CHAPTER 6b

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"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE ANY BLOODY TINFOIL!?" Steve screamed at the trainee, who'd recently acquired an infuriatingly time-wasting stutter.  "I'm suh-suh-sorry Sir, It's my first week, and I'm not shu-shu-sure if we..."

"DO YOU HAVE ANY BLOODY IDEA..." Steve paused, realizing that the trainee quite likely didn't, as he'd put it, have any bloody anything.  “...Right, can I talk to your manager?" Steve said, leaning against the counter as nonchalantly as a bleeding nudist can muster.

"That'd be me." Wally replied.

"Wally!?" Steve whirled, suddenly very concerned about his nakedness, and doing his very best to cover it up with a nearby art magazine, which, ironically, seemed to have both a very zoomed in, controversial photograph, and the related cover story of the controversy surrounding Michelangelo’s David, and the showing thereof to school children.

"...Steve?" Wally blanched, "What the hell are you doing?"

Steve opened his mouth to explain, paused, lifted his finger to speak again, paused, and finally put the disappointed finger back down.  "Look, do you have any tinfoil?"

"Aisle 7, look, where are your clothes man!?" Wally pressed, sensing that this was, perhaps, exactly the sort of thing that wasn't returning to his office and watching old people change.

"AISLE 7!  OF COURSE!  Look, follow me, and keep your head down man!  Come on!" Steve squealed, trundling off towards 7, flailing the magazine at a shocked someone who, in Steve’s opinion, had looked somewhat alienish.

If you asked him, even now, why Wally had followed him, why Wally had always followed Steve, he wouldn't be able to tell you.  In high school, he could have mustered a weak "to be popular" response, but it was utter tripe.  There were no bullies now, no social pecking order to invisibly climb, and yet, there he was, running after Steve's naked, glass-embedded tush, keeping his head down for unknown reasons, as his employees all gawked at the decidedly abnormal turn of events.

Steve tore up the isle, grabbing the tinfoil and donning a makeshift hat as quickly as possible.  "Pants!" He stage-whispered at Wally "Can you get me some pants?  Where can we hide?"


And there it was.  That "we" word.  Perhaps it was just Wally belonging to something greater than himself.  (This, admittedly, wasn’t difficult for Wally.)  Perhaps that's why Wally, after giving directions to the underground parking lot, and his overcompensatingly-large, sports-utility-vehicle, had ran off in search of something discounted for Steve to wear.

As Wally grabbed the pants, he noticed that the snow globes were priced incorrectly.  And, oddly, reflected therein, was a giant, tentacled rhino creature, who seemed to be intent on crashing through Wally’s previously uneventful store.  Taking a leap of logic, Wally assumed that this, was quite likely what Steve had been running from, and promptly headed for the parking lot.