D for Desolation

He scrabbled at the rocks above him, gasping in short bursts of breath. Just a hundred more meters or so and he would make it; he just had to keep climbing, he had to, or else he would surely die underground.

But what was the point? He had no friends, no family, no home. He had nowhere to go and was an outcast to the rest of the world. Once upon a time, he had lived with his family, had many friends, had a home to go to. However, all of them had slowly moved away from his life, either passing away, or relocating to other cities and towns. 

As he lost his family's support, he lost the money to pay for his house as well and he was forced to leave  his neighborhood. At the time, he had been desperate. He was a bankrupt, uneducated man and had very few choices open to him.

With a sense of reluctance, but understanding perhaps, that he had no choice, he had decided to join one of the few links to his previous life, a mountaineer named Graham. Graham had been a childhood friend of his, a classmate who had helped him with schoolwork. 

Mountaineering was dangerous work. Graham worked for a company called Iced Mountain, which employed men to climb to the mountain's peak and melt the ice at the very top. Then, a helicopter was supposed to pick up the freshly melted ice that was refrozen to be sold. There was a lot of competition between companies and that was when Iced Mountain decided to make mountaineers climb up the mountain, instead of sending a helicopter up to the top. It was slower, and more dangerous, but it meant money, and money was what the company cared about.

He could distinctly remember the last mission he went on. Graham and a few others, including him, were supposed to get to the top of this particular mountain before it was discovered by the public. It was going to be the Iced Mountain company's biggest project. It was all going well and they had almost reached the peak.The mission was going to be a success and Iced Mountain was going to be a universal super company.

Until he fell into a small gap in the snow. Nobody had noticed since he was at the back of the group and he had fallen without any alarm being raised. Thanks to his safety equipment, he survived the fall with a few minor bumps and bruises. Though he was not too experienced, he immediately knew that there was no chance anybody would hear him from so deep below and his best chance was  to try climbing up. He had been quite confident that he would live,  considering the fact that he had a reasonable supply of food and water.

Now though, two days later, his food was over, his water had fallen deep into the pit a while back, all of his safety equipment had been damaged quite severely and his backpack was considerably weighing him down. An overwhelming sense of desolation came over him. There was no chance he would ever go back home alive, he realized. Even if he did get out of the pit, it was a long way back to the bottom of the mountain.

He smiled sadly, remembering how his life used to be. No treacherous mountains, days full of sunshine and song, and of course, fun and games with his family. Reflecting upon these memories, he realized how many years had passed in his life, how many of those years spent being idle and useless. There was no way he would have lived happily without anybody he loved anyway, he thought to himself. And consoling himself with this fact, looking up at the distant sunlight for one last time, he let go of the rocky outcrop and allowed himself to fall into the dark abyss below him.