Customs

Sandra leaned in towards Mike,

“How about this one?”

She nodded in the direction of an unassuming middle aged man dragging his luggage behind him.

“Yeah, sure,” Mike replied, barely looking up from a pile of forms.

“Excuse me sir, could you just step over here for a moment please?”

The man looked at Sandra for a second and stepped over to the customs desk.

“We just need you to look at this form and tell us if you have anything to declare.”

The man nodded and studied the piece of paper on the desk, before looking up and staring at nothing in particular.

“Sir, do you have anything to declare?” Sandra prompted.

Looking at the ground, the man released a sigh before meeting Sandra’s gaze.

“I think I’ve probably wasted my life.”

Reviews

[gingergee]

I liked this. Probably the shortest story I've ever read. It's complete and paints an entire picture. On the first read, I was caught up on the word 'middle'. My mind tried to figure out what 'middle' distances was. If you got rid of the word, I don't think it would change the meaning. In the 7th sentence, it might sound better if you put that the man needs to look over the form; i.e. "We just need 'you' to look at this..."
Instead of using the word 'form' in 2 sentences in a row, perhaps you could use the word 'page' in the 2nd sentence. Also, the word towards is used twice and could possibly be replaced with 'at' in the 3rd sentence.

I loved the last line. It was quite a nice surprise.