Crimes of Cacao
I thought I was safe posting my dirtiest secret in the online forum SweetCinz on the Dark Chocolate Web. I sat before my computer in a hot-pink nightie top and shorts that were covered with a pattern of martini glasses. Alcohol had been banned years ago, but I had gotten the ensemble at a thrift store twenty years ago. I covered my camera to ensure complete privacy while using the alias SugarMama to unburden myself.
I typed:
Since an early age, I have had a promiscuous relationship with chocolate. My first tryst was the cheap chocolate at the grocery stores that used to be available when I was a teen. From there, this love affair expanded to every flavor. In college, I was in that experimental phase when I was willing to try anything: white chocolate, dark chocolate, with nuts, and with caramel. As I grew older, I expanded my palate to try more refined varieties with more concentrated dark chocolate so I could get that theobromine boost. Every time I celebrated, I did it with chocolate. When my girlfriend and I broke up, I went on a three-day fudge spree.
With the increase in chocolate bans over the last decade, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to turn to or where to go.
It was cathartic sharing my burden with others who might understand me. I had kept my confession heartfelt, vague enough not to sound like a solicitation for chocolate if this message was somehow traced back to me. There were a variety of responses, some commiserating, some sharing their own sorrows.
CocaoLoco’s message caught my eye:
First it was marijuana and alcohol, and I was fine with it if it was for the greater good. Then it was saturated fat, sugar, and coffee, but chocolate? I have to get a doctor’s prescription just to apply for olive oil to supplement my diet so the government will let me have some in the house. This has gone too far!
GanashGenesh24 shared:
Our country is a farce of democracy. The health insurance requires my doctor to regularly test me for ketosis because I haven’t been following the government mandated diet.
Tears filled my eyes. These were my people. I felt less alone.
An evangelist wrote:
There are many people out there suffering for their dietary sins. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Cleanse yourself free of the toxins of chocolate by embracing an all-vegan diet. Call 1-800-GOT-VEGI so that you can experience the grace and purity of the great almighty vegetable smoothie.
I scrolled past the vegetable fundamentalist’s post. Vegi worshippers were almost as bad as the protein pushers out there. The moderator shouldn’t have even been permitted evangelists in the forum. Then again, if they did that, they wouldn’t be any better than the government with their totalitarian ways.
Most of the comments were from other users suffering from the chocolate prohibition as much as I was.
Pro-Choc81 wrote:
The government took my sister. She had a thyroid problem that led to obesity. She developed diabetes and a number of health issues. The Healthcare Enforcement Agency abducted her to put her in a “health camp” to help her recuperate. That was five years ago. We haven’t seen her since. DO NOT TRUST HEA.
There were rumors about the national healthcare system exterminating people who were a drain on their resources, but I had never met anyone in real life this had happened to—or a family member of a victim. It was an urban myth of the internet, coming from unreliable sources of information.
Still, part of me worried that might be where the HEA was headed if it wasn’t doing this now.
Only one member responded negatively in response to my post. Their username was ProCin, but it was obvious they were anti-chocolate from the first line:
You should be ashamed of yourself. There’s a good reason chocolate was banned. Chocolate isn’t just killing you, but it’s destroying the rain forest. It’s murdering indigenous people who live on that land. It’s killing the people who traffic into our country, and the courageous officers who die on the streets to fight the gangs and chocolate dealers who profit from your pleasure. You are a degenerate sicko!
I rolled my eyes. This user sounded like my father.
CreamyNug54 followed that up with:
Ignore the anti-chocolate rhetoric. This isn’t the place for that. Does anyone know where to buy some quality cocoa in Portland, Oregon?
I waited for an answer. The closest supplier I had once known was in Seattle before they had gone silent on the web. I started typing my own question, then deleted it. I was on the Dark Chocolate Web, so that meant it was safe to ask questions like that, wasn’t it? Someone else had asked, and they probably weren’t going to get busted for just asking if there were any chocolate dealers out there.
Still, I thought about my history with the law. I’d been fined and spent a week in jail the last time I’d been “high” on theobromine. I had found out the hard way that law enforcement required caffeine and theobromine blood tests by targeting anyone who looked “too happy.”
The key was to appear as listless and medicated as all the other sheep out there. If I did that, no one would suspect.
KapowKacao wrote:
I know someone who knows someone who supplies in Bend.
Bend was only two hours away. But there had to be someone in Corvallis or Eugene. These were college towns.
If I didn’t ask, I would never know if I would get my hands on more chocolate ever again. It would be carob from here on out. Yuck!
I asked: Is there anyone near Eugene, Oregon who is selling?
No one answered. I wasn’t completely surprised. I turned off my computer, and I went to bed. Disappointment weighed down my soul.
In the middle of the night, I woke to a sound like a car crashing into my apartment—which would have been impossible since I lived on the fifth floor. Flashes of light in the darkness blinded me. Someone yanked me from my blankets and threw me to the ground. Pain exploded across my arms as someone beat me with something that felt like a baseball bat. I thought I was being robbed.
The words of my attackers sent a chill down my spine. “You’re under arrest!”
Oh no! The police had found out about my darkest secret.
The lights turned on. I blinked at the sudden brightness. A swat team dressed in all-black surrounded me. I trembled in my nightgown, as much from fright as pain. The jerk with the billy club—or bully club as I thought of it—leered at me as though my attire broadcast my guilt. I wished I’d worn my modest and retro Carebear Pajamas instead of the silk pink nightie. Surely they would see the martini-glass pattern and risqué attire as evidence of a criminal mind.
I could see now that the Dark Chocolate Web was not as safe as I’d thought.
“You’ve made a mistake,” I said, scrambling for a lie that would satiate them. “I let a friend use my computer.”
A man resembling a bulldog stomped in from the other room. “This is all I found so far.”
He held up a Nestle bag containing a quarter cup of chocolate chips I had traded one month of wages for.
If they had found my stash of chocolate in the floorboards, they would soon find the cocoa nibs in the Ziplock behind the wall panel and the chocolate Easter Bunny I’d been saving for a special occasion.
“This is only a small time chocolate addict, not a dealer,” someone from the other room said.
I wasn’t an addict. I was just someone who didn’t agree with dietary fascism.
The bulldog man smiled at me with sinister intent. “It isn’t a complete loss. We can get her to lead us to her supplier.”
They weren’t going to be able to get any information out of me. I had met my supplier on the Dark Chocolate Web. They had since disappeared, theoretically arrested or dead.
A woman with a beefy frame that could only have been achieved by lifting weights and drinking chalky, green protein drinks, grabbed me by the ponytail and dragged me down the stairs. I screamed as each step slammed across my spine.
#
The interrogations lasted hours, though there was no information they could get out of me that would be useful to them. My chocolate supplier was gone, and the only way I had been able to get chocolate back in the day, was by leaving envelopes of cash in the hollow of a tree with a map that showed where to find my purchase later. That didn’t stop the HEA from torturing me with bully clubs, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding.
After waiting for three days in a cold, drab cell with only water and green protein drink to cleanse me of my evils, I was presented to the court in my dirty and torn nightie. In the days of my youth, prisoners had been treated with a modicum of decency. I wasn’t even given the dignity of an orange jumpsuit. There were no lawyers.
The judge was a man with skin that sagged over his skeletal frame, a man who looked as though he hadn’t eaten an ounce of sugar in his life. “You have been charged with possession and intention of use. How do you plead?”
“Not guilty.” My voice rasped hoarse from vomiting up the vegi drink they’d tried to force down my throat. “It wasn’t me. I was framed.”
The judge sneered down at me, his breath stinking of acetone. “Upon your entry to this facility, your blood test showed elevated levels of sugar that you can’t reach with green vegetables and protein. If you were following the government mandated diet, you would be in ketosis.”
From the reek of his breath, I was certain he was in ketosis right now.
Rage percolated in my core like a coffeepot would have in the days before caffeine had been banned. “It isn’t the government’s business if I’m in ketosis or not. It’s my body! If I want to be obese or have diabetes or have high blood sugar, that’s my concern, not yours.”
If I wanted to purchase a wheelbarrow full of chocolate, that was none of their business.
Flecks of spittle showered from the judge’s mouth. “Silence, you degenerate criminal! It’s everyone’s concern. Do you think tax payers want to pay for national healthcare to treat your chronic inflammation caused by sugar? Are you so entitled that you expect us to eat the costs of your heart disease? Are the hardworking, able-bodied to bear the weight of all the addicts as they fight infections, viruses, and cancer fed by your moral depravity? You deserve to answer for your crimes.”
Sugar and chocolate could be addictions, but not harmful ones. Occasionally indulging in chocolate wasn’t going to give me chronic inflammation, destroy my liver, or turn me into an invalid who wasn’t a productive member of society.
“I’m not an addict. I still drink the required protein supplements,” I said, trying to apply to his sense of reason. “I’m not a bad person. I’m employed full time.
“Silence!”
I would not be silenced. “Occasionally indulging in sugar and chocolate isn’t a contagious disease.”
The judge sneered, obviously disliking what I’d said. He nodded to the bailiff, who jolted me with a taser rod. It was worse than the batons the swat team had beat me with days before. I found myself lying in a puddle of my own urine on the courtroom floor. The judge, the court recorder, and the bailiff scrutinized me as though I were filth.
The judge pointed an emaciated finger at me. “You’re being charged with two counts of sugar crimes, two counts of chocolate, and one count of contraband trafficking. This is your second offense in five years. We’re giving you one last chance. You can go to rehab and change your disgusting, sinful ways, or you can go to prison.”
I chose one month of rehab. Each day was filled with the bland repetition of kale, broccoli, and soy protein drinks. Once a week we had a treat day when we were permitted real meat—chicken or fish in our smoothie.
In an assembly hall of other supposed addicts, the group repeated the mantra’s that blared from loudspeakers on the walls. “Pure protein and green vegetables will cleanse my soul.”
“Poo poo to ga vegababa will cleanse my hole,” I mouthed in defiance.
Around me was a sea of people with lifeless eyes.
All the while I held fast to my ideals, not wanting HEA to break me. I repeated my own mantra in my head. “Food should be a choice. Food is not a crime.”
When it came time for my aversion therapy treatment, doctors showed me pictures of chocolate chip cookies, chocolate bars, and Devil’s food cake while using the taser baton on me. I told myself I was seeing carob and sugar-free, diet food, not the heavenly dessert I had grown up with.
On the last day, I found a Hersey’s chocolate bar had been left in my cell. I recognized the test for what it was. I held the bar away from myself, my tone filled with revulsion. “Guards! Get this filthy food away from me.”
I didn’t have to feign my disgust—only the disgust I felt was aimed at my captors and their fascism.
Later that day, I was released. My social worker said, “You’re on six months of probation. Don’t mess this up.”
#
I returned to my apartment. My landlord had repaired the door, and I was overdue on last month’s rent.
“Now that you’re reformed and changed, you should have no trouble keeping a job,” my social worker said as he eyed my apartment.
I’d never had a problem keeping a job, but my social worker lumped me into the same category as other criminals, probably not even bothering to read my file. But as I’d gazed at the taser baton at his hip, I knew to keep my mouth shut.
My life was a lie. My recovery was a farse. But I told myself to act the part of a vegan who loved soy protein.
I still thought about the rich morsels of chocolate coating salted caramel. I salivated at the thought of creamy, dark chocolate mixed with coconut milk. I dreamed of crunchy nuts dusted with cacao.
More importantly, I dreamed of a day when people wouldn’t be judged by their dietary preferences.
I waited six months for my probation to end. Then I waited another month to be certain I wasn’t under surveillance. I could only hope their department was so overwhelmed by the multitude of chocolate rebels that they had better things to do than watch me around the clock for signs of relapse.
After I checked for recording devices and found none, I drew the curtains and opened the panel in the wall to see if my stash remained.
My chocolate Easter Bunny was still there! Despite the three plastic bags I’d used to conceal the scent, the heady aroma of chocolate made it through. My mouth salivated.
I tucked it away. I wasn’t an addict like the government claimed. I still wanted chocolate, but I didn’t need to eat it. I needed chocolate as a symbol of my autonomy. Chocolate was freedom.
What the government didn’t realize was that their ban on chocolate made me want it more.
Sarina Dorie has sold over 200 short stories to markets like Analog, Daily Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, and F & SF. She has over one hundred books up on Amazon, including her bestselling series, Womby’s School for Wayward Witches.