100TWC - Day 60: Exhaustion

There was still no end in sight. How long had he been climbing? Without any external clues - sunlight, moonlight, stars, a watch - it was impossible to tell. Counting one-one thousand wouldn't have been any good, even if he'd thought to begin when he started. That point was, by now, way below him. How far, he couldn't imagine. Didn't even like to think about it in case it set off his vertigo again.

Funny how he'd always thought he didn't suffer from vertigo. He'd never been one of those to experience cold shivers when walking down the stairwell of a high-rise office block or hotel. The views from the window had always fascinated him. Attracted him, even. He'd been up the Space Needle and the CN Tower. Stood on the glass floors and stared straight down. No problem. Felt kinda weird being suspended in mid-air like that when part of your brain still insisted you were standing on the floor, but in a madcap kind of way he enjoyed it. Could never empathise - or even, for the most part, sympathise - with anyone who shied away from such experiences, although he stopped short of ridiculing them.

He held on to that small crumb of comfort now. That lack of ridicule. Because he was certain he looked pretty ridiculous now. Clinging to this ladder and climbing from way down there to way up there without a clue how he got there or where he was going. A slick of sweat on his face and the smell from his armpits giving away his terror, though there was no-one around to suffer it.

It wouldn't have been any use counting rungs either. Sure, they were evenly spaced, but his pace was anything but even. Every now and then when a fresh wave of vertigo struck he would have to stop climbing and cling to the rung, wrapping his arms around the riser, clasping his hands tight around each opposite wrist, and hoping his legs wouldn't give out. Even without the vertigo he had to keep stopping to catch his breath. He'd never been the fittest of the bunch but this climb would have tested the best of the high-school jocks who used to taunt his incipient beer belly all those years before.

After an hour or so - or what felt like an hour - he'd settled into a kind of rhythm. Climb for a bit, rest for a bit, climb for a bit, and repeat that around ten times before stopping for a longer rest, until his heart slowed again and his breathing returned to normal. That had seemed a good strategy at the time, but lately he'd begun to worry that it slowed his climb significantly. As time went on, the rest stops did nothing to reduce the aching in his arms and legs. Sure, his circulation was still recovering, but his muscles were getting more and more tired. The lactic acid build-up was beginning to bite, and if he stopped moving for too long his legs would begin to shake and his arms wouldn't obey the instructions from his increasingly fatigued and frightened brain.

Where the hell was this anyway? And where did it lead? He had no memory of starting up the ladder. No idea what was at the base, or even if he had begun his climb at the bottom. It had been a little darker down there, maybe. Like he was climbing out of a pit. But if that was true it was a pit with no visible sides. No sign of support. And if, as he vaguely remembered, there had been less light down there, then there wasn't all that much more light up here. The change was almost entirely imperceptible. There was no "blue sky" above him, or hadn't been the last time he'd looked and almost lost his grip on the rungs and fallen back to wherever it was he'd started. No matter which way he figured it he must already have climbed a couple of thousand feet and he knew with bone deep certainty that the vinegar in his muscles wouldn't allow him another couple of thousand. Not even half that. And still no sign of there being any top to the climb.

He stopped again, panting, and drew a hand across his brow to prevent the accumulated sweat running into his eyes. With his arms once more locked around the ladder he stared straight ahead, standing on his right leg and resting his left, squinting through the bland greyness that surrounded him to try to make out any pattern, any hint of substance beyond. He looked left, and right, staring into nothing, unable to focus since there was nothing to focus on. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. There were no colours. It was as if the word 'void' had been made real and wrapped around him in a long tube with no beginning and no end.

He shifted onto his left leg to try to relieve the aches, but as fast as one ache died away another took its place. He had to keep moving. This close to total exhaustion one false step would mean a certain fall, and if his estimate of distance was even halfway accurate, certain death.