Flash Fiction Friday

More of our story (see the past couple of Fridays to catch up). This week’s installment is 282 words long:

The air around me was cool, like the walk-in freezers I used to frequent as a teenaged grunt-worker for a meat wholesaler. I could still see the lines of animal carcasses hanging in that cavernous room. Pigs, deer, cows, skinned and gutted. I remembered the steel walls, the harsh white light, and walking down the aisles pushing the dead animals, making them swing.

There’s a body hanging from a hook at the end of the aisle. A woman. Blood on her baggy white shirt, her head to one side, her face obscured by long dark hair. She turns. Anan…

I opened my eyes and took deep, frigid breaths. I was I still alive, and I could feel the ground beneath me. Sunlight from the gash above reflected off snow packed walls. There was barely a foot between me and the wall to my right. To my left, a sheer drop. This ledge had broken my fall. But I was at least fifty feet down with no means of climbing.

I lay there for ten minutes weighing my options, which were essentially two: live or die. I could try to find a way out, or I could throw myself off the ledge. Option two sounded attractive for a while. Then I remembered Anan.

I wanted answers. And I wouldn’t get any at the bottom of the abyss.

It was then I heard the faint sound of a helicopter. I sat up and gazed through the opening at the sky. The drone of the rotors was getting closer. I let myself nurse a glimmer of hope until I remembered…

Only one person knew I was out here. And he had left me for dead…

To Be Continued…