I owned ticket number sixty-seven. The display had ticked from fifty-eight to sixty-five in the hour and a half I had already waited.
Ping!
“Number sixty-six, go through, please.”
The bespectacled speaker lowered her head and continued to scratch at a desk full of papers. I gripped my form and sweat pooled on my palms.
Ping!
“Number sixty-seven, go through, please.”
Excitedly, I hurried along the beige corridor, turning left, right, and left again, finally emerging into an oppressive grey room.
An identical, horn-rimmed clad bureaucrat sharply announced, “Take a ticket, sir.”
Number thirty-two? Red-digits burned with an evil sixteen.
