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Sorry, Right Number-N&D
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This is a great story and it really makes you think about whether this sort of time paradox would ever turn out the way you wanted it to. A friend of mine once had a call like this where the person sounded like him and only said "Mom?" He has yet to figure out what happened.
Great ending! Really good. Underrated.
(view spoiler)[Sorry, Right Number is a teleplay written by author Stephen King for an episode of the horror anthology TV series Tales From The Darkside. It was later included in King's short story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and is notable as the only such work that King has included in any of his anthologies. It appears in script format and begins with an author's note on screenplay abbreviations as a guide for the reader.
The plot follows Katie Weiderman, the wife of a horror writer. There is also a sub-plot about her children that has significance later in the story.
This story was produced as a short film in 2005, directed and adapted by Brian Berkowitz. The cast included Darrin Stevens, Karla Droege, Michael Brady, Kimberly D'Armond, Karoline Striplin, and Barbara Weetman.[1] The original short film, which aired on Tales From The Darkside in 1987, starred Deborah Harmon and Arthur Taxier as Katie and Bill Weiderman, and Rhonda Dotson as Katie's sister Dawn, with Katherine Britton, Brandon Stewart and Nicole Huntington as the Weiderman children.[2]
The name is a takeoff of the radio play and movie Sorry, Wrong Number wherein a bedridden woman overhears two men plotting a murder.
Plot summary
One night, while the children are arguing about whether or not to watch Ghost's Kiss, the gory TV adaptation of her husband Bill's novel, Katie receives a strange phone call in which the person at the other end of the line sobs, "Take... please take... t-t-," before the line goes dead. She at first thinks it's her daughter Polly, away at boarding school, then believes it's her mother, then her sister Dawn; she discovers that none of them were the source of the mysterious call. The incident is quickly forgotten. Later, she finds her husband slumped in his chair, dead from a heart attack. The story then jumps forward in time to Polly's wedding day, five years to the day of Bill's death. Katie is in Bill's old office when she finds a tape of Ghost's Kiss and puts it into the television. She is hysterical with grief over the death of her husband and accidentally dials the old house number. She is startled when it rings and is answered by herself five years previously. She tries to warn herself of the terrible tragedy that is about to befall her/them but is unable to speak her intended message of "Take him to the hospital! If you want him to live, take him to the hospital!" In her shock, she is only able to get out "Take... please take..." before the line goes dead. It's then that she realizes the truth of what happened that night. The story ends with Katie crying over her lost chance to save her husband and a close-up shot of the ominous looking telephone. This ending displays an example of a predestination paradox. (hide spoiler)]