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Short Stories

Mount Ordeals

     It was a lonely day in autumn.  I recall missing someone and feeling like I didn't know what to do with myself.  I decided to take a trip to Stone Mountain.  It was only a few minutes away from the house.  Soon I was on the road and then the highway.
     The tape player in the car didn't work.  I had made jokes earlier in the week that my mental disorientation was broadcasting itself and had caused the tape in the deck to flip from one side to the other without playing any music.  It didn't seem so funny now.  Somehow the silence made me uncomfortable.  I didn't want to hear my own thoughts and I didn't want to feel my emotions.  I put on some earphones and listened to the Walkman I had left in the car the day before.  I let the abrasive, politically opinionated music fill my head with general thoughts that were not my own.
     In no time I arrived at the park.  It wasn't very crowded, it being close to sundown.  I parked and headed towards the trail up the mountain.  Just about where the trail begins to incline, I stopped to gaze at the sky.  I often looked there, as though I might find an image in the clouds to comfort me. Today there was nothing besides thin wisps of almost nonexistent clouds, slowly curling around the sun in the slight breeze.  The sun caught my attention next.  “I will race the sun”, I thought.
     I headed up the trail, moving steadily and quickly.  The music was still blaring in my ears.  I made pretty good time, occasionally looking behind me to check the progress of the sun.  Suddenly, the trail began to get steeper.  I was out of breath, sweating, the earphones were falling off my head periodically, and I thought of an old video game.  “I'm climbing Mount Ordeals”, I told myself. After a brief rest, I pushed on.
     The trail got steadily steeper, and I could not stop to rest, lest I lose my momentum.  The music in my ears began to take on a mocking tone, and I was struggling with each step.  I felt tears on my face but could not recall the moment that I had begun crying.  As I looked at my shoes, I noticed an inscription carved into the mountainside.  “We love you, go!”  After fighting for a few more minutes, I saw the summit.
     I wasn't so tired anymore.  I took the headphones off and hurried onward.  The last several feet went quickly, and then I was at the top.  The wind pulled at my clothes as I stood there. The sun was just beginning to set.  I watched the pastel colored clouds on the horizon drift and melt. As I turned my head from side to side, studying the small buildings and vast green expanses of trees, the wind made music as it passed my ears.  Each slight movement of my head created a different soft, throbbing trill of a note that I could not only hear but also feel. Everything looked calm and still from the vantage of the mountaintop.  There was a strange peace in feeling so small, standing alone on the top of the mountain.