text: 1st draft of a short story I finished writing recently. Let me know your opinions. Thank you. \ Joe drove into the rest area at the base of the mountain feeling a bit drowsy, yawning loudly and at once stretching in theatrical displays of lethargy to his wife, Kaylee, who was sitting next to him. At the curt behest of his wife, who showed not the slightest measure of sympathy for those boisterous sounds that he made, Joe resignedly parked the car away from the other vehicles. “We’re here,” he said, with a tiredness in his voice as he looked up at the summit hidden under the exhaled white, frosty breath of the frozen air. His wife sat silently next to him. As if she had made a covenant with herself, she looked the other way seeking instead the attention of her own frigid reflection through which she observed the icy landscape, the snow falling ever gently on to the cold glass. She suddenly began with a silent rustle in preparation of the forthcoming hike. She gathered the whole of her gear: boots, backpack, fanny pack, jacket, pants, mittens for her small hands. Her movements were aggressive, noisy, made in such an angry spirit that she tossed things into her backpack and shoved them as deep as the bottom would allow for a thing to reach; she even felt herself challenged by an innocent zipper of her impermeable jacket that stubbornly refused to zip and close. “Damn it! C’mon you stupid thing!” she quietly exclaimed to it, still unable to get it to move, pinching it harder between her fingers and pulling it with greater force inasmuch as the little metal zipper seemed destined to be torn off completely against its will. “Can I help?” Joe offered. “No... I got it,” she replied coldly as she struggled, but soon thereafter the zipper yielded finally and relief had come to her face with the zipper now drawn up to her neck, yet she did not appear entirely freed from her sudden agitation. Joe ignored his wife’s rejection and looked out through the windshield up at a calm sky of gray clouds. The sun appeared stifled, dormant even, and, for as long as it remained behind that thick haze of the clouds, as a faded, yellow smudge that was weak enough in radiance to look at directly without much damage to the eyes. Joe was thin, and despite his slender form, he was not at all athletic. He already felt the altitude exerting its influence in the difficulty there was to breathe when he first arrived at the park. He had not gone a few steps on the first trail that his head began to feel light and disorientated, but he never disclosed these ailments to Kaylee whom he found, on looking up from his staggered step, mustering on a few meters ahead of him with a red tinge on her cheeks, and her little back muscles exposed and glistening under the frosty sun. The symptoms would grow worse for Joe and they had to stop their advance more often, very much to the disappointment of his wife, and owing to these difficulties therefore decided to quit the hike prematurely and failed to reach the end. This was always the result at each trail that they had visited from that to the current path, each a failure to reach the summit. The trail now before him was a redemption of some kind for him, as he looked at the peak just out there amid the white mist. “Will you get ready already? We’re wasting time.” Kaylee said, tearing him away from the peacefulness of the mountain. Joe quickly grabbed his things for the hike along with his wallet when a wrinkled, little old paper fell from it, and he reached for the slip with great regret for its fall, anxious about retrieving it from the dark abyss between the armrest and the driver seat in which more things are lost than all the mountains that the human spirit ever had the courage to scale. There was nothing of particular importance on it as it was mostly empty in fact except for a heart that had been cartoonishly rendered on it by Kaylee. It was a small gift he vouched to forever keep that she gave to him one night as recompense for abiding yet another long night of intense study during her days as a law student. “Alright, let’s go,” she said to him, bringing the straps of her backpack over her shoulders like a military man throwing the immense weight of his equipment on his back. “This time, we have to reach the top, please. We can’t keep quitting in the middle of it.” “I won’t stop,” he replied, “I’ll try not to stop, for anything.” “You promise we’ll keep going until we reach the end? You keep saying you will, but you never do, and I have to do it alone or not at all in the end.” “I promise.” The trailhead began where a sign was put to mark the beginning that read “Deer Mountain trail.” “There it is,” Kaylee said, marking out the long, dirt path ahead of them that disappeared rather sneakily around a bend. Joe found it a bit of a charming curiosity in his wife that she was as steadfast as yet she possessed no survival instinct; she had no sense of orientation as he knew on the basis of past experience that she would not be able to find her way back to the origin point despite that the trail only went in two directions, forward and backward. Unlike Joe, her big, astute eyes often overlooked the many markings of a forest that can guide a fellow traveler and lead him to his destination even when the forest seems vast, dark, unnavigable for its many possible paths that can lead a hiker astray to frustrating dead ends. She’d often look back whenever the trail vanished before her at Joe to consult with his inner compass for directions, and he relished the smile on her face when he pointed to her the direction in which they ought to continue. Some time later, not half-way up the mountain, it began to drizzle on them as they began to hear the small patter of falling rain droplets against their shoulders, near the ear. “It might get muddy, and dangerous if we keep climbing, don’t you think?” Joe said. “It’s nothing, c’mon! Don’t stop.” In addition to the gentle beginning of the rain, the road began to vanish under a slight haze. The fog was encroaching more on the mountain with the passing of each minute, like some sinister specter come to haunt the hikers. Through the white mist, each branch and each rock and each hill took on the form of a silhouette without any distinguishing feature to speak of. Each object as seen through the haze was a dark outline, fuzzy like television static. Even the people themselves looked identical under the cloak of the mist as everyone took on the same fundamental form, indistinguishable from man to man, from woman to woman, except when it was from man to woman as the former had a noticeably larger build than the latter, and it was under these ghostly conditions that Joe saw someone sitting on a boulder some feet away from the trail. The couple pressed on, but Joe was in sufficient proximity to the stranger to notice that he had a face which was similar to his own, except for a large burly beard that hung well below the neck. His eyes were hidden under the lip of his hat and were impossible to see what with a shadow cast from the same hat over his face. He had stopped to eat, and to do it alone. His eyes were on the trail, yet there was an absent quality in them. As he might have seemed like an apparition to Joe, they might have been viewed as figments by him as they aroused no notice from him as he ate. “So, have you started your IT courses yet?” Kaylee asked. “Not yet, I haven’t.” “Then when?” “Soon. I’ll start them as soon as we return.” “You keep saying you will, but you never do.” “I will, okay? I will. Please, don’t start.” Kaylee stopped; she dug her heel into the ground and pivoted quickly. “Joe, you know the plan! We’ve gone over it many times. We have to earn this much,” she mimed an amount, “so that we can live our best lives while we are still relatively young! Don’t you want that?” “I do, babycakes, I never said that I don’t, but -- ” “Well? Or do you want to grow old and feeble and never enjoy what you could have enjoyed while you were young?” “I said I do already, okay? I’ll get started when we get back, I told you. I can’t do it right this minute, now can I? So, can we just keep going?” Scoffing, “Fine...” she replied. When a thousand feet more of mountain had been climbed, Joe requested for them to take a small rest. (name) released her backpack from her shoulders and it fell to the ground in a way that made the gravity on Earth seem stronger than it is usually. Joe was aware of the pain in her shoulders, and the tremble in her legs, the same symptoms that Joe exhibited in his own physique, but also there in a peculiar aspect of her expression he witnessed the firm reticence to complain of her deficiencies, fully formed on her brow, on her stiffened nose and expanding nostrils attempting to catch the faintest air to bring to her panting lungs. She hydrated, she ate small portions of her trail mix, she had done whatever to regain the strength that she perhaps knew had been permanently lost to the commitment that the hike demanded. Joe always admired that she was blindly aware of her limits that when he knew that she could feel herself reaching them, they were only another corner to go around, or another hill to climb, another river to cross. Where an insurmountable barrier to anyone, a red cape dangled over the eyes of a bull. “Do you think we are almost to the top?” she asked him. “Not likely, and what’s more, it’s getting harder to see what’s in front of me with this fog. It’s thicker now than before.” “Don’t tell me you want to turn back.” “I didn’t say that...” “You don’t have to.” On that last word was the moment when the stranger from before began to appear behind them, emerging silently from the mist but for the soft crunch of the ground beneath him as he walked. He continued without a word, as if seeking quick passage to avoid being caught in the middle of their quarrel. This time, Joe was more convinced than before that the stranger was stranger still for the resemblance that he bore to himself. As rapidly and as silently as he arrived, he passed through. His presence came like a shadow, or a kind ghost wandering the mountain. His footsteps eventually faded into the natural cacophony of wind, the rustle of leaves, and gravel and likewise rocks crushed by that heavy tread that belonged to him. “I’m only suggesting that it may get more dangerous as we go. We can hardly see the road below, down there in the valley. A short while ago I was able to see the cars drive by, but now I can’t.” “You always make excuses. Always.” “It’s not an excuse, (wife). I’m just concerned.” “You said we would reach the end.” “I said I would try.” “Well, you aren’t trying hard enough. Damn it, you’re so lazy! What is wrong with you? Why don’t you have any ambition? You’re constantly quitting. You’re so unwilling to make the sacrifice, even for me.” “I don’t know! I don’t know! Maybe it’s because I don’t give a damn about anything, or because the world is one big shitty place and I just can’t fathom doing anything in it. What’s the point? I don’t know, and I really don’t want to talk about it now. Can we go back? Seriously, please?” “You go back. I’m going to keep going.” On that the conversation ended. Kaylee tossed the backpack on her back and continued to hike the trail. The idea of her walking alone so high up, on a narrow path when the ground had recently become wet created a series of terrifying images in his mind, all of which depicted her fall or some other serious injury, and the guilt they produced sprung him into motion. He beckoned her to wait as he ran to her even as she had gained a great distance on him in such a short period of time. Some few hundred feet higher, Kaylee stopped when the path had suddenly ceased to continue. Joe had reached his wife and he too stopped and noticed that the path had disappeared behind them both. “Did we go the wrong way?” She again asked him. “I don’t know. It’s possible. I was getting tired again anyway, so let’s rest.” She sighed, and wove her arms together, and she nodded her head, “we’ll never get to the top at this rate. We should just turn back.” “Now you want to turn back?” “I feel like I’m dragging you up there.” “You’re not dragging me -- “ “Yes, I am.” “No, you’re not,” he replied. “Yes, I am. I feel like I drag you all the time, like your IT courses that we paid for. I’ve always felt that I was the one pulling us forward, the mule pulling the cart. You haven’t even found a job yet.” “I’ve started looking.” “Yeah, a month ago. You’ve sent, what, ten applications in that time?” “Twelve...” “Whatever. We aren’t on track to achieve anything we have set out to do, together. I’m the only one giving a shit.” Joe found nothing in his repertoire of prepared speeches that were not prolonged apologies that offered to her thin rays of weak hope which she believed emanated from the promise of something more, so he found it difficult to say anything. He was not deaf to her exasperations of him as he had committed every accusation leveled against him of indifference to memory, and he stood there to listen to them again, and again invoking inevitably the same ponderous weight of guilt that has become an indispensable aspect of their spats, and so, he thought, that he will continue to hear them evermore, again and again, ad infinitum as he gazed into the future somehow showing in the thick foliage of the trees overhead, a cycle that alas culminates only in a self-loathing for which he had no means to end without offering up his mind and body like a bloody heart to the altar of the cruel world that begat him. “I know. I hear you...” “Well, then, tell me why? Why is it so hard to get you to move?” He shrugged his shoulders, and did not respond. There was a brief silence between them. Only the trees spoke of anything when their leaves were ruffled by a wind. “Well, can you get us back to the trail?” “You still want to continue?” “Sure. Why not? Let’s see how far we get, I’ll be happy with that if we can’t get to the top.” “Alright. I think I remember the landscape enough to guide us back. Follow me.” More than half an hour later, the two of them eventually began to notice more areas where the vegetation had been cleared for the trail, and before long the path outlined itself for them and they knew where to steer themselves. In that instant, the vicissitudes of circumstance aligned so that a hole in the clouds serendipitously formed and a sun ray bathed them in an intense white light. They looked up - their skin was lit to a warm touch - and they went to a point a few steps away where they determined the sun was most intense. There was nothing special, nothing to distinguish this little piece of dirt from another little piece of trodden dirt elsewhere since or to come. The rocks were the same as were the branches dangling from the walls of trees, and the shrubbery was no less dry in some areas of where they stood than in other areas. Yet, to there they were drawn by a more clear view of the open green valley and all things revealed therein illuminated by liberated sunbeams. The fog had cleared away mostly and they could see the tiny cars down below driving by without hearing the sound of their engines or the whoosh of their passing as they cut through wind. Joe and Kaylee both looked out at the other mountains from their location, and Joe wondered at the view. She stood by silently next to him, and there the two of them stood in silence. “As difficult as it is, views like these are worth it,” he then said to Kaylee, “this is what I always hope to find when we go on hikes, did you know? This. Nothing else.” “It is beautiful up here, but I like that feeling when you’ve reached the end. It’s satisfying, don’t you think so?” she replied. “I’m sure it is... but I’m happy here...” She smiled at him and returned to silence. To Joe, life seemed rather simple at that altitude. Without the noise and the preoccupations born of the world below, life consisted of very little else that was possible to fathom. Health, love, peace, nature are some of the things indispensable that came to his mind. Just above, Joe saw the stranger walking up the mountain, disappearing just over the edge of the hill where even the whole Earthly firmament disappeared behind the green and rocky surface. They must be close to the top he thought, or at least that was the hope that grew in him when he witnessed the stranger vanish over the cliff. “Hey, if we walk a little more, we might reach the end soon.” “Alright, let’s go!” Footsteps approached the end of the trail until they reached a small tomb a few meters ahead with an epitaph that read “My Eternal Love lies here.” A cartoonish heart stamped to it, fluttering as if preparing for flight. “Hey there,” said the stranger to the stone, “This mountain ain’t so bad now.” He sat down next to the stone. “I have some good news. I finally got my IT certificate, and I have an interview soon. Thought I would share that with you today.” He looked at the sun rising up and an orange diamond glistened on his cold cheek.