The Cannibal Within

The trip with Daniel was supposed to be a simple one. We’d pay to climb the mountain, and our guide would help take us to the top. Simple. If I’d known what was really in store for us, I might never have gone.

It was our second day on the mountain when the avalanche happened. We saw it coming and managed to get underneath a rocky outcropping that protected us from most of it. Our guide was not as lucky, and instead was crushed under the snow when part of the outcropping collapsed underneath the force of the snow. He disappeared with a short scream, obliterated by the white onslaught raining down the mountain. And with that, we were trapped, three walls of rock and one of snow. We were on the less traveled side of the mountain because we’d wanted a challenge, so it was unlikely that anyone would find us. Even after they started looking a few days or a week from now when we hadn’t come back, it would be a miracle if they found us at all, let alone before we’d starved or frozen.

Space was not much of an issue; we had plenty in our icy prison. But supplies were something of a problem. The guide was the one with the food. All we really had was basic supplies, and a hot top with a little propane tank. Daniel thought it would’ve been fun to cook something on top of the mountain. Instead, we sat across from each other in this space we would share for potentially the rest of our lives, cold and miserable.

“Hey Danny,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“You remember that time when we were kids, and we made that shitty little igloo in my backyard?”

I did. Daniel and I had been in each other’s lives for as long as I could remember. We’d grown up together, best friends. We only took a break from each other during college, when he went away while I stayed in town and got a job.

“Yeah, I remember that. It ended up collapsing on us.”

“Hopefully the one we’re in right now is made of tougher stuff,” he said with a chuckle.

Daniel always could find the good in the bad. He could always cheer you up in a shit situation. He was just that kind of guy. The kind to crack jokes when you were at your worst, make you laugh even when you didn’t want to. Make you smile even when the only thing you thought possible was a frown. He was just a genuinely great guy, and everyone saw it in him. What he saw in me though, I didn’t know. I’d always been ungainly and unpopular. But he never left my side.

“Hey Daniel,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Why’d you come back?”

He scrunched up his face. As though the question had offended him.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You could’ve been anything, gone anywhere. But you came back to our shitty town. Why?”

And it was true. Daniel had always excelled academically, and always been gifted athletically. He was just a good ol’ homegrown American boy. When he went to college, it was a full ride. After that, he went to medical school and became a doctor, a surgeon. Then, he came back to our hometown. The hometown I’d never left.

He seemed to ponder for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

“I just really missed it. I missed the people. I missed my family,” he said. “You can only get so far out there without the people you love.”

I leaned forward and said –

“Bullshit.”

He seemed taken aback by this, the soft smile disappearing from his face.

“You had the whole world to explore, you could be making a million a year, you could be driving exotic cars, but you came back to our hellhole for family? Family you could’ve visited every year at Christmas? I’m not buying it.”

The small cave became quiet with my outburst, even the crackling of the snow seeming to silence itself. He wrapped his arms around his knees as he brought them to his chest. After a few minutes, I really began to feel bad. I shouldn’t have said that. My life was full of things I shouldn’t have said. Unlike Daniel, I was dumb. I had little common sense, and I’d been working shitty minimum-wage jobs since I was sixteen. I was twenty-six now. A decade of mediocrity. I was only on this trip now because he'd paid for everything.

“It was for you, Danny.”

Daniel’s voice pulled me out of my self-pity. I looked at him and we locked eyes. He was serious.

“Wha-”

“I moved back because I missed you, Danny,” he said, cutting me off. “Life just wasn’t the same without you man.”

I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“What are you talking about Daniel?”

He sighed, his breath freezing over in the air. He looked resigned.

“I missed you. I just couldn’t find anyone like you out there, and I tried. I wanted to have someone with me, someone like you. But there was no one. They just couldn’t fill your shoes man.”

I was in shock. No one had ever said something like that to me before. No one had ever told me I was really worth much, let alone that I was irreplaceable.

“Daniel, where is this coming from?”

He shrugged. “You’re my best friend dude. Always have been, always will be. I love you, bro.”

“I love you too man”, I said, holding back tears. “But I still don’t get it, there’s nothing special about me.”

“That’s not true Danny, there’s always been something special about you. You’ve always looked at life in a way I never could. Even in your darkest hour, you didn’t give up. You kept going.”

He was talking about when I was addicted to heroin. It started shortly after I heard he’d gotten into med school. I looked at my life and didn’t see anything worth living, so I tried to escape. I did it off and on for years, getting clean and relapsing. But when Daniel came back to town and found out, he sent me to a really nice clinic that actually helped me. He paid for everything, and to repay him I’d stayed sober ever since. It’d been two years now since I’d touched the stuff. But I still didn’t understand.

“You always saw the art in life, the beauty. You looked at nature like it was a gallery, not a terrarium. You never cared about understanding, you could just exist. I could never do that.”

With that, I saw tears in his eyes as well. I saw pain. He was telling me something he’d never told anyone, I could tell. This was something he’d been living with for a while.

“I wanted to hate you sometimes,” he said. “Because you seemed so happy just to be here. But I could never bring myself to it. I just wanted to be like you so badly, Danny. So badly.”

We were both crying now, the tears stung my cheeks, the cold turning them into icy rivulets of sadness. He was more composed, but I was sobbing. I couldn’t hold it back. I’d always wished the opposite, that I could just be more like him. I’d always wanted my parents to be proud of me like his were, for people to like me the way they did him, for girls to talk to me so easily. I just wanted to be better. And this whole time he wanted to be, what? Dumber? So stupid that the weight of life could be lifted off of his shoulders. What a weight, what a horrible burden he carried, I thought bitterly. To be so loved.

“Fuck you, Daniel,” I said, venom in my voice.

Now, he was the shocked one. His mouth opened in surprise.

“Fuck you. You think you’d be better off as me? You think being some dumb, heroin-addicted loser who barely got out of high school would be better than what you are? A fucking doctor! That’s what you are, you’re a fucking doctor, and everyone loves you.

What the fuck is wrong with you?”

His mouth shut tensely, and he choked back his tears. Once again the quiet reigned supreme in our prison cell. After what felt like an eternity, in actuality probably just a few minutes, he whispered something.

“What?” I said.

Again, he said something softly. So softly it couldn’t pierce the sound of silence.

“I can’t hear you, Daniel.”

“I said I don’t know!” he roared.

His suddenly fierce demeanor caught me off guard, and my anger was quickly forgotten.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me Danny! But something must be because I hate my life! Every day I wish I hadn’t woken up. Every night when I go to sleep I hope it’s for the last time! Do you know how many times I’ve fantasized?! Do you know how much I wish I had the balls to just blow my brains out?! But I can’t, Danny! I can’t fucking do it!”

Now I was fearful. Daniel was standing, shouting at me as I curled tighter into myself.

I felt like a child who’d once again said something stupid. I spoke before I thought about the implications. He took a step towards me.

“I guess I’m getting what I want, huh Danny?! I guess it’s finally ALL gonna happen for me! Everything I ever wanted!”

I was terrified and grabbed the pick next to me. Daniel saw this, and a look of realization and self-conscious horror came across his face. He backed off and sat down once again. I clutched the pick to my chest, trembling in fear rather than cold.

We sat there, him looking forlorn and dead inside, and me, shaking. The temperature was dropping, and soon I was shaking with the cold.

“Hey, Danny.”

“Yeah, Daniel?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, Daniel.”

“Can you take that pick, and put it right in my temple?”

His request startled me at first, but after a moment of thought it didn’t seem outlandish, given his recent revelation. But I didn’t have the guts. We both knew it.

“It won't hurt me,” He said calmly. “One good swing, that’s all it’ll take.”

My hands were sweating, writhing about the pick in nervousness.

“Please, Danny. I don’t want to freeze to death.”

My eyes widened, and I felt nauseous at his request. There was no way I could. I couldn’t murder my best friend.

“Daniel, I know we got a little heated, but we don’t need to do anything like that. We could still get rescued!”

“I don’t want it to come to that,” he said calmly. “I don’t want to make it out of here.”

“Daniel,” I said, pleadingly. “Daniel please don’t ask that of me. I can’t do it.”

He looked up into my teary eyes, and I could see the defeat in his.

“Okay, Danny,” he conceded. “But know this, I won’t make it out of this life alive, and I’d rather it be by your hand than mine. So please, reconsider doing me this mercy.”

With that, he laid down and rolled over to face away from me, and I was alone. I sat there, wondering what he meant by that. His life was wonderful! He had so much to live for, why wouldn’t he want it? The longer I sat there, the colder I got, and the more confused. Eventually, I crawled over to Daniel, and on my knees I asked him –

“Why?”

“Why what, Danny?”

“Why don’t you want to live?”

He was silent.

“I can’t do this if I don’t know why, Daniel.”

Silence.

“You’ve got so much to live for, you’ve got such a great life. Why end it?”

More silence. And then –

“Because none of it means anything. It’s all a pointless charade. It’s all just a chore at this point. The only thing I want anymore in this life is you, and I can’t have just that. So I don’t want any of it.”

I thought for a moment.

“What do you mean, all you want is me?”

He sighed.

“I told you, Danny, I love you, man.”

I sat behind him for a moment. Then I raised the pick into the air. My hand was shaking violently, and so I gripped it with both. Tears streamed down my face as I tried desperately to do what he wanted, to give him the only real thing he’d ever asked of me.

“Danny?”

“Y-yeah Daniel?” I stuttered, my speech impeded by my heaving chest.

“Thank you.”

I froze, my hands stilling themselves. And then I swung.

My aim was true, and with a horrible squelching sound the pick sank itself into his head. He jerked, then lay still. Blood should’ve been rushing from his head, I thought, but instead, it flowed slowly. It was pushed out by ambient pressure rather than a heartbeat. It was an almost peaceful scene. I sank back onto my heels and looked at what I’d done. It took a few seconds, but the realization soon washed over me, and I began to weep once more. Now that I’d done it, I was once more jealous of him. I’d never thought to get out, to end it. And now, here I was, trapped with the body of the person I loved the most in the world.

I began removing my clothes, and as I did the cold cut me deeply, quickly reaching into my bones. If he was gone, I wanted to follow suit. I just hoped freezing to death wasn’t going to be long or painful. Soon, though, I stopped trembling. I was confused, and tired, very tired. I laid down next to Daniel, holding him tightly, the pick still in his head.

“Hey, Daniel?”

“Yeah, Danny?”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you hurt for so long.”

“It’s okay, Danny. It’s alright.”