Writers Weekly puts on a unique quarterly contest open to all writers that is both fun and challenging. Those entered in the contest receive a prompt at noon on Saturday and have 24 hours to write a 500-2000 word short story. The lengths vary with each contest. This is the prompt for their winter contest and my entry, which received an honorable mention.

Blue ice stretched to the horizon, fading into the blinding rays of another waning winter sun. She shivered violently as the shifting mass groaned under her feet. She instinctively glanced down, looking for cracks under the transparent sheen. Suddenly, she tensed and dropped to her knees. Desperately clawing at the ice, she screamed...

Second Opinion

The sun’s glare reflected off the window onto the glistening snow that surrounded the cabin. A small sliver of a ray slipped through the curtain creating a line of light that slowly worked its way along the floor until it reached the bed where the old man slept. From there it zigzagged across the valleys and ridges of the quilt until it settled on his eyes.

He turned easily and was rewarded with a few more minutes of slumber until the light was too much to ignore. He arose and prepared for his busy day.

He had come to this lake once before as a young boy with his family but had never returned in all the years since. He simply never had a reason to return but now—now he did.

In the years between visits he had married, raised a family and watched it grow. He had been as active as he felt he needed to be not to feel cheated but he had also taken the time to observe and absorb the world around him to acquire at least a glimpse of what it was all about. He still had a lot of questions but he never expected to get all the answers.

He prepared breakfast, brewed several cups of tea, and then spent the next few hours alone with his past before finally deciding it was time to visit the lake. If he waited any longer the air that had taken all morning to warm up would begin getting cold again. This was the coldest time of the year and it was man’s duty to not surrender to the elements if there was still a chance to win against them.

A chance to win? The old man wondered if we ever knew for sure. Life is just an endless line of choices—some risky and some not so risky—but do we ever know for sure about the decisions we make? You give it your best shot, but we never know for sure. As he put his hat on and wrapped the scarf around his neck, an afterthought occurred to him. Well, we usually don’t know.

When he arrived at the edge of the lake he paused. It had been summertime when his parents brought him here as a boy. The island he remembered was still there and why wouldn’t it be, he thought, but everything else was different.

The snow piled high on the banks and the smattering of new snow that had fallen on the ice overnight presented a very different lake than the one he remembered.

It occurred to him that if this had been the way he first viewed the lake he might never had given it a second thought. But things do change. He wasn’t the same person he was then, either. And there was nothing he could do about it.

He placed his foot gingerly upon the frozen lake, then the other and then began walking determinedly away from the shoreline. He wasn’t casual but neither was he cautious. The wind began to pick up as he distanced himself from the trees and gentle slope of land that surrounded the lake.

The frozen blue ice stretched to the horizon, before fading into the blinding rays of the waning winter sun that had so warmly greeted him just a few hours earlier. He began to shiver as the shifting mass of ice groaned ever so softly conveying a warning that something was amiss and that the winter wonderland that surrounded him was about to change—that things were not what they appeared to be.

He heard the small inkling of a crack that grew before he could react. He instinctively looked down, although he knew what he would see, and in fact, had come expecting to see. The lines extended out in all directions from him. Suddenly he felt his muscles tense as his footing gave way and he dropped to his knees.

His hands reached out desperately but there was nothing to grab just as he knew there would be nothing to grab. He screamed but it was more of a gasp of surprise at the suddenness of what had just occurred. The surprise lasted but for a moment.

“Well, you made it.”

The old man looked to where the voice was coming from but could make out little.

“We don’t have many suicides by ice. You’re the first in quite a while.”

“I didn’t commit suicide. I never knew with certainty that the ice would crack.”

“You just took a chance?”

“Just because my doctor said there was nothing more he could do didn’t mean there was nothing more that I could do. I wanted a second opinion.”

“And you came to me for it.”

“I did, if you’re who I think you are.”

“I think I Am. Can I ask, why in the frozen ice of Lake Winnipesaukee?”

“I was doing a crossword puzzle and the clue was ‘smile of the Great Spirit’ and the answer was ‘Winnipesaukee.’ I took that as a sign.”