SKI PATH TO JUSTICE

                                           SKI PATH TO JUSTICE

           Nick was never a good student but right now that didn’t matter, because everybody that ever went to school or watched TV knew that if you ever got caught outside in the freezing cold, the situation you would be in, would simply mean one thing…in time you’re going to die. That’s why Nick knew he had to find the snow trail leading back to the lodge that he stupidly veered off while on this stupid solo expedition. The situation wasn’t helped when a quick and fast arriving snow caused a white out condition that was accompanied with dropping temperatures. The sign in the lodge had said that one should sign out when skiing along but of course, big bad Nick didn’t think a man would put his name on it.

             Nick had been in life and death situations before during his deployment years but in most of those times it had been expected so he was prepared for whatever had laid ahead. What happened here was unexpected and he was unprepared. Nick had told no one where he was going mainly because there was no one to tell, he had made this trip alone. Nick was a loner so if he died alone out there, it wouldn’t be lonely, just cold.       

              He had somehow gotten lost and now It felt as though he had walked miles. Soon Nicks mind started to drift as he walked what he thought was a straight line that he thought would lead him to somewhere anywhere, just hopefully somewhere warm and hot that was other than hell.

As he walked, the not so nice things, he had done in his life started flashing though his mind. This at least took his mind away from the immediate situation at hand but couldn’t get rid of the reality of it all which rested in his numb body parts. "Maybe", he said to himself “ill wake up at home and this would have been just a dream just like in the movies".

    .    He of course, wasn’t going to be that lucky. Like many a man before him, who believed they were about to meet their end or maker, he was hoping that he would survive and just end up making a promise to himself or to whoever, that if he survived, he’d be a better person.

                Hours passed when he finally fell to his knees and wondered if he would be found before the spring. He started believing that this was it, it was all over. He then thought about the pen and small pad he always carried. He pondered whether he should leave a note and come clean about the murder he had committed two years prior to this disastrous trip. This trip that had taken him to this snowy mountain top, in this foreign country, that was paid with the money he had embezzled and killed for.

             Everything had been working out fine and he had been going about his life with no remorse for the unforgiveable crime he had committed. Now it appeared that he would never get to enjoy the rest of the 1.5 million of other people’s money. Maybe this was just a fitting end to a murderous playboy, who had been living the good life as though he had earned the right to so.

              Now his thought was to cleanse himself of his sins, somehow take the load off his soul by taking the only action he could at this time to make it all right. After all he had never lived a life of crime until he committed THE CRIME. So, he took his pen out and with his barely useable hands, wrote his legible but scribbled confession. Yes, he put pen to paper and told why, how and where to find the body.

              After putting his notebook back into his chest pocket where he figured it would be easily found after they found his frozen dead body, he felt sleepy and was conscious of the fact that he was almost no longer able to move. The hallucination of being nice and warm In Hawaii a place he once visited and thought he would have a chance to return to, made it all feel so easy for him to accept his reality. It felt so real, as real as the feeling he got of being lifted and moved. His thought was that he was now ascending from his body in a paralyzed state awaiting his final destination. He had noticed that here was no bright guiding light as people who have gone to the edge had claimed to have seen, but there was a voice.

                 He may have been frozen and unable to move but apparently there was nothing wrong with his hearing even though his ears he thought had properly fell off. To his amazement the voice he heard said loud and clear, “Mr. Nick Johnson I am Officer Harris, we are about to helicopter you to the medical center”. All Nick could hear was the words “No No” which didn’t come from his frozen mouth, it was in his head, he said it to himself, and it was full of panic, and loud as though someone on the outside of his head standing right beside him had yelled it out at the top of their lungs. Amazingly he was still conscious of what he had just done with that notebook as he laid there unable to talk, stunned of this development as the noise for the chopper got louder.

             The cop knew his name! His thoughts started to run wild. Had his deeds been found out already, before his written confession. Had they been looking for him. Was it just a consequence that he had gotten lost at the same time? No, it wasn’t, and it hit him like a brick on the head when it came to him. The only way the cop could have identified him since he left his room at the ski lodge with no identification, was from that little notebook, His always handy notebook, the one that he had made his confession in, the notebook that was going to send him to jail, the one that had his name on it.

               He couldn’t see what was happening around him, because no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t open his eyes, they were frozen shout. He could only hope that the cop wouldn’t go through the notebook without his permission. He could only hope that when he heard the flickering of pages, that it was only the imagination of a delirious lost frozen man, who couldn't find his way back to the ski path and not that of a man about to find justice.