Twisted Tales

Up, Up, and Away

         Jack wasn't kidding when he said he was a good climber—he scaled the beanstalk fast, and made it look easy the whole way. That made sense, I suppose. He was literally made to do this, I suppose. That didn't keep me from feeling bitter and resentful as I struggled the whole way up though, especially considering the fact that we were playing for pretty high stakes here.

         I started off strong, making it up the first fifteen feet in good time and with relative ease.

         I started to slow down a little after that, and by about twenty five feet up, my arms were starting to hurt from pulling my weight.

         At thirty feet, I made the mistake of looking down.

         I'd always enjoy climbing rock walls. I used to do it every time I came across one, and even briefly experimented with real rock climbing out in the mountains when I'd joined a climbing club in college, before my class load got too heavy and I ducked out. So I wasn't scared of heights, exactly, but I suddenly realized in that moment that there is a very big difference between being thirty feet off the ground while strapped in a harness with half a dozen different safety features keeping you safely suspending in the air, and being thirty feet in the air with nothing between you and the unforgiving ground but the strength of your own arms. And now that my strength was starting to fail, I was suddenly realizing exactly how precarious of a position I had put myself in.

         I clung to the beanstalk, gripping the base of one enormous leaf so tightly with both hands that my fingers started to go numb.

         Erik was coming up below me at a much slower pace, and it took a while for him to catch up and realize I'd stopped moving. He stopped right underneath me, his head next to my foot.

         "What are you doing, Rikki? We're not even halfway yet, keep going," he grunted.

         "I can't," I replied, my voice high and tight.

         "What, is there no handhold that you can reach from there?"

         "No—that's not it. I just... I can't. I can't keep going."

         "Yes you can, you just have to do it—don't think about it, just do it."

         "No, I mean I literally can't. I can't let go, my hands have seized up. I looked down, Erik. I shouldn't have looked down."

         Erik made an exasperated sound, and then started to shuffle over to the side so he was on my right rather than directly below me. He climbed up higher until he was beside me and our heads were level. Despite the fog of terror that had suddenly clouded my head, I noticed that he was breathing heavily, though he seemed to be trying to conceal the fact.

         "Rikki," he said, his voice low and serious. "You can't stop now. We're nearly halfway, you literally can't stop now. You either have to keep going up, or you'll have to climb back down. If you stay here without going anywhere, you'll only exhaust yourself. You'll become too weak to climb at all, and then you really will fall. This isn't negotiable, you have to make a choice, and you have to make it now. Up, or down?"

         "This is a terrible pep talk," I squeaked, screwing my eyes shut tight, as if the distance to the ground would just melt away if I couldn't see it.

         "If I had time to gently walk you through this, I would. But this is a serious situation, and you're going to have to act to get out of it, not wait around for me to say nice things until you get control of yourself. You came this far. If you keep going, you'll be at the top in just a few minutes. And after that, this part will all be over. You can make it a few minutes, can't you? You can be afraid for a few minutes. You can be brave anyway for a few minutes. You can climb for a few minutes. But you have to do it, because doing nothing will only get you hurt, do you understand me?"