Singing Dixie

Jeremy Starfish was jonesing for Dixie Drumstick biscuits harder than ever before. A bad case of the shakes made it difficult to open his cupboards, and his cold sweats demanded that he hug himself for warmth every few seconds. It was the most sick he’d ever felt in his life – it was way worse than the time he’d eaten rancid salsa. Just thinking about the salsa incident made his stomach convulse for the fifth time that evening and what was left of his stomach’s contents went splashing across the floor in a flurry of orange and red speckles.

‘Th-this is it, J-j-jeremy,’ he stammered as he hugged himself in the corner, ‘You’re gonna be a statistic, just like the r-r-rest of them.’

He stomach heaved again and more orange chunks spilled onto the floor. His vision wavered as he stared at the sticky mess, trying to make sense of it all, trying to piece together the broken puzzle his life had become. He giggled as he mentally joined the dots of vomit together. ‘Looks just like my aunty,’ he muttered as he sucked in another breath. ‘I’ll just lie down f-f-for a minute, get m-m-my strength b-b-back.’ He pressed his face against the cool lino floor and felt marginally better, if only briefly. As he started losing consciousness he spotted a tantalising shape under the fridge; for the first time in his life being face-down on a kitchen floor might serve a purpose. He hauled his twitching, sweating body through the mess of saliva, vomit and stomach lining which bathed the kitchen floor, and hoped that under the refrigerator lay his salvation. He stretched out a trembling hand and snatched the rusty orange shape from the dusty clutches of the fridge’s condensation tray. He let out a whoop of triumph – the Dixie Drumstick biscuit was his! Jeremy didn’t bother dusting off the lint or layer of scum that coated the biscuit – he just threw it into his mouth and munched frantically, savouring every last greasy crumb. His appetite satiated, he lay on the floor and felt the warmth return to his limbs. It had been too close this time, much too close for comfort, and as far as he could guess it was only going to get worse.

The moment Kraft discontinued the Dixie Drumstick biscuit was the day part of Jeremy died. He went to every supermarket in town and bought every box of the precious biscuits he could find, partly because they were delicious, but mostly because he was properly addicted to them and got the shakes when he went too long without them. It was like a heroin addiction but about a thousand times more pathetic, and a thousand times more fattening. Heroin addicts look like skeletons after long-term use and struggle to put weight on, whereas Dixie Drumstick addicts like Jeremy (who am I kidding, he’s the only one) gained weight at an almost impossible rate. What’s more, the constant consumption of a high fat, high salt, and artificially-coloured diet left his skin yellow, pimply and waxy. He looked like the very thing he consumed, but much fatter, and nowhere near as tasty. Jeremy took to writing letters to Kraft begging them to put his favourite meal back on supermarket shelves. His pleas fell on deaf ears and his stockpile slowly shrank.

Jeremy was in a filthy state a mere two weeks into the discontinuation. He didn’t go outside, he didn’t shower, he barely drank enough water, and his bowels had slowly ground to a halt. Things were bad enough in that department before the tragic (his words, not mine) turn of events, but at least his daily walk to the supermarket had ‘mixed things around a bit’. The only physical activity Jeremy participated in daily could hardly be considered ‘strenuous’, unless ‘taking biscuits out of a box and arranging them in neat little rows’ classifies as ‘exercise’. The biscuits were not going to audit themselves, and his carefully-formulated rationing system depended on an accurate headcount if it was to work at all. Jeremy had worked out that if he consumed one biscuit a day, then he’d be able to hold out for nearly two years, as long as he maintained a balanced diet and only ate a biscuit to stave off withdrawal symptoms. That plan had gone out the window by day two as he’d neglected to buy any groceries other than biscuits, and he was too afraid to leave the house lest someone break into his house and burgle his towering collection of Dixie Drumstick boxes. Left with nothing to eat but his precious treasure trove, Jeremy gorged himself on his high salt, high fat, low, low, low, low, LOW fibre diet. The crazy thing about this biscuit addiction, as if an addiction to biscuits wasn’t crazy enough, is that the more Jeremy consumed, the faster the withdrawal symptoms would set in, so within a couple of hours of finishing a box he would require another just to stay lucid. He would set an alarm to wake himself every two hours, just in case.

With nothing left in the kitchen cupboard but empty boxes, Jeremy started to worry. He knew that he couldn’t get to the supermarket on his own – a lack of water had taken care of that – and he knew that even if he called someone they wouldn’t be able to help on account of Jeremy buying every last remaining box of Dixie Drumsticks in town. At the two hour mark he started to sweat. At the three hour mark he started to shake. By the fourth hour he’d passed out on the floor but was woken by the chattering of his own teeth a few minutes later, shortly before his sojourn through the pond of orange-flecked chunder.

Jeremy assessed his situation once his withdrawal symptoms were somewhat taken care of. He was a grotesquely fat man sitting on a kitchen floor, completely surrounded by (and covered in) vomit, and was fifteen minutes away from another attack of withdrawals which would surely prove fatal. He contemplated the series of events which had got him to this point and, as he wiped some of the saliva from his wobbling, yellow chins he admitted to himself that he was an addict. A strange, obese, yellow, pimply pathetic addict, but an addict nonetheless.

‘Jeremy,’ he said to himself, ‘You need help or you’re going to die.’ He struggled to his feet and, rather shakily, stumbled to the phone which sat on the bench top. Just as he was dialling the number for the ambulance he caught a familiar twinkle out of the corner of his eye. It was coming from his bedroom across the hall and, as he turned to get a better look at it, he yelped with joy.

‘Oh my word! I can’t believe I had forgotten about you!’ He clapped his pudgy hands together and bounced from foot to foot, all his worries forgotten. The first rule of overcoming addiction is admitting that you have a problem. The second rule of overcoming addiction is closing the door of a wardrobe packed full of unopened Dixie Drumstick boxes.