The Tax Man Cometh

Sometimes, late at night on the rare nights of absent nightmares, I dream about all of the good times we had. My husband and I were so excited to be together. Everything was fun and carefree.
I remember dancing in the moonlight in our happy neighborhood without a care in the world. It was so beautiful and the love was there. We lived in the best area of the suburbs. People helped each other and we all got along. Until we saw the flash on the horizon, it was one big party. Then came people screaming and sirens were everywhere. 
They didn’t hit our cities first, they hit our food and water supply. As we went for days and then months without food, we began to barter everything we had for a simple meal. A large black utility truck that screamed government would cruise our neighborhood daily offering food for goods or money but money was scarce. No one was working after the cities were hit. There were no more jobs to have except for helping hands and trades around the neighborhood.
We thought the truck might be the feds at first but there was no paperwork or exchange of information. The man in the truck never asked for money. It started with our belongings like jewelry then shoes and socks. Then came our clothes and blankets. They never wanted our defunct electronics. We didn’t know where it all was coming from but the supply of meat was steady as long as we had goods to barter with.
I guess we got greedy because we had a lot of clothes and junk but the moment came when we had almost nothing left. Our bellies were full but our shelves were bare and the nights were cold. We didn’t think of winter. Summer and spring went by so slowly with nothing to do that we thought it would never end or real jobs would even come back. I guess we should have paid attention.
When the delivery truck came by that late December day, we asked where the food came from. “Your fellow neighbor!” The fat man bellowed as he tossed the boxes of frozen stew and meat on our porch. 
I didn’t know what that meant at the time until a few days later while eating a warm stew on a foggy coastal night. They must have forgotten to remove the wedding band from his hand for right there in the bowl of stew was a gold ring wrapped around a finger. I pulled the ring off and noticed the initials JER stamped on the inside.
I lost it, my stomach recoiled into heaving spasms as I threw up whatever was left of JER on the sidewalk. 
“You killed these people and fed them to us?” I tried to scream but it came out as a sobbing shriek through all of the bile forming into a giant spit bomb from my lower lip.
The thought washed through my head like a cheap cannibal horror movie. The months of how long we had been eating this slop went around in circles. When was the last time we saw a cow in a field or a garden growing? Since the flash came that day and the sky turned to ash. Nothing was growing, not even the grass. Of course! It all made sense now.
The next few weeks I spent fasting upon only the water from the stream. I had no idea where these food sources were coming from but I couldn’t let it continue. I didn’t trust the food nor did I trust that man who delivered it weekly to our doorstep. My husband kept eating like it was nothing. He didn’t believe my theory.
“The government would never do that to us!” he spouted with his mouth full of what they called meat stew on the label.
The ingredients of “meat stew” were a simple list of some non-descript meat, garlic, mushrooms, and potatoes. I can see the mushrooms, garlic, and potatoes growing easily without the sunlight but the meat of an animal requires certain substances like grass and grains. This stew was without fat which indicated to me the livestock used was not eating grains or grass. Where are they keeping such creatures?
And where was this government my husband asked about? They didn’t seem to exist anymore. There were no police or ambulances about. People fended for themselves and protected their own. After the flash, my job ceased to exist and anything electronic stopped working including all of our new cars, televisions, computers, and radios. We were living in dystopian hell.
Still, people worked together. There weren’t any looters or criminals scoping our area. People were trying to help each other or just survive. I guess when survival skills begin to kick in and everyone is affected on an unknown sublevel people just try to help. Maybe. But where were the criminals? They seemed to be the first to vanish.
The man came around again with the frozen meat, but when he asked us what we had to offer for the stew, I blurted out that we had nothing left. We no longer had jobs and all we had were the shirts on our backs.
“Are you sure?” he yelled, waving a package of stew in front of my face and as he did, I noticed that his ring finger was missing.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Jason Earl Ringly, why?”
“I do have something left. You lost it making your stew!” I tossed the gold wedding ring at him.
He caught the ring and studied it. The shock on his face was obvious but not enough to tell me what happened.
“Did you lose it in an accident making the stew or are you killing people for food? Where are all of the cows?” I screamed.
His laughter bellowed from his huge belly as he looked down at me. People began to gather around. Up until that moment, I hadn’t noticed something very peculiar about the residents in the area. Many were missing fingers and toes. Some were even missing hands and even whole arms. One man who normally wore his blanket around his body was missing his entire leg! The old lady next door pushed her husband out to the crowd. I hadn’t seen him for months and now I knew why. Both arms and legs plus an ear were missing but he smiled at the large man in front of him just the same.
Jason looked at me while pulling out a large butcher knife. I’m not sure if the gleam coming off his eye was just plain happiness or the glint of the knife, but as he spoke, he smiled. “The Tax Man Cometh! It's time to collect. Don’t worry, no one has to die.”
Category:Wheel of Misfortune 2022
Category:Dismemberment
Category:Mental Illness