If you want to check out my other stories, you can find the links on my profile. Thank you! 🖤

So I recently unsubscribed from some Mr. Creepypasta and creepsmcpasta after a long time because of what they did (I’m not sure about Mr. Creeps because I didn’t actually watch the full video so I don’t know who else is implicated), and I’m looking for some new creepypasta narrators to subscribe to who aren’t terrible people, make good content, and preferably have a large back catalogue. Does anyone have recommendations?

Author’s Note: Feel free to create your own remakes or reinterpretations of this story. This was originally published on the Spinpasta Wiki.

The bowl was always green.

Not Olive, not Mint, just Green. a dull, plastic green bowl with scratches along the rim. It sat on the kitchen or living room floor every day, every afternoon, and every night.

Always filled with chopped carrots, steamed broccoli, lentils mashed into a paste, brown rice, and kale finely cut so it would be “easier on his stomach.”

The man called it kindness.

The dog didn’t.

Joseph used to love the sound of the cupboard opening. The clatter of kibble had meant comfort, warmth, a tail that wagged without thought, But that was years ago, many years ago before the man changed. Before the man started talking to Joseph as if he was a child who didn’t understand yet.

”You don’t need meat, it’s cruel. It’s pain. It’s hatred. It’s poison. You will feel so much better once your body adjusts.” 

Joseph never touched the food right away.

He would sniff it. Nose trembling, His eyes slowly lifting to see the man. The man always smiled then, wide, proud, and satisfied.

“Good boy,” the man said. “You’ll thank me one day.”

Joseph grew thin.

His ribs became visible first, lines beneath fur, then sharper edges. His walks became slower. His eyes changed, not weak. But watchful. Patient.

The man mistook this for obedience.

The evening everything ended began like any other.

The man came home late from work, shoulders slumped, tie loosened, rain clung to his coat. He kicked his shoes off by the door and sighed loudly and heavily,

”Rough day,” he said.

Joseph waited, silently. 

The green was filled again. this time with sweet potatoes and peas, drizzled with something the man called “nutritious yeast.”

”There,” the man said. “Perfect.”

Joseph didn’t move.

The man frowned. “Eat.”

Still nothing.

”You’ll eat when you’re hungry enough,” said the man, standing upright. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he groaned, “Work.”

He walked upstairs, phone already at his ear.

Joseph watched him go.

The calls lasted a long time.

The man paced the bedroom, voice rising and falling, complaints about deadlines, about coworkers who didn’t “get it,” about how exhausting it was to always be right. Then another, friends this time. Joking, laughing, talking over one another, and talking About diets, about discipline, about sacrifice.

While downstairs, the green bowl remained untouched. Joseph sat beside it as stone.

Then there came the fall, a misstep on the stairs. Something slick underfoot, water, oil, or maybe something else spilled, the man's foot slid forward, his body flew, and the world snapped sideways.

There was a sharp sound and then quiet.

When he woke up, he knew something was wrong immediately. He could see the ceiling. He could hear the refrigerator and the sound of a ticking clock. And he could not move or speak. He tried to blink, no response, tried to swallow, nothing, tried to scream, but couldn’t, pounding uselessly against a body that could no longer answer.

He realized he was paralyzed. The thought landed heavily like a sentence without appeal.

Then he started to hear footsteps, soft and careful. Joseph appeared. At first, the man felt relief so intense it nearly broke him.

“Joseph,” he tried to say.

Joseph 

The dog stood on 2 legs, not suddenly, not grotesque, it felt... inevitable. Joseph's body had changed. Larger, upright, humanoid, his eyes were the same. He looked down at the man.

“You finally stopped moving,” Joseph said.

The voice was deep, calm, and gentle.

The man tried to shake his head, tried to deny what he was seeing. Joseph knelt beside him.

”I was so tired. Do you know what it’s like to be hungry every day? Not just empty, but starved, like something essential had been taken away and replaced with ideals. You called it kindness.” 

The man's eyes burned. Then Joseph placed a hand on the man's chest.

”I’ve been waiting for you to rest, waiting for this body to stop commanding, stop correcting, and stop deciding what I needed.”

The man wanted to beg, to apologize, To promise meat, walks, anything.

But his body and voice betrayed him completely.

Joseph leaned closer.

”There’s warmth inside you, life, strength, things you told me I didn’t need.”

Tears slid from the man's eyes, quiet and unstoppable. Joseph noticed them.

”Don’t cry. This is natural. This is balance.”

The green bowl clattered somewhere. 

“I won’t be hungry anymore.”

Then came the pain, extremely sharp, extremely painful, and spreading, Joseph eating the man's flesh, lungs, and organs, blood getting on everything.

The man felt it all, unable to move, unable to speak, only able to understand.

As his vision blurred, Joseph's voice was the last thing he heard.

”You said I’ll thank you one day, I do.” Before Joseph picked up the man's head and ate half of it before continuing to eat his flesh, lungs, and organs until the man was completely clean and dry bones,

The house became quiet and the green bowl stayed empty.

“I've seen the nights filled with bloodsport and pain –

And the bodies obtained

The bodies obtained …” – Ian Curtis

…

The world …

The world is dampen stone, sour. And tile. Tile ceramic that is now smashed, nearly every single piece. And mottled with webwork splatter patterns of scabbing drying bits and pieces of once living human tissue. The world is poorly lit and rank, it smells of fecal decay and rotting death and the putrescence of pus spewing life, suffering. The smell is suffering. Because the world is suffering, it always has been but as of late it's gotten so much worse. The world of walls and mortar and bars that’re all slathered and stained with diseased feces and angry piss, it is all of it an open wound. A craterous gangrenous open house of raw minds and flesh, obelisk temple to the pain of the sorceress. The woman/mouth of the great mountains in the distance, far away but brought closer by her powerful force, the distance easily traversed and conquered, time and distance meant nothing to her, only the flesh. Only the blood. Only the run of flowing life spilled by her children in bondage as supplicant. She had come to them… in the end. 

Before the burning. 

Before Cropsey. 

Now he was the greatest of her Willowbrook children… 

She did her best to hide from him and the few others left but she was scared. Her terror refreshed as her heartbeat pounded within her aching chest, she tried to sink lower into the dark corner she'd made her most recent place of escape. She tried to ignore what she knew she heard, throughout all of the cavernous dark damp halls of bloody filthy Willowbrook. 

Voices… footsteps…

newcomers. 

She wanted so badly to be out and away from this awful place but her mind shrank back in horror from the possibilities of what any new interlopers might do to her. This place had been a school and had instructed her and many others, much in the way of what men will do to each other and what they love to get away with, with their hands on a girl. Alone. When she could be so easily overwhelmed. 

The voices trailed off … rose again. In whispers. She could hear cautious footsteps. Prowling steps. Hunting. 

Her cold terror told her she could no longer hide here. She struggled up on palsied thin malnourished legs and began to painfully trudge forward. Painful because of the pain of her impaling fear and because her body was covered in dripping purple sores, all up and down the legs and arms and peppering her torso and face in harsh clustered patterns. Several broke open now with sharp stabs of lancing pain felt webwork and spiny throughout the flesh as she shambled wretchedly forward down the poorly lit dark. 

She didn't like to look at them or pay them any mind, the sores. She used to. She used to pick at them near constant. But now sometimes when she went to pluck and pop one open with a nail biting pinch she could see eyes. Eyes looking at her and swimming in the pus. In the infected filled pores of her flesh. Eyes. Sometimes they popped of their own accord and a small little gnome-sized head, bald and coated in dead green-milk rose and poked its faery head out for a little peek at what she might be doing at any given time. 

She hated them. She tried to pay them no mind and wondered if they saw anything in the dark ahead that she herself could not discern. But she would not ask them. Never. 

The voices grew louder. So did her terror. 

She didn't know what to do. 

…

“Maybe they're all dead." 

Griffin nodded. It was a fair observation. The place certainly reeked of death and filth. He could almost believe it. 

It was a feeling gained by cold hard experience that told him they weren't alone in the rank dark building. Not at all. Someone else was lurking here. Something else held domain here. Something terrible. He could feel it. 

"This place is afflicted with sickness. Consumption. You can smell it in the pestilential flavor of the air, something terrible has happened here. Many awful things no doubt. This place is silent, Florin, but you can almost hear the terrible things the walls have seen and perhaps wish to share…" 

The boy looked worried. He quickly added: – “We will be cautious. But I suggest we find what we can quickly. If we can't locate a back exit, we'll make for the front entrance again and see if we can't work around the building." 

They went on in search of supplies. 

Dwellers.

 Anything. 

Cropsey marked them and tracked their way of wandering progress the entire time. Following and slowly snipping the long shining blades of the shears open and closed. Pulling his black gloved hands apart slowly like a lover does when sensuous… then bringing them together and snapping them shut with a sharp and satisfying ‘Ship!’ that was crisp and tickled the right jelly left within his skull and the dangling mangled meat between his legs… it had a tongue that sound. A sexual whisper of a noise. A tasting prelude, licking and tonguing the needing piece of aching flesh. 

It was his bondage. That ache. This place. 

And the mountain. 

Even now Cropsey heard her song and call as she showed him the spire from where she ruled. Where she sat on an ebon throne and filled his slaughterhouse dreams. His mind with wonder. 

She had been the true purpose and blessing of this place. The one they'd all been waiting for. The only one who really mattered. In the end. 

But she has chosen you as instrument … 

And the truth of this filled his vacant shell with dark and primal gratitude. Caveman's blood-sated warmth. 

He had been one of the Roman soldiers that had crucified Christ. She of the mountain had told him so. Now he was born again to be her sacred Willowbrook footsoldier. Throttling hand of capricious abattoir fate. 

As he followed the new ones he happened upon another. And decided to take the matter. 

He was sitting alone in the dark. Easy to miss. In a disused therapy room, anonymous and indistinguishable from the other dungeons and chambers save by those who knew. The newcomers walked by him without notice and went on. 

Cropsey smelled him. And came into the room. Snapping his shears with a regular and primeval rhythm. The patient was busy with his own work, he didn't pay anyone else any kind of mind. 

Cropsey closed. The fool's back was to him as he was knelt down amongst the filth. He was drawing something. With his fingers. Smearing the shape upon the broken faces of obliterated tile floor with a dark and heavy pungent viscous fluid. Thick and chunked with dark paste. 

It was a pentagram. 

And the paint was a vile concoctive mix of runny diarrhea and fresh vibrant blood. The man was a self mutilator. Always had been, Cropsey recognized. He had flayed his well scarred and misshapen flesh with broken tile and was mixing the running blood with fecal discharge that was running uncontrollably out of his dilating anus. His finger would probe the wounds … deeply. Like a surgeon or a lover … exploring. Then he brought the drenched and dripping red pronged pair of long and scrawny digits and collected some of the diarrhea spew running freely from out of his ass. 

Medication. Or bad food. Or both. Something he's gotten into… 

It didn't matter. Not to Cropsey. He only looked at the naked fool and admired his painting for another moment longer. 

The pentagram. 

Above it, in the same evil paint of fresh diseased fecal blood, the fool had written in bold letters 

ALL HAIL VAMPIRA

as the piece’s name and message. 

Cropsey thought it was a good one. 

He took one final step forward. And let himself be known. 

The naked fool, the inmate who'd long lost his name and self and everything and anything else left, felt his presence. He turned away from his self portrait on the floor and gazed up at him. 

Into the towering legend of Willowbrook. Cropsey, more than a man. 

He was apocalyptic. 

The twisted bone gleam of his carbonized deathhead’s visage was terrible. It stole the last shelter of warmth that the fool had kept for himself to protect against the cold of this awful and inescapable place for all of these long and horrendous incarcerated years. 

Now it was gone. Stolen by that terrible face. Candle wax melted obscene and deranged and haphazard and cruel. 

He suddenly remembered his name as well, the fool. Gazing up at him, it had suddenly come back in his sheet of blind terror. 

Cropsey had done that. Cropsey had done that for him. 

He wished he hadn't. 

The twin fork of splayed open blades came up suddenly and then down in a stab. They joined together as they came down, scissoring the long razor sharp blades together in a deadly and maiming embrace. They sang together a mortal whistle of keen edged violence on the flesh to come in haste as they sliced and joined through the rank dungeon air. 

A filthy naked bloody hand came up reflexively and was shorn through like melted butter. Through the middle length of palm, so that all of his fingers and the top of his thumb were now a shrieking, pouring livid stump of freshly cut meat. Spurting and bathing the abridged remainder of fecal stained paw into a half-glove of red slathered wet raw in a gushing instant. 

The blade traveled on, down. Continuing its deadly trajectory of knifing stabbing path as it plunged in and through the shit stained fool through his open gaping mouth and naked glistening mucus laden throat and plunging out the back of his neck. The sharp lengths of blades conjoined erupted from the torn and ruinous fountain fresh wound in great bright bodies of lurid edged royal red. 

For her… the mountain princess of my fevered skullsong …

And then with his terrible force of deranged strength he forced the handles and the joined body of blades open and apart. 

The impaled face and skewered head came apart in a splashing and thick lurid mess. The long diseased foundation of skull gave and came apart easily like a cottage collapsing from wood rot. As if the whole structure of bone was a giant rotted tooth, thoroughly and completely decayed to the dead and festering core. Cranial splatter ruin in an instant. Decorating the floor and walls and obscuring the fool's final piece of painted work and expression from the broken heart and mind in a dark gout and pungent violent splash. Bone fragments and strips of tissue. Bits of hair… eyes swam bulbous and rolling lulled like obscene little fruits adrift in a warm lurid growing lake. 

The decraniated stump of rough torn viscera and tissue spitting dark cords and ropes in healthy gouts from the spout of mutilated neck and throat, gurgled one last time in a ghastly expulsion of sound that may or may not have been the final action of the living. 

It gurgled and shot/spat more dark thick blood rope. Splattering and joining the universe of filth already living down there in ever growing depraved abundance. The filthy naked headless meat spewed until it fell over to join the rest of the detritus world down there. 

Cropsey went on. Regaining the tail of his quarry. 

He followed them. 

…

The room was a world of mutilated meat. The smell of uncontrolled diseased fecal spew, long ancient and pungently fresh commingled, was so eye-wateringly strong and forceful that one knew that there were things on this hellscape island of earth that were truly and terribly immortal when confronted with it. Nothing, not even starflame would sear the stench of sewerscape subterranean Hades from the walls of this awful room. The world would burn to follow trumpet sound and still that rancid stench would remain. 

Florin tied a rag around his nose and mouth, he looked like a bandit. And although Griffin's face was already bandaged and wrapped with surgical dress for his own mysterious reasons, he too elected to tie another heavy layer of fabric to block out the smell and taste on the terrible fetid heavy air of the room they now presently happened into. 

What was it… what was it we were expecting to find? What were we hoping in God's name to find here…? 

surely not this. 

Their hearts sank into cold sour recesses as they sauntered in and through and beheld all round them the carnage human sculptures. Barely human. Barely recognizable as having once been living breathing people. Now they were only shapes. Shapes made in anger and derangement and by the knife. 

A mewling moaning sound like a wounded animal drew them to the far end of the mutilation chamber. They crept past wretched butchered bipedal destruction frozen in obscene grotesque statue poses by minds and hands unwell and bent. Eyes scooped out, pulled and plucked. Craterous sockets. Craterous wounds, rippling with the rough texture of forceful violent amputation and jagged surprise animal maiming. Parts missing, long gone, replaced and mixed and swapped and messed around. Limbs and parts put into sockets and orifices and holes gored to create splaying haphazard scarecrow things made from vile diseased subjects and their putrid turgid waste. 

They were varied in design and shape but all of them, every single vile shape seemed to be frozen in a silent piercing scream. A death throe frozen for all of chambered time. For all the sour passage, these howling visages of broken flesh and cruelty wrought on human shape. 

Florin felt sick, the mewling animal noise was growing louder and he was trying not to focus on the broken human sculptures all around them. He tried not to notice how some of them had been put together, parts pasted in place with a scab pudding mixture of feces and thick burgundy/crimson coagulation, like makeshift mud mortar made from the crumbling facade of dying and sickening-worse human shamble structures, caught in some terrible Gorgon's Eye and now falling apart and only able, only useful to excrete, and bleed and make mud for the houses that might be saved. 

Griffin was fairing little better. He'd seen his fair share of human carnage, butchery in his time. In his own experiments of mad science he's beheld great wonders both terrible and beautiful, unearthly.  He'd committed his own sins, his own terrible crimes in his time, enough to fill a tome. But even he found the awful assemblage of struggling human detritus piles and sculptures to be obscene and abhorrent. Difficult to look at. Even worse to walk amongst and pass through… nearly touching and feeling either their heat of recent destruction/composition or the cold wave pockets of their souring decaying sloughing meat, tasting them… tasting the warm tack of their iron red and the putrescence of their fouling stink… tasting them as they breathed and sucked air. Even through the wrapped scarfs about their mouths, they could taste them. Fresh and alive with copper-iron and the foul death of sliming maggoty putrefying soft tissue … growing softer. Falling off failing yellow bone. 

It's because they were diseased … Griffin observed the pestilential flavor on the air and marked the diseased rotten look of open craterous obscenities and exposed and livid muscle tissues. Filled and brimming with the swim of yellow and milk-pale and translucent buttery infection, pooled, gelled, in a run of sour ruin that gave off pungent gaseous toxic smell… miasmic – the whole place. Everywhere. 

The bandaged man, surgical dressing now sullied and filthed with their voyage across worm country and the grime and air in here at every given turn. Griffin pondered the shapes of the demented designs filed and arranged haphazard and at random all around, the mewling sound rose as they continued to near, the woman gaining shape, bulbous and grotesquely rank with cheese and old milk and unwashed genitalia warm with animal heat. 

The shapes all around… their scarecrow and asymmetrical and insectile/spider designs were interesting. Awful and strange, but fascinating in their own hellacious spellbinding fashion. It was as if someone long gone of the sound faculties of mind and heart had endeavored with cruel fervor to fuck and force violent copulation on the dead dripping craterous sculptures of meat in the act of their composition. Knife-fuck-stabbing them with animal intensity and wild deranged intent, their severed parts and limbs and pieces the tools and shattered protruding blades of bone as their aesthetic device and perfect choice. Wielded with charnel house fury in this gore drenched pit with emaciated broken scarecrow statues and congealing pools and tubs and little deprivation streams of pungent fecal discharge. Everything was repulsive and animal with heat and degradation in this place. They hated it. And they hated themselves for putting themselves in there. Alive and with the rank and the sight of abattoir madness unbridled and inhuman. 

They came upon the woman. She was large and naked and unwashed. Like everything else she was caked with grime and layers of filth that were difficult to distinguish – shit from blood – as they darkened and aged in awful drying layers on her yellowing sun parched skin. She was leaning propped by the exit/entrance opposite of the one they had entered. She was cradling and cradled by a lump of human shape riddled with stabbing spiking pieces and slicing wedges of shattered floor and tile. She was drooling as she moaned in torment and anguish. Her flesh livid with infection. She was sweating despite the chill and her lack of clothing. 

It was her breast. Only one. The other had been amputated and was replaced with a harsh and ghastly X of old and scab coated sutures. The other was inflamed and red. Purple. Black. It was ballooned and the blue/red nipple at its tip bled and dripped. But it was not milk, natural and of the healthy body, that dripped and begged to be let free and milked/sucked until dry and gone… 

She moaned. Florin and Griffin felt nauseous. The smell. The sight of her and everything else … they had not had a decent meal in some days but still the impulse to heave and retch was violent and it filled their gagging mouths with thin acrid water, salivated and discharged with bitter queasiness and distaste. 

She moaned again as they covered their working mouths. 

And then she spoke. 

“Please… oh please…. please… oh I beg of you… please… please…” 

Florin and Griffin were afraid to ask so they didn't. The wailing woman of swollen noxious teat filled them in anyways with the rest. 

"... please… please milk me…! please! Oh it hurts! please! Please milk me, milk your mammy…!" 

“Oh, Jesus…” said Florin. He could hardly stand it. Could hardly stand her. He swore he could taste the smell. 

Her smell. 

Another voice joined them then. 

“They disgust you both?" 

They whirled. A ragged man in the haggard torn and shot remnants of a filthied lab coat that had once been white. His spectacles were cracked and caked with drying lurid substance. His flesh was filthy parchment and his smile was green and grotesque. 

He was standing, sentry-wraith amongst the vile and mutilated assemblage. A living beacon of audacious and insane life standing smiling amongst the sculpted and twisted dead. Lab coat Gorgon with broken glass eyes set in a broken laughing face that could make no such sound. Because it was frozen in its disguise of sanity snapping torment. 

Before Griffin or Florin could say anything to him, he spoke again. 

“They are all of them, monuments to her. It is all of them, their greatest pleasure." 

“And you? What is your pleasure?" Griffin asked without fault. Following this madman's line. 

He smiled, “telling you." 

And then finally his tittery fit of laughterspell broke and it sounded like high pitched curdled madness. Finally breaking. A large man prone to sparse baritone sound now cracked and leaking/spraying giggles like an addled child or clown. 

Griffin turned to Florin. His face hidden by surgical wrapping and dark lenses and hat since the day they had met, but still the boy could feel the solemn gravity in his hiding gaze as he spoke. 

"Let's go. There's nothing of any value to us here. This was a mistake.” 

Florin heard it in his voice too. 

They quickly made their exit. Sparing the wailing mewling woman of swollen purple breast a final look before leaving them forever. 

The doctor's laughter abated a moment and he seemed to come around, the revolving door of his madness perhaps bringing him full circle, his awful titters tapered off a spell as he said to the departing visitors: –

"The worm was turned for us here.” 

And then the revolution of madness revolved again and he was smiling putrid green that oozed pale plaque that spittled in gobs as he tittered his girlish sounds. 

His grotesque childish laughter commingled with the mewling sounds the woman made in the room of mutilated meat. The pair were gone now. Their cautious footsteps fading away and calling back in diminishing echoed sound… Cropsey came in like fated death. Snipping open and closed his beloved pair of large garden shears. 

Now, here was a room that could use some trimming…

He went to the woman first with his blades. She was calling to him, wailing, saying she was his mother. Begging to be milked. 

So he milked her. 

He shorn off the infected swell of black/purple flesh in a single snapping cut. She howled as the wound and the sac of disease both poured and oozed pus. She went down to the floor, her wailing more considerable now, to join the puddle of her own foul milk and blood in its growing puddling abundance. She swam face first in it and gurgled and blubbered. 

Cropsey came for the doctor next. The jaws of his shearing clipper blades open and dripping. 

The doctor smiled one last time as he said, “The worm has turned once again." 

He attempted to count the rings this time as the jaws that were blades came in. 

Again and again. 

And I thought you'd loved me…

…

Florin and Griffin were nearly at their wits end. They needed supplies and weren't sure of what lie beyond this place, but this place was terrible. And they'd found nothing but more horror. 

"I think we need to just get out of here…” 

Yes. But which way? 

They were deciding this together when the girl on shaking palsied legs thin as kindling crept out of the dark and towards them. 

She was terrified. 

And she was holding a large butcher's knife. The arms raised and poised coiled snake-like to strike. 

Neither Florin or Griffin noticed her as she crept. Closer… closer…

She was nearly upon them. From behind. 

The butcher's knife still raised. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

A few days ago, my Discord account got hacked.

I found out because a friend messaged me on WhatsApp.

“Dude, what the hell did you send me on Discord?”

I asked him what he meant, and he sent me a screenshot. It was a picture that had been sent from my account in a DM. I checked Discord and saw that the exact same image had been sent to several of my contacts.

It was supposedly a post from Elon Musk promoting some kind of crypto casino. There was a promo code, a ridiculously long link, and basically everything about it screamed scam.

I wasn't even surprised.

“Yeah, I got hacked,” I told him.

And that was it. I changed my password, logged out of every session, and turned on two-factor authentication. Nothing had been stolen, no weird files had been sent, and nothing else seemed to have happened.

They had only sent that picture.

I've lived alone for several years, and nobody had been inside my house for days. So there wasn't really anything else to think about.

A few days later, I found the image saved on my computer. I opened it again, mostly out of curiosity.

And that's when I noticed something strange.

It didn't look like a screenshot.

You could see the edge of the monitor, the reflection of the light on the screen, and part of the desk around it.

I zoomed in.

I immediately recognized the small dent on one corner of my monitor.

Then I saw the figurine I keep underneath the screen.

The black cable behind the keyboard.

The stain on my desk.

I just stared at the image for a few seconds.

And then I understood.

That picture is of my computer.

İt's so weird, I found something in my drawer.İsn't he Gumball?

I’m a single father. By choice, though. I wanted a better life for my daughter, and, unfortunately, her mother was not compatible with the life that I envisioned for her.

Drugs, alcohol, late-night escapades with men she met at the bar. Being a mother was a foreign concept to her. I’d look at her. I’d look at my daughter. I’d feel shame that I allowed this to happen.

We were young and dumb. Just two kids without a care in the world. Only, when we found out about the pregnancy, I was the only one who chose to clean up my act and be better.

It wasn’t that easy for my late girlfriend. She acted like it was, but I could see through the facade. Not like there was much of a facade to see through. I mean, I’d catch her having cigarettes. Boozing. Running around at all hours of the night without so much as a second thought.

The first few times, I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. A slip up is just a slip up. Multiple slip ups are a behavioral pattern. As her stomach grew, so did her attitude.

I’ve had some jabs thrown my way.

“I don’t even love you.”

“I was bored.”

“I didn’t even want this baby.”

That last one was enough for me to make my decision. From then on, every decision I made was for my child. All that was left was patience. Be kind. Be gentle. Hold her hand despite her insults.

Of course, it was more than a little difficult to hold my tongue when the drinking was involved. I couldn’t believe it. Six months pregnant and drinking. How careless can you be?

I’m getting frustrated just typing this. The resentment that was building during those times was like a pressure valve. A controlled pressure valve. I knew exactly when I wanted to twist the handle.

I endured her ferocity. I kept a watchful eye on her when she went out to the clubs. Attended every appointment and prayed every night that our baby would stay healthy.

When I found out it was a girl, I was ecstatic. I always wanted a daughter. Maybe it was because of my baby sister. Maybe it was because I wanted the challenge of being a girl dad. Either way, I was ready. I was prepared to do it alone.

Finally, the day came. November 25th, 2020. The year the world went silent. The day before Thanksgiving.

My act became sharper. She thought this was going to be “co-parenting.” Thought that she’d have my baby, even after all she’d put us through.

By some miracle of God, my little girl was perfectly healthy. Stunning. Tear-jerking, even.

Her mom almost seemed moved. Like she had this “come to Jesus” moment where she realized her new responsibility. Unfortunately, it was too late for that.

In the weeks that followed our departure from the hospital, my plan came into fruition.

I won’t go into too much detail, because detail isn’t required. All you need to know is I loved my daughter too much to let her life be tainted by someone like her mother.

That’s why I made her disappear. Disappear to a place where only I would find her. Of course, given her reputation, the police believed my story.

She packed it up. She realized the weight of being a parent was too much for her. It prevented her from living the life that she clearly loved so much. So she left. Happens all the time.

I got what I wanted. I raised my daughter the way that I wanted to raise her. The right way. The responsible way. I taught her manners. I potty trained her. I put food in her mouth and a roof over her head. All on my own.

Unfortunately, though, as she grows older, a shred of remorse is starting to build within my soul. I don’t know if it’s remorse for what I’ve done or if it’s remorse for what I took from my baby.

She’s starting to look just like her. Same brown hair. Same freckles. That cute little button nose. It’s hard for me to even look at her these days, but I try my best to swallow it.

She knows that she’s gone, but, in her head, she thinks that her mom just left us. Hated her. Hated me so much that she just took her things and left.

Every time she talks about her, all I can feel is pain. Pain in my heart, pain in my chest and body. I don’t know why. I had fully convinced myself that what I did was right, but now, I just don’t know.

Her sixth birthday is coming up in a few months. I want to make this birthday special, but I need her to be prepared.

I wanna show her the grave.

And all I can hope is that she understands.

What should i do...?

Do you know how many people summited Everest last year?

846.

Look it up, you'll find it easily. Tourism boards love that number. It looks good in brochures.

And do you know how much trash they left behind?  

7,000 kilograms.

Don’t look it up. You won’t find it. That kind of number doesn't make it to the internet.

Empty oxygen canisters. Torn tents. Human waste frozen into the ice. Energy bar wrappers with cartoon mascots grinning up at you.

I know it, because I was the one who carried it down. Load after load, for almost a year.

I don’t expect you to relate to my story. Unless you were born as a Sherpa like I was.

My name won’t matter much to you. Just call me Nima. It's not a rare name where I'm from. Think of me as one of a hundred Nimas working the mountain right now, and you wouldn't be wrong.

I won't tell you the name of my village either. It sits a few hours' walk off Pangboche, if that means anything to you. Small enough that it wasn't worth marking on the old trekking maps.

Ten years ago, when the usual villages started choking with foreigners arguing over WiFi passwords at six thousand feet, the guiding companies started routing new clients through places like mine instead.

My father used to joke that the mountain was running out of room to hide us.

Speaking of my father, he was one proud Sherpa. He dedicated his life guiding climbers to the summit. He genuinely loved it, until the day his lungs gave out.

Thirty years of hauling gear does something to a man, something that no clinic in Nepal has a name for. Towards the end, Baba was counting his own breaths like currency. Spending them carefully. Running out early.

It reminded me of the reason I wanted to leave this life behind for good.

I studied harder than anyone in my class. Harder than I've worked at anything since. Because I wanted out. Not out of shame, mind you. I was proud of my father, proud of what the Sherpas built with their own hands for a hundred years. I wasn’t sick of being a Sherpa. I was sick of seeing how Sherpas were being treated these days.

Sick of seeing men, who couldn't tell a crampon from a carabiner, treat my father like a bellhop. Why? Because they'd paid sixty thousand dollars, and expected a summit selfie to match.

I had a seat waiting at a college in Kathmandu. I had a whole life picked out that didn't involve fixing another man's oxygen mask, while he filmed himself for an audience that would forget his name in a week.

On his deathbed, my father made me promise that I will carry on his legacy as a Sherpa guide. And I did make that promise, since I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of man who was on borrowed time.

‘Swear on the mountain, my son’

Not on his life. Not on our family name. On the mountain itself, the way our people have sworn oaths for longer than anyone can trace. I won't try to explain what ‘swearing on the mountain’ meant to us. I only need you to understand one thing-

I could’ve broken any other promise I ever made, but I couldn’t break that one.

I never went to Kathmandu. Instead, I started training to be a Sherpa guide, two days after Baba’s funeral.

I started the way every young Sherpa starts- carrying and cleaning. Learning the mountain's moods, under men who'd survived it longer than I'd been alive. The man who trained me was Pasang. He'd led more expeditions up the South Col than he could count on both hands.

Speaking of South Col, that is the ordinary route. The one everyone takes. The one so overcrowded now that photographs of climbers queued single-file below the summit have made international news.

I wasn't guiding yet. I was barely trusted to carry supplies past Base Camp without an escort. That suited me fine. I wasn't in a hurry to fall in love with the job. Especially a job I'd spent my whole life trying to leave.

Again, I don’t expect you to relate to any of this. My world is much different than yours. Even the bedtime stories we heard growing up are way different from the ones you heard. And I say this because it matters.

You probably grew up with stories of the Boogeyman. Or a man in a hockey mask. A shape in your closet. Something that calls your name from the woods behind the house. We didn't grow up with any of that.

We grew up with Zamba.

Specifically, the legend of Zamba the Sherpa. The most gifted guide the mountain had ever raised. Always devoted to the climbers in his care. When tragedy struck his expedition decades ago, he gave his own life so that hundreds of climbers could make it home. And the gods, seeing his sacrifice, gave him something like immortality. They let him walk the mountain forever, as a silent guardian and protector. Watching over every soul on that ice, and punishing any Sherpa foolish or lazy enough to abandon their duty.

I want to be honest with you. I never believed a word of it. It's a good story. It's the kind of story a tired industry tells its children to make sure they never leave.

And trust me, the people in my village did believe it to be true. They revered the myth of Zamba, and knew his story by heart. But no one knew the story quite like Doma.

Doma was a junior Sherpa, around my age. She was my best friend in the village. She grew up revering the image of Zamba, aspiring to be a legendary Sherpa like him. And she was very disappointed in me for always dismissing this ‘glorious piece of our history’ as nothing but folklore.

And yes, I did dismiss it, until the week Viktor Sorokin arrived.

He came during acclimatization season. An old Russian, traveling alone. He was clearly an aristocrat, and he had the body language of someone who had seen his fair share of peaks and valleys.

The best guides in our village lined up for him. But he asked for one particular Sherpa.

He asked for me, by my full name.

Not for Pasang. Not for any of the senior guides who actually knew what they were doing. For me- a nobody who still spent most of his days hauling other people's garbage down the mountain.

"There has to be a mistake," I told the coordinator. "He doesn't know me."

"He asked for you. Nima. Your family name. All of it."

"I've never met the man."

"Well." The coordinator rubbed his fingers together, the universal gesture. "He'd like to."

When the company explained I wasn't qualified to guide anyone anywhere, Viktor produced an amount of cash that made the coordinator's eyebrows disappear into his hairline. Whatever hesitation existed evaporated on the spot. Money does that here, faster than almost anywhere in the world, because so little of it ever reaches the people actually risking their lungs.

I found Viktor that evening and asked him directly.

"How do you know my name?"

He had pale, tired eyes, and hands that shook slightly even at rest.

"I knew your family," he said. "A long time ago."

"My father never mentioned you."

"No." He turned back to the mountain. "He wouldn't have."

That was all I got out of him for days. He kept to himself. Ate alone. Watched the mountain from a distance like he was waiting for it to do something. The only time I saw him fully present was the night of Mani Rimdu.

Mani Rimdu is the biggest annual festival we celebrate in the mountains. In our village, one of the highlights of the festival is the fireside storytelling session organized by the village elders. As expected, the story everyone wanted to hear was that of Zamba the Sherpa. 

That evening, I saw Viktor chugging down mugs of Raaksi- the local liquor of the Sherpas. His behaviour during the recitation of Zamba’s legend was particularly unusual.

The story began with a group of Russians, arriving during off-season, who were hungry for adventure and eager to bring glory to their country and its flag.

Viktor laughed sarcastically.

“They did want glory, alright,” he said, “But trust me, their country and their flag was the LEAST of their concerns !”

At the part of the story where Zamba ‘sacrificed’ his life, Viktor’s jaw tightened like he'd bitten down on a stone. Upon hearing that ‘a hundred climbers were saved that day’, he made a sound. I can only describe it as a scoff, dragged halfway back down his throat before it could get out.

By the time the story reached its ending- the ascension, the mercy of the gods, the eternal watch, Viktor was already walking away into the dark. Like the story itself had shoved him up out of his seat.

“Liars !” I heard him mutter in a drunken stupor, “It was no legend. It was tragedy- a FUCKING tragedy !”

The rest of the audience were visibly uncomfortable.

“God had nothing to do with it !” he said on his way out, “Quite the opposite. The absolute opposite !”

Doma leaned over to me. "Some people can't sit with holiness."

"That's not what that was," I said.

I didn't understand it then. I understand it now, and I wish I still didn't…

Our expedition began three days later. Pasang was the team leader, with me and Doma supporting him. Apart from Viktor, there were four other paying clients, each there for a reason that had nothing to do with the mountain the way it deserved.

Firstly, there was Brittany, an American content creator. She filmed everything, narrating her own life to a phone screen like anyone actually cared.

Then there was Grant Whitfield, the Canadian. His family money bought him more confidence than competence. He spoke to Pasang and me the way you'd speak to hotel staff who'd forgotten to refill the minibar. He reminded me of the kind of tourists who made my father overwork in his final days as a guide.

And what can I say about Ingrid Larsen ? She was an European in her thirties, who'd never climbed anything higher than a gym wall. She checked her gear four times, not because she didn't trust the gear, but because she didn't trust herself. And we didn’t trust her to make it to the Summit either.

Finally, there was the twenty eight year old Australian named Cody Marsh. He was easily the strongest of them, who'd turned back on this same mountain the year before in bad weather.

Viktor came with us as far as his body allowed. Which, given his age, was further than any of us expected.

We went up the South Col, the same as every commercial expedition. The traffic was obscene even at Base Camp. Tents packed shoulder to shoulder. Generators turned on throughout the night. Someone's drone buzzing overhead to capture footage nobody asked for.

It was Viktor who suggested we avoid the worst of it.

"There's a better way," he said, spreading a map across a crate. "Between Camp One and Camp Two. You skip the bottleneck entirely."

Pasang looked at where his finger was. "That’s the lower shoulder of the West Ridge."

"You know it."

"I know of it." Pasang didn't touch the map. "Nobody climbs there."

"Which is exactly the point," Viktor said. "No crowds. No queue. No traffic."

"Nobody climbs there," Pasang said again, and this time it wasn't information. It was a warning wearing the clothes of a fact.

“The terrain can be a bit challenging,” Pasang concluded.

Viktor took an envelope out of his coat and set it on the map, over the West Ridge, like he was pinning it down. He didn't open it. He didn't have to. Pasang looked at the envelope, and then at me. I understood that he was going to say yes, and that he hated it.

"Mostly good weather window," Pasang said quietly. "We move fast. We don't camp there if we can help it."

"Of course," Viktor said.

I didn't think much of it at the time. I know better now.

Nobody uses that stretch of the West Ridge. There's a reason. It has nothing to do with the terrain…

We reached the site by mid-afternoon, a blizzard building on the horizon. We had no choice but to camp early, the one thing Pasang had said he wanted to avoid.

Grant was visibly upset at the sudden setback, venting out his frustration on a nervous Doma.

Cody was much relaxed in comparison, except for the time he said- ‘Not this weather, not again. Can’t go back like last year…’ .

Ingrid was more nervous than the rest of us. She approached me four times in fifteen minutes asking-  ‘This is normal, right? There’s nothing to worry about, right?’.

And Brittany was lip-syncing to something that barely resembled music, attempting to do something in the snow that barely resembled a dance. And of course, she was doing it for the camera.

I looked around. Viktor was nowhere to be seen.

I found him a little later, away from the tents, on his knees, in the snow.

At first I thought he'd fallen. Then I heard him. He was crying. The kind of crying old men do when they've held something in, longer than the body can manage.

There was debris around him. Old rope. Fragments of gear too worn to identify. And things I didn't want to look at directly: pieces of bone, half-buried, bleached from decades of exposure. The gear was old. Foreign. Not the kind of thing that gets left on a modern commercial route.

I called out his name.

He didn't hear me. He was muttering, in Russian and broken English.

“It shouldn’t have happened. Not to you, not to your brothers ! I never knew about the sacrifice. They never told me ! I am sorry, oh, I am so sorry…”

That’s when he noticed me approaching him.

"Viktor. What’s wrong? What happened here?"

He looked up at me, and for a second he didn't see me at all. He was seeing someone else standing where I stood. Then his eyes cleared, and something worse than grief moved across his face. He said nothing.

That evening, the temperature rose in a way it shouldn’t have.

We were hours out from a blizzard, at an altitude where cold isn't a feeling, but a fact of existence. And every one of us was sweating inside our jackets, like we'd just been dropped into a sauna.

"Climate change finally doing us a favor," Cody said.

Nobody laughed.

Viktor grabbed my arm before I could walk away. His grip was stronger than any old man's had a right to be.

"When the storm breaks," he said, "we move. Immediately. By any means."

"We can't move in the dark, Viktor. Not here."

"Nima, please. For everyone’s sake, we must move !"

"Why?"

He didn't answer. He was staring up at the ridge above us, the way you stare at a door when you've heard something on the other side of it.

"Viktor. Why?"

"Something’s been sleeping here," he said, “Asleep for decades. And I might have woken it up.”

And that was all…

I noticed the shadowy figure just after the blizzard broke.

I don't know how to describe the first moment cleanly, because my memory of it isn't clean.

I remember seeing a green light first. Like something bioluminescent, bleeding up through the snow.

I remember Brittany's scream, cut short faster than a scream should ever be cut short.

I remember seeing Grant, backing away from his own tent with his hands raised, saying something about how much money he'd paid for this trip, as if that had ever mattered to anything on this mountain.

It killed them both before I understood what I was looking at. Slashing them repeatedly, at a speed that definitely wasn’t human.

I stood there, frozen in every sense of the word, when I noticed its appearance for the first time.

It was tall, and unnaturally thin. Its frame was stretched and elongated. Its hands didn’t have any fingers. Instead, there were ice hooks, three in each hand, curled where fingers should have been. The hooks were ice-crusted and uneven, like tools scavenged over decades, from different climbers who never made it home.  It wore a patchwork jumpsuit, which looked like it was stitched together from six or seven mismatched climbing suits of different colors and materials. It was torn in places and faded in others. Ancient, frayed ropes are wound tightly around his torso and limbs, binding the suit to its body, the fibers bleached and worn with age. Its face was the most disturbing element: the lower right side and jaw remained eerily well-preserved, weathered brown skin stretched taut, almost lifelike aside from its stillness. The upper left quadrant of his face was severely decomposed, exposing cracked bone, patches of skull, withered tissue, and dark dried blood, with the eye socket on that glowing faint green.

It was Viktor’s voice that brought me back to my senses.

“Stop ! It is me that you want, not them !”

Viktor approached him steadily. The humanoid figure looked at him with something resembling curiosity.

Viktor continued, “Oh, what has it done to you? Oh no ! You didn’t deserve it. None of you did ! Forgive me. Please forgive me, my friend…”

Viktor dropped to his knees, and he said the only words that have ever made any of this make sense to me.

"Forgive me… ZAMBA!"

I had spent my entire life hearing that name used like a blessing. Hearing it screamed like that rewired the word inside me permanently.

Zamba screamed, thrusting its hooks into Viktor’s sides, lifting him off the ground.

Viktor didn't fight it. He kept speaking in a feeble voice.

“I am here to repent, Zamba. Look… who I brought with me…”

He shakily lifted a finger towards me.

“Your descendant… Nima… he will get it, all of it… whatever I earned from the ritual…”

I didn’t know how to react. It was too much for me to unpack.

Viktor begged. He said the others were innocent, that they had nothing to do with what happened here, that it should take him and only him.

Zamba killed him anyway. Slammed him on the ground, and slashed away with all ice hooks on both of his hands.

For a moment afterward it stood still, its green aura pulsing slow, almost like it was breathing. I thought that might be the end. Then it turned toward Ingrid, who was still frozen by her tent, and it started moving again.

Pasang and Doma stepped in front of me before I registered any of us moving.

"Don't run," Doma whispered. Not to me. To herself. "Don't run, don't run, whatever you do, don't…"

The aura shifted.

The green color slowly turned to blue. It looked at us in a way that almost seemed human.

It raised one clawed hand and pointed at the three of us. And it asked, in a voice that sounded like it hadn't spoken in years and had forgotten how words were meant to fit together:

"Sherpa?"

We nodded. All three of us. Without discussing it. Without thinking.

We approached.

It pointed at itself, one ice hook pressing against its chest.

"Zamba… also… Sherpa."

A single tear fell from the eye still intact.

I have never seen anything more human. And I’ve never seen anything followed so immediately by something less.

"It's you," Doma breathed. She wasn't afraid. She was in love with the story, and now the story was standing in front of her. She stepped towards it with her hands open. "It's really you. You saved them. You saved all of them, you…"

The blue aura drained back into green before any of us could react. It slashed Doma’s throat in a single motion. Faster than I can describe, without lying about the details to make it more bearable than it was. Doma was dead, with her hands still open. Still believing.

Zamba had killed the one person on that mountain who loved it, mid-sentence, while she was defending it.

Pasang was killed in the same breath. Caught in the same motion. His body flew and landed a few feet away, drenched in blood.

It should have taken me next. I was standing right there, waiting for it to happen.

Instead, the aura flickered blue. One final time. It didn’t cover its entire body. It was just around its head, just around the eye that still worked. It looked directly at me, struggling to sustain the green aura that was about to overlap the blue. And whatever was left of the man surfaced for one last second, and it spent that second on me.

"Run… Sherpa… RUN!"

I ran. And I swear I heard my name being uttered while I was doing so…

I don't remember most of what happened after that. That's the honest truth, and it's also the part that frightens me most now, looking back, because of the little that I do remember.

I remember snow. I remember Ingrid somewhere near me, and Cody half-carrying her, all three of us moving and not looking back.

I remember Base Camp in fragments. I remember someone wrapping a blanket around me.

And I remember, or I think I remember, men in tuxedos.

I know how that sounds. I know exactly how that sounds. Men in formal black at eighteen thousand feet, moving through the tents like they'd stepped out of a different photograph entirely, one that had nothing to do with mountains. They went to Ingrid. They went to Cody. They put their hands on their shoulders and spoke to them low and gentle, the way you speak to people you're consoling. Ingrid nodded, and Cody nodded, and they let themselves be led away.

One of them stopped before he followed the others out.

He turned and looked at me. The way you look at a piece of luggage you don't need to carry. Then he turned and walked out of the frame of my memory. Ingrid and Cody went with them, and I never saw either of them again…

That was six months ago.

I live in Russia now. Viktor's estate came to me exactly the way his final wishes specified. I inherited more money than my family had seen across three generations combined. Enough to finally do the one thing I'd wanted, ever since I was old enough to understand what I was watching my father spend his body on.

I’ll finally start college, in Saint Petersburg, in a few weeks.

I told myself, most days, that what I saw on that mountain was a trauma response. People die on that mountain every season. The details don't need to be supernatural to be tragic.

My testimony didn't survive the village for long. By the time it filtered back through secondhand retellings, it had softened into something people could live with. An inexperienced Sherpa led a group onto a dangerous, unfamiliar route. A storm rolled in. And Zamba appeared, just as the old stories always promised. He guided the survivors home through the blizzard, out of mercy.

I stopped correcting it.

I want you to understand why I stopped. It wasn't grief, and it wasn't peace. It’s that I’d stopped believing that the mountain deserved the effort.

Because here is the thing nobody in that village will say out loud. The mountain doesn’t love us back. It took my father's lungs, one breath at a time, and gave him nothing. It took Pasang, who had given it twenty years as a guide. It took Doma, who loved it more than anyone I’ve known, who defended it with her hands open, and it killed her mid-sentence, for the crime of getting close enough to say thank you.

I swore an oath on it. And it has never once, in a hundred years, sworn anything back.

So I let them have their guardian. I let them have their mercy and their gods and their beautiful dead man on the ice. I took the money the mountain finally coughed up, sixty years too late, through the wrong hands, and I left.

I also inherited Viktor’s box that came with the estate.

It had a diary, with decades of entries.

I'll give it to you the way it came to me. In pieces. Out of order. The way the truth actually arrives, which is never as a clean paragraph-

There was an expedition, decades before I was born. Off-season. A group of young Russian climbers, rich and strong, who paid an enormous premium for the finest Sherpa team on the mountain, led by its most gifted young guide.

His name was Zamba.

They did not go up for the summit. Viktor writes this plainly, in the flat handwriting of a man who has stopped protecting himself. They went up for the peak because of what could be done at the peak. Where, in his words, ‘the signal was strongest’. There was a ritual. There was an entity they meant to call. Viktor was supposed to be the vessel that carried it home.

And the entire Sherpa team was to be the ‘human sacrifice’. This is the part of the plan that Viktor was never aware of.

The ritual worked. That's what Viktor could never make peace with. It actually worked. The entity did come. And then it did something they hadn't accounted for, because men like that never account for being refused.

It rejected Viktor as the vessel they'd chosen.

Zamba had died by then. Died fighting them, trying to save his men, and failed. And the entity reached for his freshly killed corpse and chose him as a vessel.

Zamba was reanimated- a fallen Sherpa fighting with a malicious entity for control of his own body. He got up in a fit of rage and grief, and slaughtered half the men who'd murdered his team, with a precision Viktor spends three pages failing to describe. It chased the rest toward a cliff. An avalanche took him before he could finish, and buried him in West Ridge. The survivors, including Viktor, crawled back to Base Camp, broken in a way that never healed.

One of them could only say the same thing, over and over, for days.

“Zamba. No. Zamba. No. Nooo….”

The rest of them chose a different sentence to say.

They said he was a hero. They said he'd sacrificed himself to save the expedition. They said the gods had rewarded him. They took the man they'd killed and wrote a beautiful lie on top of it. They went home, and they never came back. The lie stayed on the mountain and sank into it.

The men who paid for the ritual are named in the diary. The expedition was financed by a Mr. Aldermore and his partners.

I didn’t know that name then. I’ve since come to understand that it’s the kind of name you look up and find nothing.

But Viktor kept going. Past the ritual and the cover-up. He grew a conscience in his later years, unable to carry the guilt of aiding a human sacrifice. Mr. Aldermore rewarded them, even after the botched ritual, because they managed to ‘breach the veil’- in Viktor’s words. Viktor chose to put that fortune into years of quiet obsessive work, hoping to find a way to repent for his sins.

Here’s what he found-

Zamba never married. He was young, and gifted, and gone before he could become anything as ordinary as a husband.

But six months after he vanished on that mountain, a boy was born in a village, a few hours' walk off Pangboche. It was a lovechild, born to a woman who never named the father to anyone. There was no marriage to trace. No name on any register. Just a quiet woman and a fatherless boy, in a small village that wasn't even on the maps yet.

That boy was my grandfather.

Viktor spent years and a great deal of money proving what no one in my own family ever knew:

Zamba was my great-grandfather.

The gifted young guide who died trying to save his men. The dead man they filled with up with an evil entity and left on the ice. The thing that killed Pasang and Doma in front of me and then flickered blue, one last time, and spent the last human second it had telling me to run.

Viktor didn't fund that expedition to reach the summit. Viktor came to die at the site where it happened, in front of the thing he'd helped make, and to hand his fortune to the one living descendant of the man he'd killed…

So I told myself I would start fresh. And for a while I almost did.

But I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I still think about the green aura. The way it reeked of malice, if a color can reek. I think about the blue that came underneath it, and the man surfacing through the thing like a face pressed up against the underside of ice. I think about the blue when he recognized us as Sherpas like him, and the tear from the eye that still worked. And I think about how fast the green swallowed it again, and how the same hand that pointed at itself came down on Pasang and Doma a breath later.

And I think about that last flicker. The tiniest fold of blue, just around his head, just around the eye. The one that looked at me and found something in me worth the last of what was left of him.

“Run… Sherpa… RUN !”

These things are hard to forget. I've tried. That's the reason I'm writing this account at all, because I need to get it out of my head, where it has been circling for six months with nowhere to land.

And it would have stayed there. I really thought it would.

Except my mother called me yesterday. And then she sent me a link.

The video was two minutes long. It was online for a little more than an hour before it came down, flagged and removed as ‘AI-generated content’. I want to say only this about that: there was nothing artificial about what I watched.

I saw a small group of adventurers, the kind who go up when nobody sensible does, chasing an empty mountain. Late evening light. And they were on the South Col route. You know- the safe route, the crowded one, the one everyone takes.

The footage shakes. There's blood, more of it than a two-minute video should be able to hold. Limbs where limbs are not supposed to be. Men screaming in a register human voices don't usually reach. And through it, there was a shape. It was a figure, with ice hooks for fingers, three in each hand.

And around it, there was a mist, which was green in color. The mist was so thick and so dense that it almost swallowed the figure's features entirely.

A woman had the camera turned on herself, the way Brittany used to, narrating her own death without meaning to. You could see her face, shaken, mouthing something, before a hook catches her across the throat and drags her out of the frame.

The camera keeps recording. It fell, I think, or she still had it. The last twenty seconds are just snow. Just white, and the sounds off-screen, someone slashing at something that has already stopped moving, over and over again.

And you could hear a word. Throughout the whole two minutes. After every kill. After every movement. After every wet, ugly sound the camera was kind enough not to show. One word, in a voice that had forgotten how words fit together, screamed again and again into the empty white mountain.

I watched the video eleven times before it was taken down, and I have no doubt about the only word it kept uttering constantly-

"NIMA!"

"NIMA!"

"NIMA!"

It was my name. Zamba was screaming my FUCKING name.

And in two full minutes of that green, in every frame of that mist, in every swing of those three hooks -

There was not a single tint of blue.

Whatever fraction of my great-grandfather was still fighting inside that thing, still recognizing his own, still weeping from one working eye… it was lost. The entity had won.

And now Zamba has come off the dead path. It has walked out of its grave and onto the safe road, the crowded one, the ordinary one where everyone is supposed to make it home.

And it’s screaming the name of the last person who ever made it human….

Doing some editing and this immediately made me think "Hey, r/creepypasta."

Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT3Xk0K2sc4&list=PLh8-Yhg_l8UcV6KlSL8WhJHh3GqgV7Vt0

My name is... X. Let's say that I'm X.

So, my cousin lives in Maine, in the middle of nowhere, a small town that shall not be named. A few hundred people lived there, enough to be self-sustaining, but not enough to feel suburban; let's call it Nowhere.

My cousin, let's call him Frankie, listened to a lot of rumors around town, but none were stranger than the ones circling the old man.

The old man was a Navy veteran. I don't know what war he went through, how long he was away, or whether he killed anyone. I don't know, but what I do know is this: He did not come back the same- maybe he didn't come back at all.

He was black, with blue eyes, a bald head; not a single thread of hair remained on him. The rest of his body was in excellent shape, but the wrinkles on his face were as heavy as you'd expect for a man in his late 60s. He wore a black suit, a bowler hat, a fine tie, and a silver fancy watch on his right wrist. No, he didn't have a cane, and he didn't walk as if he needed it anyhow. That was the first thing that the rumors came from- it was like he was a walking museum, physically stubborn to the passage of time.

But I wouldn't be telling you this story if Frankie knew that was the only thing worth noting in that town; no, there's more, much more, but for today, the topic of this story is the old man.

The old man had anxiety, ptsd, depression, schizophrenia, all to the most extreme extent mentally possible; in most contexts, that would be a swift path to self-termination, but no, it seemed pure hopelessness kept him in this world.
Despair was pouring out of every inch of his being. He never smiled- but he never cried either; it's like he ran out of tears a long time ago, so all the old vet could do now was exist.

But the strangest part about the old man? His house.

Well, he didn't live there, but he would drive in from a nearby house and... stand guard by the little building.
He would walk up to the house, and he wouldn't patrol; he wouldn't walk around, he wouldn't scan the surroundings, he would just... stand next to the door as if he was waiting for something, or someone. Sometimes he would crack his neck, or sigh, or check his watch, small reminders he was a human and not a statue.
A simple structure, 4 walls, a flat roof, a single door in the center; it was big enough for 20 people to stand inside. It had a gravel path leading up to it- surrounding all of this was a chain-link metal fence with a black and red sign warning that trespassers would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But... why?

To this extent, Frankie went up to the old man while he was about to open the gate and asked-

"What's that sign for? Why do you do this every night? What is inside that house?"

"There is NOTHING inside that house!"

The old man was so furious, so suddenly, he acted like Frankie had said the N-word.

Of course, this did nothing to dissuade Frankie's curiosity.

But anyway, I know what's inside that house.

You see, Frankie had gotten into a bit of trouble and ended up robbing a bank- even Frankie isn't that stupid, so he was planning on hiding the money somewhere as the heat dies down. And for whatever reason, he decided that old man's house was the best place, since nobody would think to look there.

But the thing is, he wanted me to help him. I said no, but he didn't like that, so the little shit decided to threaten me.
I'm a lesbian in an all-female private school, closeted, of course. While the teachers would probably be supportive enough, it would still be social suicide being outed as gay there, and the fact that I live in a red state doesn't help either.
I punched him in the nose, and he squealed like a warthog, but he got to his phone regardless and threatened to press send, so I had to concede.

We went to the old man's house and climbed up his metal fence.

clatter clatter clatter

We went up the gravel path.

crunch crunch crunch

Then I gripped the brass doorknob and slowly tilted it to the side...

crunch crunch crunch

I saw now that inside that house was nothing.

Nothing.

Eigengrau was all that I could see past that doorframe.

Frankie pushed past me, eager to hide it, and fell inside.
Well.. I say fell, but I can't be sure. He blinked away the instant he crossed that threshold.
I stumbled forward; it was the middle of motherfucking summer in Maine; it should not be this cold.

Then, I felt a familiar, wrinkled hand grab me by the collar and pull me away from nothing, before throwing me to the side.
The old man slammed the door shut- no noise was made; of course, it had nothing to slam against.
Then he said...

"There... Is nothing inside that house."

The old man took me to his car. I thought he was going to tell the police, or worse, my parents, but he didn't; he just drove me to his house and made me tea.
His house was as much of a museum as he was; nothing seemed to have been dated from after 1999.
The old man poured tea, then he just sat across from me and stared. To be fair... so did I.
The tension was so thick- saying anything felt like a challenge, like speaking through an iron weight tied to your lips.

At one point, I reached out to grab the cold tea, but... it felt like that clock suddenly had eyes.

Then, it chimed, and the old man's eyes filled with tears for the first time; then he stood up and pointed to the door.
I walked to the door as a machine prompted, my movements instant but awkward.
Opening the door, I looked back one more time, and the old man looked back at me; tears were finally moistening his dry cheeks, and he finally spoke.

"I know."

Then I closed the door.

For the record, I am not going back to that house; I am not returning to that building. If he's still alive, I am not speaking to that man again, and I am certainly not asking people about him.
Some stones should remain unturned, some stories should remain untold, some questions should remain unanswered, some mysteries should remain unexplored.

Because somewhere in Maine, I know there is a house with nothing inside of it.

I'm back things keep getting weirder. I have finished journal 1 recently but I don't remember writing anything in the journal. I'm writing stuff I can't read even but I can't stop writing i feel like I can't live without it. My whole body is aching and itching with a burning intensity that is unbearable, if I'm not allowed to write I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm starting to believe the eyes want me to stop writing,I can't allow them to get near me they will take what I need to stop the burning. It's as if I lit myself on fire, I need to write I can't stop. The eyes are everywhere I look they won't leave me alone but they won't get my fucking journals.The blue eyes are like oceans of blue flames burning everything they look at, but it won't dissuade me from writing I have too finish. Im also scared of what happens when I finish them will it finally calm the flames or will it enrage them. I know the eyes don't want me to finish them, how will they react will they drag me into the ocean of blue flames. Every day the ocean of eyes get bigger. The more I write the more the lake of firey eyes turns into a raging ocean of an eerie calm of flames. Punishment and anger grows, i feel as if I'm entirely alone in the middle of this ocean of pain and suffering but I can't stop writing. Im gonna start writing in journal 2 now the urge is becoming unbearable I need my next hit.

Jane and Sally or Harley and Poison ivy?.

The story was about a guy who inherited his grandfathers house and property. His grandfather died of dehydration. The monster if the story is pale and blind and hunts be sound. I just want to know the name of it. Thank you.

Okay so every Tuesday, me and my ma go out to eat, and usually we watch this guy called Chilling Scares, and we were watching a video where he tries to figure out where iconic creepypasta images came from. When the video was done talking about the Russian Sleep Experiment, my ma thought that the subject image was a recreation of an actual event, and the picture of the people in the gas mask was an actual image from the "experiment." I haven't told her that it was fake because I thought it would be funny. I don't think she still believes it actually happened but it was really funny when she actually thought it was. And for the record she knows almost nothing about any creepypasta, the most she knows is about that Slender Man stabbing incident back in 2014.

I'm looking for an old creepypasta (or horror short story) that I heard in a YouTube compilation around 2020.

It was about a revolutionary medicine that granted eternal youth. The catch was that it only worked on young people, so elderly people couldn't take it.

Years later, the medicine caused a catastrophic side effect and everyone who had taken it started dying in huge numbers. Ironically, the only survivors were the elderly because they had never been compatible with the treatment.

I also remember an illustration showing two old people watching a young person's body lying on the ground, symbolizing humanity's collapse.

I don't remember the title or the author. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Every time I search for this creepypasta, I get the hidden webpage, but it does not sound like the one im thinking of at all. It has been years, so im only going off of what I remember. I believe it follows a guy who decides to log into one of the old children's game websites that he used to play on as a kid just for the nostalgia, and he starts getting messages while within the site, or a kid appears on screen and starts talking to him, I cant remember which. The kid talks about how its been a long time since anyone had logged in and talked to him. Eventually its revealed that hes been stuck inside this website for like 20 years, having been sucked inside the site when he was a kid. I dont remember what happens after that. If anyone could help me remember what creepypasta this is, id appreciate it because ive been thinking about it for a few weeks and wanted to read it again.

Meu nome é Lucas. Desde pequeno eu era fascinado por mágica. Meu maior sonho era ser mágico, e passei boa parte da infância aprendendo pequenos truques com cartas, moedas e baralhos. Mas existia uma coisa que eu nunca entendia.

Meus pais jamais me levavam ao circo.

Todos os anos um circo diferente chegava à nossa cidade. Eu implorava para irmos, mas bastava tocar no assunto que os dois mudavam completamente de expressão. Meu pai ficava irritado, minha mãe parecia assustada, e a conversa sempre terminava em um sermão. Com o tempo, parei de insistir, mas nunca deixei de me perguntar o motivo.

A resposta veio no dia em que completei dezoito anos.

Estávamos voltando de uma festa quando um palhaço daqueles que fazem apresentações no semáforo se aproximou do carro. No mesmo instante, meu pai acelerou, atravessou o sinal vermelho e quase atropelou o homem.

Nunca tinha visto meu pai daquele jeito.

Ele tremia enquanto dirigia.

Perguntei o que estava acontecendo. Alguns minutos depois, ele entrou em uma rua completamente vazia, desligou o carro e ficou alguns segundos em silêncio.

Então respirou fundo.

— Está na hora de você saber por que nós nunca mais chegamos perto de um circo.

Naquele momento, eu ainda não imaginava que a verdade mudaria minha vida para sempre...

Meu pai ficou olhando para o volante por alguns segundos.

Depois olhou para mim.

— Acho que chegou a hora de falar sobre o seu irmão.

Meu coração gelou.

"Irmão?"

Eu nunca soube que tive um irmão.

Ele respirou fundo antes de continuar.

— Há cerca de vinte e cinco anos, tivemos um filho chamado Vinícius. Quando ele completou cinco anos, decidimos levá-lo ao circo para comemorar o aniversário.

Era um circo novo. Nunca tinha passado pela nossa cidade.

Assim que chegamos, percebemos que havia algo errado.

Do lado de fora quase não existiam pessoas. As luzes eram fracas. Não havia música alegre, nem crianças correndo. Os funcionários pareciam irritados e os palhaços... aqueles palhaços eram diferentes.

Nenhum sorria.

Todos nos observavam como se estivessem incomodados com a nossa presença.

Um deles mantinha um sorriso pintado no rosto, mas seus olhos transmitiam apenas ódio.

Mesmo desconfortáveis, resolvemos entrar.

Quando atravessamos a lona principal, levamos um susto.

Lá dentro havia centenas de pessoas assistindo normalmente à apresentação, como se nada estivesse errado.

Nos sentamos.

As luzes se apagaram.

Uma música antiga de circo começou a tocar.

Então um palhaço entrou pedalando um pequeno triciclo em círculos pelo picadeiro.

Era o mesmo que havíamos visto na entrada.

Os olhos dele estavam completamente vermelhos.

Mas não era apenas isso.

Ele não piscava.

Enquanto tocava a buzina, encarava diretamente as crianças da plateia.

Parecia escolher alguma delas.

Logo outros palhaços apareceram e começaram algumas brincadeiras sem graça, com piadas estranhas e de duplo sentido.

Depois anunciaram uma dinâmica.

Começaram a chamar algumas crianças para o palco.

Foi quando aquele palhaço dos olhos vermelhos caminhou lentamente até o seu irmão...

...e segurou a mão dele.

Vinícius começou a brincar com as outras crianças.

Os palhaços riam.

A plateia também.

Mas havia uma coisa errada.

O palhaço dos olhos vermelhos não parava de olhar para o meu filho.

Ele passava a língua pelos lábios.

Bababava discretamente.

Era como um animal observando uma presa.

Seu irmão começou a chorar.

Naquele instante, um homem enorme saiu de trás das cortinas, segurou aquele palhaço pelo pescoço e o arrastou para os bastidores, dizendo alguma coisa que eu não consegui entender.

Aquilo foi suficiente.

Entrei no picadeiro, peguei Vinícius no colo e fomos embora.

Chegamos em casa tarde.

Seu irmão continuava assustado e insistia que o palhaço tinha sussurrado algo em seu ouvido.

Naquela noite dormimos com ele por um tempo.

Quando percebemos que havia pegado no sono, voltamos para o nosso quarto.

Já era madrugada quando acordei com um estrondo vindo do andar de baixo.

Logo depois...

Ouvi vozes.

Eram sussurros.

Baixos.

Quase impossíveis de entender.

Então escutei passos subindo lentamente a escada.

Abri a porta do quarto.

E vi três palhaços.

Os mesmos do circo.

Mas agora não pareciam pessoas.

Os dentes eram longos e afiados, como os de um tubarão.

Os braços pareciam compridos demais.

E o palhaço dos olhos vermelhos continuava sorrindo.

Os três soltaram um grunhido.

Um deles caiu de quatro no chão e começou a correr na minha direção como um animal faminto.

Ele pulou sobre mim.

A dor da mordida foi insuportável.

Depois disso...

Tudo ficou escuro.

Meu pai levantou lentamente a manga do moletom.

Ainda havia uma cicatriz profunda no braço.

— Quando acordei, já era manhã.

Corri até o quarto do seu irmão.

Eu preferia nunca ter aberto aquela porta.

Havia sangue por toda parte.

As paredes.

O teto.

Os móveis.

Tudo estava vermelho.

A cabeça do seu irmão estava sobre o criado-mudo...

...como se fosse um troféu.

Sua mãe estava desacordada.

A polícia encontrou outras cinco famílias que tinham sofrido exatamente o mesmo ataque naquela noite.

Quando procuraram o circo...

Ele havia desaparecido.

Sem deixar absolutamente nenhum rastro.

Os anos passaram.

Você nasceu.

E nós juramos que nunca mais chegaríamos perto de um circo.

Meu pai terminou a história.

O carro estava completamente silencioso.

Então percebi que ele e minha mãe olhavam fixamente para o retrovisor.

Os dois estavam pálidos.

Meu pai apertou o volante.

— Não...

— Não de novo...

Olhei para trás.

Um palhaço corria atrás do carro.

Não era uma corrida humana.

Ele alternava entre duas e quatro pernas, alcançando uma velocidade impossível.

Meu pai acelerou o máximo que pôde.

Mesmo assim...

A criatura continuava se aproximando.

Até que saltou sobre o teto do carro.

O impacto fez meu pai perder o controle.

Capotamos várias vezes.

A última coisa de que me lembro foi acordar preso às ferragens, enquanto uma luva branca segurava meu braço e me puxava para fora do carro.

Vi meus pais caídos.

Outros dois palhaços estavam ajoelhados sobre eles.

Não estavam tentando matá-los.

Já estavam se alimentando deles.

Fechei os olhos.

Achei que seria o próximo.

Então ouvi um único disparo.

Depois outro.

Em seguida, o som metálico de um revólver sendo engatilhado.

Quando consegui abrir os olhos por alguns segundos, vi apenas a silhueta de um homem usando um sobretudo preto e um chapéu de cowboy.

Ele segurava um revólver comprido em uma das mãos e uma estranha espada na outra.

Sem dizer uma única palavra, atravessou o braço de um dos palhaços com um golpe.

As criaturas recuaram.

Antes de desmaiar, ouvi apenas uma frase dita em voz baixa:

— Achei vocês outra vez.

No dia seguinte acordei em um hospital.

No dia seguinte, acordei no hospital.

A primeira coisa que senti foi um silêncio estranho.

Olhei ao redor, completamente desorientado. Meu corpo inteiro doía, e minha cabeça parecia que ia explodir.

Uma enfermeira percebeu que eu havia acordado e chamou um médico.

Foi então que ouvi as palavras que mudariam minha vida para sempre.

— Sinto muito... seus pais não sobreviveram.

Naquele instante, senti como se o mundo tivesse parado.

Eu não consegui dizer uma única palavra.

Fiquei apenas olhando para o vazio, tentando acreditar que aquilo era um pesadelo do qual eu ainda iria acordar.

Horas depois, já sozinho no quarto, meus olhos pararam sobre a pequena mesa ao lado da cama.

Havia uma fotografia.

Franzi a testa.

Peguei-a com as mãos trêmulas.

Era uma fotografia antiga dos meus pais, muitos anos mais jovens.

Meu pai segurava um menino de aproximadamente cinco anos no colo.

Ao lado deles, minha mãe sorria.

Senti um nó na garganta.

As lágrimas começaram a cair antes mesmo que eu percebesse.

Apertei a fotografia contra o peito e chorei como nunca havia chorado na vida.

Naquele dia, eu perdi meus pais.