Ascent

I turn aside before Everest’s summit. Hobbling to a low drift, I scoop away the snow. I have found her, still lying where she had collapsed on her fateful ascent years ago. I peel off her goggles. She stares at the cobalt sky, as if daydreaming. Her ivory skin remains unspoilt, despite the passage of time.

Laying down beside her, I unclip my mask and gasp in the thin air.

My heart pummels my ribs while I remove our gloves.

I wrap my wife’s stiff hand in mine and gaze up at the heavens, waiting to see what she sees.

From Guest Contributor Christopher Mattravers-Taylor

Chistopher has been shortlisted in the Summer 2023 and Autumn 2024 Voice.Club Competitions and longlisted in Periscope Literary’s 2023 short story competition. He was also a finalist in Globe Soup’s October and November 2024 100-word competition. His short stories have variously been described as fierce, dark, humorous and descriptive. Currently he enjoys writing short stories with a speculative edge, and now is beginning his debut novel. He lives in Bristol, UK, with an amazing wife and two wonderful children he does not deserve.

His writing is coloured by his experiences as a ME sufferer, particle physicist at CERN, property developer, core driller, disability benefits claimant, Dalmatian breeder, traveller, and more besides. One thing has remained constant in his chaotic life, however: his love of Encona Hot Sauce.

The Ascent

The door heaves open. Light floods me while darkness retreats inside me. The guards shove me outside my cell. On the stairs, my heart beats like a war drum. One step. Two. Many more. While my chains gently clink. At the summit, I look down and the people cheer. I see their mouths moving but I can’t hear a sound. All I hear is my panicked breath. As they take off my chains, the darkness escapes. I feel so light that I lose the ground under my feet. I smile, in the twenty-five meters that separate me from the abyss.

From Guest Contributor Davide Risso

Davide grew up in Italy, but his itchy feet led him to live in Ireland, Germany, the United States, and travel around the globe. Scientist by training, writer by passion, rock climber by vocation, his fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, RumbleFish Press, Literary Yard, and Cranked Anvil among others.