#real fans (aka my irl friends) remember the gold hats

[incandescent-eden]

31 Days of Horror - Misplace (5)

I skipped flesh (day 4), for now! Got a bit busy and just wrapped up day 5!

Total word count: 1302

TW / CW : strong language, obsessive chase / mindset, paranoia-inducing ( the monster in this story is ambiguously real and could be read as a hallucination, although that is not the intent ; please proceed with caution )

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It shouldn’t have been so hard to find the goddamn gold fedoras. For the love of whichever dread power was laughing at that instant, they were golden fedoras. Twenty of them. The gaudiest shit you had ever seen.

Marley rounded the corner of the labyrinthine backstage, throwing the door of the dressing room open. “Have you seen the -”

She stopped short as a burst of hairspray hit her directly in the mouth. It smelled sweet and metallic, but tasted awful.

“Oh, sorry!” Nicky said hurriedly, dropping the can. “I go on in a bit, so -”

“No, it’s fine,” Marley cut them off quickly. Her mouth still tasted of hairspray. “Have you seen the fedoras?”

Marley started searching, ducking to check under the chairs, and lifting costume pieces. Vaguely, she heard Nicky respond apologetically in the negative.

The last time she had seen the silly hats, she had stacked them on top of the dress form in the costume shop, so maybe they were still there?

She started to run, her heels clacking against the gray tiles. The lights flickered slightly, transforming the short, straight corridor into a wavering bridge from the dressing room to the shop. The overlapping voices from the dressing room drifted to Marley’s ears.

Marley paused, her hand inches from the door. The shop was locked.

It was supposed to be locked.

Marley had one hand in her pocket, her fingers curled around the key.

The red double doors to the shop were slightly ajar, the lock still on the floor, barely an inch from the toe of Marley’s shoe.

Maybe Lee had gone in for supplies and forgotten to lock the door again?

A shadow flitted from the corners of the dim lights in the shop. Marley stiffened.

“Hello?” she called, peeping through the crack between the doors.

No reply. Maybe it was a rat. It happened. Hard to keep rodents out of the theater, and cast was always eating backstage (which they weren’t technically supposed to do, but call was so early and it was cruel to expect people to just not eat and then perform for three hours - Marley was fine with it as long as they didn’t spill anything on the costumes).

A long sustained note hummed faintly in the air, just barely audible through the thick metal doors into the wings, but it was enough to shock Marley into jumping. Enough for her to kick the discarded metal lock through the crack in the doors, where it skidded loudly to a stop.

Marley winced. The band was done tuning. She had to find those goddamn hats.

The shop was, perhaps, more difficult to navigate than the tiny dressing room full of dancers and haphazardly placed character shoes scattered among chairs draped with jackets and skirts.

Racks of gray military coats stood stock still, like a line of soldiers that watched her with gleaming gold button eyes as she walked past. A draft blew in from the door. Marley shivered.

“Where are those hats,” she muttered, rubbing her hands against her arms.

A fake raccoon statue with beady eyes appeared as she rounded the corner of costume racks. An old sewing machine sat with red tarp pooled on the floor around it, like a corpse sitting in its own blood.

Again, Marley paused. That machine was supposed to be covered up with the tarp. “Lee?” she called again, wondering if her assistant costume designer had been through the shop earlier.

No answer.

She couldn’t hear the sounds from the stage inside the shop, but she was running out of time. The gold fedoras were needed for the act one finale, and they were already well into the act.

With a frown, Marley continued her search.

She only took a few steps further when she almost tripped over the knocked over dress form, a styrofoam wig head a few feet off to the side.

“Lee, this isn’t funny!” Marley whisper-shouted after her initial yelp of surprise. “If you’re going to leave the shop a mess, then you have to put it back together!”

Still, there was no response.

The lights in the shop flickered as much as the lights in the hallway, but the shop lighting was far worse. Squinting, the dress form and head resembled a corpse. The styrofoam head glared at her accusingly, like she was the one to knock it off of the nearest table. In the flickering light, something winked back at Marley.

She picked up a single gold fedora, upside down next to the wig head. One down, nineteen left to find. Maybe Lee had taken the rest of them out already and had just dropped this one?

Gingerly, Marley also picked up the styrofoam head and placed it on the table by the old sewing machine. It was oddly heavy. It matched the expected weight, which was unexpected on its own. Styrofoam should never feel as heavy as it looks.

“Lee,” Marley hissed, tossing them the single hat she found. “You left the shop a mess!”

Lee looked at her curiously. “I didn’t go into the shop, Mar. I thought you had just gone in to get the hats?”

“Well… yeah. I only found this one though,” said Marley with a scowl.

Lee frowned. “Weren’t they all put together?”

“They should have been. Maybe I misplaced them,” said Marley, crossing her arms.

The clock was ticking. A clang of cymbals indicated there were only two numbers left until the finale.

“Well, they’re not in the dressing room,” Lee said, gesturing to the mess around them. “And I guess not in the shop?”

Marley shook her head in confirmation. The bright lights of the dressing room flicked, for just a moment. Just long enough for her to see herself in the big mirror that covered the entire wall on the opposite side of the room, to see her reflection shiver before returning to the picture of herself she expected.

Pressing a finger to her temple, Marley sank into one of the chairs placed by the makeup counter, careful not to step on any character shoes or discarded costume skirts. The door to the dressing room was open just a sliver.

A shadow passed. The same shadow she had seen early. And a gleam of gold beckoned her, flashing in the flickering light of the hallway.

“Mar!” Lee yelled in concern as Marley bolted out of the chair, kicking away at a cape someone left behind.

All caution was thrown to the dressing room floor like a discarded tissue covered in excess foundation. Marley was not going to let the hats evade her that easily, not when there was still time to get them.

She chased the glimmer of sequins down the hall, catching only a glimpse each time it turned the corner. Still, the lights flickered, faster and faster, as though laughing in futility. Twisting and turning down corridors and stairs, Marley’s heels echoed in time with the beat of the music swelled as the penultimate number of the first act drew to a close. Her heart pounded, instead, in time with the lights.

There was nowhere left to run. Just a flash of yellow as it slipped through the double doors into the house.

Marley threw open the doors with a bang.

The theater was dark. No flash of gold in sight. Only chagrined, bright eyes that glared back at her silently as she stood, panting in the doorway, light flooding the side of the orchestra seats from the hallway behind her.

Numbly, Marley closed the doors behind her. Watched from the sidelines as the final number began, with only the single fedora she had handed Lee earlier.

From the corner of the wings of the stage, she could see a shadow and a glimmer of gold, winking at her.