A Late Lunch
Flash fiction
A man sits in a prison cell. He is gaunt and very near the end of his life. Scrawled onto the grimy and fungal walls are inscriptions. They appear to be in some form of code. The rattling of keys begins again, and the prisoner remains unfazed. He has heard this sound for so many years that he is now deaf to its icy tone. A plate of stomach-turning sludge on a plastic tray is shoved through the letterbox gap.
“Lunchtime,” utters the prison guard gruffly.
Averting his eyes away from the door, the prisoner continues to pick at his skin. He is full of holes that are oozing with a custard-like puss. Time means nothing inside such a place. It is a foreign concept to the bodies within its walls.
His crime remains unnamed. Whenever someone has asked him what he is in for, he responds with;
“I did a bad thing.”
The bad thing has never been disclosed. The other prisoners are disturbed by his nonchalant nature and reluctance to disclose his crime. Some of the prisoners have suspected he is a pedophile, but they cannot know for sure. They figure that if he was such a thing, then not disclosing it would be smart and expected.
The prisoner’s skin is clammy and has a slight tinge of blue, as though he has ingested silver. His veiny hands orchestrate a myriad of scribbles into the pages of a well-loved book.
Bang.
A few moments later, the prison officer comes back around to collect the tray of inedible slop when he notices the prisoner slumped on the floor of his cell. The guard raises the alarm.
“Medic!”
A medic runs into the cell with the prison officer, and it is quite clear that there is no life left within the prisoner. As the medic marks down the time of death, the guard picks up the book that the prison has been scribbling in moments ago.
Apology by Plato
Inside are an amalgamation of unintelligible notes at first, but slowly, they come together to form a cohesive thought.
I did it. I killed the saboteur.
Looking ahead, inscribed into the wall, is an image of the sock and buskin.