Black Friday

Black Friday

Numerous sleeping bags lay haphazardly on the pavement outside the department store entrance. They were all occupied – and judging by the amount of discarded coffee cups, crisps and chocolate packets, newspapers, empty alcohol bottles and beer cans – had been for some time. Pigeons trotted hither and thither between the sleepers, pecking at abundant crumbs, goggle-eyed at their good luck.

From one of the sleeping bags a young woman stuck out her head and looked at the dawn’s flamingo-coloured sky.

Suzie rested on her elbows, feeling stiff and sore after lying on the pavement for the past seven hours. She shook back her red hair and gazed around, preferring for the time being to stay in the warmth of her cocoon. It was too early to get up anyway; the store wasn’t opening for another hour.

Everyone else still appeared to be asleep. There were the sounds of gentle and hoarse snoring, a cough here and there, someone sneezed, and in the distance she could hear a police siren.

She slid one of her arms from her sleeping bag to test the morning chill and was gratified to find that the air that greeted her bare hand was quite bearable. It was going to be a fine day, and even better, she was first in the queue.

She patted around the pavement next to her sleeping bag and located the bottle of cranberry juice that she’d been drinking from earlier. She wiggled it around; there was plenty left. She drank deeply, finished it, and then wondered about going to the toilet.

The way Suzie saw it was like this. The public toilets were just a block away but she would have to leave her sleeping bag and she was worried that someone might take her place. All they had to do was kick the bag to one side and then she wouldn’t be in prime position any more.

Her bladder complained. It was so unfair! If she was a bloke she could pee in one of the bottles; he could even pull it inside the sleeping bag and put his… Anyway she should go now while everyone was comatose.

Suzie was determined to be the first through the store door when it opened for its annual mega sales. In particular, she was after the one and only item that had grabbed her attention. She wanted the TV that had been advertised. This TV had everything: a high definition picture, all the box sets, 3D conversion and Blu-ray, Digital Freeview, Wi-Fi and lots of Internet goodies, Skype, USB connection, A+ rated energy-saving, and a host of other features. And there was a whopping 70% off the usual asking price!

There was only one for sale and whoever got there first, bagged it. And the person who bought it would have their picture taken and be in the newspapers. She could see herself now, smiling at the camera, her red hair falling like a curtain around her shoulders. Underneath it would read something like this: ‘And the lucky customer is Suzie Smith who was first in line for our magnificent special offer, our fabulous state-of-the-art television. Congratulations, Suzie’.

This appealed to her tremendously, which reminded her that while she was in the ladies’, she should smarten up, put on some lipstick, do her hair and be fully prepared to have her picture taken.

She looked around her and something reminded her of the line… and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Well, almost. The pigeons were still going strong.

She felt around the top of her sleeping bag and located the start of the zip. She began to unzip the bag as quietly as possible – no need to let the other sales-hunters know she was on the move. Suzie had automatically assumed that everyone else was there for the TV too, but it was hers. It had her name on it.

What she hadn’t bargained for was that the little Velcro straps that linked over the zip to make it waterproof had closed tightly together and she needed to tug them open so that she could get the zip down. She couldn’t believe what a racket they made.

She separated them bit by bit, holding her breath while she tried to do it quietly, pausing to glance at the people closest to her to see if she had woken anyone up. She managed to part the first two straps, unzip the bag a couple of feet and begin to shuffle out.

In so doing, she knocked over an empty wine bottle that began to roll, making a clunkety-clunk sound as it bounced over cracks in the pavement. It came to rest at the side of a sleeping man who continued to snore softly. Suzie watched him with bated breath, half-wondering whether to hit him over the head with it.

After a few seconds she quickly climbed out of her bag like a caterpillar emerging from its chrysalis. She found her trainers underneath it and pulled them on.

Suzie stood and carefully bent backwards, releasing stiffness from her spine. She looked across the road. Concentrating on her balance, she began to tiptoe as fast as she dared through the sleepers towards the toilets, her thoughts in perpetual motion. Abba’s song, The Winner Takes It All was a relentless earworm.

It was the quickest visit to a toilet that she had ever made, and as soon as she’d dipped her fingers under the slowest tap in London, she dashed back to her place at the head of the queue – and her heart sank. The inevitable had happened. The guy next to her had wormed his way, still in his mangy sleeping bag, to the front of the queue. He was now going to be the first customer through the store door when it opened for the sales.

Suzie could have screamed. She clutched her fists in anger and glared at him.

He grinned at her. “All right?”

She moved close to him so as not to wake anyone. “That’s my place,” she hissed, “I’ve been waiting here all night for that.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “We all have love.”

“Yes, but I came especially early to get to the front!”

“Hey honey,” another voice piped up. Female. “What do you think the rest of us are doing then? Waiting for the prices to go up?”

All around her, sleeping bags were coming alive with people hatching from them like grubs from garbage.

Someone shouted in her direction, “Oy, you woke me up! Keep it down a bit, can’t you?”

Someone else asked the time, while another person enquired if the store had opened yet and got the reply, “It’s only six, mate.”

“Yeah, but they’re openin’ early.”

Oh, this was too bad. Suzie looked down at the guy who had robbed her space.

“So, what do I get if I let you in then?” he grinned.

Choice words sprang to mind but she bit her tongue. Literally.

Suddenly, everyone was alerted to the sound of clunking wheels and a girl shouted ‘Yeah!’ as a swarthy Italian man trundled a coffee cart towards them, pulling it like a horse between two wooden shafts.

“Yes! Hello!,” he beamed at them all. “Good coffee. Nice and hot. Come!”

The smell of coffee wafting from his cart was simply heavenly. Suzie’s mouth watered.

She felt in her pocket and came up with three one-pound coins. Perfect. She’d be first in line for her coffee, and then while the idiot who had stolen her place waited for his – she could hear him rattling coins around – she would snatch back her spot and be number one again. She grinned. The gods were on her side.

She made a dash for the cart, nudged this way and that by other shoppers – knocking a few out of the way herself. She wasn’t usually as feisty as this, but well, what the heck. The Winner Takes It All.

She ordered a filter coffee and waited for it to be poured. More people had gathered behind her and she found herself at the front of quite a crowd.

Only five minutes ago they had all been sleeping.

She was about to hand over her money when suddenly there was the sound of locks being unlocked, handles being turned and someone called something. The store was opening now!

People behind her turned and ran, carelessly kicking sleeping bags aside in their haste to get there.

“No!” yelled Suzie.

She dropped her coffee and sprinted back too, roughly jostled on all sides by the heaving mass of bargain-hunters. She fell and hit the ground, her fall at least softened by discarded sleeping bags. Two men stumbled over her prostrate body, clutching at air as they landed next to her. There was chaos as yet more shoppers joined them, all the while scrabbling as hard as they could to get out of the human pile. There was blood. An elderly man had broken his nose and was sitting with his head tilted backwards. Someone threw him a sock.

Suzie was in tears as she tried to get up, screaming as people trod on her fingers.

A voice shouted, “Sorry, lady!”

She heard two men arguing and the sound of breaking glass.

She managed to get up and instantly launched herself into the mass of bargain hunters about to crash through the doors.

A uniformed member of staff stood in the doorway, opened his arms wide and forced a panic-stricken yell, “Calm down, folks! Please! Or we’ll close the doors until there is some kind of order! There is plenty for everyone so… Christ!” He may as well have been talking to a bowl of fruit as no-one took the slightest notice.

He dived to the side as the crowd surged through the half-open doors like a tidal wave. It was madness. Sobbing with frustration, Suzie was propelled along roughly; for a few seconds her feet weren’t even touching the ground.

Where, oh where, was the television?

There it was! Mounted on a special stand. Centre piece.

Like a missile, she aimed for her target, reaching it at the same time as a huge woman wearing a beanie. The women leant into Suzie’s face. “I got here first. Sod off.”

Suzie touched the television. It was beautiful. A large screen set in a jet black surround. Her name was on it. She just knew it.

“Better idea, you sod off!”, and she gave the woman a shove. The woman was much larger than Suzie but had no sense of balance. Her arms flailed like a windmill as she crashed into boxes containing Goods for Sale.

Suzie was horrified but she didn’t have time to react because someone grabbed hold of her hair and yanked her head back.

“Aargh!” She swiftly turned and found herself staring at a plump red-faced lad who was holding a clump of her hair.

“That’s me mam. You get off her!”

Suzie gave the lad a shove too. He joined his mother in the Goods for Sale, disappearing under a pile of pillows.

Suzie’s fingers were throbbing. She had been kicked so many times that her whole body felt like one big bruise. Some of her hair was missing while an oncoming migraine was stabbing at her right temple.

She looked around. It was chaos. Staff had taken refuge behind the counters while punters rushed around grabbing sales items.

The woman Suzie had upended had managed to roll out of the pile of boxes and was tugging at her son. She turned and lunged at Suzie, screaming at the top of her voice, “Now you’re gonna get it, you cow!”

Being hit at seismic force by an angry two hundred pound woman was more than Suzie could withstand. She crashed to the shop floor, her head bouncing off the side of the TV display stand – and that was the last thing she remembered.

Now at home, sitting on her sofa with a new short haircut and a bandaged leg resting on the coffee table, she stared at the front page of the local newspaper.

Well, she was in the picture all right, not that she looked very glamorous. Two paramedics were putting her on a stretcher while in the background were three security men assuming military-style techniques to control a large woman and her son.

But now, none of that mattered.

Suzie sighed with satisfaction as she reached out and located a remote control. She pointed it at the television – the one with the large screen in a jet black surround – and pressed the green button, all the while humming… The Winner Takes It All.