Nobody ever expects something bad to happen to them, and I used to be one of those people. My name is Xavier, I’m seventeen and my life was perfect. I had a 3.8 GPA, great girlfriend, and I was a star football, basketball, and tennis player at East High School in Denver, Colorado. I also had a love for skiing and that is what changed my life changed forever.

This year for my Christmas present I got to take a ski trip in the Rocky Mountains. Not one of the ones where you buy thirty dollar ticket and ski for a day, but on an actual mountain where you need a helicopter to get to the top and you’re on your own until you reach the bottom where you call someone to pick you up. No one I know can ski as well as me, which I’m used to, so I just went by myself. That was the first mistake that I made.

The ride to the top of the mountain took seven minutes, and I was told to jump off the helicopter which was about ten feet off the ground. When they opened the door I felt an icy wind slice through my skin like a knife.
“It’s now or never, if you’re going to go you need to jump out now!” yelled the pilot.
My adrenaline started pumping, and I could hear the blood rushing through my veins. I was so scared and thrilled at the same time that I didn’t even answer him as I jumped out. I just hoped that I wouldn't crash when I hit the ground. It seemed like an eternity as I slowly fell back towards Earth. When I hit, both of my knees buckled from the impact, but I didn’t fall. I started gliding down the mountain. The snow had just fallen and was soft, so every time I turned my skis shot up a cloud of snow. Then I saw the helicopter slowly disappear over the horizon and I knew that I was alone. suddenly, a cliff appeared directly in front of me with a forest below it. I tried to made a sharp right turn, but my skis caught on a hidden rock, and broke off my boots. I fell hard on to the snow and slid right of the cliff.

I must have blacked out because when I woke up it was midafternoon and I had an intense headache. The only thing I remembered was hitting some trees then darkness. When I tried to push myself up, pain shot through my leg causing me to see stars, and I knew I had at least shattered my knee cap possibly fractured my tibia. I was shivering uncontrollably and I knew if I didn’t start a fire I would freeze to death. Because I could only drag myself through the snow I grabbed some sticks around me, and started to rub them together hoping to ignite them with just a single spark.

After a few hours of rubbing the sticks together my gloves ripped and my hands were oozing blood. They were also starting to get turn a pale white color which I knew was the beginning of frostbite. I wrapped my long sleeve shirt around my hands to stop the bleeding, and to try to keep them warm. To avoid freezing to death from hypothermia I piled some pine branches on to of myself to try to stay warm. I didn’t sleep at all from being so cold and I could hear wolves howling. Each howl sent shivers down my spine, and I knew that if I died out here they would eat my remains, and no one would ever find me.
When it started getting light out I saw that the frostbite on my hands had gotten worse and my left hand was infected. My fingers had started to turn black and the cuts on my left hand felt like they were being stabbed with a knife every time I touched them. I didn’t want the infection to spread up my arm, and I knew the only way I would survive was if I cut it off. I always kept a pocket knife on me, and I started cutting. My hands shook because of the cold, and I was nervous hoping not to slip and make a larger cut than I needed to. When I was about half way though my wrist I started blacking out from the pain and blood loss.
After I cut off the rest of my hand, I made a tourniquet to help stop the bleeding. Next I cut some sticks and branches to make crutches. When I finished, I could somewhat walk so I started heading down the mountain leaving small drops of blood as I went. After about ten minutes of walking, hunger set in. There aren’t any edible plants growing during winter, and I knew that I would never be able to kill a rabbit or other small animal, so I thought about maybe going back and eating my hand.
When I thought about it more though I knew that I would never be able to eat it, and if I tried I wouldn’t be able to keep it down. So without having any way to get food I figured I should stop walking to save my calories to have a better chance of someone finding me. I rewrapped my tourniquet and laid down in the snow and waited for darkness.
It was another night full of me constantly shaking to stay warm and wolf howls, but I eventually did fall asleep. When I woke up I felt really strange, and when I looked down all of the snow was pink. I turned around and all of the trees were on fire. I jumped up, not even thinking about my injured leg, and tried to run. I then fell and started rolling down the mountain hitting trees as I went. When I finally stopped everything was spinning, and many different colors started flashing in front of my eyes like a kaleidoscope. After the colors slowly faded away I saw a helicopter flying above me. I was finally going to be saved. Suddenly the helicopter started shooting at me. I started running but I took a shot to the neck and went down hard. I hit my head on a rock, but I stayed conscious. That is when everything changed inside my head.
“I see unicorns flying on rainbows!”
“No colonel that grenade will kill us all!”
“Another cup of tea governor, no I couldn’t I already had four and I don’t want things to get a little crazy if you know what I mean, hahaha.”
You never realize that you’ve gone insane, it just happens. I talked and yelled at myself for about two hours then things really got weird. I had a burning feeling all over my body, so I took off all of my clothes, including the tourniquet. The blood started pouring out of my wound and I slowly started to black out. I died less than two minutes later. I was never found.