Avalanche

by Joseph Grant

It had been a beauty of a jump; Steve said to himself, it was a hell of a jump down one of the highest slopes in Deer Valley, it was also a hell of a thing to end up this way, walled up inside a deathtrap of snow, not knowing which end was up. To answer this question, Steve remembered a simple test an old German guide once taught him, spit and let gravity do the job, if it landed on your chin, you were right side up and all you had to do was try and stand but if it landed on your nose or forehead, you were fucked. Just his luck, Steve’s mouth was extremely parched, so he started to think of the biggest, juiciest, most tender steak and baked potato with a pat of melting butter on top, but all that did was to get him hungry, so he thought of the biggest, coldest mug of Carlsberg, but all that did was make him thirstier and colder, so he conjured up the sourest lemon he had ever had and after a few moments, voila, success, but the only downside was that his downside was his upside. As he struggled to make sense of it all in this embryonic death position, he thought whaddya know, the old Kraut was right; he was fucked. Inconceivably, he ended up ass-first in a snow pile from the collapse of the north ridge, due to his hubris he thought, as there had been warnings back at the hotel and it was true what they said, you never hear it behind you, but in front of you. His mind raced to his family, as he struggled against a sweaty panic attack and the anxiety to breathe and maintain his composure in this solid, sub-zero imprisonment, but luckily; he was not under more than a few inches of snow he learned, as he aggressively kicked as if his life depended on it, which it had, but forgetting all he knew about avalanches, he did not foresee the greater snowslide his actions were causing as it gained momentum down the mountain burying him once and for all.

6S

Joseph Grant, whose full catalog is here, is the first featured author in our "Six Sixes" series.