Survivor Type (Stephen King)

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Survivor Type is a short story by Stephen King, published in the Skeleton Crew collection.

Survivor Type is written as the diary of a medical school dropout who, while attempting to smuggle a large amount of heroin on a cruise, finds himself marooned on a tiny island in the Pacific with very limited supplies and no food. A self-proclaimed "survivor" type, his diary entries documenting his day to day activities become more and more disjointed and raving (similar to the writing technique used in Flowers For Algernon), revealing his slow mental decay and eventual insanity caused by starvation, isolation, and drug use. Determined to survive and be rescued, he goes to horrifying lengths to survive, using his surgical training to amputate his own limbs to use as a food source, ingesting the heroin as an anesthesia during the operations. His last few diary entries, barely comprehensible, indicate he has cut off and eaten everything below his waist, as well as his ears and drools uncontrollably as he ponders what next body part to consume.