I gasp at the fleeting air. The constant respiratory rhythm interrupts this deathly silent world. Exhaled air escapes in miniature billowing clouds that seem to crystallize and then dissipate into the icy sky. All my focus is on this constant life line that is imperceptibly growing shorter and more sporadic. But one notices the imperceptible when this close to dying.

I lay in a frozen snowy gash in the side of the mountain, partially covered from the newly fallen and partially uncovered from the struggle I put up only five minutes ago. How humans struggle and fight to live.

The snow froze over my body before I could get out. I’m stuck and that’s it. The end. The frantic escape plan, so desperately fought for had failed with me gasping hard and feeling weak enough to fall into an unconscious sleep. But I cannot rest, it would be certain death. Even when its presence is so imminent, I still strive to escape the cold claws of death. Humans are so stubborn.

Cold was ubiquitous, yet now strangely easy to ignore. It had been my constant irritant companion since I left the camp, but seems to have left me in the midst of this freezing snow. The ever constant cold was normal now. To feel anything now would be an improvement.

Yet I do feel my heart, as faint as it is.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Heart beat.

Fog spreads across the wide horizon, thick and mushy. No sun is visible. No warmth. Yet light seems to come from all directions. The snow looks strangely bright. I stare at it, analyzing every particle. My body ravages suddenly for food or water. The snow looks edible. I turn my head and snow falls on my face. I open my mouth and eat. It melts horribly slow, freezing and filling. Water trickles down my throat like heaven. I eat more, savoring its freshness. Coldness nubs faster in the inside, but it’s addicting. My mouth swallows on its own accord like a starved cow, desperately needing something, anything, to fill it. My lips begin to hurt. I can feel their red sting turn crisp blue, yet for some reason I keep trying to survive.
My appendages are useless, dead. All depends on my head; my face. Each breath is shorter than the other. Each swallow smaller. I try to get out with pure will crying in anguish, in pain, in suffering. My head falls back, mouth still frozen open. I strain to see the last bit of light, but my eyes are disobedient. They roll close, blackness.
Why is death so numbing?
Feeling is a strange sensation. It seems to slowly dissipate and quickly come back in wild, angry torrents. Piercing pain arouses my unconsciousness with a jolt- I gasp, but my lungs do not move. Desperate, I try to breathe, I mouth the air, trying to pull in the oxygen an exasperatingly, slowly, it trickles in and relief courses through my deficit body along with a painful surge shocking every fiber. Life is so painful, and yet I still try to live- strange. I gradually resupply my lungs, consciously sending oxinated blood to my brain, my lungs, my heart. Each breath agonizingly reminding me that my sense of feeling actually works, or rather, is starting to.
Somewhere deep inside my head tiny nerves begin to vibrate and prickle with sound. A hurried, low rumble of, perhaps, human voices reach my ears, as pushing through suffocating mud. I strain earnestly to comprehend, but my mind wearies easily and I do not understand. I almost forget to breathe. I stop trying and just listen to the sound, comforted by the fact that someone else is here. Where ever here is. I suddenly feel a rush of cool sweet oxygen pour through me with waves of relief and burning fire. It reaches my head, overwhelming me. I am too weak to tread the water and fall under the welcoming waves of nothingness.

I am not dead yet.