Over two hundred dead bodies litter the peak of Mount Everest - and although this is my seventeenth climb, I still pause to honor these souls turned frozen guideposts. Most of my clients' eyes tend to glaze over after the first body. Sometimes they will even take a picture, looking at the corpse before them with the indifference of photographing a mildly interesting bug.
The other sherpas and I refer to my current client as the "Chukpu Pumpeza," rich teenage girl. He is a grown man of course, but he's prone to outbursts that could have shamed the collective of my daughter's most "unfortunate" years.
Chukpu Pumpeza is different from my other clients when he sees his first dead body. The other tourists have always seemed overtaken with summit fever... regarding the bodies as mere lessons and markers of the pathways forward. But Chukpu Pumpeza stares. He takes pictures. He smiles.
He asks me to point out Sleeping Beauty, the Canadian, and Green Boots. He knows each body by name and recites to me the backstory of each failed climber. He even stops as we reach the body in the bright red jacket.
"This one was from your last expedition, right?" Chukpu Pumpeza turns towards me. His irises are so icy, that the snow underneath our feet feels warm. My lips stick together as I press them tightly into a line.
"I knew him," Chukpu Pumpeza stares at the ice pick in his hands.
And then he smiles at me.
Reader insights
Nice work
Very well written. Keep up the good work!
Top insights
Compelling and original writing
Creative use of language & vocab
Easy to read and follow
Well-structured & engaging content
Excellent storytelling
Original narrative & well developed characters
- Runner-Up in Time Traveler Challenge
Ripples Across The Universe
On a moonless night, where sea and sky melded into one vast, dark expanse, two lovers found themselves wrapped in an embrace that defied the fleeting nature of stolen moments. Glen, lost in the intimacy of that embrace, couldn't discern where the horizon met the sea. The water beneath the boat seemed to dissolve the boundaries of his reality, leaving him suspended between the depths below and the vastness above.
By Arshad Mecci7 days ago in Fiction
Another Factor That Separates Sages From Masters
Read to the End to Help "Change The World" with our Earth Week Impact Launch Initiative! --- In my article The 8 Stages to a Quality Career, I detailed each of the steps one must go through to advance to the highest levels in any Industry.
By Cody Dakota Wooten, C.B.C.5 days ago in Journal
Comments (3)
Oh, this was wonderfully written. And timely for me as I have just finished writing a story about the litter collectors of Everest which will be published this week. This was excellent.
Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Okay that was soooo freaking creepy! Loved your story!