Well folks, it finally happened. All it took was for me to skip lunch last Thursday and I gave into temptation. Pulling into the Wendy’s drive-through, I saw the instrument of my demise illuminated on the light-up billboard, “TRY SRIRACHA BACON FRIES.” Surely, I thought, such a combination of three individual ingredients, all of which I love dearly, could be an enjoyable menu item. Surely it’s not just Wendy’s marketing team that has convinced me of this; me, a mindless zombie uninhibited by free will, choosing only as my capitalist overlords would have me choose:

“Yeah, uh, one cheeseburger… one order of the sriracha bacon fries… and a root beer.”

“Sure-thing-come-to-the-second-window-please!”

I knew not what fate had in store for me as I traded paper money for a brown paper bag. Perhaps, in retrospect, the cheeseburger attempted to save me from certain hell as it left me so filled that I decided to save the Sriracha Bacon fries for a snack at home. Perhaps also, the cheeseburger thus sealed my fortune in the fries’ warm plastic exterior, dripping with water condensation and non-FDA approved “cheese”.

When the time came for a snack, I unsealed this casket of remorse and laid eyes upon Wendy’s latest creation. There it was, moistened fries crumpled together, as if attempting to reform the potato from whence they were sliced, drowned in a layer of multicolored yellow goop. It was as if the food itself was in terror. Bacon bits had been haphazardly tossed on top, and for the first time I felt less excited in the presence of crispy pork. A creature had died for this, I thought.

Yet I pushed on. The thought came to my head that, well, even if it tastes bad I can write an article in the Odyssey about it. I took my fork and pierced the heart of the foul beast, at which it shrieked with the lost souls of the damned. No, this food wouldn’t be consumed in individual fries – the fries had somehow fused together and came out in mutated clumps. Not always covered in cheese either; it seemed that the layering had developed a rubber-like consistency that would slip away when pulled on, and needed to be cut apart to eat.

My head dizzy, I dropped the plastic container on the table and my fork clattered against the glass top. My mind flashed with images of the Wendy’s mascot and her childlike grin, laughing at me, laughing at the folly of all mankind. Bacon Sriracha Fries. We never stopped to ask if we should.