The Coat

Jamie wasn’t much of a charity shop kind of person. Not because he thought he was too good for second-hand things—he just rarely had the patience to dig through rails of bobbled jumpers and battered trainers for the chance of finding something decent. But that afternoon, walking home in the thin, unforgiving November rain, he felt drawn to the little shop at the end of Howard Street in a way he couldn’t explain.

It was the kind of place you’d usually overlook. The sign above the door was sun-bleached and peeling, its windows crowded with yellowing paperbacks and chipped tea sets. A row of once-white mannequins stood behind the glass, their arms disjointed, their faces blank. It didn’t look inviting. But something—a flicker in the corner of his eye, a faint warmth as he passed—made him stop.

Inside, the shop smelt like wet fabric, old wood, and lavender polish. The lighting buzzed overhead, slightly too dim, slightly too yellow. A radio crackled somewhere near the counter, tuned to a station that only played tinny 1940s ballads. The air felt heavier the further he moved in, as though the clutter absorbed sound and movement, muffling everything beneath a hush of dust and time.

That was when he saw it.

The coat was displayed at the back of the shop, hanging on a solitary wooden stand. Unlike everything else, it wasn’t crammed onto a rail or folded beneath bargain signage. It stood alone, elevated, almost revered. A rich, mossy green, double-breasted with wide lapels and long sleeves that narrowed neatly at the wrists. The black buttons glinted subtly, not with polish, but with something older—like oil on water, shifting in the light. It looked like it belonged in a Victorian wardrobe or a museum exhibit. Or a coffin.

Jamie ran his fingers along the collar. The wool was impossibly soft but heavy, almost damp with age. When he slipped his arms into it, the sensation was immediate. Warmth spread across his back and shoulders, not just surface-level comfort, but deep warmth—like slipping into bathwater, like something welcoming him home.

He turned to the full-length mirror leaning at a crooked angle between a rack of faded bridesmaid dresses and a shelf of VHS tapes. The coat fit perfectly. Not just well—but precisely. As though it had been made for him, down to the slight curve of his spine, the exact length of his arms. The mirror was old, the glass slightly warped, but the man reflected back looked… right. Older, perhaps. More composed. As if wearing the coat had pulled everything else into line.

“It suits you,” a voice said quietly behind him.

He turned. The woman at the till was watching him. Her name badge read LINDA in faded ink. She looked to be in her late fifties, though her eyes seemed older—deep-set and glassy, like someone who’d seen too much without being allowed to look away. Her smile didn’t quite reach her mouth.

“How much is it?” Jamie asked, expecting something ridiculous. A vintage piece like that in a boutique would be upwards of £200.

“Ten pounds,” she said flatly.

He blinked. “That’s it?”

“Some things are meant to be found,” she murmured, folding his note without looking at it. She didn’t offer a receipt. Didn’t ask if he wanted a bag. As Jamie turned to leave, he heard her say something under her breath—just a syllable or two—but when he looked back, her mouth was closed and her eyes were fixed on the countertop.

He didn’t take the coat off for the walk home. The weather had worsened; the rain fell heavier now, and the wind clawed around corners with wet, snapping fingers. But the coat repelled it all. The warmth remained steady, untouched. He could feel it pressed close to his skin—not just on him, but around him. Protective. Possessive.

The flat felt colder than usual when he stepped inside, though the heating had clicked on hours ago. He shrugged the coat off with a bit of effort and draped it over the back of the sofa. It slumped forward slightly, still heavy with the shape of him, almost…hunched. Watching.

That night, the first dream came.

He was standing in a dense, frozen forest. The air was sharp with the sting of frost, and the trees towered above him, black and skeletal. The snow underfoot was thin and dirty, more ice than powder. It crunched when he moved. Everything smelt like pine and something darker—something sweet and rotting.

He was wearing the coat in the dream. Buttoned all the way up, collar turned high. Despite the cold, he wasn’t shivering. In fact, he couldn’t feel his body at all. Ahead, a figure stood half-hidden in the trees—still, silent, facing away. The moment Jamie stepped forward, it turned.

It was him.

Or close enough. Same coat. Same height. Same face. But the eyes were sunken, the skin stretched pale and waxy over sharp cheekbones. The lips were a bluish-grey, split at the corners. Frost clung to its eyelashes like cobwebs. It smiled.

Jamie woke gasping, drenched in sweat, the sheets kicked to the floor. The coat was at the foot of the bed. He was sure he hadn’t brought it in. It sat upright, arms resting along the duvet like it had crawled in next to him during the night.

In the days that followed, the coat became part of him.

He told himself he could take it off whenever he wanted—he just didn’t want to. Not in this weather. Not when it fit so well. But soon he discovered the truth: it wouldn’t come off. At first, the buttons simply refused to budge. Then, when he tugged harder, the fabric pulled back, tightening around his body like a second skin. It clung to his chest, his arms, his neck.

He tried cutting through the lining. The scissors broke. Tried burning it. The lighter fizzled and sparked and went out. Even the sharp kitchen knife, which he held to the sleeve with shaking hands, slid off as if the wool were stone.

His appetite dwindled. His eyes darkened. Every time he passed a mirror, he looked a little less like himself. The coat was feeding him warmth, but draining everything else—his colour, his energy, his sense of time. It was filling him up and hollowing him out all at once.

When he finally staggered back to Howard Street—tired, thin, the coat sealed around him like armour—he found only ruins.

The shop was gone. In its place stood a burned-out husk of scorched bricks and collapsed roof beams. Soot-black windows stared out like blind eyes.

A passer-by, a woman with a shopping bag and a tired face, paused beside him.

“That place?” she said, following his gaze. “Caught fire years ago. Nothing they could do.”

He turned to her, his throat dry, the coat tight around his ribs.

“They say it started at the back. Where the clothes were. One of the volunteers went missing in the fire. Linda, I think her name was. Never found a trace of her. Not a body. Just ash and some…material that wouldn’t burn.”

That night, Jamie didn’t so much fall asleep as slip beneath something. It wasn’t rest in the conventional sense, nor even the fitful dreaming that had plagued him since buying the coat. Instead, it was more like yielding — a slow surrender of consciousness to a weight pressing down on him from within and without. When he closed his eyes, there was no moment of drifting or forgetting. There was only stillness. And then, as though called into being by the rhythm of his breath slowing to nothing, the forest returned.

It was not the same as before. It had grown darker somehow, not just in colour but in feeling, as though something inside the very earth had changed. The trees had thickened, their trunks warped and gnarled, their branches bare and outstretched like blackened hands. The air smelled of ash and damp moss. The snow beneath his feet was no longer white but a grey slush streaked with something darker — tar, or blood, or something worse. There was no sky overhead, only a vast ceiling of unmoving cloud that seemed to press downward like a lid.

He didn’t question how he had come to be there. At some point, that part of him — the rational voice, the one that demanded answers — had grown quiet. What remained was simply awareness, and the terrible understanding that he belonged here now. Ahead, the figure was waiting, as it always did. But this time it had drawn closer. No longer distant, no longer blurred by mist or dream-logic, it stood directly in his path, its face fully visible.

It was him, but reduced. The face still bore a resemblance — the shape of the eyes, the line of the jaw — but it had been drained of all that made it human. The skin clung like wax to the bone. The eyes were not eyes at all now, but empty sockets filled with a swirling, smoky blackness. The mouth hung slightly open, lips colourless and cracked. No breath escaped. It was not dead, not entirely, but it had left behind the need for life. It was still. Monumental. Waiting.

Jamie’s feet carried him forward without hesitation. He did not feel cold. He did not feel much of anything. As he drew within arm’s reach, the figure raised one withered hand and pressed it flat against Jamie’s chest. There was no sensation — no pressure, no cold, no touch. Just a hollowing, as though something inside him gave way like a floor collapsing. An absence that bloomed out from the point of contact and spread down his limbs, curling through his spine, crawling into the hollow space behind his eyes. He looked down and saw the coat unbuttoning itself, the black buttons sliding free one after another with soft clicks that echoed through the frozen air like nails being driven into wood. The front of the coat opened slowly, deliberately, like a pair of jaws parting after a long sleep. And beneath it — beneath him — there was nothing. Not blood. Not bone. Just the thin suggestion of form, a papery silhouette in the shape of a man, hollow as an old suit.

When his eyes opened again, the flat was dark. Not merely unlit, but sunless — drained of colour and warmth. The overhead light cast only a weak yellow pool, and even that seemed to shrink the longer he stared at it. The streetlamp outside no longer illuminated the walls; its light had turned a sickly orange, barely penetrating the thin blinds. The air in the flat felt stagnant, thick with the smell of old dust and something acrid beneath it, like scorched wool. The familiar shapes of his furniture seemed different somehow — stretched, sunken, as if they’d been distorted by water or time.

Jamie was standing in the middle of the room, though he didn’t remember rising. His back ached faintly, and his arms hung limply by his sides. His head felt hollow. Light. He reached up and touched his chest — not out of concern, but curiosity. His heartbeat was absent. Or perhaps simply quiet. Hard to say. His fingers felt distant, like the tools of someone else’s body. The coat was no longer on him.

It stood a few feet away, in the centre of the room, upright on nothing at all. There were no strings, no tricks of light or balance. The sleeves held their shape. The shoulders remained squared. And as Jamie watched, the coat shifted subtly, smoothing down the fabric of its left sleeve with the right, as though some invisible hand were brushing off dust. It was no longer mimicking him. It no longer needed to. It had become something more — self-contained, independent, alive in the quiet way of old things that have waited too long.

He tried to speak — tried to say what are you or what do you want — but his voice refused to rise from his throat. It caught there, dry and brittle, like old paper cracking at the fold. The coat turned — or at least, it moved. There were no steps. Just an elegant pivot as it faced the door, almost politely. And then it glided forward, slowly, without haste, without hesitation. The door swung open ahead of it, not with the creak of old hinges but with a soft, final sound — like the turning of a page.

Jamie remained where he was, rooted to the floor not by fear but by the knowledge that it was already too late. His legs no longer felt like they belonged to him. His fingers trembled faintly, but there was no energy behind the movement. He sank slowly to the sofa, not out of choice but necessity. His limbs folded beneath him, his back sagged, and his head lolled slightly to one side. He could no longer remember how long he’d been here — in this room, in this version of himself. Had it been days? Weeks? Months? He wasn’t sure anymore whether he had eaten recently, or if he’d even needed to. He tried to picture his face in the mirror but couldn’t summon the details. His features were slipping away, shedding like old paint.

Far away, under a sky that always seemed on the verge of rain, the coat walked through a different town. It passed silently beneath flickering streetlights and between old terrace houses, its movements slow and measured. None who passed it noticed. The coat had always been good at blending in when it needed to. Somewhere, a forgotten charity shop reopened. Not with ceremony or signage, but simply was. The front window, grimy with years of soot, offered only the barest glimpse inside — a shadow of movement, a glint of glass, the outline of something hanging perfectly still.

At the back, on a polished wooden stand, the coat waited.

It had no urgency. No hunger. It simply endured. Someone would come. They always did. Someone tired. Someone cold. Someone searching for comfort in a world grown indifferent and grey. They would see the coat and feel drawn. They would run their hand over the soft wool, marvel at the fit, admire the weight of it on their shoulders.

They would believe they had found something rare.

They would believe they had chosen it.

And by the time they realised it was the other way around — that the coat had always chosen them — it would already be too late to take it off.