It’s been six days since I came down to the clearing. My meager supplies have dwindled to a mere nothing, though really, I’ve hardly eaten a thing. A bare handful of food was all that could be spared — let alone carried — and, for my pains, for my self-inflicted isolation on this bank, I’ve but a cramped stomach.
My wife would likely pass me in the street. Glancing at my reflection in the stream this morning by the dim light of December’s Arctic sun revealed a face that I myself had difficulty recognizing. A puffed clot of bruises, framed by fresh cuts obtained through my wilderness trek nearly a week ago, did little to mask the one thing that’s been on my mind, in my stomach, and visible on my face since a few days after the crash: I’m starving.
The pain in my gut comes and goes, sometimes manifesting in minute stabbing, other times leaving me a sobbing wreck, a jumbled mass of quivering frost-bitten flesh. These pains pale in comparison to the pangs of guilt I feel, however. ‘I trust you…’
‘I trust you.’
Those were the words she spoke to me. My faith in God is strong, but she placed her faith in me, and this is how I have repaid her trust. She believed in me, and I let her down. I let her fall, reality crashing into my little fantasy world where I, Clayton Engh, would be the kind saviour who delivered little Anna Kush to her destination. I sought to travel the heavens with her at my side, but brought her to Hell with me instead.
I am a failure.
God, forgive me my arrogance. Spare Anna, I beg you — she in this matter is an innocent and I, I… I am a fool who overstepped his bounds.
It lacks context, but I would think that the imaginative among you will still get something out of it.
ADDENDUM, DAYS LATER: Think of it as a scribbled entry in a diary, found near a desiccated corpse in the far reaches of the northern wilderness. Several hundred meters away and halfway up a nearby mountain is the wreckage of a plane, a two-person single-engine flyer, nearly impossible to see from a distance due to the thick woods surrounding it. The serial number etched on the fuselage of the plane matches that of a flight reported missing over eight years ago. Near the wreckage is the remains of a camp, and those of a young woman. Investigators surmise that the two bodies are those of twenty-one year old Anna Kush and missing (and unlicensed) pilot Clayton Engh, 34, who took off without permission from Whitehorse’s control tower into a heavy snow storm, southbound for Fort St. John.