Off Piste

She peered at the drawing. It was clearly an animal of some sort, and the oversized whiskers suggested a cat...

A story inspired by my own miniature snow leopard, Scarlett.

Fran x

Previously, Jill would have been queuing at the base of the mountain with Steve, waiting for the gondola to open. Now Steve was dead, it was nearly ten, and she was eating pain au chocolat alone in the hotel breakfast room.

In the end, it was Steve’s sister who persuaded her not to cancel the holiday.

‘Steve would want you to go,’ she insisted as Jill dithered.

Would he, though? Steve suffered from FOMO before FOMO was invented, and the hotel was full of families, which only increased her sense of isolation. Last night in the lounge that doubled as a bar, she was so desperate for company she’d engaged a random family in conversation.

She spotted them again on a return trip to the buffet and stopped to say hello. The youngest child, a boy of about seven, was drawing on the paper tablecloth with crayons supplied by the staff. He was a cute kid with freckles and a button nose, and Jill felt a familiar pang for what might have been. She was childless – a word that intimated failure no matter how you framed it - and Steve, who was twice divorced, didn’t want more. His daughter, Sharon, was in her final year at university, and Jill hadn’t spoken to her since the funeral, although she’d left several messages. Sharon called her the trollop behind her back, which was unfair because Steve had done all the running.

‘Is that a lion?’

She peered at the drawing. It was clearly an animal of some sort, and the oversized whiskers suggested a cat.

‘It’s the beast,’ the boy said. ‘He lives at the top of the mountain.’

His mother, whose name Jill had already forgotten, rolled her eyes.

‘It’s a local myth, a kind of Swiss Yetti. The guys who drive the piste bashers claim to have seen it, and supposedly a ski instructor was stalked by a cat-like animal when he was checking the slopes for stragglers.’

‘Gosh.’ Jill looked at the picture again. The boy (Ben?) had given the creature a tail that was longer than its body and almost as wide. ‘Well, I hope I don’t run into it.’

She mentioned the beast to the receptionist as she was collecting a slope map, but the girl, who’d only been working there for a month, had never heard of it.

‘Perhaps it was a dog they saw?’ She volunteered as Jill helped herself to a map from the plastic dispenser.

A dog wandering alone at the top of the mountain? More likely, a story invented to dissuade skiers from leaving the marked runs.

By the time Jill had forced her reluctant feet into ski boots and lugged her gear to the gondola, she was red-faced and sweating. She planned to ski until lunchtime, when the weather was due to change. She attempted a green run first and then, as her confidence returned, a blue and some of the easier reds, before stopping at a mountain hut where she ordered hot chocolate in fractured German.

To her surprise, she was enjoying herself. Steve skied so fast it was hard to keep up, whereas without him she could practice her turns and pause at the crest of each run to appreciate the mountains that rose around her like jagged teeth. She missed him, of course. He would have encouraged her to say yes when the boy serving asked if she wanted whipped cream. Would have helped when she struggled with the combination lock that secured the rented skis to a post.

She took a seat by the window. The sky, which had been clear when she finished her run, was marbled with cloud, and a few flakes of snow clung to the glass. Tempting as it was to keep going, common sense advised her to quit while she was ahead. People were crowding into the hut, and a couple stood pointedly by her table as she consulted the map. Although it was barely twelve, lunch was underway, and a vegetal smell mingled with the fug of warm bodies. She took her time fastening her boots and pulling on her jacket, ignoring the impatient sigh from the young man.

The cat track that led to the village was at the base of a steep red, and she skied it gingerly, avoiding the ice that had formed in the shadows. When she reached the bottom, she stopped to catch her breath. The cat track was narrow with a steep drop on one side, and she eyed it warily through the snow, which was falling more heavily.

‘Take it easy and you’ll be fine.’

She conjured Steve’s voice as she propelled herself forward. The snow blurred the boundary between sky and slope, but her biggest problem was psychological. It was as if the edge was luring her towards it, and the more she tried to veer away, the greater the pull it exerted. As the gradient increased, she became stiffer and more awkward, until every turn was a battle of will.

‘Turn, turn, TURN!’ A snowboarder whizzed past so close she could hear the music leaching from his headphones. ‘TURN!’

She was less than an arm’s length from the drop when her ski caught and she made the fatal mistake of leaning back. It was, as Steve was prone to remind her, the worst thing she could do.

When she finally came to rest, she was lying in a pocket of snow at the base of a pine tree. One ski was still attached, but the other was nowhere to be seen, and when she moved her free leg, pain radiated from her ankle to her thigh. In the murk, it was impossible to tell how far she had fallen.

‘Help. Help. Please, someone help me.’

A heavy silence descended, broken only by a soft thud as a pillow of snow slipped from a branch. Jill forced herself upright, triggering a tiny avalanche. The pain in her ankle was excruciating, and she realised that if she tried to dig herself out; she risked being buried completely.

After an hour, her voice was hoarse from yelling, and she could barely feel her hands. She banged her gloves against her thighs. Soon, the lifts would close, and no one would use the track until morning. She almost envied Steve his heart attack, which at least had the merit of being quick. One minute he was loading the dishwasher, and the next he was dead on the kitchen floor. What would he do? Well, for a start, he wouldn’t have left his phone on the bedside table.

Perhaps someone at the hotel would notice she was missing. Except, for all they knew, she was guzzling fondue in a village restaurant or had hooked up with friends. A small creature scurried up the tree, dislodging more snow. What else was out here? Chamois? Mountain hares? Squirrels? Nothing that would harm her unless you counted the beast, which she didn’t.

Gradually, the sky turned from purple to indigo, and the sugared walls of her prison glistened in the moonlight. She traced the plough with her finger. Steve had a telescope in his study, and on clear nights, they took turns to observe the stars. It would be nice to see him again, although she hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

*

She woke to the sound of snoring.

‘Steve?’

She reached out her hand without opening her eyes. If she was dreaming, she didn’t want to break the spell. Her body was, if not warm, considerably warmer than it had been, and it was almost possible to imagine she was snuggled under the duvet at home with Steve beside her. Perhaps she was already dead. Her hand touched something firm, and the sound stopped. Seconds later, it started again. A low rumble like the purr of a domestic cat, only louder and deeper. Definitely not Steve. The creature, whatever it was, was pressed hard against her, radiating heat. Jill kept her eyes closed. Sometimes it was better not to know.

If you enjoyed this story, a share would be much appreciated and please subscribe if you haven’t already. All my work is free, and I post two or sometimes three twisty stories a month so I won’t overwhelm your inbox.

Scarlett.