I had no choice. It was me, or both of us. I knew he hadn’t the heart to do what I did, and if not him then we both would have gone. It was never supposed to happen, we weren’t meant to be in the cave for me more than two hours five at most. But the days crawled on, the batteries drained and light died. It is funny, how quickly things can change. One moment you have a full life ahead of you, ambitions, loved ones, dreams, so much time to live, develope. But when it happens you realize as if for the first time, how fast and callously all you live for is taken away. The sound of the rocks crashing above us, the last grey glow of light ripped away and left with the cold and empty darkness, yes that’s when I knew. When the last of the rocks settled we were left with silence, a quiet you would never want to know. We stood there, motionless as corpses. For hours we didn’t speak, didn’t move. At first out of shock but it quickly settled into a realization. Understanding what's to come and what to be left behind. The cold set in quick, cruel, sinking into me, I felt as if one wrong move and my bones would shatter like brittle plastic. Yet here I now sit, crimson warmth coating my arms, heat enveloping me as the blood, still hot coats my starved arms. By the time the flashlights died I had come to accept death, I knew the flickering LED would be the last light to bare my vision. I had time to think in the claustrophobic confinements of stone, perhaps to much time, I was ready to embrace a death of hunger. Apparently part of me wasn’t.
In the days before I did it the man and I didn’t talk much. For what was there to speak of, what use to it. I knew before it happened what I was going to do, part of me just hadn’t come to terms with it. I didn’t think myself capable, but the hunger brought out a part of me I didn’t know existed, and I was to weak to fight it. In the hours before, I think the man knew my intentions, but unlike myself he had already lost his will to survive, he never had the same spark of determination as myself. Although impossible in the darkness, I remember seeing his eyes as I brought the stone down on his frail skull. I like to think I died that moment, but in reality I know I lost myself the instant I gave into whoever it is that brought the stone crashing down on the twitching corpse before me. Now I sit, a mindless animal feverishly gnawing away at the carcass of my once friend; now simply sustenance, a way to keep me living another few days, a week, but for what.
I don’t know who I am anymore, I feel powerless to my actions. I realize now that I did not die inside, I have simply become a captive in my own mind, a slave to my hunger, the primal desperation to live above all costs. I have no control over this, the demon of instinct stole me away, I am not to blame. My mouth bloodied and grotesque unhinges. It is not me. My maw bites in tearing off a tendon. I didn’t do it. Chewing. I was powerless to stop it. Another sickly bite. I didn’t do it. My dry cracked tongue writhes licking the pooled blood from my lips. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.