A Solo Adventure to East Greenland

Urine flows down my thighs, soaking my synthetic underwear and sleeping bag. My mind slowly sinks into the quicksand of delirium. I can do nothing to stop it. There is no other explanation: She must be from hell. Relentless snow threatens to bury my sanctuary shell. Her serpent-like voice rises above the howling wind. “What is your mother’s name?” she asks, her obsidian eyes turning blood red.
She has appeared next to me in my stagnant shelter 2000 feet up a wall in East Greenland. I never knew her, let alone talked to her. She was just a girl I saw over the years, from elementary school to high school. I’d never thought of her, then or since. So how did she get here? I’ve been climbing solo for the last 20 days and have been alone in this remote arctic fjord for a month.
Am I asleep, lost in a confusing dream? Impossible — my damp sleeping bag, cold feet, and torn hands are physical reminders that I am awake. I’m halfway down the wall, descending after having made the first ascent of this massive tower, and for the last three days a raging snowstorm has attacked, confining me to my fragile nylon shelter. I’m in too much misery to be dreaming. Nonetheless, this stranger sits next to me, staring. Fear paralyzes me; tears well up in my eyes. What is happening?
I teeter on the abyss of hysteria. Why does this demon-child want to know my mother’s name? Good God, what is my mother’s name? How can I forget my own mother’s name? I try to breathe while sanity melts away like snowflakes on skin. She smiles, revealing small, rat-like teeth, then laughs. “Your mother’s name is Charlotte.”
There is no doubt this girl is here for my soul. Outside, snow and wind continue their onslaught. The wrath of the storm is so powerful that my refuge is almost completely buried. The nylon walls close in like exhaling lungs releasing their last gasping breath. Despite the bone-chilling cold, beads of sweat trickle down my face and neck. The archfiend girl spews her witch-voice again. “What is my name?” she asks. “If you cannot remember, you will die tonight. Mike, tell me my name and you will live to see your unborn child.”
I can see the letters of her name in my mind but can’t read them, can’t say them; my tongue will not form the syllables. I can’t hear the snowstorm anymore. Deafening silence. The snow has completely buried me. “What is her name?!” I scream, my hands ripping hair from my scalp. No answer. The grip of lunacy tightens. The demon-girl vanishes. My shelter collapses. The acute reality of smothering to death settles in with cold certainty. I cannot think of her name. For my life I cannot remember her name.