Chapter 1

I bet you've been in such a situation before. You know, the one where somebody explicitly tells you NOT to do something? And you do it anyway? And then things go down south real fast and you regret having ever been born? Yeah? Sounds familiar? Well, that's exactly what happened to me. "This is a route for experts," they said. "You amateur ass ain't got no business climbing that mountain," they said. But I was convinced that I could do it no problem. Because doing parkour as a hobby surely would be the same as climbing a fucking mountain. What could possibly go wrong, right? Yeah, well, EVERY-FUCKING-THING!

It all already started before I even got to the location. I'm not a complete bonobo, so I decided to do at least some research regarding which route to take and what equipment to pack. The equipment part was easy. It was a matter of copy-pasting the names into the Amazon search bar, pressing the "buy" button, and then waiting until the stuff got delivered. But once I came face-to-face with a map of the damn mountain, well, I didn't really understand what I was looking at. There were multiple routes, from amateur level to Jesus-Christ-On-A-Cracker level. And since to me, they had all looked the same, I decided to just fuck it and pick the shortest one. First mistake. With that done, I continued with my research. I had found a blog where the guy explained stuff about weather conditions, wind stuff, and some other shit one should pay attention to because, duh, you gotta be prepared for literally everything since it'll be a pain in the ass to get help should something go wrong. This blog kinda scared the shit out of me, not gonna lie. So, on a second shopping spree, I went, buying more of the stuff that the guy had said would be "essential for survival". I even got myself one of those stupid satellite phones, because, why the hell not. After which I spent my time watching tutorial videos on how to climb a fucking mountain. If you could call them tutorial videos. I even watched one where the lady climbed the exact route that I had planned on taking. Looked easy enough, nothing I had no confidence in doing myself.

And then, finally, came the day where I would get up that mountain and then, as only a king could, would look down upon the world. After which I would take some selfies, of course. Gotta immortalize that grand moment of mine on the internet, after all. The weather was, meh. The sky was grey, and it was a tad bit foggy. The temperatures were somewhere around 10° Celsius (or 50° Fahrenheit for those still stuck using the imperial system), so nothing special. It was slightly windy though. So, after parking my car, I took out my gear, checking if I really, truly got everything, before venturing off towards where I would start my climb. On my way there, I met a handful of other climbers. And after chatting with them, they all told me the same thing: Don't climb this route, it's too dangerous for somebody with zero experience like you; you'd only die.

Stupid idiot that I was, I naturally did what did best: I completely and utterly ignored them. Because I knew better, right? No, I really didn't, and that was my second mistake.

I wasn't even halfway up when the first major incident happened. I misjudged the distance of a jump and just barely managed to get a hold of the ledge, dangling there freely, looking down an 80m (about 263 feet) chasm. Yeah, sure it was a close call and all that, but why call that major, you may ask? Well, I dropped my pick-ax-thingy – something that I would've needed later on. Anyway, I managed to pull myself back up and continued my climb. About an hour or so later, I arrived at the part of the mountain where I would need to hike for about a mile and a half through a field of snow. And ice. But you don't see that underneath all of that snow. Guess who slipped about a dozen times and nearly fell to his death. That's right, little ole me. Normal people would've turned tails by that point and tried to go back down while it was still relatively safe. Guess who didn't. Yeah, me. Because the sun was shining, and the glittering snow looked so beautiful, and I had already invested so much into this climb that I NEEDED to finish this. That was my third mistake. And there are only so many mistakes one can make before things go to shit.

So, on I went with the climb. It was at about two-thirds of the way when the weather suddenly went one-eighty on me. Sun and clear, blue sky? Gone within a matter of minutes. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped drastically. I swear my snot almost turned into icicles. But that wasn't even the worst part. It turned into a fucking snowstorm. And I had no way of hiding from it, clinging to the steep mountainside as I did. I felt myself getting colder and colder, my fingers were stiff, I could barely see anything, and my toes felt like they were dead. They probably were. Frostbite is a bitch. I was basically climbing blind at that point, hoping that I would miraculously find a tiny plateau where I could set up camp or something to hide from the storm. Panic had begun to spread, and the air felt as if it had gotten much thinner; it was hard to breathe. And then the second major incident happened: I slipped. And I fell. And oh holy shit did I fall deep before my rope caught and stopped me from plunging straight to my death. Unfortunately, dying instantly would've been much better in my case. Because, on my way down, not only did I crash against the stone wall a couple of times, when the rope caught and my momentum had stopped so abruptly, I was slammed against the stone wall with so much force that, not only did I break my right arm that had gotten caught in a weird angle, but some of my ribs also got crushed. And I hit my head, like, really hard.

To say that my situation is bad, at this point, would be the understatement of the century. I was hanging at the side of a mountain with blood leaking everywhere, a good amount of broken bones, and a concussion so bad that not only did things appear in doubles, but I also felt extremely nauseous and would occasionally slip in and out of consciousness. I was trapped there surrounded by a wall of white, and I was incapable of moving. I tried to reach for my satellite phone during a short time of lucidity, but then I realized that my backpack was gone. It must've come off during my fall or something. In the end, there was nothing I could do but wait for my end to come. This would've been a situation where I should've considered biting my tongue off to quicken the pace at which my life dwindled away; to end my suffering much sooner. But I'm a fucking coward, and a little bitch when it came to pain, so... yeah, the hard way it is.

The wait was a long and painful one. I had tried to distract myself by thinking back to the good old times. My loving family (who had finally all but perished during a plane crash a few years ago. Notice the sarcasm here?), my awesome friends (who had each gone their own way and forgotten about me), the few boyfriends I had over the years (that had either cheated on me with women or turned into abusive scumbags) – when you're encased in a hell of white, it is easy for your mind to conjure up things. It almost worked like a projector playing a movie on a white screen. Now that I think about it, there is nobody waiting for my return. My work resumes only about a week later and until then, no one would be aware that I have gone missing. Somehow I had never felt as lonely as did in that very moment when I realized that I was truly and utterly alone. I had nobody. Maybe dying wasn't such a bad idea after all. Not that I could get out of my current predicament even if I wanted to.

I could feel the pain, the freezing cold, the blood loss. I could feel myself slowly suffocate with all the blood that had gathered inside my lungs over time. A broken rib must've punctured it at some point. I also noticed my black-out periods occurring more often. Most of my limbs should have already died off due to frostbite – I couldn't feel them anymore. My nose as well. Even if I did get rescued by somebody somehow, I would've ended up looking like fucking Voldemort. Yeah, no, I'd rather die, thank you.

Slowly but surely, I could feel my thoughts disconnect more and more until finally there was nothing but darkness.