Nevada invaded his once grassy backyard with weeds of the prickly thorny kind.
The boots looked like Nazi combat boots from World War II. They were pristine, almost brand new except for the bits of stuff stuck to their bottoms. The insides, though, they looked like crap. As if they'd gone through ten generations of misuse. Taimu chucked one boot into the weeds, hard. When the boot hit the ground, waves of earth pinched like riverbed water frozen in time. Taimu grunted. Not a trick then. He rolled his wheelchair forward and picked up the boot again. Underneath, the dry earth had deep, tilted imprints.
He studied the imprints, imagining the force that must have been produced to create such an effect. He tapped the boots into his palm. They felt like normal steel-toed boots. He swung a boot lightly at his backyard tree. It was a fir tree that was as thick as American grandmother had been. A loud snap rang out and the entire tree shivered. Taimu backed his wheelchair away, staring up, realizing that he should have thought things through better before swinging.
Loud cracks and more snaps, the tree groaned, bending. Taimu threw his wheelchair in reverse but his chair tipped, caught in weeds. He fell out with a dismayed cry, thorns and sharp little spiky balls made him arc in pain. He crawled, panicked as the tree continued to lean, further, and further. He covered his face with the boots and screamed as the tree came crashing down, right into Taimu's kitchen wall.
The tree smashed through it, splinters exploded and branches stabbed into tables and chairs and cupboards. Debris and leaves. Taimu gasped, panting. The tree hovered a few feet above his head. It could've killed him. He looked at the boots in his hands held out defensively. Or maybe not.
Taimu stuffed his hands into the boots and pushed himself up from the weeds. He barely managed to climb into his wheelchair, plucking thorn-balls from his shirt and pants. One of Taimu's Chinese neighbors stared over the fence at Taimu. She chattered in Mandarin for a moment with incredulous bulging eyes, then she started laughing. She threw her hands repeatedly into the air, saying something that Taimu could only assume were praises to the sky. She shook her head with another laugh and walked away.
She and Taimu weren't exactly best friends.
A pipe exploded and water flushed into the air. Taimu just sat in his wheelchair, soaking. Finally, he called his insurance company. "Act of nature," he'd call it.