Time Travel

(Agh!  I don't know what's happening!  I always remember to post on Mondays!  Now I've forgotten two weeks in a row.)

Actually, I do know what happened.  My husband and I were talking the other day about how I've been doing since the sudden death of my dad.  I said to him (thinking I was very clever) that I feel like I slipped on a banana peel at the end of April and I haven't stopped falling yet.  Every time I blink, another week has passed by.  My mind is still in April, but my body has passed through a time portal into June (almost July)!

So I'm going to take the idea and run with it for our prompt this week.  Alice went through the looking glass, Gregor went down a vent, and I've slipped on a banana peel.  What will happen to your character that will launch them into a new world?

Enjoy!

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My response:

I was the only one on the tram.  I guess the heat of the afternoon kept everyone else inside, and I would have been there, too, if it hadn't been for my mom's boyfriend, Brad.  He was the reason our annual retreat to the mountains had turned into a circus.

I stood on the platform until the tram arrived.  The operators worked behind one way glass, so I couldn't even see them as the tram approached.  No one else was coming, but I had to wait the requisite ten minutes before heading up the mountain.  That was fine by me.  I had my phone, and I didn't have three sets of hands trying to snatch it away from me.  Brad's kids thought it was so unfair that I had a phone and they didn't, and they wouldn't leave me alone with it.  Brad was even talking to my mom about whether she really thought I needed my own phone ... which is why I popped up and stormed out on my own in the heat.

We'd bought passes each day at what was, in the winter, a ski resort.  In the summer, it was a hiker's haven.  I loved it.  Indian paintbrushes nodded beneath the tram, and I spotted a moose and her calf in the shadows of the pines.  I took a deep breath and left Mom, Brad, and all that baggage in the condo behind me.

Then the tram shuddered.  I was only half way up the mountain.  The tram rocked back and forth, releasing the momentum it still had after the cables stopped.  Metal creaked.  A chill shot down my back and a pit opened where my stomach should have been.  My mind chided my body for overreacting.  Surely the tram would start moving again, soon.  It always did.

But I'd never been stopped on the tram all alone.  The terrifying thought hit me - what if they didn't know I was in here?  Had they stopped the tram for the night?  Would I be trapped until morning, hanging a hundred feet in the air over a treacherous mountain slope?! 

I could feel panic rising.

But no.  With more creaking and rocking, the tram started moving again.  I sighed and turned around, sinking down onto the bench in relief and pulling out my phone.  Sure enough, I'd freaked out over nothing.

It wasn't until the tram stopped at the top that I suspected anything.  The automatic doors levered themselves open, and an icy wind swept through the tram.  The hundred degree air vanished in a swirl of flurries. 

I blinked, standing up and heading towards the doors.  The railings and metal scaffolding that made up the tram stop were covered in white.  Out the windows, a blizzard raged. 

My chin hit the floor.