jml297

Sam looked again at the palm of his left hand. In the dim light, it was difficult to make out what the message was. Mitch had grabbed his hand, scoring the flat of Sam’s palm with an old biro that he’d found in the tin of old junk in the corner of the room.

‘This is what you need to work it all out.’

Usually, Mitch was hard to shut up, telling anybody more than they needed or wanted to know. But this was all he’d managed to say before he’d been called away.

Sam shuffled toward the greasy light coming in from the window up high in the far wall. He spread out his hand, held it up toward the murky light. 76293. At least that’s what the scrawled shapes looked like. Sam said them aloud, softly, running them forwards and backwards, willing his mind to make sense of them. 76293. It wasn’t Mitch’s birthdate. It wasn’t one of the door codes that had been programmed to allow access to various parts of the building. And it couldn’t be Mitch’s access code, as they were all a minimum of six numbers, and it wasn’t possible to start a code with a zero.

Sam growled in frustration. Maybe if he had a piece of paper, he could work it out. But the room was virtually bare, and it wouldn’t be wise to scratch it on the wall. He no longer knew who he could trust. Mitch’s fear had been real, and Sam knew that whatever came next, this seemingly random number would play a part.

This was written to a prompt at my local writing group.

Photo: flash fiction