St Helena
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 283

Andy found a crumpled note in the door handle of his car. He had only been at the Balmoral Cinema for the hour and a half playing time of the movie.
One-way ticket to St Helena Island Prison, the note had written in a messy, child-like printing.

“What the hell’s this?” Andy said to his friend, Peter.

“What’s what?” Peter replied.

Andy unlocked the car and passed the note to Peter when they both sat down. Peter looked at the note, turned it over and saw the handwritten barcode with twelve random numbers scrawled above and below.

“Just kids being funny,” Peter said.

Andy screwed the note up and tossed in out the window.

“Yeh, very funny.”

He dropped Peter off at his unit on the way home, and then went straight home to go to bed.

“Wake up you lazy bastard!” a voice boomed at Andy, waking him from a deep yet restless sleep.

He opened his eyes, rubbing the sleep out to clear his vision. His surrounding was not the soft, warm green walls of the bedroom of his unit, but the cold, hard, pale grey concrete of a prison cell.

“Where am I?” he said.

“Very funny indeed,” said the muscular guard standing at his cell door. “Now get your lazy ass out of bed before I throw you in solitary.”

“There must be some mistake. I’m not supposed to be here?”

“Ain’t ever heard that one before,” the guard said, pulling the rough, wool blanket from Andy’s bed. “Everyone here at St Helena’s is innocent, ain’t they.”

THE END