“What do you mean?” His tone was less than friendly, which was saying something. He chewed on the end of an unlit cigar. “You are telling me someone got away with your truck?” Snapping his fingers, “Just like that? Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me you are kidding?”

“Um, yeah. Yes. Yes, he did.” Scotty held a trucker’s hat in his hands. He was the driver who left the keys on the driver’s seat inside the unlocked, unsecured semi-truck. “I put the keys . . .” Scotty didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence.

“He got your truck?” Brad rolled his eyes, sighing. “Let me guess. You left the keys on the seat?” Brad slapped his forehead. “This can’t be happening to me,” he said under his breath. Scotty slinked away, breaking into a run the second Brad’s back was turned.

A sharp-dressed woman wearing a business suit replied. “We believe he was heading towards Saint Louis, but at this point,” she gestured at the warehouse’s interior, covered in cheese dust, “it’s just a guess.”

The bald man chewed harder on his cigar, pacing through his warehouse. Brad Genova, Geeno to his friends, never had a truck stolen before, much less one stolen from his warehouse. His button-down white pin-striped shirt had dark sweat stains on the armpits. He wore a t-shirt underneath the button-down and always smoked his stogies outside the building, especially if human resources paid him a surprise visit, like today. “Vicki, there is no reason to believe a fictional character stole the truck.” The cigar moved through his teeth from one side of his mouth to the other. “He’s imaginary. It’s animated. A figment of someone’s imagination created out of thin air. It ain’t real!”

“Then how do you explain the cheetle dust everywhere, the paw prints in the cheetle, and the size six, triple-wide high-top prints?” She pointed to the ground where several shoe prints with the word CHEETO were stomped in the dust. “You have a four-foot-two employee running around the warehouse, stealing a truck of Cheetos?” Her stiletto heels clicked on the warehouse floor, following right behind Geeno. “And I don’t need to remind you what happened the last time he escaped from this facility, do I?”

Geeno shuddered. He’d heard the stories of Chester Cheetah and the havoc he caused shortly after taking over as the mascot of Cheetos in the late 1980s. Geeno knew they were more than rumors after talking to the former warehouse manager, Jared Carter. He tried to get the voice of Jared saying, ‘It was a disaster. They thought it was all in my head and had me under a psych watch for three days!’ Geeno shouted, “That’s not going to happen to me!” A thin line of sweat beaded across his forehead. Brad, shaking his head, flung sweat in Vicki’s direction.

“Ugh! Do you mind?” Vicki stepped away from him, watching him pull a handkerchief from his slacks pocket. She watched him mop his forehead with it, wiping his face, making it redder. Vicki cringed, thinking about her last employer. Gene was a fat man too, only worse than Geeno. He smelled oily, like sardines, pastrami, and salami, mixed with his natural body odor. Gene also took several medications, the least of which were for his heart, diabetes, and liver conditions. The combo was too much for her. Vicki Barton heard Frito-Lay was hiring a human resources director for several warehouses, including the one Geeno was responsible for. She got along with Geeno well as long as he kept his sweat to himself. “You have two choices, Bradly.” She called him Bradly because that was his legal name. It also irritated him, so she insisted on using it, saying that it was his legal name, so he didn’t have any legal grounds to stop her from using it. “You can either admit that Chester stole a truck and drove it north to Saint Louis, or you admit to stealing the truck yourself and selling the Frito-Lay products inside it.” Vicki crossed her arms, waiting for Brad to respond.

Without a second thought or consideration of Vicki, he stepped just outside the warehouse dock doors, where the truck was hours earlier, and pulled out a zippo, lighting the cigar. Blowing smoke in her general direction satisfied him for Vicki calling him Bradly. “Chester Cheetah. A fictional, imaginary character came to life and stole a truck full of Cheetos.”

“It had more than Cheetos,” Vicki replied, glancing at the clipboard she was carrying under one arm. The top sheet had a manifest documenting every product loaded on the truck. Over half of the cargo was, in fact, Cheetos. Brad was partly right.

A wirey, weasley little man, Sean Cortisan, pushed past Vicki. Putting his hands on her, he moved her out of his way. “Excuse me, Ms. Barton. Geeno?” He side-eyed Vicki, knowing his job was at stake if he wasn’t careful. “Geeno? We’ve had several reports of trucks heading up to Saint Louis – none of which were slated to be there.”

Brad rolled his eyes, chewed his cigar, and stared at the human resources director. “Explain that one to me, Ms. Barton. How is there more than one unscheduled truck heading up to Saint Louis?”

Vicki’s face reddened, matching the color of Brad’s.

“Oh? Little Miss H.R. doesn’t have an answer now?”