Crib Stuck | Short Story

One can always tell by the calves. There they are, facing away from the arete. They are hiker’s calves – seemingly hewn from volcanic rock and looking set to erupt out of the socks encasing them. No mere holiday walker, he. An athlete he might be, but calves don’t lie and this pair, high up on the arete, are spasming in the summer heat.

He’s crib stuck, the lad. Not unusual, particularly on this lonely arm of Snowdon. The boy – young man really – has got it bad. White-cuticled fingers clawing at the top of the knife-edged ridge, chest pressed as low to the mountain as possible, eyes wild and with pupils dilated like discuses. He’s looking for security, for the wide open wind to stop battering at his kagool. All nine-hundred metres of near-vertical drop yawns behind him, whilst ahead and over the crest of the ridge lies only more space, more air. This is about as bad a case as I’ve seen, and not made any better for the lad being alone on the mountain.

Of course he might have known, or guessed at least, that he did not have a head for heights. Probably thought he could brave it out – mind over mountain, all that kind of thing. What he almost certainly didn’t consider was how his fear – and it is a rabid, knee-trembling fear – might affect others on the mountain. What of the rescue team who are going to have to get their gear on and peel him off the mountain? What of the family and friends waiting anxiously for him at home, hanging on their phones for the first Instagram pictures of those chiselled calves standing at the trig point? What of the person behind him, say, who might also not be that keen on heights and who is now being asked to edge around this tapdancing wannabe sherpa, this blowhard, designer-bearded influencer? Does he not realise that a person must keep going, that to stop, to pause and let the fear take you, is fucking death?

So be it. I’ll make sure that there are not two new permanent residents on Crib Goch today.

It’s a warm day, but I see that my hand is trembling as it reaches for the boy’s collar.

*Thanks for reading, folks. Image courtesy of David Crocker. My recent short stories include ‘A Clearing‘ and ‘Across the Glassine‘.

---

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, and Shooter magazine. He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father. He blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.