(Daily Prompt)
You step into an acquaintance’s house for the first time, and discover that everything — from the furniture, to the books, to the art on the wall — is identical to your home. What happens next?
Several years ago, my wife, Trisha, and I attended a dinner party held at my neighbor’s home of Tom and Pam Gregory, who live four doors away, in a neighborhood of twenty homes, that ends in a Cul-Du-Sac.
Trisha and Pam are very close and so are our two kids, Kyle and Amanda, and their two kids, Jessica and Jennifer, all attending the same elementary school, and Tom and I are both veterans of the Army, so needles to say, we do a lot of activities together.
Now, the party was going very well, and I consumed eight or ten beers, along with five whiskey’s and cola’s over a five-hour period, so I sat down on a patio chair on Tom’s deck where a lot of people had gather on the warm summer night. I vaguely recall hearing groups of people saying goodnight and I looked at my watch and I could barely see that it was around midnight, so I began to get up to leave when I heard Trisha yell, come to bed honey, so I replied ok. It was at this point that I realized that I was still drunk, so I sat back in the chair.
My bladder decided to activate the beer removal feature, so as I stood, and my legs were a little wobbly when I entered the home through the french doors leading from the deck. I immediately noticed that the family room looked really familiar, from the apple fragrance in the air, to the carpet, the wall paint, the border around the wall, the television, the furniture, tables, and the wall decorations were the same as my home.
I found my way to the first floor powder room where again everything looked just like my home, with the walls painted the same color, floor tile the same, the decorative soap, decorative towels, (That I dried my hands on) the toilet bowl brush, and even the cinnamon spice smell.
While relieving my bladder, I realize I must be home because everything in this bathroom looked exactly like my downstairs bathroom in my home. So in my drunken haze, I figured Trisha or Tom must have walked me home and placed me on my deck to sleep off the party. I did recall hearing, Trisha’s voice earlier, calling me to bed, so with that, I washed and dried my hands and began to walk towards the stairs leading to the second floor.
As I begin walking up the stairs, I recognized Trisha has placed some new photos of the kids along the wall leading up the steps, however as I continued, I could hear the sounds of love-making coming from my bedroom, Now, my drunken haze began to fade fast as thoughts of Trisha with another man race through my mind. I heard the voice of a male in between heavy breathing yell, “You kids go back to bed”, and just as I topped the stairs, I saw standing at the door, little Jessica apparently sleep walking with her eyes open wide as small lemons, beating on the bedroom door.
I stop dead in my tracks, quietly and quickly turning around and whatever drunken haze I had left, it was replaced with adrenaline pulsating through my body as I ran down the stairs towards the front door, as I realized, I was in Tom and Pam’s home. I quietly and quickly ran out the front door, and across the lawns towards my home, like an African Cheetah.
I entered the code to open my garage door, and rushed into the family room where Trisha was seated watching a movie. She turned with a look of total surprise upon seeing me and she explained how she thought, I was still asleep on Tom’s deck. When I began to explain what had happen, she began laughing so hard that Trisha wet her pants.
Its been several years since that night of mistaken home interiors, and we often laugh about it, however Jessica has never visited our home since that night.
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