The God of the Grocery Store

He lives in the back, of course. The flash and glitter of the aisles is just for show, a facade, the inexplicable place where stock goes to disappear. His is a world of boxes and numbers, of supply and demand, of hazy predictions and a never-ending treadmill of constantly shifting targets. He is a bookie, trusting his third eye, using the long bets to cover the short, counting and recounting. He is thin, thin, thin, sliding between plastic-wrapped towers of cardboard like a neurotic ghost.

If he knew why they took the food from his shelves, he would be horrified.