We didn’t know about Black Friday at all
when we found ourselves at Target
in West Hollywood the day after Thanksgiving.
And what I learned about zombies in that moment
changed everything. Until then, I really knew nothing.
I was an amateur: I. Had. No. Idea.
They came as a flood behind us while we hunted mupirocin.
There were so many that I respected group nouns anew:
throng, mob, horde, swarm. We went casually to the end of the row
and I was whisked away. My shirt got caught at a cart’s handle
and I was jettisoned downrow by a maniacal overweight mom
headed for Toys. When I looked down, I saw that her toddler
was holding my shirt in his fist. His face beaming terrible
with clenched teeth stained with tropical red juice.
The mother plowed directly into a Target-shirted teen
directing traffic. She clipped the poor kid into some refrigerators
and his skull caught the corner perfectly producing a spray of blood
across the glass door. But we kept going and the red shirt disappeared
just as I peeled away and looked back for Bri, but he was nowhere.
Disappeared into the justice of mob violence. Bodies
and arms, a slur of humans, a fray. “Bri!” I yelled plaintively.
I was suddenly among the masters. The savants.
What skill. What aggression. What perfect blocking.
What assertion. What dedication. What delivery.
Two women struggled over a Lego Friends Amusement
Park Roller Coaster, the massive box impeding their wild swings,
a third woman approached and kicked the first in the thigh.
And she promptly collapsed, overrun by other carts,
other desires manifest. Another woman came in cartless,
and grabbed the box with both hands. The man with her prying
fingers back until they audibly snapped. I heard the screams
briefly before they were drowned out in his laughter. Elbows out,
he shook the box like a rebound, clearing everyone with headshots.
There are times in the pursuit of any skill, of any craft,
when we noobs shudder and winge as experts deliver
the sublime, when perfection sends the novice
back to school. And this is when many surrender.
I have seen many a guitarist drop their arms altogether
and sell it all, to take accounting jobs or play video games.
I can never get this good. They think. And I thought so too
in this very second. I knew what it was like to play the piano
and then watch Mozart abscond with a concerto before the king.
A mother and her young daughter, holding Teddy Ruxpin and Fingerlings,
respectively, cornered over where the bikes meet automotive,
were totally overrun by fifteen or so different people.
Their collective mass said: give it up, and by sheer volume kept inching closer.
The cornered woman took out her mace and the child next to her
sobbed and wailed. Terrified. Her eyes saucer-wide and shrinking.
But the horde could not hold back. First, they crushed the kid between
Giant bike frames into a space of about four inches, and as her body
was swallowed, her arms remained extended, immovable Fingerlings.
Another woman brought a large Coach purse to bear on her twiggy forearms,
a cracking sound and then that woman was brought down from behind
by two more women and then the scene devolved to a chaos indecipherable
as the mother screamed and dropped Teddy Ruxpin and moved to climb
the bodies to retrieve the crushed daughter and man punched her in the ribs
and was himself overcome by a feisty gradmother with a cart,
attempting to pin Teddy Ruxpin for herself, when two additional woman
picked up her cart from the side and flipped it, contents and all,
into the crowd and rolled the grandmother so that she was beneath it
when it came to rest on her sternum and thighs and more people moved
in and by then in the phantasmagoria and blood and bodies I could no longer
make out one person but instead just a teeming mass of malevolent terror.
By now, I had clamored atop a row of shelving to avoid
the maelstrom. I could feel a mass of hands pawing the vamps
of my shoes. I tucked my legs in and spit into the throng.
We’ve all applauded an amazing performance
but we also know how rare it is to witness greatness.
I was in awe. What violence! What shameless dedication to the craft!
