I lay there among the stones, listening as silence swallowed everything. The pain was so deep that I couldn’t tell if I was breathing. Only my stubborn heart beat somewhere deep in my chest, a sign that I was not dead yet.
“Mihai… are you there?” I whispered, barely audible.
“I am… but I can’t move,” he replied, his voice broken. “We need to find a way out of here.”
I lifted my head with difficulty. Beneath me, the ground was soaked with blood and dust. The chasm wasn’t deep enough to break you in half, but deep enough to tear you apart. Above, the sky seemed far away, and the shadows of the trees stretched like fingers reaching for us.
I realized that I had one leg trapped under a rock. With every breath, the pain shot up to my temples. Poor Mihai was trying to crawl towards me, but he stopped with every step, gasping.
“Don’t move,” I told him. “If I lose you too, I won’t have anything left to live for.”
A tear rolled down his cheek. I remembered how we had held hands in front of the altar forty years ago. Back then, I said “Yes” without knowing how much that word would come to mean.
We stayed there for hours. The sun set, and the cold began to bite through our clothes. Above, footsteps could be heard again. My heart stopped for a moment.
“Is anyone there!” I shouted, hoping it was a hiker.
But it wasn’t. The shadows that approached had familiar faces. Emil and Clara.
“I told you to make sure they were dead!” she hissed.
“Shut up and finish it!” he replied, rummaging through his backpack. He pulled out a flashlight and leaned over the edge. The beam of light found us.
“Mom?” he said, in a false, feigned tone. “Are you… okay?”
I held my breath. Mihai squeezed my hand. “Don’t say anything,” he whispered.
We fell silent. After a few seconds, Emil turned off the flashlight.
“That’s it. They’re not even breathing,” he said.
The footsteps faded away. I heard the car engine starting in the distance. And then, only then, I began to cry.
We gathered our last strength and, with the help of a branch, managed to drag ourselves a few meters to a pile of stones. There, we found a broken phone — probably Clara’s. With a cracked screen and no signal, but with a battery that still flickered.
I desperately climbed onto a rock and raised the phone as high as I could. A weak signal appeared. I dialed 112 with trembling fingers.
The operator’s voice seemed to come from another world: “Hello? What is the emergency?”
“They pushed us… off the mountain…” I managed to say before the world went dark again.
I woke up in the hospital. My arm in a cast, ribs broken, but alive. Mihai, too, was still fighting.
The police arrived shortly after. They found traces, fingerprints, even footage from a camera mounted at the cabin.
Faced with the evidence, Emil confessed. All for money. He wanted our house, the land, and he could no longer wait. Clara cried in the courtroom, but her tears didn’t erase anything.
Today, a year later, I climb the mountain again. Alone. I look down at the place where I almost lost my life, and I thank the heavens that I didn’t lose my soul as well.
Some say blood doesn’t lie. I say that sometimes, it’s blood that betrays you.
But I believe one more thing: that God does not leave you in the middle of the abyss, no matter how deep it is.
This work is inspired by real events and people, but has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The author and publisher do not assume responsibility for the accuracy of events or for the portrayal of characters and are not liable for any misinterpretations. This story is provided “as is,” and any opinions expressed belong to the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.
