Almost a decade ago, a devastating global event occurred that is today known as the Global Strike. The United States of America was (at the time) a hyper-aggressive nation actively seeking out weaker countries and planets to annex and claim as their own. This lead to anger worldwide and then several missile threats eventually leading to action. The majority of the Western Hemisphere became absolutely uninhabitable for almost a year, until the remaining humans rebuilt it from its roots, creating the New United Democracy- the nation that I live in today- the peace reborn from death.

I sipped my coffee as I made my daily commute to my office. As a therapist, I listen to many stories from people who have suffered significant trauma in their lives. My client I was to see today was a middle aged man of pale complexion- by the name Richard Davis. He entered my office with the goal to deal with significant loss and trauma. He had large bags under his eyes, accompanied by significant scarring around the face. He sat in the chair across from mine, patiently waiting for my arrival.

“Sir I am so glad to be here with you today. Please call me Dick,” he started off by saying.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dick,” I replied.

He had a grateful sort of attitude that most of my clients do not have, which honestly surprised me. Most people seeking help from me are usually not the most joyful.

“Before we begin, would you like to tell me a backstory, to ‘set the scene?’”

“Of course, it all started 10 years ago, days before the Global Strike...”

He pulled out a tattered, brown notebook and rummaged through the pages:

. . .

I had everything, then I had nothing. The TV echoed through the empty halls:

“Several reports of ballistic missile attacks incoming, please take shelter or escape with any means necessary.”

Dad pushed me outside and forced me into a small, metal room with a cabinet of food and water supplies.

I spotted my friend running away from the neighborhood

He pressed a wide, glowing button before getting back out.

I ascended.

Up.

Up.

Up.

The blue sky around me gradually faded into a less saturated hue. My world morphed from a dazzling area of amusement to a bleak, desolate space. Around me was darkness, an enormous, gaping darkness staring into me from blank eyes.

I paced where I could in my 20 by 20 ft. prison, recalling all that happened in the last ten minutes. From sleeping to watching television to flying to absolutely nothing - a whole new life in just ten minutes.  I bunched together a bunch of my clothes and some safety blankets on the ship and made myself a little pile to sleep on. I lay down, waiting to fall asleep. I want to leave this dream

But I never left.

It wasn’t until a couple days later until I realized the actual weight of my situation. It felt more like a day trip at first, but gradually I realized the effect it would have on my life, possibly even being the end of it. My ship was a cluttered tin box with various control panels and technology lining the walls around me, emitting a constant but faint buzzing. A large cabinet with food and medical supplies was fastened to the wall next to a 50 L water tank. Below that cabinet was a metal research drawer containing various research tools, such as pens and notebooks. The buzzing around me was my only reminder of civilised life, of daily technology that was once normal to me.

Day by day I chipped away at my food supply, going from full on week 1 to half-empty on week 2. As I opened the next can of beans to be eaten I had realised a major problem- these cans and bags of dried food would be the last food I would see before me for possibly the rest of my life. I glid to the other side of my capsule and opened the research drawer. Before me were 3 empty notebooks, 20 pens, and several bottles of whiteout and other writing supplies. I grabbed a bright green notebook and a black pen and opened it to the first page. I sketched out a table to plan my food usage. I originally made a 7 by 2 table with each day of the week written at the top of each column, but scrapped the idea, as I had already lost track of the day of week. I settled with writing numbers for each day, just making sure I kept track of which day it was. I started off with 2 cans of beans a day with 500 mL of water, but later doubled the amount because I would be out of here soon anyway, right? Right?.....

Every day became the same thing, draw for a bit, look into space, hope for rescue, think about family, repeat. It got really boring. Like really, really boring. A single day was like a week. Trying to save food was hard, but it got easier as I did it. I made little friends out of paper and put them all over the place. It really eased me for a bit, but got mundane fast. You can only do so many things with a piece of paper and a pen. Why did I have to get lost in space? Why couldn’t it have been anywhere else, like the forest or the ocean?

My first journal gradually ran out of pages to write on. I moved on to the second one, with a bright yellow cover. My food supply gradually dwindled to the point of almost nothing left. My tally for days past was approaching the triple digits. I felt an immense amount of guilt as I opened the last can of food and ate it slowly. Food doesn’t taste so good once you’ve had it every day for a third of a year, along with the thought of not knowing where your next meal would be (and even if there would be one.)

My stomach full of beans gradually morphed into an empty hole.  I pulled the handle of the medicine cabinet and placed my thin hands on its edges. My mouth salivated as I looked at the rolls of gauze on the second shelf. I grabbed a small amount and placed it in my mouth. I loved the gauze. The gauze tasted good. The fibers of it massaged my tongue as I put more and more into my mouth. As I reached for the last roll of gauze, the gauze said to me:

“Please don’t eat me Richie, I’m just a friend of yours!”

“Then give me some more food,” I shot back

“There’s no more food up here, Richie, this is where we are going to end,” the gauze retorted

I blinked a few times then shoved the gauze into my mouth.

It wasn’t until halfway through the third week that I had realized that I wouldn’t be able to get out unless I did something about it. I fiddled with the rockets controls to try to see if I could get back, but it was to no avail. A final button mash lead to a louder buzzing, which I at first thought meant I was about to start, but later lead to the gradual loss of power to the ships systems. My lights dimmed to black and the buzzing completely stopped. After what felt to be around 10 minutes of complete silence a silent whirring began. A voice blared out:

“CRITICAL SYSTEM DAMAGE: EMERGENCY SYSTEMS ACTIVATED. OXYGEN PRODUCTION RE-ENABLED, LOW-POWER LIGHTS ACTIVATING”

“Who is that?” I slurred in a delusional ramble.

The light gradually came back, but as a dim, red one instead of my original fluorescent white ones.

The red lights scared me at first, I felt as if I were in hell, but I gradually grew to like them more. I suppose I liked the red in a way- it seemed to remind me of raw meat. I filled out the last page of the yellow journal with my daily report (as well as some delusional fiction), and crawled over the ship to get my next one, a red one. On the first page I had scratched:

“Please let this be my last journal, please, I want to survive but the hunger is unbearable. I try to walk but my legs are too weak. I have acquired a taste for medical supplies. Please let me get out of here. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out…”

…

“So, Dick, you are telling me this story from that brown journal you are holding, but didn’t you tell me that you had three different journals over the course of your trip? What happened to those?” I asked

“When I got back I tore them apart and locked them away for a while. It wasn’t until years later that I decided to undig them from the cellar and rebind them into a single definitive journal,” he answered.

“At this point of my journey I was in a less than desirable state of mind, so some details will be greatly blurred or completely separate from reality,” he followed

“Like here, look at this page:”

He showed me a page far into the journal titled “hell o mom”:

Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. I have eaten what no-one wants to have.

Space. Hunger. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell. Welcome Death To My Ship

Cosmic Hell.
Cosmic Hell.
Cosmic Hell.
Cosmic Hell. Cosmic Hell.

At the bottom of the page were various bite marks and tears. The page had an eerie vibe to it- it felt like a relic from a horror movie.

“I-I see. Are you alright with continuing your story?” I asked, still shocked.

“Sure,” he responded, and delved back into his journey.

…

Through the small window I had available to look through I saw an enormous ship begin to approach. I immediately jumped to my feet, and then fell back down. The water filter acted as a stool for me to support myself on to look outside. The ship got closer, and I began to hit the window. The only noise I had the ability to make was a dull tap from the bones in my hands contacting the window. After a few minutes the ship was getting much, much closer, almost in jumping range. I awaited its signal to stop. But it never came. I assumed they had just forgotten, and gave it time to slow down. But it didn’t. It inched closer and closer.

The air around me shattered. The front of the ship collided with the side of mine, propelling me to an extremely high speed. Metal groans and creaks resonated about my tin can. The cabinets about me emptied all over the ground of my shuttle. Drawers opened and emptied themselves, adding to the piles of mess on the ground. There in the middle of my shuttle I laid, a broken man, covered in papers, empty cans and bottles, my own waste, empty bags, and blood. My legs hurt more than they ever have in my life at that point. One was bent sideways with the bone piercing the skin and the other backwards. It was at that point I really could have used the medical supplies.

I groaned, and a man of middle age emerged from a space I had not known existed previously in my craft.

“You okay, kid?” He asked.

I didn’t know how to respond.

“Ah, the silent type I see… I’m Whisky Joe, I’ve been stuck in here since the day you left.” “I see you are in a bit of a pinch, let me get that for you,” He said

He took a roll of medical tape and a couple of casts and put them on my legs, it hurt a great deal, but it was for the best.

…

“So, you met a new person that was a stowaway on your rocket?” I asked

“Yeah but.. Um… Well… N-Never mind. That’s right, he was hiding here right from the beginning.”

He quaked as he grabbed a napkin from the table adjacent to him. Recognizing his anxiety, I gave him a minute before asking him to continue his story.

…

Out of my small window I observed an intense orange glare. Looking down I saw white, only white.  The white turned to grey, and then slowly began to fade away. Little droplets of water adhered to the window, creating small puddles. Beneath the clouds the ground littered with trees rose closer and closer, faster and faster. I shivered as I awaited my impact. The shuttle roared as it clashed with the ground, bouncing and rolling in the process. My body shattered as I passed out in an instant.

“Hey, wake up- you’ve been asleep for two weeks,”

I woke up in a bright white room that felt almost as empty as my orbital prison.

“Aha, you are finally awake,” a voice called over me.

“We found you in a torn up metal spacecraft in that field over east,” He pointed to a plain of grass around half a mile from my hospital room. Near the middle of it was a deep crater with charred vegetation and metal scrap littered around it. And sure enough, inside the crater laid my crashed spacecraft.

“We found you stuck under an empty file cabinet- all of your limbs are either sprained or broken so we’d ask that you take it easy for a while while you recover? I’ll give you some time to yourself while I file this paperwork,” He gave me a ham and cheese sandwich and walked out of the office. I impulsively tore it into several pieces to save for later but soon forgot my plan and just ate all of them. I then helped myself to the doctors lunch as well as a couple cough drops from a jar on the counter to my left. I nearly collapsed when the patient I shared my hospital room with threw away their half eaten bowl of soup into the garbage.

There is no reason I should have survived that situation, but I did. I spent an entire month in the hospital and then another two in rehabilitation. Once I got out, I spent a few years living at my aunt’s house where I rarely spoke for a sizable portion of that time. I had an extremely hard time getting myself back on my feet, to the point where I was recommended to go to the Miller Trauma Therapist Office, a highly respected therapist known to help people understand what they have gone through and how to get past it. And that brings me to where I am right now…

…

“Please excuse me Dick because it may sound like I am doubting your story, but I want to assure you that I am not. So you say that your ship held a stowaway inside it, but you had mentioned earlier that it was so small that you barely had room to pace around in it. It seems extremely unlikely to me that someone could spend so long undetected in a small space wouldn’t you agree? Also, how would you manage to survive only on medical supplies for such a long time? Can you please elaborate?” I asked. I felt like a horrible person for asking this, but I needed to know the truth before continuing to give him help.

He loudly sighed and remained silent for a few moments as he stared into the ground.

“In the end, I feel that it would be the best for me if I told you the truth about the story. Back when my dad boarded me into the ship, my best friend from the neighborhood snuck in behind me while my father managed the controls and the restraint systems. We survived together for a while which made it a lot easier, but when we ran out of food our relationship began to change. I-I…-”

“Mr. Davis don’t worry I ge-”

“I killed him and ate him”

Dick broke into tears immediately and started shaking violently.

“There was nothing else I could do, I was running out of food, and-and- *sniffle* I thought we wouldn’t make it out anyway. I feel horrible- I can’t- I can’t believe I chose to do that! Please help me Mr. Miller, please help me!”

I settled him down by subtly changing the topic and beginning my help to him now that I had known the entire situation.

Every week on Thursdays he came to my office for multiple hours at a time. He brought tea and biscuits, but always only exactly enough to sate our hunger. Bit by bit he slowly began to mentally strengthen and get past his guilt and trauma, though it was not easy for him. Even after his therapy fully completed, we still met up to talk and watch the game, but only keeping the television on as long as it needed to be. His experience gave him his own little quirks, and a hell of a story to tell.