Making Summit

Mercury finally drags me free of the tunnel inch by painful inch. As I scramble up the rocky incline behind him, each effort is a fresh misery. The rough fabric of my shorts rubs against the tender, swollen flesh, and with every upward pull of my leg, I feel it, the soft, heavy bulge shifting wetly between my thighs.

It squishes with the motion, a sickening internal slide that reminds me with every breath of what he did in the dark. The climb is long and steep, and by the time I near the top, my legs are trembling, less from exertion and more from the effort of moving around the ruined, aching weight inside me.

He waits at the next ledge, silhouetted against the rising sun, watching my slow, pained progress with an expression I cannot read. He reaches down to pull me onto the shelf of rock just below the summit. I collapse onto my hands and knees immediately, coughing hard while cold night air floods back into my lungs.

Every muscle in my body trembles from exhaustion. My shoulders ache, my palms are shredded raw from climbing, and blood streaks my bare feet where the stone tore them open during the ascent. But the pain is already beginning to fade. Not completely, and not fast enough to erase the damage Mercury and the cliff left behind, but enough that I can physically feel the change happening inside my body.

The sharp burning in my ribs dulls first. Then the trembling weakness in my arms starts easing little by little while warmth slowly spreads outward through my chest and stomach. The lust that Mercury spurted into my holes in that cramped darkness inside the cliff is working its way through me now, feeding the thing inside me that heals faster than it should.

The bruises spreading across my ribs no longer burn quite as sharply. My breathing comes easier with every passing minute. Heat coils low in my stomach while my prolapsed rectum slowly settles back into place, fed just enough by the lust Mercury spent into me in that cramped darkness beneath the cliff.

I hate that I need it. Knowing my luck, my cunt and ass will be nearlu virginal again just in time to be destroyed my the next mutant hillbilly. Mercury crouches beside me grinning nervously while moonlight spills across the jagged rocks around us. “See?” he says proudly. “Told ya I’d get you up.”

I **** myself to nod while pushing upright against the cliff wall. The summit waits only another twenty feet above us now. The slope steepens near the top, but compared to the climb below, it almost looks manageable. Sparse desert brush clings to the edge of the mesa while cold wind sweeps softly across the ridge line overhead.

For one brief, **** moment, the summit above us actually feels like freedom. Maybe not safety, not truly, but at least distance from the mines, the shantytown, and the things hunting me through the desert tonight. Open ground waits just beyond the ridge line beneath the moonlight, and the sight of it sends a fresh surge of adrenaline through my exhausted body.

Mercury climbs first without another word, scrambling upward across the remaining rock shelves with nervous speed while loose gravel skitters away beneath his boots into the darkness below. He moves fast despite his thin frame, scrambling upward across the remaining rock shelves with almost spiderlike confidence.

I follow behind him carefully, fingers digging into cracks in the stone while loose gravel rattles away beneath my feet into darkness. The closer we get to the summit, the harder my pulse hammers. Something feels wrong as we near the top of the mesa.

At first I cannot explain it. The climb remains the same beneath my hands, and the moonlight still spills silver across the rocks above us, but the air itself begins to change. The wind sweeping across the ridge suddenly dies without warning, leaving the cliff face unnaturally still around us.

Then I notice the silence..Not the normal silence of the desert at night, but something heavier. Expectant. Every distant sound below the cliff seems to vanish all at once until all I can hear is my own breathing and the scrape of loose stone beneath our hands.

Mercury notices it too. He freezes just beneath the ridge line so abruptly that gravel slides away beneath his boots into the darkness below. His head tilts slightly upward like an animal scenting danger. “What?” I whisper harshly.

Mercury slowly turns back toward me..The grin is gone from his face now. So is the smugness. Moonlight catches his wide bloodshot eyes, and for the first time since meeting him, I see something honest there, fear. Before I can ask again, a massive shape slowly rises into view above the edge of the cliff.

Moonlight spills across his bald head and enormous shoulders while he stares down at us without speaking. He looks even bigger standing above us on solid ground, broad enough to block half the ridge line behind him. One massive hand hangs loosely at his side. The other holds an axe.

Mercury makes a terrified noise deep in his throat. “Aw hell,” he whispers. Then Mercury suddenly bolts sideways across the cliff face without another word. There is no warning, no apology, and no hesitation whatsoever in the decision. One second he is frozen beside the ridge staring upward in terror, and the next he is scrambling away from me in blind panic.

Loose rock explodes beneath his boots while he claws desperately toward another narrow crack in the mountain. He climbs sideways across the cliff face and disappears into another crack in the mountain without even looking back at me once. “Mercury!” I shout. He is already gone.

The sound of scrambling stone fades quickly into the darkness, leaving me alone at the top of the mesa. This must be Pluto. He stares down at me silently for several long seconds while the wind moves softly across the mesa above us. Then, slowly, he starts walking toward me.