Summit

Fifteen meters to go, he thought. Just fifteen bloody-arsed meters. There he was with a broken hip, lying on a ledge just beneath the summit. Fifteen. Fucking. Meters. He couldn't move, not that he didn't want to, but his body just refused to obey his orders to get up and climb that last fifteen meters.

Fifteen. Goddamn. Meters. He sat up, the bones of his hip grating together and shooting fresh pain all through him, nearly sending him back into unconsciousness. But he kept up, and kept on, pulling himself upright. One hand after the other he went, slowly dragging his near-useless legs up behind him for the last fifteen shit-fucking meters, hand over hand, no lifeline, no oxygen, just him and the mountain, the mocking, angry, snow-shitting mountain. Fuck this mountain, he thought, as his hand crested the top of the summit ledge and he pulled himself up and back onto solid ground. Fuck it right in the~

There was a tent, complete with electric beacons and a wind-flag, the flap closed against the wind and snow but with light visible from within. Someone was already there. Before him. Hours before him, maybe even days. Fuck this mountain.

He dragged himself up to the tent and barged in, as much as he could with a broken hip and a tenuous grasp on consciousness, to see who had the audacity to be here before him. There, relaxing in a folding chair beside a small space heater, drinking a big mug of something steaming, he sat, warm and cozy in long underwear and not much else. He watched himself look over and catch sight of himself, lying there on the floor, covered in snow and ice, saw the confusion followed by horror in his own eyes.

“What the fuck?” He said. They said. We said. “What the fuck?”

He dropped his drink and stumbled back out of the chair, feeling behind him, desperately, for the ice axe. Meanwhile, he tried to stand and say something coherent, something comforting, knowing that if he was doing what he would do in that situation that there wasn't much time to save himself. “Look, I don't know what's going on, but you have to believe me whe~”

He reached the axe and hefted it, not at all comforted by its weight but driven by the encroaching anger and madness at the audacity of the thing lying before him, wearing his skin and talking in his voice. He approached it as it became more and more furtive in its words, trying desperately to escape before the pick came down with a mortal thud, ending the words with a squelch and spurt. The thing's blood arced, gracefully, from the wound and as muscle function ended with life it collapsed completely, leaking all over the floor of the tent with several different fluids.

Christ, he thought. What the fuck is going on? What is this thing? He removed the axe and looked at his own face, caved in and dead, and knew immediately what he had to do. He quickly donned his gear and, trying to keep himself from gazing too long at his dead counterpart, dragged it out of the tent and to the mountain's edge, where he unceremoniously dumped it over the side, throwing the axe down for good measure. As he turned to leave, though, a slight tremble in the earth gave him sudden and futile warning as the snow beneath him gave way. He fell, not far, landing hard and painfully on a ledge around fifteen meters below. He felt his hip crack and snap on landing, and the pain sent him into a world of blackness.