Old Friends

 “I've been meaning to ask you,” a regular customer says to Fernando one day long ago, perhaps six months after he had taken on the mantle of Keeper. Fernando stiffens, because even by this point he realizes these words are rarely a prelude to something he wishes to experience.

“What's that?”

“Why's there a crab and octopus on top of your TV?”

Fernando looks over his shoulder into the office, where there are indeed a bathtoy crab and a bathtoy octopus resting atop the television. “Those are Crumbles and Octorok. They watch over the store when I'm not around.”

“Come on, really,” she insists.

“Well, if you must know, they were passed into my keeping. Neither of them is technically mine. They belong to some friends and are used to bless nerdish debauchary and so forth, and by that I mean they tend to be thrown around a lot. I actually don't think either of them have ever gotten wet, except for maybe via Pepsi or something.”

“Nerdish debauchary?”

“Dungeons and Dragons. Satan's game.” Fernando pauses for a moment. “Y'know, I'm still missing Kafka.”

“Kafka?”

“Yeah, he's a cockroach. I have no idea where he vanished to.”

Fernando's guest's face screws up in disgust. “They make cockroach bathtoys?”

“No, no. Kafka was actually from a cheap-ass dollar store magic trick package-toy-thing. I think one was supposed to be dexterous enough to make him a surprise. Practically that meant we would wait until someone turned his or her back and then we'd put Kafka in an obvious place.” Fernando's vision blurs as he retreats into the mists of time. “There was also an obviously fake pencil which never fooled anybody, but we still went along with it because why not.”

“Well, I hope you find your cockroach then.”

Alas, years later Kafka is still absent. Our little cockroach had grown into a strong, independent cockroach man. Maybe he settled down with a nice cockroach lady and birthed a brood of mini-Kafkas. Maybe he fell in with the wrong crowd, suffered a heroin overdose, and died alone and unmourned in a secluded alleyway.

Maybe, just maybe, he's still trying to find us, too. Godspeed, Kafka. Godspeed.