The Wealthy Diet

My father says the government knows what's best for us, but when they said we needed to start eating cash, I didn't know if I could trust his opinions anymore. It had been building up for a few years; food was slowly inching closer to death as the months went on, becoming scarce, more poisonous, and infested with chemicals, and no one seemed to bat an eye at it. As long as the tomatoes were waxy and looked perfect on the shelves, people didn't question whether or not they were even eating a tomato. I always thought it tasted good. But it turns out the chemical levels had been rising, a little bit here and a little higher there, and people started dying once their bodies had turned on them. Just dropping like elephants to the elephant gun once the poison hit the roof. That's what got my sister and mom, my sister always said things tasted better when we were kids. I always thought she was right.

I was playing with my Virtual Reality headset when the world went all horrorshow. The thing just cut out and red-walled me. Forcing me to disconnect. I head downstairs, thinking it's some router issue, but I see my father standing, his mouth stuck open, feet planted on the fat carpet, a Canadian beer on the glass table between him and the television, and the prime minister was talking. I always hated how they talked; they looked perfect, like computer graphics, just their mouths moving like reading a script. It always creeped me out, but this time what the PM said was real dystopian fiction. It was all there on the television. I stood next to my father and listened:

"What we have feared for the last year is now upon us," I heard first, and the screen changed from his face to another video of thousands of people dead in white bags outside of hospitals. "All the data from the research confirms the food is deadly; even one bite will kill you."

My whole head just filled with this high-pitched ringing as I watched all those bodies on the screen, and I swear it was my sisters screaming voice, but it filled my head like with pools worth of water trying to fit in a small cup, and I just knew that this is what had caused her cancer and moms too. I fell back cause my head felt all heavy, being filled with all that noise. I planted myself on the couch, and my father did the same thing. Just falling back dead with worry. I don't know what the PM was saying, but I watched his mouth moving for a while; I looked at his tie, his perfect red suit, his freshly shaved face, and his stupid hair, and I hated him.

I look at my father, and he's all plump and biscuits and butter looking, and I, too, am all fat. We've lost a lot of weight during the year with the food shortages, but we still looked nothing like the PM. I look at the PM, and he's all tanned, and his physique healthy like a younger olympian, and I hated how perfect he looked. I wonder what he's been eating and how he manages to stay healthy. Then on the screen, a bunch of men in white chemical suits were pouring all this white liquid, it looked like milk, onto these big square cubes of colourful Canadian dollar bills and the noise in my head was silenced, so I could hear what he was saying.

The PM looks around the room, then down at some pages on his podium. This little box in the corner of the screen shows rows of money being soaked in the strange milky solution, "This white liquid is a mixture of specific proteins that bind to the polymer molecules and and and change the notes into something the human body can digest and absorb and, in return, become a healthy alternative to the current food pandemic and is a sustainable food source until other options will be introduced. "

My father and I look at each other, and I think it's pretty apparent this must be some joke, so I say, "is this idiot serious?"

"Idiot? How can you say that? Look how fast he has solved this problem, turning our cash into food; it's brilliant."

I have to turn my head back to the television because I can't think that anything could be more stupid than that. Until the PM continues with his speech:

"It's quite simple, we are going to take the total sum of all your accounts, you know, you know, whether it is your home, your shares in companies, banks, and supply you with an equivalent amount of notes, as edible food for you and your family, and I assure you, this compliance is the way of Canadians, it's always been this way and Canadians have always looked after one another. We will continue to do so in the name of science and our future and freedom."

I think about my friend Alex, a crazy pot smoking burn out who misses almost every class, but something struck me when the PM said that Science, Future, Freedom part of his script. Alex would always say to watch out for code words, like SFF. He said it's always some lie based on principles people can get behind, like Catholics and church and God and being good. I also remember him offering me loads of acid when we were in high school, and I don't know how he got into the same university, but maybe that says more about me.

So I turn my head back to my father, and he is rubbing his hands together, nodding his head feverishly as if he was some plebeian reading the bible for the first time fifteen hundred years ago. Looking at the man on the television like some saviour. I had nothing to say to him. I wish my mother were here; she would agree with me. Maybe she could talk some sense into him.

I turn back to the television. The PM is just talking about introducing a digital currency and all this shit; I don't even care about it. I stand up and check the router. Everything seems to be working fine. My stomach rumbles while I head back upstairs to my room.

A few days later, a helicopter drops the cash cubes off at our house. Dropping these various-sized, wrapped bundles of banknotes into the backyards of all our neighbours. It was clear very quickly that many people were struggling and others were not. Our reserve of dollars was not the smallest but not the biggest by far. Seeing all this money, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, in everyone's backyard just sitting there was strange. However, it was clear that no one would try and steal it, as the government had set up apps on our phones and returned an equal amount of money to us in digital form. The winds passed through my hair, and the whole street smelt of vanilla ice cream and honey garlic sausages, and I was starving.

I immediately noticed my neighbours pulling these colourful plastic notes from the large bundle and stuffing their mouths with the money. Chewing on it, opening and closing their maws like a dog trying to suck back a wad of peanut butter.

My father and I spent two hours cutting into the stacks of notes and bringing these heavy smaller cubes inside the house. I watched my neighbours devouring more of their bills, and by the time my father and I got all the cash inside the house, they had eaten their way through a whole layer of banknotes. They were sitting on the ground next to their food, hands on their stomachs, and smiling. I hadn't seen a smile like that in a year.

The whole house was overwhelmingly filled with the scent of honey garlic sausages. Whatever was poured onto the cash smelled delicious. I was salivating, drips of saliva from both sides of my mouth, and I had to wipe it away with my sleeve. My father and I look at each other, then back at the large cubes of delicious-smelling cash.

"We should eat it," my dad says

"We should, but what if it's bad, you know, cash? You're not supposed to eat money." Alex's voice rings in my head like some siren.

"What do I always tell you? the government is here to figure out all our problems, boy, don't you worry; what would your mother say? Besides, right, when the last time we ate? we can't go on any longer like this."

I look at my hands, like studying them, jumping back and forth between the two with some moral conflict; here we are in the cellar with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of life-saving cash to eat, promised to us by our government that it's safe. But, on the other hand, here we are, with money that a few weeks ago could purchase phones and poisonous food but was now supposed to be edible and that smells of garlic sausages in our basement that people I have never seen in my life have air dropped into my back yard and assured us on the television is safe. My stomach was roaring at the smell, and my fathers too. He was right; we would die if we didn't do it. So we brought up one smaller cube to the kitchen.

We are at the kitchen table and can hear the television play some news channel from the other room. A stack of bills between us equaling about twenty thousand dollars by the looks of all the different coloured notes and the quantities of each colour. It isn't that much, maybe the size of a ready-to-go chicken. We have a plate, no cutlery and a glass of hard tap water each.

"I should go first. I'm the parent," he says with conviction, but I could feel his stomach moving like tectonics. He reaches for a handful of hundreds. Placing them on his plate. It reminds me of a nice size steak, with it being brown and all.

The smell between us was knocking me back dead with hunger. My desire and senses swamped with this sensation that made me clench my fists with restraint—holding my chair to hold me back from lunging face first at all that mouth-watering cash on the table. I watch my dad's shaking hand grab just one single hundred dollar bill from the stack, and he lifts it to his mouth, and I can see his eyes closing as he sniffs it. Then he sticks his tongue out and licks it. I think about all the creases in that bill, how old it must be, where it's been. How much cocaine has been snorted through it, and what chemicals are on it now. His eyes bug out of his skull, all like a fly, and he stuffs it in his mouth as if the lick had driven him mad. Then, with his mouth opening and closing like he was chewing on some fist full of taffy, his hands fly down to his plate, and he grabs all the hundreds and stuffs them in his mouth like some sick circus act. Just sitting there, chewing all this cash, it sounds crinkly, like an empty plastic bottle being squeezed, but his mouth is opening and closing in big bites like he is drowning in molasses and caramel, practically choking on the stuff.

I leap towards the plate in the middle of the table. Knocking the plate onto its edge. The bills fly all around, and I start stuffing fives and tens in my mouth. Then a twenty and a few hundred dollars more in my open salivating cavity until I can't breathe. It's so hard to chew, and I chew and chew, and it tastes like sugar cream pie, and another bite, it tastes like maple bacon, and it's just this maple bacon dessert that fills all the holes I didn't know I had as if something so sweet and delicious couldn't have existed.

I sit back because I can hardly open my mouth. The money is so tacky. I watch my dad chewing and stuffing more food in his mouth. The whole room smells like honey sausages. Finally, my father finishes all the bills on the table, and between his opening and closing mug, he vomits some words mumbling:

"Basement, food, more, I need more." He heads downstairs. I don't know if I've seen him move that fast in his whole life. He knocks over a chair before leaving the room.

I'm just trying to open and close my mouth, and that plastic bottle noise is loud in my head, crinkling right between my ears, but quickly I notice that my whole brain burns with white-hot receptors firing, like I was high on this cash, like I snorted a line in a dorm bathroom. After some more chewing, I swallow this wad back; I feel it, slimy and thick, shivering down my throat and plopping in my stomach. But I am not even remotely full. I think that can't be it, we just went through at least twenty thousand, but those thoughts evaporate in the burning pleasure of my feelings. I needed more, and I needed to eat it now.

My father returned with two cubes about the size of a whole hunk of ham shoulder each. Dropping it onto my plate. The plate wobbles on its side, and the stack of cash also does. I start ripping it apart. Piece by colourful piece of delicious money and fill my dripping mouth hole with as much as I can until I can't breathe or speak but only whistle through my nose, sucking in hot nasal breaths of air between chews, and it's perfect. I've never been more satisfied by food before in my life, and not once did I hear Alex's voice, not once did I hear my thoughts doubt the milk-covered cash, only that it was good, and by the time I finished the whole thick carving of money I sat there with my father like a stuffed turkey, all full of delicious sweet good stuffing a hand on my stomach until I passed out right there at the table high as a kite with pleasure I never knew I needed.

About two months after that first bite, our supplies were noticeably shrinking right around when the looting started. People weren't hiding it either. All those neighbours I saw with small piles of cash in their reserves were fully charging right through other people's front doors at three in the morning. The screams were terrible, but worse was watching all those once skinny bodies, now gelatinous and sick and wet with oil sitting on the steps of these broken-into homes just eating people's money. It was so much worse because when I looked at this unrecognizable figure in the bathroom mirror, I knew my father and I were right around the corner to being them on those front porches.

I sit on the couch with dad, and we watch the news, looking at this Olympian looking Prime Minister, and I hate how tan he is and how perfect he looks. My father and I watch with the volume up, and we wheeze through fattened lungs, staring now at a few hundred dollars bills each and some fives that rest on old plates on our laps. His hands shake with rubber muscles as he reaches down and grabs the few plastic pieces of food. One at a time, like Doritos, he puts them in his mouth, licking his fingers, chewing, and he turns to me, and I hear one of our neighbours screaming, and he says, "don't worry, son, the government will figure this out."