Aisle be there
an excerpt

There was obviously something about supermarkets, she thought, that brings out the worst in people. Once again, it was relatively early in the shift and once again, she had been left sitting manning a till with no customers to attend to and no-one around to talk to – not that many of the staff would have talked to her. She didn’t have a lot in common with them, rather she considered most of them to be brain dead, interested only in the latest reality tv fad or some unbelievable soap and the lives of their overpaid, lacking in talent stars. What she wanted was to have a real discussion; to talk about the latest discoveries in quantum physics or to debate a philosophical or ethical dilemma. There was no chance of that here. So, instead, she watched the shoppers moving around that part of the store visible from her station. It was raining today, a steady miserable cold drizzle, grey and unremitting; the type of drizzle that one felt entered ones bones, putting a dampener on everything. The unpleasantness of the weather was reflected in the mood of the shoppers. Parents snapped at their children, pensioners complained in overloud voices to hard of hearing companions; couples bickered and sniped at each other, while singletons pushed and barged their way around the store, trollies clashing as everyone tried to get ahead and refused to give way. That morning, there had been a problem with one of the bread ovens at the back of the store, which meant that fresh baked bread was in relatively short supply on the shelves. This only helped to worsen people’s attitude. Julie had a clear view down the cat and dog food aisle to the aisle with packaged sliced bread down to the racks at the back of the store where the fresh bakery produce was displayed. Normally plentiful, the bread on these shelves was non-existent this morning, the minor shortage somehow compelling customer to take more than they normally would, so helping to compound the problem. As she sat watching them with an impersonal, detached viewpoint, Julie saw the people snapping and snarling around the empty shelves waiting for the next batch to be put out. It struck her that they were acting just like animals on some television documentary, the males barging and posturing, trying to take control of the prime position, ready to snatch the prized loaves as soon as they appeared. As Julie watched, it seemed to her that two particularly abhorrent specimens, bellies straining over low slung belts metamorphasised before her eyes into huge walruses, rising up on their back quarters and lunging at each other. The barks and snaps of their family packs all around them, the gigantic walruses vied for position, their fat blubbery bodies slapping together as each tried to convince the other of their own supremacy. It was all Julie could do to suppress a snigger as she watched the ungainly performance on display for her. As she tore her eyes away, she noticed that more and more of the shoppers were also turning into huge mammals as they made their way around the aisles. Children became packs of hyenas snapped and snarled around the ankles and trolleys of there now disassociated parents; parents who had become water buffaloes or snarling black bears. The water buffaloes were harried and hassled and eventually overcome by the hyenas, who tore their prizes from them and began stuffing chocolate as they ran through the store. By contrast, the black bears fought back, lashing out at the pack harrying them, and connecting with one, sent the hyena sprawling and howling across the aisle, the cries picked up by the remaining pack until the bear turned around and roared it it’s own turn at which point the hyena pack, quieted and slunk silently behind the bear, cowed into submission, whimpering and licking their wounds, their watchful eyes looking out for some other less formidable victim to harry.