I’m starting to get used to writing short fiction again, and I’m reminded of why I’ve always loved it so much in the first place. Short fiction is a chance to get down and dirty with characters, with plots, and with the development of both, without getting too attached because I know they’re going to be gone soon. If I want to kill them off I can without too much thought of consequence, unlike what goes on when I write novels.
However, there are limitations to short fiction that are obvious as well. Because I don’t get to know my characters quite as much I’m not as invested in them. These days my short stories only last as long as the situation that I’ve set up lasts, not until the characters die or a resolution is achieved.
Once I wrote a short fictive piece about a man at a New Year’s Eve party who suddenly realizes that public holidays and functions are merely constructs, and he’s struck by how meaningless most of life becomes when you look at it that way. The entire story takes place inside of his head, and exists only in the battle between what he’s known and what he’s finally figured out.
I like that short story because it proves a story can live through its use of metaphor and inner conflict. I decided I want to do something like that again with this one. I’ll remind you of the rules regarding the Flash Fiction Challenge…
- Each entry has to follow a set prompt
- Each entry has to be 1,000 words or fewer
- Each entry has to be written specifically for this challenge
Topic: Chocolate.
It’s been ten years since I took a bite of chocolate, since I let it magnificently melt in my mouth and slide sinfully down my throat for the final time, so I can look back at it with an objective eye. I can be around a Snickers bar now and not salivate obsessively over it, and not beg its owner for just a little bite, and not offer my body in exchange for a hit of the good stuff.
If there was a 12-step group for chocolate lovers I would probably have been its first member, dutifully standing up in front of my cacao loving peers and proclaiming that I have a problem. That’s what we call it these days when an obsession interferes with our normal lives, driving us from the ranks of those who love something to those who are in love with something. It’s no different from any other addiction, not from nicotine, or alcohol, or sex. Chocolate, to me, was all those things rolled into one.
So I had to quit. Cold turkey.
I knew that slowly weaning myself off the good stuff was never going to work for me. It’s a slippery slope when it comes to addiction because it’s easy to say all the right things, and even to believe them, but when it comes to putting them into practice the addiction simply calls out. And we answer. I had tried for years to quit, had told myself I was going to cut back. But cutting back was difficult when it was in the house. Living by myself was the real killer because there was no one there to keep me to my promise. If the chocolate was in my apartment I was going to devour it. I was going to keep going back to the beast and sucking the marrow off of its bones.
So I did quit, and I did it on a Sunday in August, when the temperature was eighty-five, just hot enough for M&Ms to melt in my hand, tattooing me with sweet circles of chocolatey goodness that I always licked clean after. But on that day I didn’t have M&Ms. All I had was my willpower, which had never been enough before, but I knew something had to change. I had read all of the documentation. I had seen all the articles. Chocolate was a cruel task master that had turned me into its slave. It was time I broke free of the shackles that had claimed me so long ago.
But my friends weren’t supportive. They looked at me like I was a little slow on the uptake. They were of the opinion that chocolate can’t be evil because chocolate is so heavenly. It’s obvious they were never tempted to over-indulge. Some people don’t have addictive personalities, so they could never understand mine, and my friends were this way. Eventually they learned to refrain from eating chocolate around me, from indulging in their chocolate drinks, and from discussing the glory of the chocolate infused lifestyles they chose to live.
I began to get the chocolate sweats, the nervous shaking of my hands and arms that indicated that I was going cold turkey. I had counted on the nerves, but not the extent to which they disturbed my life. I had to call out sick from the office, and I imagined my cubicle cold and sterile, waiting for me to return and claim it from oblivion. But I also thought of the chocolate I had stored in my bottom drawer for emergencies. I had missed it on my sweep through, when I first decided to just eliminate chocolate from my diet, to crush its hold over me.
The drawer was my final temptation, the final hurdle I would have to leap before I could legitimately lay claim to being sober. My sister helped me bag up all the chocolate at my apartment, and I have to say she was appalled at the sheer volume that dominated such a small space. I had two giant bags of Snickers, a case of M&Ms, a chocolate cake I had just baked the night before, two huge tubs of mint chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer, and an 8-pack of Oreos in my kitchen. The rest of the apartment was no slouch in that department either. In the end she helped me lug seven trash bags worth of chocolate to the local food kitchen. Even they were surprised that it all came from one solitary individual.
That was ten years ago, though, and even though it was quite the process that counts as ancient history now. Sometimes I eat out with friends, and they order something with chocolate in it, but I’m not moved to tears anymore. I’m not hanging on the edge of my seat drooling all over them. I no longer get the chocolate sweats, and I taped off my bottom drawer at work ages ago so even it doesn’t draw me in like it did. I still go to the 12-step meetings in my mind, introducing myself about once a month to the addicts still living in my brain.
I’m happy to admit that chocolate is no longer the anchor weighing me down. I no longer feel so much pain from the forced separation. Just like other addicts, though, I’ll never truly be over the addiction. I just need to stay vigilant, to keep my life goals in mind, and none of them include eating a pound of chocolate a day and hating myself for it afterwards. But damn, it sure would be nice to have a 3 Musketeers bar. Or twenty.
Sam
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