Many years ago, I helped with setup at a festival in exchange for a free ticket. The deal was work there for two weeks and get a free staff wristband, camping, and food included; I was on a gap year overseas and about out of money, so for me it was perfect. It was a really big event, pretty expensive, and there were a few dozen of us doing setup on this deal.
So I spent my two weeks working, and on the Friday afternoon, they called us up to the office, and dished out the wristbands from envelopes with our names on. They were the fabric ones, with a little metal toggle thingy to close them. The festival started the following afternoon. So I went to bed, in my sleeping bag, inside my zipped-up tent, and I remember fiddling with the wristband as I dozed off, wishing they’d put it on a little looser.
When I woke up, it wasn’t there.
It wasn’t on my wrist. It wasn’t in my sleeping bag. I pulled every single item out of the tent- not that there was much- went through my whole backpack, no wristband.
I even, in desperation, un-pegged and lifted the tent in case a freak localised tornado had unzipped the tent, stolen the wristband off my wrist and hidden it under there. Nope. Not in nearby bushes, not in the toilet block.
It never showed up.
They had warned us, when they put the wristbands on, that they had only ordered the exact number of them as they had workers, following a previous incident of someone ‘losing’ one and being caught selling it. If we lost it, it was not replaceable. So I dragged myself up to the office and attempted to explain that somehow, my skin had apparently absorbed mine while I slept and did my very best hurt puppy impression. They made concerned noises, and told me that they were sympathetic, but they really couldn’t do anything unless, by some chance, someone else working setup had failed to collect theirs. They went to go check the named envelopes, just in case there was one with contents… and there was. An envelope with my name on.
By some freak mischance, they had issued me, and only me, two of them. Or maybe just one, with homing skills.