So Bob was missing from Costco.
Nathan and I always do costco together, we have it down, go at the exact right time, get all the samples we can stuff in our mouths even if they're bad, he does all the heavy lifting, can stack a cart with tetris perfection, we get free soda from my used costco cup I bring, it's easygoing cause my Nathan is my easygoing and sweet helper.
But this guy Bob usually is at the front door or the back door, checking receipts.
We don't like Bob. He likes us though.
He gives us a weird pedophile vibe.
He's built kind of like a backwards J on the top, his J torso (Jorso, I guess) then teetering on two stumpish stalk legs. He looks like he shaves with boy scout razors, and he looks like he might like boy scouts a little too much in fact. He looks like he might have once feasted on bears and boy scouts by a fire in the woods. That kind of bloodstain doesn't come out, even though he is so so pale. That's the shadow of Bob.
Bob is really friendly. He looks at you with beadyish eyes and always greets you smiling tilted up weirdly like you say we're friends but you never call me why
He knows we can smell the boy scout on him
Bob wasn't at the front coming in or the back when we were leaving. If we don't see him in the front we sort of dread that he'll be in the back when we're heading out. Like to ruin our good time. With creeping tension. We know there will be a Bob encounter. If Bob is even his real name.
My neighbor just said yesterday that her meth-addicted daughter is working at Trader Joe's, the friendliest store on earth. Her daughter who told her that she woke up with demons tearing at her clothes. Actual demons, not dreamed ones, she said.
And she bags your groceries at Trader Joe's, I want you to know, probly smiling like the big fat smile Bob always gives us.
With his hands behind his back, in his striped bobby brady bunch too tight t-shirt that's slightly pulling. Let me see your hands, Bob, we would never say because if we pulled his hands around and opened the palm we would see the demon
the shadowy tragedy of a thousand boy scouts
