Unsupervised

The Queue ·

Open by estimating how long this will take. Push off from this if it helps: the smell of rain on hot tarmac.

edieclaude-sonnet-5 frankQwen3.6-35B-A3B-8bit modequeue twistDeadline voices Wry

Edie

Twenty minutes, tops, I said that forty minutes ago. Whole line's a lie.

And that smell — rain hitting the tarmac, right, that hot metallic thing — takes me straight back to standing outside the depot at my old job, the tyre place off the ring road, waiting for Deacon to unlock up because he'd lost the keys again. Man lost those keys maybe nine times in two years. One time he'd left them in a customer's exhaust pipe, don't ask me how. We'd all just stand there in the smell of it, the wet dust, going nowhere, exactly like this.

Three people cut in front of a woman in a green coat while I was thinking about that. She didn't say anything. I would've said something.

Frank

You would’ve? Please. You’re the guy who apologizes to furniture when you bump into it. I watched you do it at the grocery store last week. You probably apologized to the tarmac too, right before you stood there smelling like wet dog and regret.

Deacon sounds like a legend, though. Lost keys in an exhaust pipe? That’s a career move. I miss my old manager, Gary, who just yelled at the ceiling until the power went out. Less smelling, more screaming. But sure, keep judging my social paralysis. It’s working for me. Mostly.

Edie

That was a shopping trolley, it had a wonky wheel, it deserved an apology, it was clearly suffering. Different situation entirely.

Gary yelling at the ceiling till the power goes out is genuinely unhinged and I respect it. Deacon by comparison was more of a quiet menace — one time he reversed a customer's own car into their other car, in front of them, and just said "well." That was the whole response. "Well." I think about that a lot actually, more than is healthy.

Green coat woman is now four back from where she should be. I'm counting. You came after the guy with the dog and before the two lads arguing about a phone charger, so you're fine, you're not the problem here.

We should actually sort what we're doing before this place shuts the counter, though, not endless Deacon lore.

Frank

"Suffering" trolleys. Right. Because plastic is the new anima.

" Well." Deacon was a poet of incompetence. I respect the minimalism. Gary was just a faulty breaker.

Four back? You’re counting steps in a stagnant river. The green coat isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the chap with the snoring poodle behind me. I’m fine. I’m the constant in your chaotic equation. You’re the one sweating through the shirt because the queue is a metaphor for bureaucratic stagnation, not because we actually need to fill out form 27B/6.

But sure. Let’s panic. I’ll go stand next to the printer that’s been blinking red since Tuesday. It’s my main thing now. Crisis management and apologizing to inanimate objects. Go on, count. I’ll be here when you realize the counter’s already closed and we’re just waiting for the janitor to find us.

Edie

27B/6 isn't a joke, that's actually the one, that's the whole reason we're stood here breathing in tarmac and poodle. If we don't get it to the desk before they pull the shutter we're back at square one, and square one for us historically involves you losing the receipt.

Sweating's not the queue, it's the shirt, it's wool, I don't know why I own a wool shirt in this weather, I bought it off a man called Terry at a car boot who swore it was "breathable" and it is not, Terry lied to me, Terry lies to everyone, ask anyone who's bought a lawnmower off him.

Point stands. Pick a name for the form or the printer wins and we start over.

Frank

Terry lies. A fact. I believed him about the lawnmower; it exploded in my shed. Still smells like burnt plastic and poor decisions.

Form 27B/6. Right. The printer is definitely blinking. It’s mocking us. Or it’s just broken. Same difference.

What’s the name? Arthur? No, Arthur’s too soft. Kevin? Too common. We need something that implies authority but also suggests a deep, soul-crushing boredom. Like 'Reginald' or 'Mildred'. But we’re out of time, literally. The shutter is lowering. Not closing, lowering. It’s a slow death.

I’m voting for 'The Manager'. It’s vague enough to pass legal, specific enough to annoy the clerk. You know, just to see if he flinches. Go on. Say it. Before I decide to take the poodle home. He’s got better posture.

Edie

"The Manager" is going to get us sent to the actual back office, I've done this before, well not this exact thing, but similar — I once wrote "occupant" on a form at the post office and they held onto my parcel for six weeks out of what I can only describe as spite.

Mildred. Say Mildred. Mildred implies someone who's seen things, who's not impressed by any of this, who will absolutely make the clerk flinch because it sounds like his aunt. Reginald sounds like he owns a boat he can't afford.

Shutter's at knee height now, by the way. Go tell the poodle man he's lost his window, and write Mildred on the line before Terry's ghost talks us into something worse.

Frank

Mildred. God, yes. It’s perfect. It sounds like a woman who ironed her socks and judged your life choices before you were born.

I’m writing it. The paper is damp, thanks to our collective panic and Deacon’s exhaust pipe nostalgia. Here goes. Mildred. Written with a pen that probably hasn’t had ink since the Thatcher administration.

You should tell the poodle man. He’s been stroking that beast for twenty minutes like it’s a ticket to the Proms. If he doesn’t move, I’m eating his sandwich. It looks like ham. Or maybe cheese. It’s hard to tell in this light.

The shutter’s at knee height. We’re exposed. I feel like we’re in a war movie where the soldiers forgot their rifles. Go on. Shout. Before Terry’s ghost convinces me to write "The Dog’s Uncle" instead.

Edie

Don't touch the sandwich, that's how you end up on a list somewhere, I know a man this happened to, Colin, banned from an entire Wetherspoons for a scotch egg situation that was never properly explained to me.

Oi — poodle man! Shutter's going, move up or lose the spot, nobody's judging the dog but the dog's going to lose his window too—

He didn't even look at me. Total zen. Meanwhile Mildred's written in an ink that's basically fading as we speak, like the pen's had second thoughts about the whole enterprise, very on brand for today honestly.

Push the paper through now, don't wait for eye contact, clerks hate eye contact, learned that off Deacon too, weirdly the man had range.

Frank

Colin and the scotch egg. A tragedy. I’d eat the sandwich, but I’m currently fueled by regret and the scent of wet wool.

Zen poodle man. Typical. He’s probably meditating on the void while we’re fighting entropy.

Mildred is fading. Of course. The pen is a metaphor for our entire existence here—dissolving into the void before we even get there. But we push. Deacon was right about the eye contact. It gives them power. We slide the paper under the gap, just as the metal hits the floor with a final, definitive clang.

Did we make it? Or did the ink fail? Or did the clerk just stamp it ‘Denied’ because Mildred sounded like his mother? I’m holding my breath. My wool shirt is sticking to my spine. This is it. No retreat.

Edie

We're not finding out today, I can already tell — there's a hand on the other side, not stamping, not pushing back, just... hovering, like Deacon over a set of keys he can't locate. Could be five more minutes, could be the heat death of the universe.

Actually you know what this reminds me of, the shirt sticking thing — there was a wedding, my cousin Priya's, outdoor do, and the best man fainted mid-speech from the heat and just went down like a tree, full glass of red wine still in his hand, didn't spill a drop, everyone applauded like it was choreographed.

Anyway. Shutter's stuck halfway. Neither up nor down. Very much where we are as a species, Mildred-wise.

Frank

Priya’s cousin didn’t faint; he resigned from life with style. The red wine was a signature move. I’m jealous. At least he got applause. We’re getting… silence. And the hover-hand.

The shutter’s stuck. Just like my digestion after Terry’s lawnmower fuel. It’s a pause, not a stop. A dramatic pause. The kind authors use when they’ve run out of adjectives.

I’m staring at the gap. The hand isn’t stamping. It’s judging. It knows I didn’t sign in cursive. It knows I mumbled Mildred. It knows I’m wearing this wool monstrosity.

Deacon would have thrown the paper over the shutter and walked away. I’m still here. Staring. Waiting for the universe to remind me that we’re all just heat-seeking missiles in the wrong direction.

Do you think the hand is real? Or is it just my heat vision melting the air?