The Survivor: A brief, short story

They say it's the little things that get you, well I once killed a man for snoring. We were the only two survivors of a plane crash over the Andes Mountains. We had been there for over two months, living in the one small section of the jumbo jet that was not destroyed in the crash. Ironically, it was the First Class section, which I only caught a brief glimpse of during the actual flight as the blissfully ignorant flight attendants pointed me towards my seat in the back of the plane. I imagine the experience of being in First Class must have been quite different during the flight than it was for us after the crash. For one thing, the seats no longer reclined, and secondly, the body temperature dropping, appendage-numbing winds that swept through the now open-air feel to the cabin, could not be stopped at the press of a button.

After two months, my fellow survivor and I had consumed all the bags of peanuts and cheese and crackers from the plane. I soon entered a downward spiral and started to become delusional from the cold. The lack of any real sustenance had begun to make me crave meat of any kind. I debated my future action in my head for a few more weeks, but after living on a diet of maggots and condiments, I eventually let my survival instinct take over. I lunged at him in the cold, dark night and suffocated him with one of the little pillows that we kept from the plane's wrecked overhead compartments.

Luckily for me, there was a group of extreme skiers who happened to be heli-skiing in the area and they saw the small fire I had made in order to barbecue his ribs. I told the skiers who found me that I did what I had to do to survive, that I had developed a bond with this man who had shared the same horrific experience with me up until the day before; when I munched on his charbroiled thighs like they were the Colonel's original recipe. But, I swear he had the most annoying goddamn snore I have ever heard. It was this loud, honking Felix Unger type snore.

To tell you the truth, I wanted to kill him during the flight. Not only was he snoring loudly, but he fell asleep with his fat, dandruff filled head against my shoulder, forcing me to press my body up against the window the whole flight. He didn't respond to any of my subtle nudges and even drooled on my shirt. Luckily for me, the oxygen masks fell down over our heads, and the screaming of the terrified passengers knocked this disgusting sloth out of dreamland and off of my shoulder. Finally, as the plane started falling out of the sky, I felt like I could breathe again.

The End.