The Day of the Last Beer

Finish That Thought #34 (Judge's Comments)
Prompt: The gust stole my breath as it pressed the damp shirt against my chest.
Special Challenge:  Your narrator must be unreliable.

This is a winning tale, folks!  Thank you so much for all your comments, encouragements, and criticisms of my writing.  I can't believe I actually snagged the Grand Champ!

The gust stole his breath as it pressed the damp shirt against his chest. Like, literally stole his breath, man. When it gets down to -20C, that gust is a full blown blizzard out here in the wastelands of Alberta. Maybe I should back things up a bit, so you can understand how awesome this guy was.

It was freshman year at college in Middle-of-Nowhere, Alberta. We were bored out of our minds. It snowed for two weeks straight, cancelling classes left, right and center. My roommate and I, we lived those two weeks on four cases of Molson beer and Kraft. We couldn’t get to the store with all the roads snowed in. So this one day, on the day of the last beer, I got this bright idea.

“Hey, Cal!”
“What?”
“You ever been polar dipping?”
“Naw, man.”
“I’ll bet you the last beer you don’t have the guts.”

He looked out the window, contemplating the blazing sun and the swirling winds, then shook hands. So we saddled up with some towels, our winter gear, the last beer, and trudged out to the lake about a kilometer away from the school. It was just our luck it wasn’t totally frozen over. We pitched up camp by the shore as Cal stripped down to his trunks and t-shirt. The beer was placed on a pedestal of towels.

You should have seen that guy, he was blue! But he slapped himself with his arms and crept out on the ice to the open waters anyway. He stood there, just staring at the dark water, and I thought he was turning chicken. Then that son of a gun turned around, saluted, and jumped in backwards!

That’s when amazing things started happening. He bumped into a seal. And he was just a-wrestling with that lump of grey, hooting and hollering the whole time for help. What was I to do? I didn’t have much but the beer, and we were both so wasted that wasn’t going to help anything.

I grabbed the beer by the neck and started inching my way out. Then a moose came up! It stared at me, I stared at it, then finally it turned its head toward the splashing. I took the opportunity and lunged at the beast. I managed to hold onto the beer as I clambered up its back. It snorted and pawed and tried to throw me off, but I held on as it carried me over to the water. Cal grabbed the beer out of my hands, smacked the seal, and crawled up behind me on the moose. Now, the moose didn’t like that at all, seeing as Cal was so cold. Cal tore off his shirt and started whipping the moose toward the dorm! All the while he was drinking the last of the beer from the broken bottle.

What? That’s not right? Was that your roommate? No? Aw heck, I don’t even remember anymore. I’m going to get myself another beer.

Courtesy of buri-osiol @ sxc.hu