TumbleDweeeb

The Night of the Cryptid Hunter, the Sock Puppeteer, and the Sleep-Deprived Physicist

    My Friday night shift at Chill n’Fill was off to an even stranger start than usual. The one-eyed polar bear sign outside wasn’t just flickering tonight—it was pulsating in a bizarre rhythm that Bob insisted was “part of our new sensory marketing campaign.” Bob, our perpetually enthusiastic owner, had spent the afternoon installing a speaker system that projected his voice from the bear’s mouth at random intervals.
   I was mopping up a mysterious purple slime near the slushy station when my phone buzzed with Jennifer’s latest creative excuse. According to her text, she was “stuck at the beach” and couldn’t make her shift. This from a woman who lived in a landlocked county three and a half hours from the nearest coastline. Bob had called me in a panic, and here I was, Karlee to the rescue once again.
   I had just finished with the slime when the bear’s eye suddenly glowed a disturbing shade of neon green and Bob’s voice boomed across the parking lot:

“HEEEEEELLO NIGHT OWLS AND INSOMNIACS! IT’S BOB-A-LICIOUS TIME AT CHILL N’FILL! REMEMBER: OUR SLUSHIES ARE DELICIOUS ANY TIME OF DAY, JUST FOLLOW YOUR NOSE! THEY’LL SHOW YOU WHERE THE FLAVOR FLOWS! BOOOOOOB OUT!”

   Three customers pumping gas outside visibly jumped. One elderly man clutched his chest. I made a mental note to remind Bob that heart attacks were bad for business.
   The clock read 10:45 PM when Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine” began playing over our speakers, its eerie space-rock opening setting an appropriately otherworldly tone for what was about to happen. The automatic door slid open to reveal a woman in her thirties dressed in full camouflage gear, night vision goggles pushed up on her forehead, and what appeared to be a modified leaf blower strapped to her back. She was covered in mud from head to toe.
        “Quick question,” she said breathlessly, rushing to the counter and leaving a trail of forest debris behind her. “Do you sell marshmallows, peanut butter, and sardines? Preferably in the same aisle?”
     “Marshmallows are in aisle three with the other candy, peanut butter in aisle four with condiments, and sardines in aisle two with canned goods,” I replied, trying not to stare at what appeared to be a tranquilizer gun holstered at her hip.
       “Perfect,” she nodded, grabbing a shopping basket. “I’m Valerie Blackwood, by the way. Cryptozoologist. I’m this close to making the discovery of the century.” She held up her thumb and forefinger with barely a millimeter between them.
     “Karlee,” I said, pointing to my name tag. “And what exactly are you discovering in our local woods at 11 PM on a Friday?”
   Valerie looked around dramatically before leaning in. “The North American Forest Squid,” she whispered reverently. “Extremely rare. Only comes out during waning gibbous moons when the dew point is precisely 58 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve been tracking this particular specimen for three years.”
   I glanced out the window. “In the patch of trees behind the Walmart?”
       “Don’t let the mundane location fool you,” she said, wagging a muddy finger. “That’s exactly what they want. The perfect camouflage is hiding in plain sight among suburban development. Why do you think they never find Bigfoot anymore? He’s probably working at a Costco somewhere in Oregon.”
   As Pink Floyd sang about celestial bodies, Valerie darted between aisles, loading her basket with an alarming amount of marshmallows, three jars of chunky peanut butter, and every can of sardines we stocked. She returned to the counter and added four packages of beef jerky and a bottle of maple syrup.
       “The bait has to be just right,” she explained, catching my questioning look. “Forest Squids are highly intelligent and extremely picky eaters. This particular one prefers a marshmallow-peanut butter sandwich with sardines on top, drizzled with maple syrup. The jerky is to distract any Jersey Devils that might be hanging around. They’re such pests.”
   I rang up her purchases, trying to maintain a professional demeanor. “Will that be all?”
       “Actually,” Valerie said, eyeing our one-eyed bear mascot, “what’s with the cyclops polar bear?”
     “Short, long story it happ….,” I began, but before I could finish, Bob’s voice thundered from the bear’s mouth:

“POLAR BEAR SAYS: DON’T BE SQUARE! TRY OUR NEW ARCTIC FREEZE ENERGY DRINK! IT’LL TICKLE YOUR TUMMY AND MAKE YOUR EYEBALLS SPIN, SPIN, SPIN! JUST LIKE MINE! BOB-TASTIC!”

   Valerie’s eyes widened. “My God,” she whispered. “The bear talks. It all makes sense now.”
       “It’s just my boss,” I tried to explain. “He installed speakers and—”
     “A perfect example of cryptid adaptation,” she interrupted, scribbling furiously in a small notebook she’d pulled from one of her many pockets. “Using commercial establishments as fronts. Communicating through electronic means. This is groundbreaking.” She looked up at me with burning intensity. “How long has the bear been… ‘Bob’?”
    “The bear isn’t Bob. Bob is a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and an unhealthy obsession with gas station aesthetics.”
       “That’s exactly what they want you to think,” she said, tapping her temple knowingly. “Classic misdirection.”
   She paid for her cryptid bait, then handed me a business card reading “Valerie Blackwood: Cryptozoologist, Paranormal Investigator” with a QR code for her YouTube channel, “Squatching With Val.”
       “If the bear speaks to you directly… not the ‘Bob’ voice, but its true voice… call me immediately,” she said, adjusting her night vision goggles. “And if you find any translucent slime that smells like butterscotch, collect it in a plastic bag and freeze it. That’s Forest Squid mating secretion. Very valuable to collectors.”
   With that advisory, she shouldered her modified leaf blower and marched back into the night, heading toward the small wooded area behind the Walmart. Through the window, I watched her disappear into the darkness as Pink Floyd’s spacey sounds faded away.
   I had barely finished cleaning up the trail of mud when suddenly the bear’s eye glowed a radioactive orange and Bob’s voice erupted with manic enthusiasm:

“HONEEEEEEY-COMBS ARE BIG! YEAH, YEAH, YEAH! NOT SMALL! NO, NO, NO! AT CHILL N’FILL, OUR SNACKS ARE BIGGER THAN YOUR MOUTH! OUR COFFEE CUPS ARE BIGGER THAN YOUR HEAD! AND OUR SLUSHIES? THEY’RE ME-SIZED, ME-SHAPED, AND ME-FLAVORED! THEY’LL DRIVE YOUR TASTE BUDS CRAY-ZEE! HONEYCOMBS FOR EVERYONE! BOB-TACULAR-LICIOUS!”

   A woman filling her gas tank outside dropped her nozzle in shock, creating a small puddle of premium unleaded on the pavement. I grabbed the emergency spill kit and hurried outside, wondering if Bob had somehow gotten into the energy drinks again.
   When I returned, the music had shifted to Queen’s “I’m Going Slightly Mad,” its playful piano and Freddie Mercury’s theatrical delivery heralding my next visitor. The door chimed and in walked a man in his fifties wearing a Carhartt jacket, carrying what appeared to be a large canvas bag that moved occasionally.
       “Evening,” he said cheerfully. “Do you sell googly eyes? The large ones, preferably. And perhaps some yarn?”
     “Craft supplies are limited, but we have a small section in aisle five,” I replied. “May I ask what it’s for?”
       “Academic purposes,” he said with complete seriousness. “I’m Professor Whitfield, Chair of Literature at the community college. I’m preparing for my lecture on Shakespearean tragedies.”
    I nodded as if this explained everything about the googly eyes, and watched as he made his way to aisle five. The canvas bag he set down by the counter wriggled slightly.
   When he returned with a package of googly eyes, several tolls of brightly colored yarn, and a roll of duct tape, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer.
       “Exactly how do these materials relate to Shakespeare?” I asked.
     “Sock puppets,” he replied matter-of-factly, as Freddie Mercury sang about banana trees. “I’ve found that students better understand the complex themes of Hamlet when witnessed via sock puppet theater.”
   Before I could respond, the canvas bag beside him lurched violently, followed by a muffled groan.
       “Is there… something in your bag?” I asked cautiously.
     “Ah, yes,” Professor Whitfield said, unzipping the canvas to reveal at least twenty sock puppets of varying colors, each with a different face and most wearing tiny costumes. “Meet the cast of Hamlet: The Sock Opera.”
   He pulled out a purple sock with a tiny crown and spoke in a deep, dramatic voice: “To be or not to be, that is the question!” Then, grabbing a pink sock with blonde yarn hair: “Oh Hamlet, how strange thou art of late!”
   I stared as the professor proceeded to act out a condensed version of Act III Scene 1 using both hands and different voices for each character. Queen provided the perfect soundtrack for what was undeniably a man going slightly mad before my eyes.
       “I find that traditional teaching methods often fail to engage the modern student,” he explained, carefully arranging his puppet Hamlet and Ophelia on the counter. “But no one… and I mean no one… can resist the allure of sock puppetry.”
   As he spoke, the door to our bathroom opened, and a sock puppet seemingly walked out on its own.
       “Ah, there’s Polonius!” the professor exclaimed. “He must have escaped again.”
   It was then that I noticed the thin fishing line extending from the puppet back into the bathroom, moments before a bleary-eyed student emerged, clearly having been roped into being the professor’s puppetry assistant.
       “Professor,” the exhausted student sighed, “it’s almost midnight. We’ve been rehearsing for nine hours. Can I please go home now?”
     “Nonsense, Trevor! We haven’t even gotten to the graveyard scene yet. Your Yorick needs work.” The professor turned to me. “Teaching assistants these days… no commitment to the craft.”
   I rang up his googly eyes and yarn, trying to ignore the pleading look from Trevor, who appeared to be on the verge of tears as he manipulated Polonius.
       “Your total is $12.87,” I said. “Will there be anything else?”
   The professor studied our one-eyed polar bear mascot. “What happened to him?”
       “Sign installation accident,” I began, only to be interrupted by Bob’s booming voice:

“GRRRREAT NEWS, MIDNIGHT SNACKERS! OUR DONUTS ARE FRESHLY DEFROSTED AND ONLY THREE DAYS OLD! THEY’RE BEARY DELICIOUS! FOLLOW YOUR NOSE TO SAVINGS! BOB-ERRIFIC!”

   The professor’s eyes lit up. “Magnificent! The bear speaks!” He turned to his assistant. “Trevor, write this down! We’re adding a talking bear character to Act Five!”
   Trevor looked at me with hollow eyes that spoke of a man whose soul had been crushed by sock puppets. I slipped him a free coffee as the professor gathered his purchases and puppet troupe, marching Trevor back into the night while enthusiastically discussing how the bear would represent the ghost of Hamlet’s father in his next production.
   I was still contemplating the surreal puppet show when the clock struck midnight and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” began playing—a strangely appropriate introduction for my third visitor of the night. The automatic door slid open to reveal a woman in her forties wearing what appeared to be indoor pajamas covered in mathematical equations, a bathrobe, and fuzzy slippers. Her hair stood out in all directions as if she’d been recently electrocuted, and she was clutching a notebook with papers spilling out of it.
      “Coffee,” she announced, making a beeline for the pot I’d just brewed. “The strongest you have. And perhaps some chalk?”
     “Fresh dark roast,” I replied, “but we don’t sell chalk.”
       “Pity,” she muttered, filling the largest cup available. “Whiteboard markers then? Or crayons? Anything that makes marks on surfaces?”
   I pointed her toward our limited office supply section, watching as she shuffled over, muttering equations under her breath. When she returned, she had a package of Sharpies and several packs of sticky notes.
      “I’m Eleanor Zhao,” she said, gulping down coffee with alarming speed. “Theoretical physicist. I’ve been awake for approximately—” she checked a watch that appeared to be running backward, “seventy-three hours and seventeen minutes.”
    “That doesn’t seem healthy,” I offered.
       “Health is relative,” she replied, spreading sticky notes across the counter and beginning to scribble equations on them. “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough in quantum entanglement theory. I just need more caffeine and surfaces to write on.”
   As Bowie sang about Major Tom floating in a most peculiar way, Ms. Zhao’s scribbling became more frantic. She filled sticky note after sticky note, arranging them in a pattern that made absolutely no sense to me but seemed to follow some internal logic for her.
       “The problem,” she explained, not looking up from her equations, “is that everyone assumes quantum particles maintain consistent properties across dimensions. But what if—” she slapped a sticky note in the center of her arrangement, “—what if they don’t? What if the very act of observation forces them to choose attributes that didn’t exist before?”
   I nodded as if I understood quantum physics at 12:30 AM.
      “So I’m developing a mathematical model that accounts for pre-observational probability variance,” she continued, drawing arrows between sticky notes. “But I ran out of wall space in my office. And my home. And my garage. And my car. The university janitorial staff has banned me from using the hallways again.”
   She paused her scribbling to drain her coffee cup, then immediately refilled it. “My husband kicked me out until I sleep. Said I was ‘scaring the cat’ with my ‘manic equation mumbling.’ As if scientific breakthrough cares about feline comfort!”
   I watched as she covered nearly the entire counter with sticky notes, forming what looked like a deranged yellow flower of mathematical symbols.
      “Do you see it?” she asked excitedly. “The pattern?”
     “I don’t really under—”
       “Of course!” she exclaimed, slapping her forehead. “You need to view it from above! The counter is a two-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional concept!”
   Before I could stop her, she climbed onto the counter, kicking aside the sticky notes I’d just carefully arranged, and stared down at her work from above. She gasped dramatically.
      “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “The universe makes sense now.”
   She jumped down, grabbed a fresh sticky note, and scrawled a single equation on it, holding it up triumphantly. “This is it! The unifying theory! All I needed was to see it from a different angle!”
    As David Bowie’s astronaut drifted farther from Earth, Dr. Zhao noticed our one-eyed polar bear mascot for the first time.
       “What happened to that bear?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
    “Sign installation accident,” I began, but was cut off by Bob’s voice:

“HELLOOOOO MIDNIGHT MATHEMATICS FANS! POLAR BEAR HERE REMINDING YOU THAT OUR ENERGY DRINKS ARE TWO FOR ONE! THEY’LL MAKE YOUR BRAIN GO ZOOM-ZOOM-ZOOM AND YOUR HEART GO BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! THEY’RE GRRRRAVY! BOB-TACULAR!”

   Dr. Zhao stared at the bear in absolute silence for nearly thirty seconds.
      “The bear,” she finally said, her voice hushed with reverence. “It’s delivering a message about my research.”
    “It’s just my boss with a speaker system,” I tried to explain.
      “No, no, no,” she insisted, frantically writing on more sticky notes. “Zoom-zoom-zoom refers to the acceleration of particles in the third quantum field! Boom-boom-boom clearly represents the collapse of wave functions! The bear is a vessel for universal knowledge!”
   She gathered all her sticky notes, shoved them haphazardly into her bathrobe pockets, and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.
      “Keep the change,” she said, already heading for the door. “I need to get back to my lab immediately. The bear has shown me the way!”
     I watched through the window as she ran to an old Volvo covered in more sticky notes, which she appeared to be using as wallpaper for the entire vehicle. As “Space Oddity” reached its conclusion, she sped away, probably breaking several traffic laws in her caffeine-fueled rush back to science.
   The digital clock on the register blinked 1:05 AM. I still had hours to go on my shift, and my counter was covered in quantum physics equations written on sticky notes.
     I pulled out my phone and texted my roommate: “Adding ‘Forest Squid hunter,’ ‘Shakespeare sock puppeteer,’ and ‘sleep-deprived quantum physicist’ to the list of Chill n’Fill characters. This one-eyed bear is attracting all the weirdos tonight. Also, tell Jennifer she’s not ‘stuck at the beach.’ We live three and a half hours from the nearest coastline.”
   I glanced up at our mascot, its single eye now pulsing with a rainbow of colors as Bob’s voice emerged in a singsongy Irish brogue:

“THEY’RE ALWAYS AFTER ME FROZEN BURRITOS! RED HOT PEPPERS, PINK QUESTIONABLE MEAT, YELLOW CHEESE PRODUCT, AND BLUE MYSTERY SPECKS! THEY’RE MAGICALLY SUSPICIOUS! GET YOURS AT CHILL N’FILL, WHERE OUR FOOD IS PART OF THIS BALANCED BREAKFAST… OR EXTREMELY UNBALANCED MIDNIGHT SNACK! HEARTS, STARS, AND HORSESHOES! CLOVERS AND BLUE MOONS! BOB-A-CHARM-LUCKY-TASTIC-LICIOUS!”

   The bear’s eye gave one final psychedelic flash before returning to its normal disturbing flicker. I made another mental note to check the break room for evidence that Bob had been experimenting with our energy drink inventory.
   Maybe there was something to what the physicist said. Maybe that bear really was channeling universal knowledge.
   Or maybe it was just another Friday night shift at the world’s most oddly-branded gas station, where the veil between normal and weird was as thin as the beef jerky we sold for prices that should be criminal. Either way, I was getting paid minimum wage to be the audience for it all… and collecting stories worth far more than my paycheck.