The Wrong Jacket

[The Tattler]

The party had begun slow but once it started the music was throbbing so loud that it took a throat straining yell in the ear to be heard. Glasses of different colors and shapes migrated through the room, going empty, getting collected and sometimes broken with giggling floating after them. The porch half sat upon a lake and strings of white lights hung above the porch, the candles within flickering as the wind or motion from the crowd caused them to tremble with the noise.

The party was to commemorate the eighteenth birthday of so-and-so's son. Most everyone at the party didn't know the kid personally and it didn't matter. What mattered was that the party be large and memorable... well, memorable to the papers, anyway.

There was a room that acted as the coat closet, where everyone piled their coats and forgot about them. In the morning everyone collected what they thought was their's and returned, hazy, to their lives and homes outside.

There was one hiccup, though.

The coat she had taken wasn't her own. It was, in fact, the coat of someone else at the party. It was almost the same size, the mistake was easy to make. However, when her hands slipped into the front pockets there was a distinct difference. Inside the pocket were two human teeth.

Oh, and a cellphone. It was ringing.

[Chase Rosewinds]

The lights were so deceptive. And the night was loud and unbearable. Those nights were always so fast. Rushing was the only way to escape it once you finally wanted to escape. Light everywhere was dim. And she was in a hurry. She almost left without her jacket, that’s how much of a hurry she was in! Oh, but she couldn’t have left without it. Her pills were in there.

And finally, when she remembered to take her daily dose, she found.. no pills? Oh, but some got loose on the bottom of her pocket? Did someone steal them? Or maybe the bottle fell out and spilled open- She didn’t remember her pills to be so –pointy-. She finally hopped into her car that was bought with all but her own money, and turned on the lights above the rear view mirror to have a better look.

“..Teeth?” She dropped them and thrashed her hand back, shaking it as those teeth tumbled to the bottom of the driver’s seat. "Ohhhhmygod those are someone's teeth!" She waved her hands around, finally dragging her hands furiously against that jacket to pointlessly wipe away the gross of touching another person’s dentition.

"Who has teeth in their pocket?! Oh my god.. now they're in my car somewhere..." She began to hop in panic and pace in rushed three-stepped laps in circles.

When the pacing finally stopped, she ducked into the car, taking hand sanitizer out of the glove box. Damn near squeezed out half of that bottle onto her hands. Small glops of colorless alcohol-stench goop tumbled onto her peeptoe pumps, which she somehow hasn’t tripped out of yet.

And then she stopped all movement when she heard a phone ringing. It was a digital tone, and its luminescent screen lit up through the fabric of her jacket. It wasn’t –her- ringtone.

And yet another panic was added to her plate. Someone took her phone?! She stomped a high heel against the ground and looked back at the nearly over party. How could she go back? She said goodbye to so many people and the house was still very crowded. She took the phone from its pocket and looked at it as if had a tentacle cover.

It was a caveman phone! It looked older than she was. Well compared to her less than a year old touch screen that was probably stolen by now. But it still ringed and ringed and ringed in her hand.

On the screen was –Unknown Caller- with crappy revolving planets as what passed for graphics back when the old thing was made.

But finally, she brought it to her ear and answered the phone by pressing the bright green button on the left. “Hi, I think you have my phone. Did you get a merlot jacket with black stitches? I took someone else’s jacket by mistake.”

She already had relief in her voice. It’s been done before, where the person calls their phone with the phone they found, right? It was a classic mix up. She had a relieved look on her face, and a bright smile that was actually thankful for the call.

The girl could act.

Most of all, the girl could hope something fierce too.

[The Tattler]

After she spoke it was as though static were answering her. A raspy exhale thundered over the old speaker. When the voice sounded, it was clear it could not be the woman who she swapped coats with, it was the voice of a man, "Who is this?"

The man that spoke was not amused. He did not entertain sounds of relief like she did but instead concern drew tight in his voice. It hinted that the wrong answer might have him hammering his voice down her ear. Before she could answer, he spoke again. It was surprisingly cordial, as though a pleasant thought had come to him and thus, to her rescue.

"Perhaps you should call your phone with this one. I assume you know your own number... she should pick it up and this whole little... misunderstanding can be put behind us."

This man was clearly not the jacket owner's boyfriend, his tone was a far cry from touched or endearing. No, it had command, concern. It had the sound of an anxious employer. Did he know about the teeth? If he did, he wasn't volunteering the information right away.

He hadn't hung up on her, yet. His breathing was still hanging over the phone as he waited for what, exactly, this other woman planned on doing. The party outside was starting to die down, there were people arm in arm stumbling to their cars to fall asleep or try to leave. There were some more sober but beaten looking guests, looking as though they'd absorbed as much of the party as possible and managed to survive. Interestingly enough, there wasn't a frantic woman in the street looking for her jacket. The lights on strings were starting to burn out like dying fireflies. The home was slowly growing less alive and less friendly toward its boisterous guests.

[Chase Rosewinds]

She embraced such an opportunity, nodding nervously with a shaky quickness at such a suggestion. The displeasure in the man’s voice reminded her of an angry mob boss that was inconvenienced. That could be deadly, according to all those movies she’d seen growing up and onward.

She felt compelled by that scary voice. An odd fear crept up into her chest and throat until she cleared it away with the literal act of clearing those frightened pipes. “Yeah, I’ll do that. I guess I’ll call back this number..?” She asked since that man seemed to have a very clear idea of what he wanted. And a man that sounded that ominous over the phone surely had that affect tenfold in person.

And that was something she wanted to avoid.
Still she waited. The young girl was held there. And her eyes were frantically zig zagging from side to side. Panic was creeping on.

That oozing feeling that was beginning to coat her less than buzzed brain.

Fewer people were around her, and many were fleeing the scene.

And she still had those disgusting teeth. The less people present, the more dangerous it felt to her. The night became lonely and too concealing. A lot can be hidden when the world slept.

[The Tattler]

"Yes, you can call me back here if you wish. The name is Marcus." And Marcus hung up.

The facade of the house was dead now, it looked like the home was abandoned and unloved now. None of the lights were on, empty cups were on the walkways, one broken at the front of the house. The strings of light that had been light and bright at one now looks like wires hanging from the porch after a tornado. It was interesting to see what just turning off the lights and music could do to a home.

When she dialed her number it rang until it went to her voice mail. There was a breath of time and then her phone lit up, the tune played. Someone was calling. If she could recognize her own number she would see it was her.

"Hello? Hello? Whose there?" It was the sound of a woman who was frantic to find her home and her phonecall had given her a small line of hope that it wasn't gone for good-- that she might just get it back.