The Wrong Bag

You just got off a long flight. After spending four hours in a cramped plane with 165 other people, baggage is delayed.

After an hour’s wait the carousel starts up and your bag is one of the first to come around. You grab it and get out of the airport as fast as you can.

Once you get home, you dump your bag out on the bed, and immediately realize it’s not yours. It must have gotten switched. You rifle through the contents looking for some form of contact information or ID. All you find are non nondescript items of men’s clothing, toiletries and an expensive digital camera. Curious, you flip the camera on and hit the review button, feeling a bit guilty for prying. There are over 500 pictures on the camera’s memory card. You start flipping through them.

The first few are of a beautiful young couple standing on a pier over a blue ocean. very scenic. each picture gets a little closer. The next one freezes your blood. It is the same couple but they are laid out on tables. They are stripped naked and have been stabbed multiple times. The next few pictures are closeups of the stab wounds, and then a closeup of each of dead couple’s faces.

Sickened and horrified, but unable to stop, you flip through some more. This time it’s pictures of a pretty blonde woman, perhaps 40, sitting on a park bench and talking on her cell phone. Then, the same woman, her hands and feet bound with duct tape, a gag ball in her mouth. her throat has been slit. blood pools on the concrete floor below her.

You sway on your feet, nearly pitching over face first onto the bed. There are over 500 photos on this memory card.

A thought occurs to you. When you checked your bag, you filled out one of those little pieces of paper that has your contact info on it.

You know, in case your luggage gets swapped.