Bogleech.com's 2014 Horror Write-off:

" VALOR "

Submitted by HISHAM H.

Let me tell you about a hero named Steve.

I'm not gonna tell you his last name. Or any of our names.

We all agreed to keep it a secret, most of all Steve.

So I'm not gonna tell you the name of the country.

I'm not gonna tell you the date either.

I've sworn to keep this secret, but I feel there should be some record, some legacy, as to what really happened.

I don't think I'm betraying any confidences by recording this; it should be vague enough that no one could ever hope to track down the incident, or any of the other survivors.

Now, Steve wasn't exactly the image of heroism.

Steve was fat. He was morbidly obese.

He had an unreal BMI. He had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and borderline diabetes.

He was pretty laid-back, always ready to crack a joke or two about his weight, and we all liked having him around.

So it was only natural that we invited him along on our trip.

We were going scuba diving (at least the rest of us were; Steve could swim but not scuba dive), and so chartered a boat and headed off to some pristine place.

The trip was pretty normal, until we all got drunk, lost track of the time, and ended up stuck in a storm in a rapidly sinking boat.

Our ship finally went down under, but we managed to end up on a deserted island.

We all made it out alive, but we were stuck on a tiny coral island. Just limestone, no plants or birds. Not even a single palm tree. With no way of getting home, and no way of contacting help.

We shared out the limited supplies, they ran out only far too soon.

Fortunately it was the rainy season. We would get showers every other day; there were some rock formations that could hold little puddles, and we had a bunch of diving masks we set out to catch even more rainwater. But we needed food.

I marked off the days by marking a big boulder with a bit of coral rock.

Days went by. We turned that island upside down for any edible scrap.

We tried catching fish. But we had no equipment, no spears or lines or anything that could be used as a hook, and the makeshift nets we made out of our clothes were woefully inadequate. Besides, the fish always swam right out of reach. They only things we could find were some oysters or mussels of some sort, attached to underwater rocks. But this was soon depleted.

We ate all the seaweed we could reach. The supply was sparse.

As the days became weeks, we soon descended slowly into madness. Heated arguments broke out, actual fistfights. A lot of crying and sobbing.

One day somebody caught a crab. He was almost murdered for it.

Weeks passed. We were starving to death. We barely had any energy left to argue, let alone hunt for food.

It was Steve's idea in the first place. He volunteered, and I swear to you we never forced him.

One month later, we were finally spotted by an airplane

He kept us fed for the whole month.

He still has the scars.