The Waterfall To The Heavens
“Holy smokes! A mongoose!” a stupid, blasted mongoose. They’re not even a rarity, I just hadn’t seen one in a long time and didn’t expect to see any here. Whatever. Famous last words, eh? No. No. Mentality always forces one foot into the grave. It can’t end like this. I won’t allow it. So many things yet to do. Mountain peaks to conquer, plateaus to visit, women to……nevermind. Or maybe I should indulge in lust more. It may just be my final indulgence. Who knows? Maybe it will help me break away from the reality of this situation, tear down this desperate and haphazard lie that I have convinced myself of. A reality that I, however, cannot afford to accept. A reality I must contort into mere fiction, a passing thought, holding absolutely no control over the delicate balance of life and death.
Broken ankle. Possibly shattered spine. I think I felt blood on my fingertips but I am too dizzy to tell. I think I see it in a distance, the famed Blue Mile Waterfall. Odd name but who am I to challenge its discoverers? They certainly did a better job than I. I feel blood seeping from my socks too but I’d rather not have this trail and my body conquered as well. I wish I had done things differently. I wish I had worn those silly looking high boots, they would have probably saved me from this predicament. If only I had not allowed my experience to mess with my head and flatter my ego. Nature is above all. One moment you conquer Everest and in the other, you lie cold and lifeless at the feet of a banyan tree, a silently shattering branch finding its prey when you least expect it. It’s almost funny, isn’t it? Here, I lie at the mercy of mother nature, buttering it with my inferiority knowing full well that my survival would lead to years of cursing and wishing the worst upon these innocent trees and the fauna they protect. If I survive to tell this “tragic” tale, I am almost certain that I’ll find a paved road, dead ferrets and groaning trunks upon my next visit. Has my buttering done anything? Or is it just adding to your amusement?
If only that GOD FORSAKEN MONGOOSE……..calm. Calm. Breathe in. Breath out. I need to calm myse- WHY IS THAT ROCK STARING AT ME LIKE THAT! YOU WILL BE THE FIRST TO FACE MY WRATH ONCE I RID MYSELF OF THIS WRETCHED PLACE, YOU HEAR ME?........Do you? Quit lying to yourself, Mike. I really wish I could punch that rock but I cannot risk breaking my wrist too. I need to crawl to safety. I don’t have the time to be petty. It’s just a lifeless rock. It can’t hear me. I suppose I should blame that no-good travel agent instead! “OOO! Go to this one waterfall hidden away from any sort of civilization to help you in case something fatal happens (which is very likely by the way)!” “Yeah! Thanks for the advice! I just wish you had the COMMON SENSE TO TELL ME THAT EARLIER!” I swear I could punch his teeth right in and pull his cursed tongue straight out of his foul mouth! But then again….. what will that bring me? Will it put an end to my eternal crawl to a make-believe evacuation zone? Or will it mark my life with an ending act of shameless violence. Are those two options really the only definitions of my legacy?
I can almost taste the airborne essence of the waterfall. Sweet, yet salty. So full of life, yet ringing death’s bell. A crystal white and crimson concoction. Oh wait. Those are merely my tears. I feel like I am bathing in them, yet my skin feels barren, lifeless already. How long can I possibly keep crawling, denying the leeches a succulent meal? Is it all I’m gonna be? Food at somebody else’s table? A passing tale from one mouth to another as the unfortunate hiker who hiked too close to the Sun? Perhaps it is a better legacy than what I truly deserve. I suppose nature really does care, for it picked out a lonely death for me over the one where I’m surrounded by distant memories and shame weighing me down. I’m glad yet saddened that it killed me surrounded by dead silence instead of crippling thoughts induced by the phantoms of the past. I do not know whether to thank it or to scream at it. A trivial thought, I must declare it to be. I wish I could share one last beer with my friends, have one last laugh with my loved ones, and indulge myself in one last ingenuine apology at my lover’s doorstep. Give me a second chance and I will treat my family right, make amends with the exiled son who I pretended to be no more than a stranger to, and above all, I would keep my greed in check and liver in line. “Second chance.” I say. Not for the first time, I’m sure you know. I suppose it is best to keep them as they are. Wishes. Fantasies. The reality of another world, of another man.
The salty water from above jolts me awake. “Not yet.” I tell myself. I am seated underneath the waterfall, barely any motivation to absorb its beauty. Stubbornly, I wave away the flies waiting eagerly to buzz about my corpse. Annoyance transforms into envy. How can it be fair for these meagre creatures to survive….nay, THRIVE in such extremities? But nature loves symmetry, doesn’t it? Sorry. She. Only she can be so gracefully hostile. Like a Venus fly trap but pure at heart, opening its arms to the trespassing insects and only clasping them shut when they overstay their welcome. Oh hell! Trivial! Trivial is all it is. Just like my life in the scope of the universe, I suppose. Just a petty little thing that will be forgotten by all but infinitely preserved by the world around me. Preserved in the echoes of the crashing water, arches of the stretching rainbows, crooked buzzing of the flies and singing of the nocturnal inhabitants. At the end of time, all that will be left of our being will be millenniums of dreams and one final lap back home.
With the little energy I could muster, my dying gasps, I pulled myself up; my arms trembling under the weight of my body, begging to the Almighty that the moss infested stones won’t fail my final wish. The wondrous watery arch shone overhead with all its might. The seven colours gifted me a glimpse of the afterlife. So vast, so free, it could make a paraplegic dance with glee, joy and a heavenly emotion no man is fit to understand; as the mute woman sings and the blind child cheers them on. The twittering birds lift me up by my collar as the water on my cheek flirts with the Sun’s coziest rays. As I flew closer and closer towards the comfortably blinding light, as the chanting of the fallen changed from damning to celebratory, as the tiniest cracks in the pebbles conceived mesmerizing ecosystems, a thought occurred to me. In the strange course of survival, I figure, man tends to forget that we may already be in heaven.
THE END.
