Great News: The Man at the End of the Dock Has a Black Friday Deal For You
Hope you’ve had your fill of the sinful roasted fowl and the damp bread contained within its anus…because Thanksgiving is over and now you simply have to grab deals.
Everyone is getting deals — deals from Sears Roebuck, from Toys ‘R’ Us, even from the notoriously stingy shopkeep known as Samuel Goody. Some deals are hot, others are quite cool to the touch. But all of them are gone. You missed out while reading this small paragraph, which is yet another reason why finishing elementary school only proved to hold you back in life. Imagine the deals you could have scooped if you couldn’t read.
But don’t fret, there’s one last deal you can scoop, and it comes from The Man at the End of the Dock.
The Man has been waiting here for quite some time, staring into the fog that has consumed the Lake. He was there before the reeds knew how to sing, before the croakfrogs knew the taste of blood. He doesn’t speak words, only truths. And if you so dare as to creep around to the front of him, to see if his eyes are truly as alabaster as the mist he casts his gaze upon, you will fall fast as rocks into the Lake below — and the last thing you’ll see, before you are forever claimed by wetness, is his blank, unchanging visage, distorted into inscrutability by ripples.
Step gingerly on each plank of the dock, forged by the Man’s brother, The Pathmaker. The legend has it that long ago, when the Man and his Brother were constructing the walking world, they quarreled about how humankind should be led. The Man said that all peoples should be given fine deals to better them on their path — that they should have many fine percentages taken off of items such as 40" Plasma TVs and Ninja 11-in-1 Air Fryers. The Pathmaker deemed his brother a fool and a champion of weakness…for if given the slightest slack, surely the human spirit would crater into slothfulness, demanding deals and even steals to better cushion their increasingly useless lifepaths. Their argument turned into a bitter war, which ended with the Pathmaker building The Dock and plunging himself into its depths. The Man, unable to pursue his brother without a path to trod upon, now stands at the edge of the wetted planks, waiting for his kin to return.
Every step brings you closer to his immovable form, and closer still to his tantalizing deal. You wonder what it might be. Is it 58% off DEERC D20 mini drones for adults and kids? Is it 11% off the knowledge of How and When You Will Die? Or perhaps is it $25 off a 45-pack of miscellaneous Osh Kosh B’Gosh?
With your final step, just inches away from his winter coat and clenched fists, the deal becomes apparent: It’s 11% off the knowledge of How and When You’ll Die. At first, an excited chill runs through your blood, as you have always wanted this deal. But at second glance, you notice something curious about the particulars of the Man’s offer:
The listed “regular price” of the knowledge is actually 11% higher than it usually is. To take 11% off that fictional, inflated price merely reduces the value to its original cost.
This Black Friday deal is a sham wrapped in the fog of the holiday rush, a gobsmacking act of FOMO-fueled flim-flammery. There is a heat in your cheeks, they’ve turned cherry red like a cherry pie that got so angry the crust flew off. The only question remains: Will you let The Man at the End of the Dock know? Or will you slink away back down the boards, each creak like a groaning gunshot heralding your cowardice?
You have made up your mind. Not only do you choose not to take the deal, you won’t pay a single penny to know how and when you’ll die: Because you already do know. You’ll die right now, by letting The Man know exactly how you feel about extortionate Black Friday prices…
Suddenly, the dockboards click and clack, creating a square border. The fog begins to lift just a little. And the man rises! Before your eyes, the Bequeather of Unacceptable Savings hoists himself aloft in the sky, taking his form further from your grasp with every gasp from your shocked, quivering throat!
Clearly he has made peace with his time on Earth, knowing he will never find his brother again, and now chooses to return from whence he came. The calming of his inner turmoil is most certainly not reflected in the Lake around him, as the waters churn upwards and the trees heaves to and fro. A couple of little frogs were trying to knock out some joyless afternoon sex and are promptly obliterated by a stray log traveling at 94 MPH. The clouds accept The Man, and in a final burst of light, all color evaporates from the world.
The sideboards recede and the waters settle. If there was a God, you know he has abandoned us.
Black Friday is over.
Grey Saturday is upon us.
