Sparks, NV — 31-year-old Dawn Qualls found herself in the torturous and fiery pits of Hell over the weekend after ordering a Starbucks limited edition Holiday Hellraiser Carmel Machiatto. Ms. Qualls, who works in guest services at the neighboring Silver Legacy Resort and Casino, was out doing some early Christmas shopping and popped into the Sparks Blvd Starbucks for a quick pick-me-up.
“It was 2 pm, and I was pooped,” said a distraught Ms. Qualls speaking via inter-spiritual channels to the surface of Earth. “And I ordered my usual Grande Carmel Machiatto, except this time the barista asked me if I wanted the limited edition Hellraiser cup. So I said, ‘why not? I like new things.’ It turns out this was the worst decision of my life.”
According to people at the scene, most of them peering creepily over their MacBook Pro laptops, it was an ordinary day at the local Starbucks. No one noticed Ms. Qualls until they heard her screams, and she was consumed by a “dark light force” and vanished into thin air.
“I’m here every day, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jimmie McCarran of Sparks. “I’m always checking out the girls as they walk in, you know? I didn’t see this lady come in, but I did hear her blood-curdling screams just before she disappeared. The weird thing is that the staff just shrugged their shoulders and moved on to the next customer. I hope she’s OK.”
According to Starbucks spokesperson Bethany Millbright, they’ve been experimenting with several different kinds of “transformational” beverage cup themes in select markets. For example, the Hellraiser Pinhead cup was chosen for the Reno/Sparks region has a containment strategy in case “things got out of control.”
“We here at Starbucks pride ourselves on our innovative instincts,” said Ms. Millbright speaking from Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, Washington. “Our customers have come to expect these kinds of new and fresh products from Starbucks. And as it turns out, this latest Hellraiser campaign was a huge success with one catch: it eliminates our customers from this plane of existence, which frankly isn’t good for the bottom line. So we’ve temporarily removed the Pinhead Holiday Cups from our Reno/Sparks market until we can tweak its performance a bit. They should be back soon.”
Over the past few years, the popular coffee chain has been experimenting with various “sinister” themes on their coffee cups in their ongoing war on Christmas. In some markets, they’ve embossed Satanic Pentagrams. At select Fresno, CA markets, they’ve served cups with quasi-Satanist/thrash metal band Slayer cups which have been well received in the hell hole. The Tempe, Arizona Starbucks had that smoldering black piece of something on them from the 1980s film Time Bandits with the words “don’t touch it, it’s evil,” prompting many customers to touch it and be consumed in a terrible explosion. However, other than the soul-damning Pinhead cups in Nevada, the most controversial cups featured Dr. Oz in Newark. These New Jersey suburbs led to riots and then the arrest of over 50 people last week.
As for the Hellraiser fixes mentioned by Ms. Millbright, she gave some hints on some of the adjustments they’re making.
“Well, first off, we can’t have our customers simply disappearing from terrestrial Earth-like that,” continued Ms. Millbright. “So we’re working with the underworld and hope to have a compromise where they can stay here, buy our products, and at the same time satisfy the underworld’s demonic forces. And we’re also planning on expanding this collection to Tacoma, Washington, Sedona, Arizona, and Stone Mountain, Georgia.
