Avalanche

A fictional soliloquy

It wasn’t the cold that made me wonder if this was the end. My limbs were numb, my fingers turned a purplish black, hard like pebbles — I still thought I’d make it.

I never knew suffocating was such a slow process. Under mounds of white death. My fate was settled by the mountain.

Nothing was pitch black, everything was pale and colorless. I dug for a time trying to escape, but quickly my progress was thwarted by falling flakes.

It is amazing how such tiny intricate snowflakes can make a tomb. That’s it, that’s what this is, my tomb. My final resting place. It’s not in a cemetery surrounded by embalmed corpses of family or inside an oven where I’m burned to the bone.

I die here in this wet, cold icebox, forever preserved to be found hundreds of years later.

Isn’t it funny to think that my frozen corpse could be thawed in some museum curation room? Finally put on display for onlookers to gawk at the frozen form.

The white is getting darker, it must be time now. Taking a breath, an inhale that will never leave my lungs again.

I will always be here, fixed in time, cryogenically preserved, here is where I die.

Prompt by Ravyne Hawke