“Blackest Friday, blackest night; no joy shall grace our sight.” -- Sgt. Ren Williams, San Narciso Police, on the Black Friday carnage.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- The pacific California hamlet of Bennington Vale was again rocked by multiple deaths and countless injuries during Black Friday sales events. In 2011, five members of a small civil rights group were trampled to death outside the Gottsgeld department store in Santa Calcetines. But this weekend, police reported that store employees, not shoppers, crushed the 43 hapless victims in a frantic attempt to overcome the throng of bargain hunters and clock in for their shifts by 5:00 p.m. Thursday evening.

Black and Blue Thursday

This year, Black Friday got off to its earliest start in history as many retailers opened Thursday afternoon. Employees, labor rights groups and even consumers used social media to voice their grievances over corporations that forced workers to dash out immediately after Thanksgiving dinner, or miss out on the holiday entirely.

At Gottsgeld, employees not only protested the early opening but also the company’s efforts to silence workers who have spoken out against low pay and understaffing. Group members planned to use the Black Friday event to draw attention to their cause. While a handful turned out to demonstrate, the majority of Gottsgeld employees appeared willing to cross the picket line to keep their jobs. But the rush to cut dinner short and clock in on time for work led to one of the county’s worst disasters on record.

“This situation presented a new and very unwelcome dynamic to Black Friday safety,” SNPD spokesman Ren Williams told reporters. “In the past, we’ve seen our share of tramplings and related casualties. Most of the time, the problems stem from desperate consumers flooding store aisles to grab deals or crushing employees at the doors to be the first inside. This year, it was the other way around.”

Williams said Gottsgeld employees were told to man their posts Thursday night under threat of attendance violations that could cost many their jobs.

“So immediately after dinner, most of the employees hurried to work,” Williams continued. “They wanted to maximize the short time they had with family, and were already cutting it close. But when they pulled into the lot, a mob of customers had already gathered.”

Witnesses described the scene as chaotic, tragic and frenzied. In comparison with other disasters, the loss of life in Bennington Vale was unique.

In Seattle, news agencies presented viral footage of a Nike store decimated just moments after opening. Some compared the devastation to an earthquake leveling a small city, the floors littered with shoe boxes like a mass grave brimming with cardboard carnage. For residents of San Narciso County, however, the destruction that rocked Gottsgeld was “a holiday holocaust.” City planners have met to consider erecting a memorial outside the parking structure.

“It was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen,” said 29-year-old Millicent Mummsburg through sobs. “The pall of death was already heavy in the air. The managers stood at the doors, and they were screaming... screaming for employees to punch in on time. The crowds were forcing themselves inside before the workers. The next thing you know, bloodied timecards were waving above the crowd like war banners. People were stampeded, bodies were piling up near the bike racks and the employees were grappling up one another’s backs like they were trying to climb a grotesque mountain of disfigured flesh and Burberry.”

In all, 43 consumers were crushed to death by store employees trying to make their shifts. Only five employees were recorded as clocking in on time.

A History of Holiday Violence

According to Lionel Tyrone Lincoln Green -- head of San Narciso’s Angry Black Revolutionaries Against Caucasian Aristocracy, Despotism and Black Repression Association (ABRA CADABRA) -- Thanksgiving and Black Friday represent some of the worst examples of white oppression and entitlement in America, next to the existence of San Narciso County itself -- an unapologetic Trump stronghold.

In 2011, a throng of rabid shoppers flooded out of the mall like a mythical Sumerian deluge to claim the lives of eight ABRA CADABRA members who were protesting outside. Following the massacre, most of the residents responsible said they never noticed the demonstrators.

Bethany Brightslice, a homemaker from Bennington Vale, was involved in the incident. She told reporters she had no idea what was happening.

“How could anyone tell the difference between the black girl selling facial cream at the kiosk and the black man with the ideological and politically charged civil rights posters?” she asked. “All I knew was that Gottsgeld was selling out of reduced price iPads, lemon zesters and Amish-made faux fireplace heaters. It was an honest mistake, which is why the police didn’t press any charges.”

Mayor Manny DiPresso, despite outrage from surrounding and more diverse communities, admitted that no charges would be filed under such circumstances. These protections have since expanded. As a result of recent “accidental rapes,” legally considered “persuasive ravishings,” and debatable lynching attempts, most locals are exonerated under the county’s sweeping “Brock Turner Defense.”

“With hot items like MacBook Pros and Hillary Clinton toilet paper on sale this weekend, the Turner Defense was seen as imperative,” DiPresso explained.

But the surviving members of ABRA CADABRA believe the situation will continue to deteriorate under a Trump presidency.

“I don’t know what the hell folks are thankful for on this holiday,” lamented Green. “First off, our cracker radio station’s always playing Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ after dinner. It’s about a bunch of spoiled white kids who ‘take on the system’ because they don’t like the city’s policy about using the garbage dump. Boo hoo, man. Then we have to endure the humiliation of flying monkeys on The Wizard of Oz, which they always show after Thanksgiving. And if all that weren’t bad enough, we got a new hillbilly president who doesn’t understand what Black Friday is; Trump thinks they call it that because the stores sell everything cheap -- you know, at prices BLACK brothers and sisters can afford.”

In Memoriam

Black Friday has long skulked within the shadows of violence and despair. In fact, the Internet tallies the number of deaths and injuries that arise from the event each year. For 2016, the toll stands at nine deaths and 102 injuries.

The ghosts of Black Fridays past are malevolent and fiendish demons, gnashing in their bloodied teeth the bones of fallen heroes, those patriotic contributors to our economic recovery. An incalculable amount of noble shopping souls have perished in this service, broken under the weight of a hundred rampaging, overfed beasts.

So as we do each year at the Evening Transcript, we would like to take a moment of silence to honor our lost heroes. May angels sing thee to thy rest, brave comrades, colleagues and neighbors -- preferably over a discounted surround-sound system manufactured in China or Mexico and sold at unbelievably low doorbuster prices, for a limited time only.

(c) 2016. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. All articles are works of satire. See disclaimers.