Snack Box.

A couple few years back, I was on this flight. I was headed from Minneapolis to San Francisco and I had with me a backpack with a couple of books, some paper, a pen or two, and personal CD player. This was before the iPod and $500 laptop computers. Like I said, it was a few years back.

Anyway, so I'm on this flight and about an hour in, the flight attendant rolls her little stainless-steel cart down the aisle between me and the guy with the ear-wax across the way. She's offering free sodas. Liquor is a few bucks extra. You want something to eat? A few bucks more even.

The lady next to me, she's in the middle seat. She's been munching on some kind of organic, freeze-dried fruit or vegetable or leek, I don't know, but she's been eating it the whole way. Since we sat down, an hour before we even got airborne, she's been eating this shit. And it smells. It smells like you wouldn't expect freeze-dried anything to smell. It's like a spicy bacon and thyme smell, but fruity, like pineapple. But even though she's putting away handfuls of this shit, she's still hungry, so she hands over her ten bucks and the flight attendant hands over a white cardboard box.

As she tears in to it, I get a glimpse of what's inside. A couple of saltines, one of those little butter patties, but it's stinky cheese. There's a cookie that looks like it might have been part of an in-flight snack on the Kittyhawk. And wouldn't you know it, a bag of that freeze-dried spicy bacon pineapple shit.

The flight attendant, she catches me eyeing the meal and asks me if I'd like one as well. I shake my head and ask her for a Coke. They've got Pepsi. I tell her, don't bother with the plastic cup or ice. I'll just drink it from the can.

The book I'm reading I just grabbed off the shelf at home. It's about some murders in Sweden. Dry stuff. All very by the numbers, but written so poorly that I've just been staring at the cover for the last 15 minutes. There's a metallic seal on the front. It says, Winner of Swedish Crime Award for Best Crime Novel. It's really the most interesting group of words throughout the whole thing. Who knew Sweden had national crime awards? And what are the other categories? Either way, it's trash. There's no clear main character to be found and it runs off on tangental shit for chapters. There's a glimmer of hope for the length of a paragraph when the writer starts telling the story from a dog's point of view, but that ends pretty quickly. I'm thinking something got lost in translation.

I'm reaching for my CD player when the whole plane starts feeling a lot less like an aircraft and a lot more like a 120-ton hunk of steel.

The woman next to me, she flinches when we drop a few feet closer to sea-level and I think she choked on a saltine. Either way, she'd be dead in a few minutes anyway so whether it was the saltine or the salt flats of Nevada that did her in, it's really anyone's guess.

Captain Ear-Wax across the aisle, he's woken up now and looking even more startled than the rest of us. For a second I wonder if he was having that dream where you're falling, but you never hit the ground. Boy, is he ever going to be surprised pretty quick here.

I plug in the headphones and skip to track 3 on this really bad-ass mix cd I put together the night before. It's a work of art really, this cd. 14 tracks of the best music you could ask for if you're going to be dropping 30,000 feet in to a barren stretch of desert. If you've never heard Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees" while hurtling towards your death in a marvel of human engineering, well, I can't recommend it, but there are worse ways to go, for sure.

Thom Yorke is wailing out "she looks like the real thing,
she tastes like the real thing" when the seat-belt light starts flashing and I see the flight attendant strapping herself in to a five-point harness next to the bathroom door. I tug at my belt and it feels snug enough. If this thing explodes on impact, they'll find me melted in to this seat.

The next few minutes are pure bliss. I never liked amusement parks. I've always had a pretty weak stomach for anything that spins or flips upside down, but a couple summers ago, I tried a roller coaster for the first time and found it comfortable enough. There's nothing else in the world that feels quite the same as a free-fall. Except for maybe touching her hand for the first time. When you feel her skin on yours and it's cold, but warm at the same time and your spine relaxes down from your neck to the top of your ass. Maybe that.

When we hit the ground, I'd opened my eyes just in time to see the horizon at a strange angle. There was a quick jolt and my cd skipped. Then there was just friction. Just hot, grinding friction everywhere. I saw a lot of light coming from everywhere. Not white, heavenly light, but warm and yellow and everywhere around me. And it was hot and dry and there was shit everywhere. Sand and saltine crackers and hydraulic fluid just mixing with the air everywhere so you couldn't see anything, but warm, yellow light and this shit just flying around.

The ear-wax guy vomited in his lap and I thought, it serves you right. Buy a box of q-tips, asshole.

I almost threw up myself when we stopped moving. It was the sudden feeling of stillness that got my guts turning around inside me.

And it was quiet for a good long while. One of my headphones had fallen out and I could still hear music, just faintly, in one ear, but everything else was quiet.

When my stomach came back, I opened my eyes and tried to free myself from the belt around my waist. The fucking thing was stuck though. I tried to pry at the metal clasp, but somewhere along the way it got jammed and I ended up wiggling out with a good bit of struggling.

Standing on my seat there, I saw everything scattered around us. Behind the plane, there was a trail of smoke and dust in the air for what looked like miles. The plane carved a trench in the desert and I could see that we'd been sliding across smooth earth for a good, long while.

I already mentioned that the lady next to me was dead. I was more than a little thankful that I'd opted out of the in-flight snack box and chuckled a little thinking back on those lame airline food jokes that made Seinfeld the star he is today. If he only knew.

From what I could see, there were quite a few of us who managed to survive the crash. Ear-wax guy was cleaning himself off. The flight attendant looked like maybe she'd broken a leg or two, but she'd make it out alive. A couple rows back, there's this lady with big, gaudy black earrings that look like fat, black pearls. She's unclipping them from her ears and stuffing them in to her purse.

I hear another woman behind me, she's calling out a name. Pat, I think. Just moaning it and carrying on. I never found out if Pat was on that plane or if she was crying out to someone back home, but she wasn't giving up on Pat. That much was certain.

I grabbed my backpack, stuffed the cd player inside and threw it over my shoulder. I'd been crammed in my seat for going on 3 hours now, if you count the hour on the tarmac, and I needed to stretch my legs.

Outside the plane, the world was a little more familiar, if hotter and drier than I was used to. At least the horizon was at its usual angle and sky was right side up.

I do remember there being luggage scattered all over the place. The cargo section of the plane must have been shredded as the bottom of the fuselage dragged across the ground and there were socks and travel tooth-brushes and capri pants scattered all over the desert.

I found an empty, black suitcase with a telescoping handle and wheels, so I grabbed it and went about collecting anything I could find that might have some use. Someone hd the foresight to bring along a nice collection of nudey mags. Someone else packed a goose down pillow. I shook off the sand and gave it a cursory sniff before tossing it in my rolling suitcase. There would be an argument a few nights later between myself and larger gentleman with a pretty severe head injury and I'd end up relinquishing the pillow to his female companion, but for now, it was mine.

I grabbed a free section of desert and set up camp. A child's playpen folded out in to a neat structure that I dug in to the dirt. I hung an obese man's hawaian shirt over the posts and made a nice shade to keep the sun off my neck.

When the sun fell an hour later, I set fire to one of the airplane seats and stayed warm for most of the night.

I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed. The desert floor does wonders for your back after spending most of the previous afternoon stuffed in an uncomfortable seat or waiting at the gate for your plane to board.

A group of survivors had gathered near the crushed cockpit. They were discussing rescue plans. We'd be rescued shortly, was the opinion of middle-aged man wearing a military dress uniform. Another man, older, contended that something must be wrong if they hadn't picked us up yet. A woman with a crying toddler suggested the delay was due to the fact that they'd surely be sending buses and, depending how far in to the desert we are, it could take some time. Everyone liked that idea and went about scavenging food from carry-on bags and what was left of the in-flight snack boxes.

I was getting hungry myself, so I joined the effort. All I could manage was a half-empty bag of Twizzlers and two cans of Pepsi that survived the depressurization.

There were some scattered arguments about sharing and rationing, but everyone was convinced that the buses were on their way, so by the end of the second night all the food was gone. You stick enough people in a barren desert without television and they'll eat just about anything. The Military Man caught a shovel-nosed snake, he called it, and made quick work of sucking it down. I don't have to tell you that Ear-Wax Guy emptied his belly again watching that.

A day or two after the snack-boxes and snakes had run out, everyone was suddenly on their best behavior. I think each of us had considered the inevitable at one point or another, but no one wanted to be the first to bring it up.

There would be a silent discussion between us. No one spoke, but we were communicating all the same. The conversation centered around how soon was too soon to begin eating the dead. We were all going to be rescued, that much had been decided, but when the buses finally came and they saw us there with our fat bellies around a campfire, picking our teeth with the plastic silverware we found in one of the snack carts, would they condemn us? Surely to survive we had to eat, but what does Miss Manners say about cannibalism in survival situations? What's the polite amount of time to refrain from feasting on the less-fortunate? Is three days long enough? In the desert, dead meat rots pretty quickly.

To be perfectly honest, I'd had my eye on the Saltine Lady the first night. When I get hungry, I get all kinds of irritable. I'm just a pain to be around, really. As soon as those first pangs of hunger start bubbling in my guts, I need to eat or my mood just goes all to hell.

And of course, no one wanted to be the first to dive in. We were all hungry, but no one wanted that kind of pressure. Remember when you were a kid and all the kids lined up at the edge of the pool and you were all going to jump in together, but while you were staring in to that cold water, the other kids were sharing secret hand signals behind your back. So, they count down, 1 - 2 - 3 and you jump and right before you hit the water, you realize your peripheral vision is empty and you've jumped in all alone. When you surface and turn around, you see all the other kids standing still at the edge of the pool and their laughing and you feel like a sucker. They all jump in eventually, but the embarrassment remains and suddenly you don't feel like swimming anymore.

Plus, you add to that the pressure of being the first to taste human meat. Your job as The First is to make it look good, but not too good. If you grimace, you might turn them all off from the idea and pretty soon you're the only kid in the pool and everyone else has left you there by yourself. But, you make it look too good and everyone thinks you're a sick fuck.

We held out for another night before the rational among us conquered the debate with the spoiled meat issue. Any longer and the meat would be no good. We'd wrapped the bodies in plastic lining from the airplane's hull and sunk them a few feet to keep them cool during the day, but all the same.

The next discussion centered on who would be eaten. We all agreed, easily enough, not to eat anyone with a surviving family member. Then, we decided no women or children, naturally. That left 15 men of varying backgrounds. Someone thought it would be racist to eat minorities, so we skipped the pair of black gentlemen and a Mexican who had been impaled on a twisted piece of seat metal. There was another small argument that followed concerning whether or not Asians are minorities, but we still had 11 white men left, so the issue was dropped quickly.

In the end, the winner was a clean-cut, average-looking man in his late-thirties. The very picture of anonymity. You couldn't pick the guy out of a crowd for anything. I'd be willing to bet it was that way his whole life. He dated average girls, finished in the middle of the pack in GPA from a good-not-great university somewhere in middle America. When they lined up to pick teams for dodgeball in grade-school, he was always somewhere in the middle. He wasn't even the first we buried in our make-shift, desert refridgerator. He just happened to be the least decomposed, the least bloated, the most unremarkable of the bunch. The only thing he ever got picked first for in his entire life and he's not even alive to enjoy it.

It was decided that the only fair way to proceed was to spread the sin amongst each of us. No one person should pegged with evil deed, so we drew straws. Military Man would do the butchering after Headwound Harry selected the cut of meat. Ear-Wax Guy built the fire because he couldn't stomach anything else. Janet, the lady with the crying toddler, would do the cooking. Someone else thought that was masogynist, but she'd been a hotel cook before the plane went down, so it just made sense. And I, with my play-pen shade and nudey-mags, I was selected for the first bite. The short straw.

To be perfectly honest, the idea bothered me less and less with every minute and by the time Ear-Wax Guy's barbeque pit was roaring with flame, I'll have to admit my mouth was watering a bit.

It'd been three full days and a night on top of that since Saltine Lady had choked on her cracker and I'd promised myself that the next bite of food I took would slide down like butter.

Janet cooked up a nice, thick cut of what I think was an upper thigh. I couldn't be sure because we'd agreed that Military Man would do the butchering alone, but it looked hearty enough to be the thigh.

When the meat was cooked well-done, everyone backed away a few yards, then a few more. They gathered, huddled by the plane's carcass, still smoking a bit near what was left of the tail. I held the meat on a piece of splintered wood. I held it up to my face and let the savory aroma drift around between my nostrils for a minute.

I reminded myself, make it look good, but not too good. Don't make a face. Just small bites. Look somber. I tried to remember what I looked like at my great-grandmother's wake. I was 8 years old and I barely knew the woman. She'd suffered from Alzheimer's Disease since before I was born and I'm sure she didn't know me either. But I remember my mom giving me a dirty look when reached out to touch her face. It was flat. The skin had fallen and formed a kind of pool around her ears. Her lips were stretched in to a thin sort of smile and it all looked so unnatural that I felt like I needed to touch her, if only to make sure that she was real.

I tried to remember how I stood there at the burial with my hands at my sides, fiddling with the seam on my new khaki slacks. I had tried to look sad, but I couldn't force the emotion, so I settled on an expressionless statue. I'd imagined myself as one of the great, stone figures that stood a few rows down. Head bowed ever so slightly, eyes open, but staring at the ground so if you'd have looked at me straight on, it would look like my eyes were closed. If I'd pulled off the performance convincingly enough, anyone would think the old, senile woman had meant the world to me and I was hiding my tears. Really I was wondering who dug the holes and if they used shovels or a big crane thing like they have at the park back home.

So, with all eyes on me, I moved the meat to my lips and felt it hot and sweet. Too hot, to be honest. If I put this thing in my mouth, I'm going to burn my lips, my tongue, the roof of my mouth. I'll have to spit it out, I thought. You can't spit out a hunk of human thigh with a group of hungry on-lookers staring you down. It's bad form. I think Miss Manners would agree.

So I took my time. If I could pull off the performance convincingly enough, my audience would think I was struggling with this moral dilemma. It would make them feel better about following after. Really, I was just wondering if this would taste anything like venison.

My step-dad hunted deer and made everything out of venison. Steaks, jerky, stew. Anything and I hated it. It looked like beef, but every bite was chewy and gamey and it was a struggle to get it down. I spent an entire evening at the kitchen table once, staring at a hunk of venison on the plate in front of me. I could leave the table as soon as I ate that one bite. I took three hours and I missed the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown special on tv, but I finally ate the horrible hunk of brown meat and was ushered straight off to bed, still tasting it despite a thorough teeth-brushing.

I put the meat to my lips again and blew on it a little. It was cooling and I thought it was time enough. Any longer and they'd think I'd chickened out. Any longer and my performance would be exposed for the ruse it was. So, I opened my mouth and slid the tip of the meat between my front teeth. As I bit down, the hot juices flooded my mouth, mixing with tangy saliva. I nearly lost my stomach at the sensation. The flavor was fine. I can't be sure if it was the meat itself or the starvation, but it was as savory as any rib-eye or prime rib I'd eaten before.

I bit the tip off and rolled it around in my mouth, flicking it back and forth with my tongue and sucking the juice down the back of my throat. I'd closed my eyes when it passed my lips and feared opening them, but knew the time had come to produce the expression everyone was waiting for. They were expecting something. I had to look satisfied, but not too satisfied. Like eating funeral cake.

I swallowed and felt the bit of meat in every inch of my throat as it passed. Here was my big moment. Here's where I complete the performance. If I pull this off, I won't be the only kid in the pool.

I opened my eyes slowly, tweaking my expression as I went, fixing it for tiny errors that might betray the act.

With my eyes opened fully, my stomach lurched. My head grew hot and full. My heart beat fast and wild. I cursed aloud when I saw the survivors, my companions, standing by the plane hugging and jumping up and down. Some of them were crying, but smiling all the same. Big, toothy, ecstatic grins as they hopped in place and hugged each other.

A man in a white and blue uniform stepped out of a charter bus with a silver suitcase in his hand. On the suitcase, a big red cross told me we'd been saved. We'd been saved and there I was, sitting under a baby's playpen, covered with hawaiian shirts, surrounded by nudey-mags and holding a hunk of human meat to my lips. There I was, in the pool again. Alone. And this time, no one was jumping in after me.

Son of a bitch.