text: “Finally!” John K took a deep breath and raised his chin high, as he looked over the vast desert. A sense of satisfaction flooded his emotions. The desert floor looked desolate from the mountain overlook. “Nothing for miles. An ocean of dirt,” he thought. After a few moments, John's eyes began to dilate. He could not hide the thought of how alone he was up there. A dull chill crept up his spine. He proceeded to pull his phone out of his pocket and check if any of his friends had posted something new since the morning. He sipped water from his canteen and felt the cold liquid slide down his throat. It had been too long since he drank any water. John sat on a rock streaming through Instagram for ten minutes. After his break, he stood up and walked over to the ledge to take some pictures. “Why even hiking up the mountain if you can’t prove it,” he said to himself. After twenty photo’s of the same view but at different angles, and with different facial expressions, he looked at the time. 11 O’clock. “Good,” he thought, “the sun will be high enough to warm the air. I ‘ll be able to get some good cardio in on the walk back.” More important than the cardio, John checked the clock to make sure he wasn’t spending too much time up there. Seven-hundred feet back down the mountain. If he left now, he would still be able to get home in enough time to go out that night. The walk down was always harder. Whenever he was climbing up a trail, the rocks had a way of morphing into steps. But going down, the rocks stayed rocks. Nothing was shaped for him on the way down. Every step had to be a conscious maneuver on John’s part. Copperhead trail was 4.65 miles long. The first mile was flat through the dessert which lead to the base of the mountain. The next 3 miles was a steady zipper pattern up its side. The last 0.65 miles was by far the toughest. Four hundred feet of incline straight up. The trail essentially vanished and became a dance with boulders. A spot turn here, a chassé there as one finds their way through the pass. John was halfway way done with his descending waltz when he decided to take a quick break. It was taking him longer than he imagined it was going to take. Not that it was scary or tough, it was just not made for his skills as a hiker. “Nothing to be worried about,” he thought as he drank some water. John pulled out his phone and looked at the time. “12:30!” John grew panicked. He thought he would be back at the car by 2pm. “I only have another hour and a half to get down the whole mountain and I’m only half way down the steep upper part.” John closed his eyes and took deep breathes to regain his composure. He redid the math in his head. “I have to be at the car by two, so I can be home by six. Eat, shower and be out of the house by 7.” His math was sound. The idea of being late to the party scared John more than the boulders ever could. “I have to pick up the pace,” he thought to himself as he placed the canteen back in his backpack. The added time pressure made the boulder dance extra difficult. John would skip a rock here or there if he thought it would save some time. Getting to the car was all he could think about. The dance slowly become more chaotic as more steps were missed. While standing on a solid boulder, John looked below to assess where to jump next. Five feet below laid another flat rock. John leaped. His arm spread wide like bird wings to guide him through the air. Instantaneously, he knew something was wrong. The additional weight loosened the rock from its teetering position and sent it, along with John, over the edge of the mountain. As he fell, John felt the full force of the mountain. The first impact hit his shoulder. The rock flipped him in the air. When he collided with the mountain a second time, it was his right femur that took the brunt of the impact. The third hit was the most painful for it was a direct hit to his back. Pain went coursing through his body. It was only then that John began to believe that he was actually hurtling down the side of the mountain. There was no way to catch himself while falling. He couldn’t grasp what way was up. The rest of the way down was a daze. Six hundred feet, and thirty-two seconds later, John landed. Blood instantaneously began to pool around his lifeless body. The wounds were numerous (a few that illustrate the severity included a broken right femur, a lung contusion, multiple broken ribs, a lumbar spine injury that affected his L3, L4, and L5 vertebrae, as well as numerous skin tissue contusions to his head and extremities). Three minutes and twelve seconds of silence later, John’s lungs opened up as they gasped for salvation. He struggled for every breathe. He never had to do that before. When John regained consciousness, his first thought was to blow it off. “I’m still alive, act cool, don’t start getting crazy.” That was his go to response whenever he felt nervous, but unbeknownst to him, he had never been in a situation so severe as this. He attempted to straighten out his limbs. Pain enveloped his entire body. “Brush it off. It’s nothing. Just stay calm... just stay calm.” After a minute or two, John was able to wince off the pain. He had no idea what to do for he had never been in a situation like this. “I need to get my phone,” he thought. In complete agony, John reached for the phone in his pants pocket. Over and over, fighting through the pain John felt around for his phone but it was nowhere in sight. Seconds after he began to fall, the phone flew from his pocket never to be seen again. John grew dark with panic as the seriousness of the situation began to set in. What was he to do. He was severed from the outside word. Alone... Only one thing was left for John to do. He picked himself off the blood soaked sand and began to drag himself towards where he thought he had to go. He had know idea where he was going. For all he knew he could be walking further away from his car. A blood drops became trail markers that tracked back to where he landed. Looking back, he determined with great anger that he had only walked 100 yards. It was the most painful 100 yards he had ever walked. As John turned his head back around, a black object appeared near the base of the mountain. “What was that?” John looked back but nothing was there. He looked harder, and shouted, “help, please, I need help... please.” No one answered his pleas. His eyes filled with tears. Loneliness settled into his thoughts. He turned back around, wiped his eyes. There it was again. The same black object was now standing directly in front of him. “No, no, no.” John recoiled, covered his mouth and slowly backed away. When he gained the strength to look again, the black object had disappeared. John had to get help soon. The pain grew as he walked on, and felt despair after seeing the black object. He sensed he wasn’t alone anymore, but who was there was not help. Something was following him. He looked around but couldn’t catch who was there. The desert was laughing at him. Thirty feet later, Johns body gave out. It could not carry him any further. He was too drown in this ocean of dirt. Out of breathe, John laid in the sand. A cool tinge crept down his spine. He looked up and the black object was coming closer. Through the haze coming off the desert, a massive black wolf was walking up to John. John could do nothing but look on as it got closer. He starred into its white beady eyes. They were calm, transcending this brief moment in time. The wolf stopped only a few feet from John. After a short moment of silence, the wolf began to speak.“Well, did you think this is how it was all going to end. In the middle of an empty desert. It seems pretty fitting doesn’t it?” The wolf tried to hide his slight grin. John’s weak body collapse completely. His head slumped and would have landed in the sand if wasn’t still attached to his body. “Wha... what? Who are you?” “That doesn’t matter right now. Soon you will be dead.” The wolf took another step closer. “You should accept it. It makes this easier and you might actually learn something.” John wasn’t ready to accept anything. He knew the accident was dire and he would have to rely on people to help him day and night (which he dreaded most of all) but he was not ready to accept that everything was going to come to an end. Death was not on John’s mind. What was, was the wolf. “How can you talk?” The wolf smirked. He knew John was going to say something stupid. “I just told you you are going to loss your life and you’re worried about understanding how a wolf can talk.” The wolf became vexed. “Man... There was a time when I would talk to humans daily, and you’re... all of you are the same now a days. So worried about the wrong thing. So worried about everything making sense.” John looked away. He’s wasn’t ready to get a lecture from a talking wolf. He debated in his head about whether he was hallucinating. He had to have been. But how could he fully except that answer if he knew he was hallucinating. He thought if he knew he was hallucinating, then he would have to stop hallucinating, because his mind could no longer play games on him.“Maybe it’s real,” he thought to himself. The wolf collected himself and returned to a calm tone. “I’ve been following for a long time.” “I thought I might have seen you from the top of the mountain.” The wolf studied John silently for a moment before answering, “I’ve been following you much longer than that. I’ve been following you your whole life. I was born when you were born. At the same time. I’ve grown along with you, and have been watching you the entire time.” John was still stuck debating whether this was actually happening or not, but what the wolf said angered him. “What are you talking about? What game are you playing? I’m lying here dying, according to you, and you are playing these games.” This was the first time John mentioned the nearness of his own death. Tears swelled and defeat overtook the proud face John was desperately trying to hold onto. “I think I would have seen a wolf following me my whole life.” “Well you did mention how you saw me at the top of the mountain.” “Only today!” John quickly snapped back, releasing some of the anger he had over his near death. The wolf saw John getting emotional and began to changed his approach. He began to sympathize with John. The wolf calmly stated, “You’ve always looked right through me. You decided not to see me. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you, but I was there the whole time.” The wolf had Johns full attention. John didn’t understand what the wolf was saying but something struck him as true. As though it was really important for him to listen. The wolf continued, “Remember when your dad left? The only way you could keep him and your mom out of your mind was to run long distances. You ran that entire summer. Remember that run right after the divorce. You ran through that park by your house. You clearly saw me standing there in the woods but you shook it off. Like there was no way there was an actual wolf in the woods. You thought that just couldn’t be real. Altercations with wolves happened to the weirdos you hear about on the news, not normal people. It couldn’t happen you. So you shook me off and I disappeared.” “What do you mean you disappeared? Why’d you leave?” “I had no choice, you didn’t want to see me.” “What do you mean?” John was putting all the energy he had left into what the wolf was saying but it was still undecipherable. John shrugged his shoulders and choked on his emotions as he spoke, “I really don’t know what you mean.” The wolf took a deep breathe. “Because I am you. And only now in the last few gasped of air are you willing to talk.” “What... what?" John was too confused and weak to form a coherent question. The wolf talked tranquilly to John. “You have been so afraid your entire life. Why is it you need to act so tough for people? Why are you so afraid of them that you have to pretend. You went your whole life avoiding me, but as far as your life is concerned, those people... your friends, families, coworkers, might as well have been wolves because you never had a serious conversation with any of them. You were too afraid to be yourself. To show emotion. Too caught up in your own thoughts to let them in. Every time you thought you were being ‘manly’, or 'tough’ by not confronting something that upset you, you were adding another layer to your defense. Building a wall and bordering yourself even farther from who you were. You were building a wall distancing yourself from me. From the world.” The wolf paused to see how John reacted, then continued, “So... how are we the same if we are different?” The wolf crouched down closer to John as he answered his own question. “I am everything you had to hide from in order to continue acting as if you were fine. I am the grief, the sorrow, the fears that you felt. You pretended they weren’t there so nothing in you had to change. Because that cardboard personality you erected to keep you safe from any real feelings would blow over and you were afraid of what would happen next. How people would react. When you fell down the side of that mountain, it wasn’t just your bones that broke. That border finally fell. I just wish it didn’t have to happen like this.” The desert winds picked up. The sand lifted into the air and danced around John. John’s lips trembled, as his face turned pail. He thought about his mom. All the things he said to her. All the thinks he didn’t say to her. All the things he wish he said. He thought about his brothers. “We were so close when we were younger, why do we not talk anymore.” “Why was I so afraid to tell them how afraid of life I was? How sad I was. How I wish we could have been closer.” John was sad for his incredulity, but was comforted by the conversation. A weight was lifted. “I’m sorry. I wanted to...” “I know. I’m sorry too. I waited in the shadows but you needed to initiate the conversation.” “I don’t want to die. Can you help me?” “I wish I could. But when you die I die too. What I can do is lie besides you, and be your friend in our last moments.“ The wolf fell from the pain onto his side facing John. In these last moments, while so close to dying, John never felt as alive. The desert wrapped both of them in warmth. Lying there, John imagined his family. He wish he could say goodbye and that he loved them. That everything was okay.