The Queue

They queue in the chemist curls between shelves of cough syrup and discounted vitamins like a slow-moving confession.

Nobody speaks above their inner murmur. Even the automatic doors seem tired of opening.

A woman near the front clutches bottled water and 'natural' sleep tablets. She keeps checking her phone, waiting for a headline to tell her how afraid she ought to be today. Behind her stands a man in work boots reading the maximum dosage on a packet of antacids with the concentration of a priest studying scripture. Every few seconds he lifts his head as if looking for guidance about how to react to fresh dangers in life.

“Experts warn—”

Everyone listens.

Not because they trust the experts anymore, but because they no longer trust themselves.

Further back, an old pensioner holds a prescription he admits he doesn’t understand. “Doctor says take these,” he whispers to nobody in particular. “Can’t remember what for now.”

A young couple argue softly over probiotics. They speak as if choosing the wrong gut bacteria might bring civilisation down around their ears.

The pharmacist moves from person to person like a ferryman guiding souls across dark water. She answers questions nobody would once have asked.

“Is tap water still alright to drink?”

"How many eggs can I eat in a week, would I get salmonella"?

“How many hours should I sleep?”

“If I sit in the sun without lotion, what's the maximum duration?”

“Is butter dangerous - again?”

She wore the exhausted expression of a woman accidentally promoted to oracle.

At the end of the queue, looking in through the window, stands a woman in a blue gilet and red boots. She carries no basket, no prescription, no shopping at all. She simply watches.

The people look pale beneath the fluorescent lights, ghost-touched. Not ill exactly — haunted was the word. Haunted by warnings. Haunted by statistics. Haunted by the suspicion that catastrophe lurked invisibly throughout their day, in every cupboard, in every bloodstream.

Years ago, people entered chemists because they were sick.

Now they go because they are uncertain.

The television continues its endless liturgy of panic: risk levels, outbreaks, hidden toxins, emotional emergencies, expert panels - discussing whether ordinary life itself remains advisable or even viable.

The queue shuffles forward - obediently.

Outside, rain slides down the windows of The chemist on The Platt. People hurry past carrying coffees, umbrellas, bad knees, private griefs. Yet somewhere beyond the town The Camel moves into the mouth of the estuary without consultation, without guidance, without approval from any authority at all.

The woman in the blue gilet and red boots suddenly laughs.

Not cruelly. Not loudly.

Just one brief human sound that doesn’t ask permission first.

Several people turn to stare at her as though she’s broken a sacred rule.

She has not - She is merely free-thinking and sovereign.