collapse
856 Words
He planted a massive, bare foot against a protrusion and shifted his weight. The sheer force of his descent began to drag me downward, my jacket screaming as it stretched to the breaking point. I looked down between my straining legs. He was looking up, his face a mask of primal, focused effort. He wasn't angry; he was hungry.
I had nothing left. My lungs were burning, and my muscles were turning to water. But as my heel scraped against the very quartz spur that was trapping me, I realized it wasn't just a snag—it was a keystone. The rock around it was fractured, spider-webbed from his earlier climb.
I stopped fighting the downward pull. For a split second, I went limp, letting his own momentum jerk me an inch lower.
Then, with a scream that tore my throat raw, I drove my free heel into the base of the quartz spur.
CRACK.
It didn't just break. The entire shelf of brittle shale and quartz that formed the "shoulder" of the chimney disintegrated.
The mountain responded with a deep, tectonic groan. Without the spur to hold me, I shot upward, my jacket shredding as I scrambled for the lip of the vent. Below me, the man’s eyes widened. He realized too late that he wasn't just pulling on me—he was pulling on the roof.
The debris—hundreds of pounds of jagged flint and heavy limestone—rained down in a suffocating curtain. I saw his massive hand reach out, trying to catch a new hold, but the rock he grabbed simply turned to dust.
"No—!" his voice was cut off by the thunderous thrum of the collapse.
The chimney choked itself.A massive slab of the ceiling dropped like a guillotine, wedging itself into the throat of the shaft. I felt the shockwave of the impact kick me toward the surface. Dust, thick and acrid, erupted from the vent like a geyser, turning the moonlight into a grey fog.
Below, there was silence. No growling, no breathing, no shifting of bone. Just the heavy, final settling of a million tons of ancient stone.
I’ve made it to the surface, but the ground beneath me is still vibrating.didn't wait for the dust to settle. The mountain was still vibrating, a low-frequency hum that told me the slab hadn't killed him—it had only bought me a head start. From deep beneath the soles of my boots came a muffled, rhythmic thud. He was down there, trapped in a pocket of air and stone, using that impossible strength to heave the rubble aside.
The exit of the vent spat me out onto a treacherous, tilted ledge of loose shale. It was a "scree slope" at a terrifying angle, dropping hundreds of feet into the mist-choked valley below.
I didn't walk; I slid. Every step sent a miniature avalanche of flat, grey stones clattering into the void. I used my hands as rudders, the sharp edges of the shale slicing through my palms, but the sting was nothing compared to the sound coming from the hole behind me.
A slab of rock, the size of a freezer door was suddenly punched upward from the vent. It hit the surface with a heavy clack, followed by the sound of coughing—deep, wet, and furious.
I risked one look back. A hand—thick, human, and coated in grey stone dust—emerged from the throat of the mountain, gripping the rim of the vent. He was coming.
I threw myself into a controlled fall. I shifted my weight back, digging my heels into the sliding shale to keep from gaining too much speed. The ledge narrowed until it was barely a foot wide, a ribbon of stone pinned between a vertical wall and a thousand-foot drop.
The wind up here was a physical weight, screaming across the ridge and threatening to pluck me off the ledge like a dry leaf. I pressed my bleeding palms against the cold stone of the wall and sidled along the "razor," my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
I reached the point where the shale ledge widened into a timberline of stunted, frozen pines. I stopped for a single heartbeat to breathe.
Far above, silhouetted against the indifferent silver of the moon, the man stood at the mouth of the vent. Even from this distance, he looked massive—a dark, muscular statue carved against the sky - he didn't chase me down the shale. He didn't need to. He simply stood there, watching my path, his chest heaving in the cold air, white plumes of breath erupting from his lungs like steam from an engine.
He raised a hand, not in a wave, but a silent promise. He knew the mountain.
I turned and dove into the shadows of the trees, the "clack-clack-clack" of shifting shale echoing behind me—whether it was the wind or his footsteps, I didn't stay to find out.
- Writer
