up the online meeting, the dude whose nick hit the bottom in the horrid deeds list knew it's time to put their matters in order and/or buy a lot in the cemetery of their choice or get drunk and laid-up for their last dollar. Whatever.

Of course, the outsider freaks tried to intervene. Parents, who had some ambitious plans for their scions, governments offended by the fact of somebody else messing around with their potential cannon fodder and egg-heads, federal investigating services because that's their job.

The MoM site would be run down, hacked, banned, replaced with the infamous '404'.

By the end of the week, the MoM members found a message in their email boxes, link to the freshly redesigned site with an added button "Report a possible infiltrator". Welcome back on track, guys.

That's how MoM dwindled and became an elite group of hundreds, then tens of participants, MoM's upscale Magisters.

The upstart dare-devil aficionados, who still got the nerve to sign up (really rarely) did not last long.

No selfies any more at the get-togethers.

When the Magisters count dropped (ascended?) to 9 the camera eyes in their notebooks were safely plastered. Some especially wary cats spoke thru the Voice Changer Device with that dumb robotic voice, you know. Still dropped in tracks, VCD or no VCD, with all their 9 lives each because right now there are just 2, Bart and me. The showdown of the Last of Mob Monsters.

No ballot is needed neither VCD. No one will anyway believe that my squeaks of a squeezed squirrel is my natural voice, as for Bart he gets too much relish in his opulent baritone.

That’s why, in full conformance to MoM rules, here am I on a 3-week vacation and no longer, hiking in this wild mountainous backcountry. Not alone I am, a mob old-timer feels better in a company. My girlfriend Mahra makes me it.

She's a cute-looking chick though not too bright which makes her even better. It was not falling at first sight by us. But then it somehow turned into a stable relationship. Something about a year or so. Anyways, she keeps a more precise track of time.

And the year back I just though, "What the hell? Would do for a security blanket, huh?" A beauty is a beauty for 3 days at most if she stays at your home. For which reason we live separately thanks to the wise advice of that Irishman who knew a thing or two about beauties and stuff.

And I do need an additional blanket on this here trek, the mountains are cold at night.

I decided to walk up this river valley to watch those waterfalls traced in the Google satellite map. Not too big to attract swarms of tourist, which is a blessing.

But I couldn't hire a guide in the couple of farmsteads we visited on the way. Halfway thru the summer, the hicks are busy making hay in the tilted fields of nearby slopes. No one available, they only explained to follow the cow path along the left riverside.

The path got lost in the woods pretty soon and we just walked on. Path or no path, the left side stays the left.

So we went, me, the fucking pathfinder, and Mahra breathing heavily yet stomping bravely behind my back. Atagirl, sweetie!

The riverside had cliffs at some places jutting to close to the stream, those you had to skirt about by climbing up the slope, thick-wooded and steep. The river stayed down there roaring along, unseen thru the treetops in the descending wood.

And then there started the second tier of cliffs. Climbing father up the slope to bypass them as well seemed like too much of an uphill job. So I went on, keeping close to the bottom in their row rooted in the, like, way-over-50-degree slant that kept growing steeper with the progress.

The most deterring was the gritty layer blanketing the ground. A kinda fine scaly slug spilled down with hissing rustle from under your boots. Real nasty sound and scary sight, them those tiny rivulets of bitty dry grit rolling downward. And only inertia of moving on did not allow to stop and think, until the slant became too abrupt.

I stopped and turned about. Mahra stood in a couple of meters off me. Then the hiss increased and I slid down standing midst one more dry grit rivulet, wider than those before.

The downward sliding got momentum, my boots submerged into the grit-current.

I took the left tuck in this slug slalom so as to reach for the tree trunk stuck up from the almost sheer drop in the slope covered over with those gray scales too slippery to even stand on.

The trunk withstood the impact of my desperate clutch. There was no time to take a breather.

One more grit-fall whooshed by. I looked up thru the sweat pouring down my face.

Mahra was rushing past seated on her bottom. My left arm shoot out, our hands clasped. She stopped hanging on the tie of our hands over the dry grit stream tumbling down the wall.

She did not scream. The tense lips in the pallid face gave out no sound. The hiss was dying away down there. The half-dry trunk of the dead tree creaked and quivered.

She never screamed, but her mad eyes! What deafening freaked-out look stood in them!

Our hand-clasp was giving in slowly, slackening. The sweat-moist fingers slipping thru, past, away.

No screaming. All I could hear was that hollow clump, and the non-stop roar of the mountainous river rolling on.

After a while, I let my backpack drop down too, but kept by me the 10-meter length of a light sturdy rope…

She lay face-down in a meter-wide stretch of backwater rimmed with current-smoothed rocks, placid spot, no deeper than a couple of inches. The hump of her backpack stayed above the water, safely dry.

I scooped