Never Get Out of This Maze

"We'll never get out of this maze!" his wife cried over the noise, her voice weighed down with exhaustion and anxiety.

"No, we will make it, Kimberly," Jim replied. He clapped his arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "Let me carry it for awhile." Kimberly gratefully handed him their treasured prize.

Suddenly, a battle cry rang out from behind a glass jewelry counter. A group of shoppers with murderous, wild eyes sprang out with claws extended.

"They've found us!" Kimberly screamed.

Jim pushed her forward. "Quickly! Aisle Three! Use your elbows!"

She flung herself into the crowd, bouncing off of people, carts, and shelves like a pinball. She tried to make room for Jim and the box, but the greedy zombies she divided poured back into the pathway like water.

Jim kept one eye on Kimberly and one eye on the rioting mob closing in. With his body, he sheltered the precious box he carried, as he shoved his way to the sanctuary of Aisle Three. Victory was just out of his reach when he felt the first hand land on him arm.

Kimberly turned in time to see her husband disappear under a pile of dirty bodies. The maddened shoppers, in their camp-out clothes, tore at Jim with snarling words and howls of desperation. Kimberly screamed her warrior cry and threw herself at the woman on top, who was poking into the pile with a golf umbrella.

"Save yourself!" came Jim's muffled yell. "Leave me here!"

A piercing whistle distracted everyone, and a knight in a shining, navy blue uniform flashed his badge and brandished his night-stick. He came into the fight like a tornado, pulling people off the pile and throwing them to the side where they glowered and licked their wounds with grumbles and blasphemies. At last, he pulled Jim up off the floor and herded him and Kimberly to Aisle Three.

"Here you go, folks. Hope that's still in one piece." he gestured to the box in Jim's arms. They thanked him over and over again, until he spotted another dog-pile and cut them off.

Jim and Kimberly payed $399 for their 42-inch plasma HD tv and scurried it out to their car. Jim shoved it into the backseat before jumping into the vehicle and locking the doors. They sat quietly under the bright parking lot light for a moment before Kimberly finally spoke up.

"So, what are we going to do with it now?"

Jim shrugged and turned the key in the ignition. "Sell it on eBay, I guess."

Bethany Bachman writes in Philadelphia and has seen fights break out on Black Friday over more ridiculous things than a tv (an Elmo doll comes to mind).

Check out www.storypraxis.com for more fiction fun.