Fiction: Food Rage Manifesto

FOOD RAGE MANIFESTO
Copyleft  2006
By
Jonty Kershaw

    Ever since I was a child, I have had a strange quirk. I have had the habit of assigning emotions to food. I think it started with my mother. She would say, "Eat that last potato, dear. Doesn't it look lonely?" I don't know about the potato, but I certainly was lonely.
    As I grew up, I started to treat my food with the kindness and attention I didn't receive myself. I would pair my asparagus with each other so they would have someone to talk to. I would place my pork chops in a soft bed of mashed potatoes if they looked tired. I would always make sure to chop the heads off all my vegetables before I boiled them. I never told anyone what I was doing.
    Later in life, after my career dried up and my marriage fell apart, I found myself alone and bitter inside the walls of a cheap basement apartment.
    Alone with my kitchen and all the food it contained.
    I began to methodically vent my anger and frustrations on my old friends. I would threaten the squash. I would boil cabbage as mercilessly as a Victorian maid. I would mash the potatoes. Sometimes I would let the cheese go bad without tasting it. I won't tell you what I did with the meat.
    As my sadism grew to new heights, something happened that I never would have expected. The food banded together. The zucchini and the beef started whispering when I wasn't paying attention. The beans unionized in secret. The meatloaf wrote a manifesto in the spaghetti sauce encouraging revolt.
One day when I was feeling particularly satisfied with my handiwork, the food rose against me as one. I fought back, but the cottage cheese was too much for me. I tried to crawl to freedom, but the fruitcake was stopping the door, and the butter had sacrificed itself to the cause by greasing the door handle.
    I became a prisoner in my own tiny basement apartment. Words cannot describe the abuse I suffered over the next weeks. The meatloaf took up its role as captain of this edible army, and no one, not even the eggs, could stand in his way. He was so sadistic that even the frozen peas began to feel sorry for me.
    My mind went. The hours and the days and the weeks became one blurry patch of sunlight on the wall. One day, when I was more lucid than usual, I realized that I was alone. The food army couldn't replenish its forces without my trips to the grocery store, and had finally succumbed to its own expiration dates.
    I was free.
    Now, you might think my experiences would have turned me off food abuse, but this is not the case. It has only strengthened my resolve. I have fled to the mountains to regain my strength, and I am writing a new manifesto so I can amass my own army of hunger and march on the Sam's club and the Publix and the Food City and take back our fine, besieged country.

    Here's chapter three of my Manifesto of Digestion. It is entitled "Rules of War":

1) Always chew each mouthful of food 32 times. It deserves no less.
2) Always put the produce and dairy items in the special compartments of the refrigerator to cut off their lines of communication.
3) Fruitcake is a foolish and terrible Christmas gift for someone you love.
4) Remember to bake the turkey for 6 hours. It would do the same to you if it had the chance.
5) Don't forget to carefully grease the pie pan before cooking to thwart escape attempts, and maintain eye contact at all times while rolling out the crust.
6) Keep your utensils spotless. Bacteria have a well-know political bias towards food.
7) Meatloaf hates you much more than you hate it.

    That's all I have managed to write so far. I will keep you updated.