Mid-fall, I do the only thing I can.I flinch, twist, and fling my one good arm, grabbing for anything that isn’t final.
My fingers connect with snow and brittle birch.The knot of shrubby branches juts from the cliff like a splintered handshake.I grip it, and the wood bites back, shredding my palm and splitting my nails.
It takes half my weight in one impossible, creaking complaint.Then it takes the rest.I hang by an arm between vertigo and salvation, my breath a ratchet of pain.
Beneath my dangling feet, the glacial river awaits, spitting and churning.A massive tooth of stone juts out of the rapids.That’s where my head would have been if I’d kept going.
It’s only a matter of time before my fingers slip.But I’m ready for it.
I shove off with a strength that’s more will than muscle and swing like a pendulum, using the branch as a fulcrum to alter trajectory.
Wind slaps my face.Snow punches my cheeks.I twist my hips mid-air and aim my body in a desperate prayer.
Roll.Absorb.Don’t splatter on impact.
I shoulder the angle and hit the icy current.My wounded arm slams into rocks.My ribs eat the vibration, and for a second so precise I can measure it, I think,Holy shit, I stuck that fucking landing.
Then the river peels open its snarling, fanged jaw and sucks me down its throat.
The undercurrent grabs my legs, dragging me beneath the surface as the world shifts sideways, spinning and pulling me at breakneck speeds far away from Hoss.
Ice chunks bash my face as I claw for a rock, a root, anything to stop the ruthless rolling.The arrow in my arm wrenches and catches on debris like a barbaric anchor.
The choice is ugly and instant.I curl my fingers around the bolt’s shaft and yank.My bicep screams, and blood sprays across the water.Vicious, fiery pain stabs up my arm, obliterating tendon and muscle.
No time for shock.My lungs demand air.For endless miles, I paddle my limbs with a panic born of instinct.Agony flares with each stroke as I choke on the brutal, shredding pain of slowly drowning.
The whitewater rapids sweep me farther and farther from the hills with violent urgency, smacking me around with the force of a god-shaped hand, and siphoning the last drop of heat from my pores.
It’s a cold so vast it isn’t cold.It’s a breath, the final one, before the body quits fighting.
My vision edges with colorless static.Every movement becomes heavier than the one before.My lungs burn for breath I can’t coax.
When the river falls silent, death answers.
The Resurrection
I wake in the dark with a gasp.
Pain.It’s everywhere.In my lungs.In my teeth.In the roots of my filthy hair.But it’s a language I understand.It tells me I’m alive.
Unless pain exists in the afterlife.In that case, I’m fucked.
The river crashes nearby, close enough to lap at my legs.But the ground beneath me is solid.
Lying on my back, I try to shift my body, but it’s too heavy.My limbs stick to the riverbank like slabs of cement.Nothing moves.Not a shiver.
Not good.
When the shivering stops, that’s the real silence.I must be dead.
I can’t feel my balls.
Oh, fuck.What if I have frostbite on my dick?Will I lose it for eternity?
I’ve died and gone to cold hell in a handbasket.
Except there’s no handbasket, and I’ve lost my dick.
