The warehouse inventory

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

Clara drew a neat line beneath the final column. One crate was missing, but the explanation seemed plain enough: somewhere between the quay and the warehouse, a tired clerk had copied a figure badly. “There,” she said, although nobody had asked her a question. Figures did not steal goods; men merely misplaced them on paper. She closed the ledger.

At the back of the warehouse, a pale rectangle interrupted the dust on the floor. Clara paused beside it. The mark was old, she decided, yet its edges were sharp and a trail ran from it towards the side door. She followed the trail slowly, offering each footprint to the silence.

The door stood slightly open. Clara took the key from her pocket and looked at it before pushing the door shut. “Carelessness,” she said. The word sounded smaller here than it had beside the desk.

When she returned to the ledger, the ruled columns appeared to lean towards one another. She opened the book at the same page and ran her finger back through the figures. At last, she crossed out the neat line she had drawn beneath them. Her hand was no longer steady.