|
|
St
Declans N.S.
|
|
|
FROM Part 1 My father
always takes me skiing twice a year. He loves to ski and I think I inherited
that along with many other things from him. There was one February in We trudged over
to the nearest chair lift and started scaling upwards when a bang rang
through the air. Dad swore and looked around. I looked behind me to see that
the man in the chair behind us wasn't looking around to see what had caused
the sound. From the malicious way he was smiling, it seemed to me that he had
caused it. When he produced a handgun from his belt, I had a fair idea how. I
motioned to my father to get down, but it was too late. The man with the gun
left off another shot, this one snapping the cable on my father's side. The
chair lurched sideways, causing Dad to slip under the protective bar. He had
to grab onto his handrail to stop himself from tumbling to his frosty demise.
He was clinging to the bar for dear life when gravity sent me hurtling to the
other side of the lift. I scrambled desperately for my own handrail to avoid
knocking Dad off his precarious perch. Miraculously my left hand found it's
target, gripping onto the bar. I then swung my right hand onto the metal and
dragged myself up on top of it. Looking down, I saw that my father was
beginning to give up hope. I had to get him off of the hand rail and up to
safety. We could wait until the lift reached the peak of the mountain, but
Dad couldn't hold on that long. There was a
plan niggling away in the back of my mind, but it seemed too insane to even
contemplate. Still, with my father dangling off the end of a bench suspended
nearly one hundred feet in the air, nothing seemed impossible. So, bracing
myself, I put my plan into action. "Dad", I called, my teeth
chattering from the freezing cold. "You have to pass me up the loose
cords" I said, undoing the pocket zip of my ski pants and producing a Swiss
army knife. My father shot me the best quizzical look he could muster, which wasn’t
easy when your eyebrows are frozen solid. Still he trusted me. He slid his
right hand across to take the connection, I bit my lip. If he so much as lost
the grip of one finger, he would fall. And, as if Satan had been reading my
thoughts, it happened. He lost not just one finger, but three. In his final
seconds it looked as though he wanted to say something, but didn't have time.
I was too shocked to even scream. He was gone. I started to
cry then I realised that I didn't have time for tears. The pressure on the
remaining suspension cord was taking its toll. Before I had time to put a
second plan into action, a third shot rang through the air, this one from
further away. There was a grunt from behind me. I turned my head to see the
man who had fired the first shot, with blood dribbling down the front of his
white ski suit. As soon as that happened, I knew that something had to be
done. I was witness to one murder and one possible murder. Therefore I had to
die. In a blind panic I looked around for something, anything that could save
me. Eventually my eyes fell on the cut cord. I tried to convince myself that
my plan wouldn't work, but I couldn't. The cable had already broken off
slightly, and it was only a matter of seconds before the rest followed. I
climbed gingerly down the dangling chair lift and cut a length from the
broken connection and climbed back up again. I then looped it over the main
connection cable. My theory was
simple enough; abseil down the cord and get off at the bottom. I could make
tracks to the hotel and call for help. Perhaps to the Russian Police, perhaps
to my mother, it didn't matter. Calling was the easy part. It was getting
down that was the problem. I tried closing my eyes and counting to three and
that didn't work. I just couldn't muster the courage to throw myself into
thin air, and this was about the thinnest you could find. Just as my last
vestiges of hope were diminishing, the remaining connection snapped and my
whole body jolted. The slope carried me down, slowly at first, like a train
starting to move and gradually becoming faster. On my descent, I was ever
conscious that I might never see the world like this again. I cast my eyes
across the snowy mountain, which was when I saw two men on snowmobiles
descending the mountain. There was nothing really strange about this, apart
from the fact that they were going at blatantly illegal speeds and that they
seemed to have no regard for human life. Somehow, I knew that they were after
me. Part 2 I was now descending
at a quick speed, the icy air powering into my nose and ears. The
snowmobilers were moving faster than me, and it was only a matter of seconds
before they'd be directly below me, and if they got to the bottom before me,
I had a feeling that I wouldn't be getting a blanket and a mug of hot
chocolate. There was only one thing to do, and this time it wasn't an
ingenious plan. It was actually downright stupid, but I was in no position to
care. Then a lifeline, a snow I hit the snow
with an audible thud. I might have low enough to avoid breaking bones, but I
felt as though I was going to faint. Luckily I overcame this, and scrambled
onto the unmanned snowboard. The The snow had
begun to melt here, and the roots sticking up made the terrain very bumpy. I
started to notice light coming through the thick branches - the pass was
ending. I leapt from my transport, hoping for a snowy landing. I was disappointed.
I fell against solid ice and my head spun. I could hear the first snowmobile
approaching. I closed my eyes waiting for the crunch. It never came. Instead
I heard the cracking of ice and the scream of a man as the weight of his
snowmobile brought him to his death. Much the same happened to the second
one. Exhausted, I collapsed onto the ice and tried in vain to stay awake. Some time later,
I awoke groggily to the sound of beating. A helicopter. I paid little or no
attention to the passengers as they roped me up. I was put onto something
warm and soft, not like the harsh ice. Then I fell into blackness, into a
happy sleep. The End |
||
