IT’S THE CLIMB

 “Hey there,” said the cute brunette in the back of the jeep.  “Wanna come party with us at camp Zabeldorf?”

  “Nah, thanks,” replied Pete. tugging on his backpack ruggedly.  “Me and Mount Susudio have a date with destiny.”

  “You can have sex with us both,” chirped the spritely blonde in the driving seat.

  “No thanks,” replied Pete, flashing his best boyish smile.

  “FAG!” the blonde shouted before driving off. Those crazy chicks.  They just didn’t understand the joy of the climb; conquering that sheer cliff face and the joy of the view at the top was sadly better than anything they could give him.  He trundled off at a moderate pace.  The mountain was summoning him.

  He hit the bottom of the rock face at 11am and checked his equipment; everything was there.  He looked up at the imposing visage.  From down at the bottom it’s subtle nooks, crevices and outcrops were all but invisible, throwing down a fierce visual gauntlet.  It was only when he got up close to it’s fearful face that it revealed its more subtle lines and deep ridges that he could get feet and finger holds.  Before he began he caressed the surface of the rock.  As the sun beat down it heated the rock that created a bond, a feeling of intimacy between man and nature that just couldn’t be felt anywhere else.  With a deep breath and a huff he mounted the beast of a mountain, and started the journey.

  The sun that warmed the rock today was no ally, beating down and generating an impressive 28 degrees heat that meant that Pete had to stop a couple of times extra to replenish his ever diminishing water levels.  Progress for that reason was slow, but a hundred metres came and went, two hundred metres, same.  This for Pete though was the boring part, staying sane while making the first thousand metres.  After that the water erosion of several thousand years the fissure that it had carved out and had split the cliff 

face would appear.  It was waiting there for him to enjoy.  Determined he pressed on and, after a while, he felt himself get in the rhythm that everyone needed in order to have a good climb and eventually it started to feel like the mountain was moving like a conveyor belt beneath his body.  Concentration was coming easy and stage by stage he and the wall were increasingly feeling as one.  The crack was just above him now and he slid his arm inside.  As he did a piece of the wall came loose and crashed upon his left hand.

  “Ow!  Shit!” said Pete.  He moved his hand sideways and managed to dislodge his thumb and three fingers but the little finger was wedged tight.

  “Dammit!” said Pete.  He daren’t risk yanking his hand out as he could wind up tumbling down the mountain with only the guy rope there to stop his fall and, although he knew it there as a safety measure he never wanted to know that it worked.  Pete yanked at his finger a few more times but no matter what he did it just wouldn’t come.  Pete looked up at the rest of the rock face.  He had just got to the good part.  He didn’t have supplies to get caught on the mountain overnight and wanted to finish as the sunset so he could walk back into town.  There was nothing else for it.  If the mountain wouldn’t remove itself from his finger then would have to remove himself from his finger.  He reached down to his boot knife with his free hand.  The blade reflected the sun in his eyes as he turned the blade.  He always made sure that the edge was super-sharp if ever this moment came, but always hoped that it wouldn’t.  He placed the blade against his little finger knuckle.  The skin parted at even the slightest touch from the blade.  He then put his remaining weight on the blade.

  “AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!” he screamed.  The sound bounced and bounded up the walls of the split rock face.  The reverberations ricocheting through even the slightest cracks running through the crevasse, birds of all types, both the hunted and the hunters scarpering at that glass-shattering sound.

  Pete hauled himself into the split and reached back with his good hand to remove his back pack while keeping his left hand jammed under his right armpit.  He was losing blood and had to work fast if he was to have any chance of survival.  Removing the first aid kit he placed a dressing over the wound in order to try and stop the bleeding and then began wrapping bandages frantically round it while swearing constantly.  He held his hand beneath his arm and settled in the huge tear in the rock to regain his strength with some food and knock some painkillers down.  He looked down and then up.  He was caught dead in the middle of the rock face.  Either a thousand metres down or a thousand metres up, that was the choice he had.  He also knew that while it may seem safe to head down 80% of all rock-climbing/mountaineering accidents came about during the descent and he didn’t fancy his chances of surviving the climbdown while missing a finger, whereas going up ...well from this point on it was largely a case of just lodging himself against both sides of the rock and forcing himself up.  He could probably do that pretty easily.  Couldn’t he?  Yeah, course he could. He looked at his left hand at the dark blooded stump where his little finger once was, he could mourn that loss as soon as he got to the top.  

  He drove himself up the mountain passing the 1100, 1200 and 1300 metre stages with relative ease and three stop points.  After every hundred metres he felt that little bit worse.  Not because of the pain but due to him now chasing the sun.  Every time he moved further up the rock face the sun’s light moved every further up the rock.  It was disheartening, but he had little choice but to move ever onward.  Ridges came and went and as time elapsed the easiest part of the climb unfolded simply.  It was just a case of pinioning himself between one side and t’other.  A foot shape gap appeared perfect for his left foot and he placed it there, a ledge above seeming prefect to act as a double point of leverage.  Unfortunately his scream earlier had weakened the rock face and, as he pulled, the rock wall came loose, the largest part of it being a thirty kilo boulder that slid down and crushed his left foot.

  “YEEEEAAAAAGGGHHHH!  FUCKING HELL!” spat Pete as the boulder shattered every thing that used to be his left foot.  Suddenly going for mobility over strength seemed less of a good idea.  Again Pete found himself trapped; so close to escaping at the top of the canyon and yet also so far away.  The tears trickled through his dust-encrusted face making him look like a sad clown from a living room painting from the nineteen seventies.  He grabbed at his leg to try and tear the smashed foot free, as he did he felt the bones mashed against broken nerve endings shooting razor-like pain signals through to his brain.

  ‘NNNNNGGGGHHHHHH!” Pete spat, through pain-laced tears.  He attempted to pull the rock but the bottom was lodged firmly into the foot-shaped gap.  Having lost a finger already on the climb the thought of losing his foot as well was almost unbearable.  He knew it was always a risk doing what he did but an entire appendage?  He looked up at the ever-growing shadow above him as the sun made its constant journey around the Earth (well, that’s what it was doing from his perspective.)  He knew his foot was damaged beyond repair and realistically there was only one thing to do, but he also knew that this time, he would need a little help.

  He spun his backpack around and removed the medical kit.  In the top lid of the kit were 10 small needles all loaded with 10 little assistants.

  “Say hello to my little friends,” said Pete doing the worst Tony Montana impersonation ever.  He removed one of the needles and squirted out just a smidgen of liquid.  Right now it was important not to waste any.  He was 1300 metres up and the thought of having to climb a further 700 metres while his system while digesting morphine was both exhilarating and terrifying, but with all the pain he was in with his finger and now his foot, what choice did he have?  He injected the sweet warm liquid and waited for it take effect.  

  He removed the knife and tried to pries the rock away bit it was not for moving.  He placed blade against his ankle, going as near to the broken foot as much as he could.  The skin again seemed to part in fear at the sharpness of the blade as it pressed even gently against it.

  “Okay then, now time to cut away!” said the blade.

  “All right, then.” replied Pete to the knife and began to slice through his leg.  The morphine took the edge off the pain (like wearing ear-muffs) and he couldn’t hear his own screams as the blade made hard work of his tendons, muscle and bone.  Eventually the blade bit through and the rock and his foot tumbled 300 metres down the crevasse, his foot wobbling from side to side like it was waving him goodbye.

  “OH NOW YOU CAN FUCKING MOVE, CAN’T YOU?” Pete shouted as the errant foot tumbled away.  He had to work fast again as he was losing a lot of blood, time however was more on his side as he’d already removed the dressings first.  He applied them quickly through short breaths as the pain strayed into his vision, creating an unwanted moment of dizziness.  He wanted to wait after the dressing was applied, that was what the morphine was telling him.

  “Wait, relax, get your strength back, you’ve got time,” it said in his own voice.  But he knew it wasn’t him saying that.  He knew that upward was outward and down here was death.  He headed up but now the climb was made treacherous due to the loss of a digit and an entire appendage.  He pummeled the rocks on either side, dragging his broken body up the two rock planes, as he did the sweat oozed down him, sliding into the bandages stinging the wounds as it soaked in.  He was tempted to stop and shoot up some more but the major with-drawl symptoms wouldn’t begin to send him insane for another 3 hours.  He made another 100 metres and went on, even though he should’ve probably stopped for something to eat.  He reached the 1500 metre mark and the top above started to look even more tempting.  His breath had started to become really short and strained and he was starting to see double, but he kept repeating “move and live, stop and die, move and live, stop and die,” over and over again like a mantra.  The morphine at the moment was still just about helping, keeping him company and keeping the worst part of the pain away.  Another 50 metres surged beneath him as he propelled continuously up there.  The end was now in sight, just a little over a four hundred metre track circuit and that was a as easy as falling off a ...Well, best not think about falling, not just at the

 moment anyway.  He placed his left hand on a ledge and pulled himself up, as he did so the ledge gave way.  Pete bounced from side to side as the rock face turned a blind eye to his plight, eventually he slowed his fall a fraction as his right arm smashed against an outcrop, shattering the bones.

  “NNNGGGHH!” exclaimed Pete at the roughness of the landing.  The fallen ledge then landed on the same arm from the elbow down.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!” he screamed.  Yet again he found himself pinned in, he looked up again and the opening seemed to move even further away.  Just over a track circuit away felt like a marathon.  Pete pushed at the rock.  With all his limbs and digits attached he might have had a chance of moving it in the past but today?  It felt like fate really wanted him to die on this mountain but Pete was not for believing in fate.  He reached round with his free hand and unfastened the back pack on the right and slung it off his left shoulder.  He could hear his old friends the morphine needles almost dancing with joy as he removed the medical kit from the pack.

  “Hey, Pete!  Long time no see,” said the syringes merrily.  

  “Those crazy morphine guys,” thought Pete as he withdrew another syringe.  The warm liquid tickling his innards as it entered his bloodstream.  This time as he withdrew his blade from his sheath he felt a small giggle escape.  He pressed the blade against the elbow joint.

  “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

The girls had enjoyed camp Zabeldorf.  They had spent the day by the lake skinny dipping and getting stoned.  It gave then a thrill the fear that Jason Vorhees may show up at any minute and do them in.  True, they were a little put out earlier when the cute guy wouldn’t put out, but hey, that was his loss.  He was forgotten now and they were just looking forward to getting back to the Motel and getting wasted as the light started to become extinguished behind the mountains.  As they drove over desert roads that played havoc with the jeep’s solid suspension the headlights flicked across an animal moving 

gingerly over the ground.  The blonde slammed on the brakes before she hit it.  The animal then turned to face them.  It was Pete.  He had only his left arm left, his right arm was gone at the elbow, and both legs had been lost at the knees.    

  “HOLY SHIT!” said the blonde as the jeep skidded to a halt next to him.  “What happened?”

  “Huh?” said Pete, the morphine fueled daze keeping his mood on the right side of happy.

  “Your arms and legs!” answered the brunette.

  “Oh,” replied Pete, looking at where the limbs once lived.  “Mountain got ‘em.”

  “Jesus, are you okay?” asked the brunette, dumbly.

  “Not really,” said Pete, still looking at his stumps.  “Can we still have sex?”

  The brunette and the blonde glanced at Pete and then each other.

  “What do you think?” asked the blonde.

  “Why not?” replied the brunette.  “It’ll be just like riding the sybian.”

  “Sure, hop in,” said the blonde, before covering her mouth in horror.  “Oh, no offence!”

  “That’s fine,” said Pete shuffling over.  He tried to reach up, before remembering where his climb had lead him that day.  “Do you mind giving me a ...”

  “Oh sure,” replied both girls, hauling his stumped torso into the vehicle, driving into the sunset for 2 hours of agony filled ecstasy for Pete.  The lucky guy.

Fin.