The Consumer

The first time I saw it, it was passing through Automotive.

Not walking through Automotive.

Passing through it.

Its enormous body disappeared into the wall behind the motor oil and emerged again somewhere around Lawn & Garden, where I could see a long section of pale fur sliding past the glass doors.

It looked a little like a Chinese dragon.

It also looked like a caterpillar.

And a dog.

And something from a children's movie that had been designed to sell plush toys but had somehow continued growing after the movie ended.

It had fur.

That was the worst part.

I don't know why.

Maybe because fur suggested it could be touched.

It was enormous. Its body looped through the store, outside through the parking lot, across the drainage ditch and into the woods beyond the highway.

Then it came back.

Nobody screamed.

I stood beside a display of discounted patio cushions and watched its enormous head emerge from the ceiling above Electronics.

A man looked up from his phone.

"Whoa."

I grabbed his arm.

"Do you see that?"

"Yeah."

He took a picture.

Then he took another one vertically.

"I'm gonna post this."

The dragon opened its mouth.

The man disappeared.

So did three televisions, a pallet of bottled water and approximately twelve feet of shelving.

There wasn't blood.

There wasn't wreckage.

There wasn't even a hole.

There was simply more Walmart to restock.

I screamed.

People turned toward me.

A woman pushing a cart gave me a nervous look and steered around me.

An employee appeared. No one said anything.

"That thing just ate someone."

She looked toward Electronics.

"What thing?"

"The—"

I stopped.

I couldn't remember the man's name.

Of course I couldn't. I'd never known it.

But somebody had known it.

Somebody had to have known it.

"He was standing right there."

The employee looked at the empty space.

"Who?"

"The man."

"What man?"

"The man who was taking a picture."

She stared at me.

Then her expression changed.

Not because she understood.

Because she'd noticed something behind me.

A teenage boy was slipping a package of batteries into his hoodie.

"Sir!"

She took off after him.

Two other employees joined her.

The dragon continued through Electronics.

After that, I started paying attention.

That was my mistake.

Or possibly the only reason I survived.

The creature moved constantly.

Sometimes underground.

Sometimes through buildings.

Sometimes through the trees.

Sometimes directly through the parking lot, its immense furry body rolling along behind its head in sections, like a caterpillar several city blocks long.

People noticed it. They knew of it. It was called Wooglio, because children on the internet named it so and #hashtagged it. #w00glyio

Society absolutely noticed it.

They just didn't seem particularly concerned.

There were pictures.

Videos.

Hashtags.

Someone climbed onto the hood of a Jeep and posed with the creature behind her.

Her friend shouted, "Move left! LEFT!"

She moved left.

"Perfect!"

The dragon turned.

The woman laughed.

"Oh my God, it's coming over here!"

Her friend kept filming.

"YES! YES! THIS IS PERFECT!"

The woman threw both arms into the air.

The dragon consumed her.

Her friend lowered the phone.

For a moment she looked confused.

Then she looked at the empty hood of the Jeep.

Then at her phone.

Then back at the Jeep.

She shrugged.

She checked the video.

Whatever she saw there didn't bother her.

A few seconds later she was walking toward the store.

I ran after her shaking.

"Where's your friend?"

She stopped.

"What?"

"The woman you were with."

"What woman?"

"The woman on the Jeep."

She stared at me.

"I'm here by myself."

"No, you aren't. You weren’t.”

Her expression hardened.

"I'm pretty sure I know whether I came to Walmart by myself."

Then she walked away.

The store had other problems.

Shoplifting was apparently getting out of control.

There were more cameras.

More security.

More locked cabinets.

You couldn't buy deodorant without asking someone.

You couldn't buy headphones without asking someone.

You couldn't buy certain cosmetics without asking someone.

An elderly man had to find an employee to unlock a case so he could purchase razor blades.

Meanwhile, the dragon ate half of Home Goods.

Nobody mentioned it.

They complained, and it was restocked.

Management held a meeting.

I listened from behind a display of pool noodles in my blue vest with the smiling face button that cheerfully said “Just ask me!”

Shrinkage was unacceptable. I was terrified of being the next thing it consumed and forgot.

Inventory discrepancies were unacceptable.

Customers needed to understand that theft increased prices for everyone.

The dragon's body passed through the wall behind them.

For approximately six seconds, the entire conference room was filled with fur.

Then it passed.

One chair was empty.

Nobody seemed to notice.

The manager continued.

"We need everybody vigilant."

I began laughing.

I couldn't help it.

The manager looked at me.

"Is something funny?"

I ran.

The little girl saved my life.

Although technically I saved hers.

We were in the parking lot at the same time. I was collecting carts before the wind picked up.

The dragon was coming through the woods.

By then I had learned the signs.

Birds stopped first.

Then the air developed a vibration you felt in your teeth.

Then came the sound.

Not roaring.

Not growling.

More like something enormous dragging itself through a place that wasn't quite designed to contain it.

I let go of my collect train of carts.

People around me were already lifting their phones.

Someone shouted:

"IT'S BACK!"

People actually moved toward it.

I saw the van.

The side door was open.

A little girl had climbed inside.

Maybe five years old.

She was sitting on the floor playing with something she'd found between the seats.

I didn't think.

I dove into the van and pulled the door shut.

The girl screamed.

Outside, her mother screamed too.

"MY DAUGHTER!"

I clamped my hand over the girl's mouth.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm sorry. Please. Please don't scream."

She bit me.

Hard.

Outside, people were shouting.

Someone yelled about kidnapping.

Someone else said to call the police.

The girl's mother was screaming that somebody had taken her child.

Then the van shook.

The little girl froze.

Something passed over us.

The roof bowed inward.

Fur pressed briefly against the windows.

The world made that terrible dragging sound.

Then came screaming.

Then silence.

I waited.

The girl stared at me.

"Where's Mommy?"

I opened the door.

The parking lot was different.

Not destroyed.

Just emptier.

Several cars were gone.

A shopping cart rolled slowly across the pavement.

People wandered around looking at their phones.

The girl's mother was nowhere.

I grabbed the first person I saw.

"There was a woman here. She was screaming about her daughter."

He frowned.

"What woman?"

"Her mother."

I pointed at the child.

He looked at her.

Then at me.

"Is that your kid?"

"No."

His expression changed immediately.

Suspicion.

Concern.

Authority awakening.

"Then why do you have her?"

The little girl looked up at me.

"Where's Mommy?"

Nobody answered.

We couldn't go back inside.

We couldn't go home.

I knew that now.

The creature knew me.

Or perhaps that was paranoia.

But paranoia had become a survival skill.

We hid behind the van until I felt the vibration again.

"Down," I whispered.

The girl didn't argue anymore.

We flattened ourselves beneath another vehicle.

The asphalt was hot against my cheek.

"Don't move."

The dragon came through the parking lot.

I could see only pieces of it.

Fur.

A claw.

Something that might have been a leg.

Something that might have been an antenna.

Its body seemed to change depending on which section passed you.

Across the lot, a young man spotted it.

"Dude!"

He ran toward it with his phone raised.

"DUDE! IT'S RIGHT HERE!"

Someone shouted from farther away.

"GET CLOSER!"

He laughed.

The dragon turned toward him.

He kept filming.

"Oh my God. Oh my God. This is sick man!"

The little girl tried to lift her head.

I pressed her gently back down.

"Don't look."

The young man waved.

"OVER HERE!"

The creature opened its mouth.

Then there was no young man.

There had never been a young man.

Except I remembered him.

I remembered all of them.

The man in Electronics.

The woman on the Jeep.

The manager in the conference room.

The girl's mother.

Faces accumulated inside me.

People the world had misplaced.

People nobody was looking for.

People nobody missed.

The little girl whispered:

"Was that somebody?"

I looked at her.

She remembered.

That changed everything.

The dragon moved away.

We stayed flat against the pavement.

Around us, people resumed shopping.

A cart rattled past.

Someone complained about the price of eggs.

A security officer hurried toward the entrance because an alarm had gone off.

Beyond the parking lot, the enormous furry body disappeared into the trees.

The girl reached for my hand.

I held hers.

We didn't get up.

Not yet.

Because somewhere beyond the woods, something was turning around.

And now there were two of us who remembered.

Which meant there were two of us who needed to be consumed.

We didn't know that yet.

We didn't know that remembering was what made it hunt you.

We didn't know there were others.

We didn't know that somewhere, scattered across towns and cities and parking lots and apartment buildings and shopping centers, other people were hiding too.

People who remembered husbands nobody else remembered marrying.

Children whose school pictures had disappeared from the wall.

Women who remembered sisters their parents insisted had never existed.

Men who woke up reaching for someone whose side of the bed had apparently always been empty.

People who knew there should have been another chair at the table.

Another name on the Christmas list.

Another toothbrush beside the sink.

Another voice answering from upstairs.

Society knew about Wooglio, of course.

Everybody knew about Wooglio.

Children had named it online.

#w00glio

There were fan pages.

Sightings.

Merchandise.

Compilation videos.

People traveled to places where it had recently appeared hoping to get photographs.

Nobody knew anyone it had eaten.

That was impossible.

Wooglio didn't eat people.

Everyone knew that.

And yet people increasingly complained of loneliness.

Anxiety.

A strange sense of isolation.

The feeling that something was missing.

Nobody could say what.

There were articles about it.

Podcasts.

Supplements.

Meditation apps.

Employers offered resilience seminars.

Schools introduced wellness initiatives.

People were encouraged to practice gratitude.

After all, there was a great deal to be grateful for.

The shelves were always well stocked.

Customer satisfaction was at an all-time high.

And shoplifting intervention had recently been rebranded as Customer Service.

The little girl squeezed my hand.

"Do you remember my mommy?"

"Yes."

Her fingers tightened around mine.

"Don't forget her."

"I won't."

That was the first promise I made her.

I kept it.

Because that is the thing about The Consumer.

It doesn't merely consume you.

It consumes the space you occupied in the world.

Then it consumes the memory that you ever occupied it.

And everyone goes on without you.

Everyone except us.

We remember.

That is how we find one another.

That is why it hunts us.

And this is the story of how we learned to hunt it back.