A Red Queen Black Friday

One Fancy-Ass Vacuum

Ruth kept her eyes carefully pinned upon the Holy Trinity's shopping list as she sat in the passenger side of Farley's scarlet F-150. With a smooth stop, the truck glided into one of the last parking spots available at Target just a few minutes before six o'clock.

She and her son's fiancée were going to need more than two shopping carts. The list went on and on, going from the basics of toasters, coffee pots, and vacuums to griddles,  waffle presses, and air fryers. Another column featured countless kitchen tools that she had never heard of and luxury pot and pan sets that Gisa had already researched, finding that they'd be on sale today.

The situation that the ex-Scarlet Street Fighter and mother of five found themselves in was equally awkward on both ends. Silently, they supposed that they had been put together to balance one another out. Farley, despite being three months pregnant, was as fierce, intimidating, and cunning as ever, while Ruth Barrow just needed a fresh start with her kitchen and was too polite to be a real Black Friday contender.

When Ruth Barrow at last peeled her eyes away from the list, she took note of a couple of things. First off, Farley had not parked in the back-forty of the Target parking lot as she had expected her to. Somehow, she had snagged a spot at the very front of the chaos, just across from the red entrance doors. It took Ruth another moment to notice that the spot was a handicap spot, but just as she was about to say something, Farley pulled out one of those blue permits and stuck it on her rearview mirror.

Perhaps she would've scolded her son's fiancée if she wasn't pregnant, but more importantly, Ruth's eyes went a little wide at what she saw before the doors. Through blowing snow that had been going hard through the night—it had delayed Maven's flight, that poor baby—hundreds had filed into a line that extended all the way down the storefront and snaked around the corner. Aside from what her sons and Cal would face at Best Buy, Ruth knew she was competing with the scariest Black Friday shoppers around.

Not to mention they were New Yorkers.

The Target workers had put up barricades to keep people from cutting, but with the fake handicap permit Farley had pulled out, Ruth had a feeling that she and Diana Farley wouldn't be playing by the rules.

"Let's get going, Missus Barrow."

Ruth, still unsure of what to make of Farley, decided in that moment that if she wanted to survive this morning, she had to have a powerful ally at her side. "Please," she told Diana. "Call me Ruth."

<<<>>>

The deals, along with the people, were insane.

Farley had the strange intuition that what was happening now was the wildest moment of Ruth Barrow's life.

The Target's aisles were teeming with crazed shoppers, half of them prepared to turn their red carts into weapons at a moment's notice. Boxes containing gadgets were tossed into carts at the speed of light, and carts tugged by overzealous housewives whipped around corners. Carts collided, and people, on occasion, collided as well. A din of screams and shouts permeated the air, making it thick with the noise of commercialism over the faint Christmas music that played.

At least, Farley thought with a touch of dark humor, she didn't have to brave Best Buy with the Barrow boys and Cal.

Farley, having spent the last five years living the mirror-opposite of this suburban nightmare, was not a little bit disgusted at the sight she saw. After pushing through the barricades to the dismay of more than one red-shirted worker—Target's security just wasn't a match for Diana Farley, and besides, she was pregnant, so rules didn't apply—she and Ruth Barrow faced down a hurricane of deal frenzied-shoppers who spread out through the store as though they were an army raiding a kingdom.

The kingdom just happened to be a Super Target.

Beneath the fluorescent lights of the store, she watched as humankind revealed its true colors.

The kitchen section, Ruth and Farley quickly realized, was among the worst parts of Target.

The two had only begun to make a dent in their shopping list. A four-slice toaster, one of those Nutri Ninja blenders, a Keurig, and one fancy pot and pan set had made it into their two carts.

Farley's eyes frantically scanned the kitchen gadget-filled thoroughfare that she sailed down, half-expecting for some deranged shopper to launch themselves at her and her kitchenware. Farley would be having none of that. The pot and pan set was seventy-percent off, after all.

"I want that one," Ruth said, flinging a hand towards the aisle that ran perpendicular to them.

Farley looked onward, assessing what Ruth saw. In front of them awaited a lengthy display of vacuums, ranging from those old, clunky steamers to the new wireless machines. Ruth pointed at a one near the aisle's end, and though Farley had never vacuumed a floor in her life nor ever intended to, she had to admit that she liked it too. It was sleek and red, wearing a slim design.

"Cords are a bitch," Ruth continued. Farley worried that her language had been rubbing off on Shade's mom.

Still, Farley grinned. "Hell yeah they are. Your sons will put it to good work, too."

The two women shared a laugh in the middle of the aisle.

But the laugh quickly faded as Ruth and Farley took note of the woman barreling down that same aisle, eyes pinned on the exact same vacuum that Missus Barrow was admiring in the most loving of ways. A big fat sale tag was pinned to the shelf, and beneath the display, Farley realized that only one sleek red vacuum was left.

"No," she whispered.

She looked frantically at Ruth, who wore a similarly panicked expression.

"I'll fight her off," Farley whispered, hoping that her companion would hear her. "You grab the vacuum."

And just like that, Farley was charging forward with her cart, all six feet of her matching the other woman step for step. Ruth was right behind her, apparently deciding that she needed that vacuum more than the suburban bitch who was beelining towards it with a stupidly smug expression.

The dingy tiles of the Super Target blurred beneath her feet, and for the first time that morning, Farley understood the bloodthirsty rush of Black Friday.

Another three seconds passed,  and Farley's cart was careening into the suburban bitch's, who up-close, had curled blond hair and a gaudy amount of mascara over her eyelashes.

"What the—"

Ruth came in from behind, dragging the last box from the shelf and throwing it into her cart with an amount of strength that Farley hadn't thought the five-foot-two woman possessed.

The impact sent the woman flying towards the ground, and as soon as Farley knew that the woman hadn't hit her head, she began to turn away.

Ruth, on the other hand, had a different idea.

With the woman down, Ruth took a quick gander at the woman's cart, and before anybody could protest, she hauled the teal KitchenAid mixer right out of it and into her own.

Farley looked at Ruth Barrow with all of the pride in the world, ready to give her a high five. Ruth grinned back at her.

But then the suburban woman began shrieking.

"We should probably leave," Farley said, already turning her cart towards the checkout.