Black Friday
written by: Austin Gilmore
The faces of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, bathed in neon pink lights, smiled lovingly from their VHS covers as our town’s unkillable evil was born, there, in the romcom section of Suncoast Video.
I filled out a job application at Suncoast every time I went to the mall; pen in one hand, a bag of Mr. Bulky’s candy in the other. It was my teenage dream, standing behind the Suncoast counter getting paid to watch movies all day. I thought there, of all places, I could become the person I always dreamt of being. So when I got home from AV Club, wet and freezing from a slushie November rain, and heard their message on my parents’ answering machine I thought surely it was a prank. Even when I rode my bike up to the mall and interviewed with Minnie and Hutch, I thought it must be some elaborate setup.
I guess it kinda was.
Back then I was so agreeable. Malleable. Nervous. Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club. Corey Haim in Lucas. But not at Suncoast Video. There I was confident. Untouchable. All because of my A Beautiful Mind-level knowledge of all things movies. That magical realm on the third floor of Metcalf Mall was the one place in the entire town, in the entire world, I felt invincible.
Minnie and Hutch looked like twins yet they weren’t related. Pale. Tall. Hair that looked like they sheared it themselves. Protruding brows and laser focused stares. They were what I strived to be when I grew up, even if they were just a few years older than me. When you roamed the aisles of Suncoast and overheard them flirtatiously debating movies you would assume they were a couple, but they weren’t. They were cool. They were intimidating. But that’s not a fair assessment since everyone intimidated me back then. I will say, though, they were nice to me during my interview. And besides “Fuck, Marry, Kill – Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese?” they only asked me one serious question during the job interview of my dreams.
“You’d have to start on Black Friday and sleep here the night before. With us. Are you okay with that?” Hutch asked in his artificial and well rehearsed Christian Slater cadence.
“It’s so we don’t sleep through our shift since the entire mall opens at the butt-crack of dawn. We did it last year and it was actually super fun,” Minnie continued in her nasally Winona Ryder voice, as if they meticulously rewatched Heathers and hijacked the personas of its main characters.
“That sounds great.” I said without hesitation.
“Wonderful! You’re hired! We’ll see you Thanksgiving night!” Hutch said, walking me out of the store as the sound of The Burbs echoed from the decorative TVs towering all around us. Only when my feet touched the tile of the mall walkway did I question the absurdity of it all – of them hiring me of all people, the unconventional work sleepover, everything. I reverted back to my malleable self, like Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams, going from young to old, confident to weak in a few simple steps. As we shook hands I asked, “I’m in here enough to know you get a lot of applications. Why hire me of all people?”
“Simple. We need to sacrifice a virgin to release Bertie,” Hutch said with a straight face.
“He’s kidding! We’ll see you on Thanksgiving,” Minnie said.
***
Self-doubt and every movie I’d ever seen told me something was off about my hiring, yet I was still excited. How could I not be? It was still Suncoast! Thanksgiving dinner was torturously slow. By the time my family got to pumpkin pie and coffee I was vibrating with both anxiety and excitement. After overloading the dishwasher with every plate and utensil, and as my parents pulled out our Christmas decorations from the attic, I threw on my coat, grabbed my overstuffed overnight bag and flew out the front door. With my stomach full of turkey and stuffing, I pedaled through town, premature Christmas lights guiding my way as nickel-sized snowflakes twirled in the air. I skidded through the empty mall parking lot until I caught sight of Hutch and Minnie in the distance, laying on the hood of a Buick Laisbre catching flakes with their tongues.
“There she is!” they screamed when they saw me through the whirling flurry.
“You know, we’re only here one night.” Minnie said, tugging on my overstuffed backpack that looked more like Santa’s bag of toys than an overnight bag. I was embarrassed, but I knew I shouldn’t be. Everything in my bag was necessary, like James Bond raiding Q’s office.
“Yeah. I know. Sorry. Sorry,” I timidly said, not knowing what I was apologizing for.
Inside, the sleeping mall felt like an alternate dimension. Every store light and fountain were turned off, creating an eerie slumber. We took turns sitting on Santa’s throne, in the newly constructed Christmas village at the center of the first floor. We each tried to swat at the oversized ornaments hanging from light fixtures. Yet as fun as it was, I was filled with nerves. I felt like a Freshman hanging out with outgoing Seniors. A little sister tagging along. I felt out of place. But I always felt out of place. So all I could do was try and keep up.
Only when Minnie said she was getting tired did we climb the shut-off escalator towards our home for the night. Hutch unlocked the Suncoast Video gate and I followed them into the darkness, movie standees playing tricks with my eyes. And as the darkness surrounded me, so did my confidence. I was inside Suncoast Video, where I belonged.
Minnie disappeared into the back office as Hutch flipped the neon lights on, washing everything out in a pink glow. And for the first time, I took in the store not as a customer but as an employee. I moved through the aisles, my fingers moving over rows of VHS tapes like a hand over a wheat field in a pretentious arthouse movie. All the doubt that had been building up since being hired, since being born, faded away. There, finally, I could be the person I wanted to be.
“Let’s play a game!” Minnie announced, reappearing from the back office with what looked like a homemade Ouija board. I tightened the straps of my backpack and followed her to the romcom section, the most spacious spot in the entire store.
“Is that a homemade Ouijia board?” I asked, sitting down across from her, already knowing the answer. I’d seen enough horror movies to know what that was. It was lacquered mahogany. Each letter chiseled into the wood in medieval chicken scratch.
“Something like that,” she said, placing it between us.
“That’s not an answer,” I said bluntly, clear of any self-conscious stutters.
“What did you say?” she asked, looking possessed with the neon pink reflection dancing in her eyes.
“I asked if that was a Oujia board. Which, like, duh it is. But you answered vaguely like you’re trying to scare me.”
“Well? Are you?” she asked with the same bluntness.
“Am I what?”
“Are you scared?”
“No. Not really. Not he–”
I jumped as the violent rattle of the front security gate crashed down onto the tile floor. Beyond the shelves of video tapes, Hutch was at the front of the store, locking us in. Locking me in.
“Seem scared to me. And you should be,” Minnie continued, as she lit candles on either side of the board. “Bertie will have you soon enough.”
“Bertie?”
“Bertie. Berchta. Frau Perchta. The Roaming Witch. We are here to free her,” she said as she caressed the board. “Du bist frei. Kommen Sie zu uns. Nehmen Sie diese Jungfrau als unser Opfer.”
From the front of the store, Hutch echoed in the darkness,”Du bist frei. Kommen Sie zu uns. Nehmen Sie diese Jungfrau als unser Opfer.”
“Oh c’mon. You’re rushing it,” I interrupted, instead of asking something like “Who’s Bertie?” or “Why are you speaking in German?”
“What?” Minnie said, breaking free of her trance.
“Like, think about The Lost Boys. Keifer Sutherland and his crew at least strung Jason Patric along for a while before they turned on him. This is happening much earlier than I–”
Hutch jolted out of the darkness, “We must release her! She’s been trapped for far too long and there are so many naughty little boys and girls that need to be plucked.” He dug his hands into my shoulders, cueing Minnie to lunge forward, pinning my knees down. “We need your virgin blood.”
“How much blood? A pin prick? A few drops?” I asked with a blind confidence I only had there, amongst the VHS tapes of Cruise and Seagal.
“Your whole bag…,” sang Minnie.
“…until you sag,” Hutch howled, backing her up.
“That’s what she demands….”
“….so that’s what she gets,” they continued to sing.
“Is this because I answered ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill – Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese’ wrong?” I asked.
“No, you actually answered it correctly. Obviously, you kill Lucas.”
“You know your movies, we’ll give you that,” said Minnie.
“That’s true, I do. It’s like Rosemary’s Baby. She should’ve known what was happening the whole time, you know? In those types of movies, I’m always like, can’t you see.…” and that’s when I pulled out my dad’s hunting knife from my bag, then finished my well-rehearsed line channeling Schwarzenegger, “…that this was all a setup?”
“What the Hell?!” Hutch said, jumping back into a shelf. An avalanche of tapes buried him like a character in any comedy trying to get something from their junk closet. I thought it would give me enough time to escape, but Minnie swatted the knife out of my hand, sending it to an aisle behind me.
“Find her knife. Hurry!” Minnie screamed as she pinned me down to the floor, her hands a death grip on my shoulders, knees cracking my ribs.
“This is pointless. I’m not even a virgin!” I screamed.
Minnie slithered close, “But you are,” licking my right, freckled cheek thinking it would scare me, which it absolutely did. “She demands to be free. She promised us blood. She promised us the world.”
“I got it! I got her knife!” Hutch screamed from the shadows.
With my bag full of weapons lost in the darkness, I wildly reached for anything I could use to protect myself. And like every movie, the ideal weapon, their Ouija board, was just out of reach. I stretched harder, feeling every muscle in my arm cramp and tear, shifting my weight just enough to grab hold of the board’s corner.
“You put up a fight. I’m impressed,” Hutch said, pulling my chin up, exposing my neck. And as the knife appeared in the neon pink light, I swung the board up, hitting Hutch in the back of the head, knocking him into Minnie. Her hold loosened and I scurried to my feet, slipping on a floor covered in fallen VHS tapes. Only then did I see the knife sticking out of Minnie’s thigh and a pool of her blood oozing over the Ouija board.
First came the crackling sound. Then the heat, emanating from the shaking board. It rattled until a shimmering force exploded out of the board of questionable origin, like a Fourth of July fireworks show going horribly wrong.
Bertie was released. She was free.
But only for a brief moment. Her force knocked the rest of the VHS tapes off the shelves, unspooling every tape in the air like wormed-confetti. The blast launched me into the wall of comedy tapes, but I absorbed it. It stuck. It went no further.
Bertie was trapped once again. Now, in me.
“I’m bleeding out,” Minnie said, white as a ghost.
“He doesn’t look too good either,” I said in my best John McClane voice, looking at the unconscious Hutch with a volcanic welt on the back of his head.
“She’s in you now. You are her. We did what you asked. Call us ambulance. Reward us,” she whispered with the little energy she had left.
She was right. I could feel her energy within me. A violent simmering. A trapped beast. I could hear her witch’s howl. And then, silence. A shifting. Getting comfortable. Calm. Acceptance. A truce. Not a prison but a susceptible host. I came here to become who I always dreamt of being. No more stuttering sorrys. No more doubt. All that was gone now.
“Looks like you didn’t need me after all, virgin.” I said making my way behind the Suncoast counter, where I always dreamt of standing. “Now, time to pluck.”
***
I pressed my forehead against the third floor window of Metcalf Mall, watching as the paramedics pushed two gurneys carrying the bagged remains of Minnie and Hutch into a single ambulance through the veil of a blinding snow. They were in no rush, no life was on the line. After the ambulance disappeared down the road, I turned back to the welcoming shadows of the comatose mall, toward the pink neon glow of Suncoast Video. I am now two, I am now free. I am hidden away, lurking as a teenage girl, spending my days watching movies and hibernating until the holly jolly Christmas season. Only then do I wake from my slumber and watch the children of this town come through these doors and determine if they are good, or if they must be plucked.
Welcome to Suncoast Video, how can I help you?
- Black Friday - December 1, 2024
