NO MORE SUGAR
The early morning sunlight flashed a golden amber as it caught the descending ribbons of maple syrup. The sauce fell in drizzling ropes, first onto a perfectly square pat of creamy butter, and then, unable to contain it’s morass of molasse, it slowly dripped off the sides of the immaculately browned and fluffy stack of pillow-soft pancakes. And with one final squeeze, city councilman Glenn Headwidth had knowingly, and shamefully, dispensed the last drop of sugar in the whole city of Lakeburg onto his breakfast.
There was no more sugar in Lakeburg. What had originally appeared to be a small hiccup in the computers had turned into a riot inducing hellscape; where sugar was like meth, and every citizen of Lakeburg, a methhead. Teenagers, whose storied apathy had been the clarion call to couches for decades, now sprung into militant and frightfully organized action. Single mothers, who had relied on confectionary induced comas to free their afternoons, became baggy-eyed warriors, fighting to replace the saccharine laced sanctity of peaceful, although chemically altered, sleeping children. Systems of bribery and cajolement, utilized by parents and nannies relying on an endless supply of sugar to work as tender, crumbled and what took over was nothing short of anarchic entropy with a slight inclination for the formation of mobs, usually of the lynching variety. Bands of concerned and cracked-out neighbors gathered together, roaming the streets, armed with weed whackers and garden shovels, hunting for any trace elements of the sweetness that once flowed like fountain drinks.
Daytime news anchors began trolling the conflagrated neighborhoods, looking for truly newsworthy distress. In some cases, the tv personalities were using stray packets of Splenda to illicit information they hoped would make for historic news coverage. Several people, convinced of the futility of a continued life without the considerations of a cassonade, immolated themselves in front of the Little Debbie distribution center on Front St. A heap of burning corpses smoldered upon the driveway, blocking access to the center. The continued production of all those cakes and cookies would be in jeopardy without workers, but manpower wasn’t the missing ingredient; what was needed was sugar, something that no one had in Lakeburg. At least, no one was outwardly advertising that they had sugar.
As city councilman Glenn Headwidth ate the final bite of his breakfast with satisfaction, he heard a thunderous pounding at his door. As he approached, he heard the unmistakable and agitated sounds of an angered crowd. Open handed and forceful, the people slammed the councilman’s door, concerned with the local governmental response to this problem. Or the lack thereof. Wondering if answering the door was the right decision, Glenn hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. If he didn’t answer the door, they might think he was not inside. They might move on. He waited as the crowd’s anger slowly rose in intensity. There were shouts outside,
“I can smell it! It smells like pancakes god damnit!”
As the crowd realized that syrup was a key aspect to pancake enjoyment, and syrup was mostly sugar, the noise and anger surged mightily. He backed away from the door and stared at his entryway, open mouthed and stupid. His hands searched his robe absentmindedly; half like he was looking for his car keys, and half proprioceptively reminding himself that yes, he was inside of his body and yes, this was real life. Glenn put his hand on his face and was terrified to find little chunks of syrup and tasty crumbs of pancake stuck to his stupid mouth. He quickly wiped off the incriminating crust and started to form a plan inside of his head. Remembering that his cool rationale, even-handed ability to control crowds, and well-versed persona had seen him through 4 non-contested re-elections, Councilman Headwidth bravely resolved to open the door.
As his hand gripped the doorknob, 613 buckshot splintered their way through his door and viciously embedded themselves throughout his face and torso, effectively ending both his life and his questions about what kind of reception he would receive from the angry mob. With the door jamb blown away, the mob entered Councilman Headwidth’s house, to find the robed official in a bloodsoaked heap of terrycloth, gun smoke and sinew.
Walking slowly towards the body, as if not to wake it up, an elderly member of the mob leaned over and in frustration, addressed the man with the shotgun.
“Well for God sake’s Travis, you shot the alderman!” He drawled, poking at the heap.
“And just how in the hell was I supposed to know he would be directly on the other side of the door? He musta heard us coming." Travis quipped back, shouldering his gun.
He stood, perhaps not as proud as a big game hunter, but as a man who had used his firearm for it’s ultimate purpose, and that, was something. He continued,
“He shouldn't even be here! He should be doing whatever it is that he usually does! His ass should be in Town Hall, or checking drill sites for permits, or...hell I don’t know. He should definitely not be sneaking around his own damned house!"
An investigative branch of the mob had detached and began rummaging through the recently deceased’s kitchen cupboards. There were the sounds of frantic searching followed by loud curses. One of the investigators had found something. The kitchen door swung open and in the hand of a waifish old lady, who was diabetic and had no active need for sugar like the rest and was just along for the ride, was the empty squeeze bottle of Aunt Jemima.
“Councilman Headwidth was holding!” She yelled, clutching the empty bottle with punctuation.
“He deserved what he got.” Travis said with finality. “In a bigger sense.”
Travis’s self-affirmation and absolvement from shooting an unarmed man for eating pancakes seemed almost right. But a lot of things “seemed” on that day.
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