Survivor

This one tasted a bit better than the last, Luis thought, finishing the meat off of the woman's left hand. He tossed it aside and returned to the plane, pulling his coat closer to maintain body heat. Looking around for more food, Luis felt full for the day. Still, he knew it would be wise to find tomorrow's meal in advance. The fresh bodies preserved in the snow had grown fewer and fewer each week, but now there weren't any left…except one. Luis dreaded the day he would have to do this, but he supposed it would have to happen at some point. He made his way to the forbidden corpse and slowly removed the snow from it, revealing the dead eyes of his brother. Luis had been thoroughly desensitized from his excessive cannibalism, but it was not enough to stop the pain as he stared into his dead brother's frozen eyes. Tomorrow, he thought, tearing his eyes from the grotesque image. When night came Luis took shelter within the downed plane, and he dreamed of his childhood. He remembered he and his brother playing in the garden, playing with their space men toys and model army tanks. He was younger than Luis, and he was the happiness of the family. Luis awoke with wet eyes, shivering in the skeleton of the plane. The relentless winds endlessly whistled through the white night engulfing Luis, his dead brother, and the downed plane. He wiped his eyes and went back to sleep, hoping to be taken to a better place once more. No dreams came. Luis woke up early and decided to walk to the water nearby. The entire day he put off the inevitable, eating snow and staring into the icy waters while holding his jacket tight. Darkness soon returned. It was still comforting than seeing the skeletal plane though; he thought while he was alone in the darkness, everything will be okay. Luis was swallowed by blackness, hearing only the arctic winds and creaking of the downed plane around him. That night he was visited by the dream that had haunted him during his whole stay in the downed plane: the attack.

The first missile had instantly killed the 737's pilots, doing well to push the passengers over the edge of panic and into a mad frenzy. As Luis and his brother screamed and sobbed an explosion sounded as another missile collided with the plane. They fell through the clouds, falling closer and closer to the ground while an immense air pressure pressing down on Luis’s ears drowned out the agonized cries of the passengers. There was a great noise of impact just before Luis's vision turned to black. Even in his dreams, he could only vaguely remember crawling from a twisted corpse of the 737.

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When he got up in the morning the hunger was unbearable; he could not remember the last time he'd gone an entire day without eating. Putting off the inevitable, he uncovered his brother's body and pulled it into the middle of what was once the heart of the plane. Luis pulled back the shards of his brother's right sleeve to reveal a mangled arm with bone protruding in areas. He started eating the bicep, greedily tearing chunks of flesh off and quickly swallowing them. Despite how nice the feeling of obtaining food was Luis sobbed uncontrollably; his body shook and his eyes were jammed shut as he ate the corpse's arm. He ate more flesh off the unnaturally mangled right arm before dropping it and proceeding to the left. The arms weren't enough though; Luis began ripping meat off of the corpse's thighs and sides with blood covering his face and shards of skin clinging to his teeth. There was so much to eat. Once the deed was done he recovered the leftovers with snow and went to run from the plane to go look at the water. Luis gazed upon the flowing river as he looked at his bloodstained hands and clothes. Never again, he thought, I'm never eating another person ever again. The next day was the hardest; Luis didn't eat anything except snow. He was crying again when he heard the impossible: a helicopter. Luis stood up and looked to the sky to see that there was indeed a helicopter flying relatively low above the downed plane, and it was moving to a flat area to land. The machine easily landed, and two men hopped out and walked in Luis's direction. He created a huge commotion, shouting for help and waving his arms spastically as the men ran his way. Luis stopped dead in his tracks when he noticed how familiar the helicopter was, but it was too late. The enemy soldiers drew their guns and their bullets tore Luis to shreds. The darkness closed in on Luis for the last time, and as he heard the arctic winds, he knew everything would be fine.