Beach Inspirations: Sorry, Wrong Number

          As discussed before I don’t have to go out looking for inspiration for stories, inspiration comes to me.  I call this one, “Sorry, wrong number.”

          A few days ago my cell phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized and so I let it go to voice mail.  The person called back again immediately, so I figured he had the wrong number so I answered it to tell him so.  He said okay. The cell phone rang again from the same number and I let it go to voicemail.  I didn’t bother checking the message.

          That night about nine o’clock the same exact routine happened.  Even though I told the guy he had the wrong number, he still called back.  And again he left a voice mail.

          Curious, I listened to both voicemails.  The tone was angry and threatening.  Yikes, I thought.  Then I reached for a pencil and wrote them down word for word as they inspired an idea for a future novel.  Here they are, maybe they’ll spark a story idea for you, too.  (Caveat:  names have been changed to protect the innocent…and guilty…)

Phone message #1:

          That house y’all are in was left to me by my mother before she passed away.  She made out a new will. And left Sam off of it because he was adopted and he was a damn thief. Besides a drunk. So whoever is living in that house right now is breaking the damn law. Believe me that house is being watched like a mousetrap.  That house is being watched all the f*****g time. 

Phone message #2:

          This is Ralph Larson Jr.  I own a house at **location redacted** there in Virginia.  I was told that a guy name Walt and a guy name Devon moved into it because it was vacant.  That’s against the law.  Why you shoulda known that.  You all don’t have enough sense not to do that. Sam doesn’t own nothing and has never owned nothing.  Sam don’t own a damn thing. That house and property was left to me.  Sam’s a god damn liar that’s all he is.

          He called back the next day and when I answered he started yelling at me with the same message as above.  I finally got a word in edge-wise and made it clear he had the wrong number.  He told me the number he was trying to reach and it was one digit off from mine.  Apparently he’d just kept hitting redial instead of recalling after we’d spoken.  The phone calls did stop after that.  But I don’t envy Walt or Devon or Sam when he did finally get a hold of them.

          It will be a year or two before I work this into a story so feel free to write one of your own.   And by that time I’ll probably have 1,000 new story inspirations.  They’re like acorns falling off a live oak tree.