Butterfinger

At first you're invited to share a fantasy. The plastic wrap is the yellow of an infinitely large banana, glowing and ripe. Pale light illuminates it from within. The glossy colors have a purity only achievable in feverish visions or commercial printing. Broaching this yellow field is an illustrated candy bar, breaking towards you. Airbrushed peanut halves prance beneath to the left and right, suspended in time against the pure yellow background. Beneath the bright blue Butterfinger banner lies the slogan, “crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery.” Nearby are claims and assurances: No artificial flavors. Gluten free. Added colors, it says, are from "real sources."

Tear open the package and your date with destiny begins. You are greeted with the intense aroma of roasted peanuts, smoky and powerful, making you salivate. The bar itself has seen better days, as revealed by its clothing, a dull and chipped chocolate robe. The robe is a sacrificial layer protecting against the hazards of handling. It flakes off at the slightest provocation, so fragile it feels almost performative, eagerly parting to reveal the naked golden body within.

The chocolate is slippery between your fingers. It wants to drop and shatter, but you're not done with it. Grip it tightly and the untempered chocolate begins to melt and smear. Neither of you can wait. The invitation is clear. Bite in.

Your teeth part the flimsy chocolate robe and cleave through your prize, a mille fuille of unidentifiable orange filling crackling with joy. Its nougaty snap is dignified: It meets your teeth with even gentility, smoothly separating in a long and gradual crunch. Meanwhile, the taste of peanut is light and gradual, its role more structural than flavorful. The role of the peanut here is to provide a honeycomb structure for sugar to adhere to, an airy nest of dense, fractalline crystals that cleave and part into layers. It is a fossil-rich creekbed of sugary flavor. The texture is classy; the flavor is a little crass. There is no subtlety or control behind the release of sugar. It's too forward, too sticky. As your tongue acclimates to the sweetness, bitterness builds behind it.

The nutty layers accumulate on your teeth, piling into stalagmites and stalactites that dull each subsequent bite and muffle your chewing. What was delicate and airy becomes sweet muck in your saliva. Meanwhile, fragments of roasted brittle and flakes of chocolate disperse everywhere. The evidence scatters across your desk and floor, hiding in the cracks, and wherever they find heat they melt immediately. Orange and chocolate splotches embed themselves in your clothes, a record of your eating captured like amber. Surely they will wash out. But you can tell that no matter your attentiveness, no matter how you wash and scrub, you will miss something.

This is the sort of candy you can't kill cleanly. All evidence points to a crime of passion. But the candy bar’s expression is blank and lifeless. There's no trace of its seductive invitation in these shattered remains, still melting in your chocolate-smeared hands. But although the scene looks heated and messy, you hardly felt a thing. Certainly you didn't fly into a rage. You bit, sure—you chewed and swallowed—but you never meant for things to go this far. All the mess was an accident. The bar wanted to be eaten, received you so politely, like it was made for this. How did things end up this way? The whole thing is disappointing. It wasn’t even that good. Sure, it smelled nice, and you liked the taste. You'd like to think the bar liked it too. While it could. But it wasn't special.

You look back at the wrapper. There's another one. What about them, the second bar of the two-piece share pack? What did they see? They were there the whole time. 

The second bar is silent. It is a mute participant. Complicit or victim, none can say. But you know this all will just happen again.

The taste and dust persist. Get a rag and some water to wash away the evidence. Leave the second bar in its shiny yellow package for now. Maybe it's for later, or maybe you will throw it away. In either case, you will forget it by the time you see another bar, still wrapped, waiting for you.