You are a vegetarian. A strict one. You have never tasted the delicious, sodium-rich opiates the world calls fast food. But your friends have. Sami and Keisha have met burger and dairy royalty. They’ve huddled close to the Colonel’s warm breast and spelled filet with an A.

Your friends think it’s strange you haven’t experienced these things. They want you to know fast food like they have, which is to say, intimately.

“You’re basically a prude,” says Sami.

“You can’t go to college having never tried it,” says Keisha.

“Fine,” you say. “But no one can see me, or they’ll think my whole life is a lie.”

You pick up the food and drive it to the woods outside of town, away from the reign of gossip.

“My mom told me about a study where they gave rats a meal from Jack in the Box,” you say. “And the rats ate the bag instead of the food.”

“You can eat the bag if you want,” says Keisha. “We won’t stop you.”

When she opens the bag the smell slaps you with a mix of desire and nausea. If it were familiar to you, it would be soothing, but it’s not.

“So you used to be a cow?” you ask a hamburger. “You look better on TV.”

“The TV adds weight,” says Sami. “Everyone knows that.”

On TV, the lettuce and tomatoes were stars, dazzling viewers with their charm and verve as they strutted on a yellow carpet of American cheese; the bread was voluptuous and proud, and the bacon crooned a sizzling melody. Now, those same celebrities huddle cold and desperate in a lame heap, far from the glitz of the big screen. It’s a traditional Hollywood arc.

“I am not touching that,” you say.

Keisha thrusts a Buttery Jack at your face. “Just try it,” she says. “It’s really no big deal.”

“How bout this,” Sami says. “If you take a bite of the Buttery Jack, Keisha and I will go with you to that gross vegan restaurant.” Keisha nods in agreement.

You watch them watch you. Their excitement is perplexing.

“Ok, fine.” You take the burger in your hand. The bun skates around on a tomato.

“Careful!” says Sami. “Don’t fuck up the layering.”

“Just eat it,” says Keisha.

You bite into the Buttery Jack’s strange flesh. It’s squishy, but surprisingly dense. The first thing you taste is the salt. The second, also salt. Then, other familiar things, like ketchup, bread, and butter, all laid over a mysterious backdrop of meat you can’t make sense of because the succession of neurons that just fired is completely and utterly new.

“Eh, I don’t like it,” you say, giving the burger to Keisha.

“Well,” she says. “Try it again later. Not many people like it their first time.”

“Like cigarettes,” Sami adds.

“Maybe, but not until I see you take a big bite out of a vegan chili cheese dog at The Radiant Radish!”

Keisha’s eyes get big. She freezes.

“Oh come on, Kee,” you say. “Vegan cheese isn’t that bad. It tastes better than this junk.”

Sami is frozen too. She’s staring in the same direction as Keisha, at something outside the car window. They seem less scared than confused.

You turn and face the adult male form of Jack I. Box, the guy from the commercials. His pale white face with its sinister arc of red lipstick is pressed against the car’s rear window. He taps on the glass with an 8” chef’s knife.

“Ugh,” says Sami, locking the doors. “This sucks.”

“He has a knife!” you shriek.

“He has no clue how to use it,” says Keisha. “He doesn’t make the food. This is a just a huge inconvenience. He’s gonna follow you around until you announce that you were wrong before and you actually do like the Buttery Jack. I’ve seen the commercial.”

Jack taps on the glass again. Keisha holds up a finger, asking him to wait.

“If we leave, he’ll just keep following us,” she whispers. “In the commercial, he broke into some dude’s house and force-fed him a sandwich. Very annoying. Your parents would hate that. I say we deal with him here.”

Sami agrees. “But you have to talk to him,” she says. “You’re the one that got us into this mess.”

“Me?” you say. “I never even wanted Jack in the Box.”

But you are the closest to Mr. Box, and Sami is already rolling down your window.

Jack leans his head in. His sticky-tack eyes are dead yet searching. His traffic cone top-hat is tilted dangerously to the side.

“What’s the matter?” he asks in his mock-enthusiastic boardroom tone. “You don’t like my Buttery Jack? It’s a classic.”

“I’m just not a meat-eater, that’s all,” you tell him.

“Well we also have salads,” he says, sounding rather ashamed to admit it. “And chicken. How about a chicken fajita pita?” He pulls a wrap out of his Brooks Brothers jacket. “It rhymes.”

“Chicken is meat…”

“I’m not arguing semantics! Eat the pita and tell the camera you like it.” He gestures toward a phone in his breast pocket, recording you.

“This is getting fucked up, dude,” says Keisha, who’s now recording Jack on her phone. “Look, we know you have a feeding fetish, and we don’t wanna kink-shame or anything, but how do you think the Internet is gonna respond to you pulling a knife on three girls in the woods?”

“You know about my feeder thing?”

“I saw your commercial in a Classic Fast Food Ads Compilation on Tik Tok, the one where you straddle that guy in his backyard and feed him a hamburger until he tells you he likes it. Not chill, bro.”

Jack’s red crayon smile becomes a thin, flat line. “That was the 90’s! And he was talking shit about my burgers.”

“Consent was a thing in the 90’s too,” says Keisha.

“Not to the same, uh, degree. I, uh—” Jack takes a nervous bite of pita. He can hardly swallow.

Looking back on this moment, you will recall the subtle quivering of Jack’s flatlined smile as the sign that he had snapped. But for now, all you can do is laugh. Your friends catch the bug and now all three of you are laughing, the kind of heaving, hysterical, teenage laugh that takes over your whole body.

Jack lunges through the window, swinging the knife like a sword. You duck as it grazes your shoulder.

“Go!” you scream, and Sami steps on the gas. The car lurches forward, knocking Jack to the ground. As you whip around a bend in the road, you see him stand up and climb into a red convertible. His headlights flash, splitting the darkness in two.

“Be careful,” you tell Sami. “It’s fucking dark.”

“I know it’s fucking dark,” she says. “You had to eat your burger in the woods.”

“Listen, don’t blame me! I never even wanted Jack in the Box!”

You’re winding around country roads, arguing like this, when you hear a high-pitched skid, followed by a loud thud. Then something low and deep, almost like a cow’s moo.

“He literally just crashed,” says Sami.

“That guy is such a loser,” says Keisha.

“Let’s go see what happened,” says Sami.

“Are you kidding?” you say. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“It could be great content,” says Keisha.

“We’re going,” says Sami, and she turns the car around.

It doesn’t take long to find him. Not 200 feet behind you is Jack’s wrecked convertible. On top of the car, taking up both front seats and pinning Jack underneath, is a cream-colored Charolais cow. It bellows and writhes but can’t get up.

“Why is this exactly what I expected?” says Sami.

Jack turns his ping-pong ball head to look at you. A sugary tear rolls down his face. “Please,” he mutters. “Get help.”

“Are you crying Sprite?” asks Keisha.

                                     .     .     .

Instead of help you go into town to get vegan chili cheese dogs from The Radiant Radish. This part of the night is your idea. Sami and Keisha take turns filming as you feed Jack I. Box the vegan dogs.

“This disgusting man chased us with a knife and tried to force feed us. Now he’s getting a taste of his own medicine,” you say to the camera. Under the immense weight of the cow, Jack admits that he does in fact like the vegan chili cheese dogs.

You post the video on Tik Tok, and it becomes an instant sensation. Even Brad McMahon, who is pretty much always bullying you, likes it.

“Post it on Youtube too,” Sami reminds you. “They love this unhinged shit.”

Owing to the virality of your video and the numerous trends it inspires, sales of Jack in the Box are up 41%.

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