I lay naked atop the silk covers. My thick thighs rustled the expensive sheets Rough hands teasingly toyed with my full, pert breasts. I groaned and arched into his touch. It was so deliciously enticing, so wonderfully torturous. I wanted more touch. I craved for him to be inside me, taking me with unbridled passion. Every fiber of my being begged for him to make me his own, to do with me what he wished. "Please.. I murmured "

Do you want the potatoes or the salad?" a shrill voice intruded on my dreaming I started back, and the world around me came back into focus. I wasn't in the arms of a gorgeous lover, but was instead standing in the line of the cafeteria located in the office building I worked at. In front of me stood one of the imposing cafeteria ladies and before her were two trays.

One had mashed potatoes, and the other salad "Huh" was my intelligent reply "Did you want potatoes, salad, or both?" she growled at me.

"Oh, um, potatoes-er, salad," I told her.

She plopped a skimpy serving of salad on my plate that would have disappointed a rabbit and turned to the person who stood beside me. That was my best friend, Carin. She was another slave to the office system, but one who took it with a lot more spirit. Her eternal optimism was for me a source of exasperation and admiration. Only Carin could walk into the office at eight in the morning with a smile on her face and a hello on her lips. Everybody else shuffled in with a look of homicide in their eyes and a snarl on their lips "Potatoes, please," she requested of the cafeteria woman. The behemoth smiled at my cheerful friend and slopped a large helping of the mush onto her plate. We turned away from the line of food and to the register.

I glared at her potatoes "How do you do it?" "Do what?" she asked me.

"Get away with murder without actually murdering someone". She sheepishly grinned and shrugged. "I guess I miss a lot and the person just kind of accidentally falls down the stairs."

"Uh-huh, and that's how you get away with murder, by acting all innocent," I playfully accused her as we slid into one of the dreary metal tables with the plastic white top The cafeteria around us was the typical white-painted affair with shining floors waxed to a homicidal finish and round tables spaced at intervals so nobody could talk with anybody at any other table unless they were really, really desperate for a conversation. The cafeteria was located on the fourth floor of a forty-floor building and had a passable view of the busy street below. Large windows showed the weather was a touch frosty with a chance for more snow on top of the piles built up on the sidewalks and in the alleys "So what were you thinking about?" Carin wondered I choked on the mouthful of salad I'd just stuffed into my mouth. "W-what?" I sputtere "I was wondering what you were thinking about in line. You know, when the lunch lady asked you what you wanted," she persisted I swallowed hard. The salad slid down like water-logged kelp. "Um, nothing. She smiled and a mischievous twinkled slipped into her eyes. "Nothing "Y-yeah. I like to shut down my brain for a couple hours a day. I was just-um, just had bad timing." Wow, if there was ever a lamer excuse I wouldn't have believed it.

Are you sure you weren't thinking about better things?" Carin wondered."What? Other things? N-no, I don't have anything else to think about except work and home," I argued She leaned over the table towards me and lowered her voice. Her eyes looked into mine with that devilish twinkle.

"Are you sure you weren't thinking about"

"Guys? Hell no!" I shook my head so hard my feet felt the whiplash.

"Why would I need to think about guys? I'm perfectly. . .happy.. "

I noticed Carin had paused and she looked at me with an expression of bewilderment.

"You weren't going to say guys, were you? She shook her head.

I groaned and lay my forehead on the table. "Me and my big mouth.." I muttered Carin patted me on the shoulder.

"Maybe you really do need that vacation I was going to suggest," she mused I raised my head and an eyebrow. "A vacation in this city doesn't sound all that exciting She smiled and shook her head. "Not in the city, out in the mountains. I know a great place where you can ski and sled and meet a ton of cute guys." I frowned and slid down in my seat so my chin rested on the top of the table. "I don't need a guy. .." I mumbled

"What about exercise?"

"I don't need exercise."

"What about fun?"

"I don't need fun" Carin looked at me with the patience of a saint in her eyes.

"Crystal, what could a little vacation hurt?"

" Who knows, you might hurt yourself on a trail and your knight-in- shining armor will come to save you." I snorted. "And he' come in on his white horse to carry me away." She grinned and nodded.

"Yep!" I raised my head and folded my arms across my chest. "I'm not doing it."

She leaned n close and fluttered her eyes. "Come on. Do it for me?" I pressed my lips in a pout and looked away.

"No." She leaned to the side to catch my eyes and her lower lip quivered.

"Pretty please?" Those Bambi eyes. That pouting lip. I couldn't resist her cuteness. My shoulders slumped and I sighed. "All right, you win. I'll do it. I' go on a vacation."

Carin squealed and wrapped her arms around me.

"You won't regret it! A week later I wanted to make her eat those words with a cold side dish of vengeance.

"Take a vacation, she said. Try out skiing, she said.

"I muttered to myself as I squinted out the snow-covered, wind-whipped windshield It was a week since the talk and I was on a mountain pass on my way to the fabled land of exercise and hot guys in metal cans. Outside my car windows was anything but hot. Tall pine trees pushed up against either side of the two-lane highway, and their branches were loaded with snow. The white stuff covered the ground with three feet of itself, and more came down from the dark sky in a good imitation of a blizzard as I puttered my way along the icy roads. I passed the last snow plow twenty minutes before, and the last oncoming car five minutes after that. No one followed me, and the weak light grew weaker as night threatened to win over day. My hands clutched the wheel so tight that my knuckles turned white. I leaned over the wheel ad squinted into the fast-falling snow. Visibility was lower than the Mariana Trench and even at my slow speed I felt the wheels slip and slide above the icy road Come on, Crystal, you can do it"I muttered as I drifted along.

"You can do it. You can-oh shit!"

The drifting was made quite real as I lost control of the ability to turn Lady Luck thumbed her nose at me and put a turn in the road in my path. I turned the wheel, but the car didn't turn with me. A giant ditch loomed ahead of me. This was it. This was how I would die. Not trapped in a candy factory like I always dreamed, but on a god-forsaken mountaintop in the middle of a blizzard that could keep a snowball frozen in hell. I closed my eyes and braced for impact. The passenger side of my car hitfirst. Every tense nerve in my body whipped forward as the wheels dove into the white abyss. Piles of snow fell down over part of the car. It was over in a second, but the second felt like an hour to me. I dared open an eye and looked around me. I was on one piece, but I was also seated at an angle. Snow was piled over the top of the passenger side window. I raised my head and let it down on the car horn. My body ached with the jarring stop of the crash I grabbed the handle on the door and tried to open it to get out and access the damage, but the door wouldn't budge. Snow lay against the side. To free myself I'd need to break the window or pray for an early spring. I opted for a breather to calm my nerves.

"It's all right, Crystal. You're all right,"I whispered to myself.

Something caught my eye through my door window, and I turned to see a shadowy figure over me. I did the only practical thing and screamed my head - off.