A Cold Life

• Sam Garner, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2018

I feel her icy fingers wrap around mine as we try to escape this torturous nightmare. As we walk down the rocky ground I look up hoping to see some sign of help but I only see a black night sky with very few stars. I turn on my flashlight to see a steep ledge only 3 meters in front of me. I look up the mountain thinking, "there's no way I am going down that ledge", but as I look up, I see something worse than the ledge, an avalanche. Well that's changed my mind about things. "There's only one way down", I say to myself under my breath. "Don't jump", a voice comes into my head. I look back and realise it was her voice in my head. I don't listen to her though and I close my eyes and jump. I jump away from the misery that fills up my body with tears that has frozen my heart to ice. I jump from the pain that breaks my bones over and over and over again. I jump away from life....

THUMP, CRACK, I hear as my body completely gets winded on the hard snow underneath me. As I assess my injuries she appears next to my broken body and whispers to me "you'll be ok". As a single tear forms a puddle around her left eye she leans down to me and we touch lips. I feel water run from her face onto mine and I think this will be my last breath. Even though this last experience of my life has been amazing with her, like a fairy tale, I know that reality will come. This won't be a happy ending because this is a cold life...for me...

As I take my last breath, time seems to pass so slowly. It takes forever for my body to rise plagued by a feeling of endless sleep. I see flashlights pointing in the direction of my dead body and her leaning on me. As they shout her name and wrap her up in a blanket, she looks up at my ghost unready to leave the world yet. When her eyes flicker away from me and back towards the people who have saved her life, I whisper "you'll be ok". Then I'm gone...