People say when something bad is about to happen to you, you can feel it. That you’ll experience some sense of doom on the horizon. But when I awoke alone in bed that morning, I experienced nothing like that. Everything my eyes opened to was utterly and entirely ordinary. My girlfriend had already left for work, as she always had. So, as usual, I dragged myself out of bed to ready myself for yet another dull week day at my dead-end job.
When I tell you nothing seemed abnormal in my small, crumbling suburban house, I mean it. My coffee tasted like crap, as it typically did when I was in a rush and forgot to add creamer to it. The freezing water stung my skin like ice in the shower just like every other morning. Even the large, deep crack that caused me to wrestle with the knob just to get the front door open was normal. All within my home was painfully, frustratingly average.
Even after locking my door and walking down my driveway that morning, all seemed in its usual place. The first sign of anything being wrong wasn’t until I was greeted by my elderly neighbor as he headed back up his own driveway after collecting his morning paper. “Mornin’ neighbor!” he said cheerfully.
He was a nice enough guy so it wasn’t strange for him to wave and say good morning. But there was just the slightest hint of extra emotion in the way he delivered his greeting that caused me to actually look at him, rather than absent-mindedly wave in his direction like I usually did.
The man’s smile was oddly large, though not quite inhumanly so. Yet, his lips still stretched wider than I’d ever seen them before. It almost appeared as though they were just a little too big for his face as the skin around them seemed to stretch up to the point just before it would tear and bleed.
“Uh…good morning!” I stuttered out nervously as I opened my car door. “Why the long face neighbor?! You should always be smiling! After all, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?!” he asked. With each sentence the words seemed to carry more excitement. I was obviously a little creeped out, but I tried to keep a polite composer as I responded. “Y-yeah! You’re right, it sure is a beautiful day!” I returned his disturbing distorted facial expression with a small smile of my own. The red slits on the bottom of his face parted a little and he nodded seemingly in approval and continued up to his house as I entered my car.
The whole exchange rattled me a little. But if I’m being honest, I was able to shake off the feeling after just a moment or so when I realized I couldn’t afford to be late to work again. So, with my attention back on getting to work I pulled out of my driveway and began what I’d soon realize would be the most disturbing drive of my life.
In the past, driving to work had always been a relatively mundane task. I’d never realized just how much people watching I actually do during this time until that day. The amount of people walking their dogs through the neighborhood or on early morning jogs. How many times I just happened to look at the driver sitting in the lane next to me as we both awaited the red light to turn green. Or even how many eyes locked with my own in the drivers heading in the opposite direction as me. But in all the times I had previously taken this drive, I’d probably only noticed a smile on anyone’s face a few times. It isn’t normal for people to just happen to be smiling when you look at them. It’s more often a blank, nearly emotionless expression. But on that day, every single individual I looked at was smiling. Every last one of them. These weren’t just standard smiles like the polite one I gave my neighbor that morning, either. They were grotesque smiles. Mouths stretched far too wide, and eyelids far too open. Moreover, it seemed that with each face I looked at, the expression became more and more exaggerated.
My neighbor’s smile was unnerving, but to see so many people with their lips spanning wildly was well beyond a little unsettling. It was disgusting.
I know how that must sound, but I can not properly describe the absolute sense of dread that had fully gripped me as I drove, probably faster than I should have. The faces of every human being became twisted and distorted so much so that I’m not sure what surprised me more, how impossibly wide their lips were smeared, or how astounding it was that despite the obvious strain it had to have been putting on their bodies, there was no sign whatsoever that any muscle or tissue had been damaged even slightly.
When I finally arrived at work and those horrid smiles were behind me, I was trembling. My hands still gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles while I sat and tried to gather myself. What the hell was going on? I took several deep breaths and counted to 10 to calm my nerves. I reasoned with myself that my neighbor’s odd demeanor had set me off and I’d only imagined all those disturbed and jagged grins on my drive. Regardless, I still had to work. So after a moment more of breathing exercises, I left the sanctity of my vehicle and went inside.
Immediately upon entering I heard a sharp, “Hello! How was your weekend!” in a warped tone that reminded me all too much of the encounter with my neighbor earlier that morning. I looked up to see the receptionist of my office gazing hungrily at me, her lips spread almost literally from ear to ear. My heart pounded in my chest as the fear I’d only moments before let go of returned with twice its former presence. As I looked at her in horror, I noticed her eyelids, too, were spread grotesquely wide, causing her eyes to bulge out between the slits odiously, like bubbles on the precipice of popping.
I stumbled, stepping back into the door and pressed my back into it like cornered prey. “Wha-” I stammered out, “What’s wrong with everyone?!”
She tilted her head, giving the impression that she was confused, but her horrifying expression remained constant. “What was that? You know I can’t understand you when you mumble! And why on Earth aren’t you smiling on such a beautiful day?!” Her words washed over me like sleet as their familiarity gnawed at my sanity. “I um…I have to get to work…” I said shakily and quickly walked past her, my body practically pinned to the furthest wall from her as possible.
I didn’t dare to look at the faces of any of my other coworkers as I hastily made my way to my cubicle. I sat and gritted my teeth, trying desperately to force the panic that was quickly rising in my chest back down. As long as I was in my cubicle, no-one ought to bother me. I’ll just get my work done and try to leave a little early today, I thought to myself. For a while, this worked. I focused on my normal duties and was able to keep those awful smiling faces out of my mind for a few hours.
I was just finishing up a report when another coworker approached me. “Well howdy there buddy! How are ya today?!” The voice cut through the air like a fork scraping rotten food off a plate and into the garbage. I grinded my teeth as stress worked its fingers around my lungs again and squeezed. I remained facing away from the horrid sight I knew would greet me if I dared turn around and instead I simply kept my back to my coworker and responded through a dry throat, “Hey, man. I’m good, but got a lot of work to do. I’ll chat with you tomorrow, okay?” He didn’t seem to take the hint and continued talking to me with that same disgustingly happy tone I’d now heard three times that day as he went on about his weekend highlights. My slowly breaking mind only registered the words, “new video game,” and “barbeque.” After a few moments I could take no more of his abhorrent voice grinding away at my ear drums like sandpaper and I interrupted him with, “That sounds great man but like I said, I’ve got a lot to do today so we’ll chat later, okay?” He ceased talking suddenly in response. I thought the silence would bring me relief, but dread overtook me as the quiet hung in the air like a thick, putrid stench. It was quiet for so long I thought I’d perhaps offended him and he’d left. But the jarring sound of his exaggeratedly cheerful speech broke the silence with the words I’d now grown to despise more than any slur or insult I could imagine. “Okay bud, no worries! But you seem kind of out of it! You should smile more on a beautiful day like this!”
I clenched my fists as my foot began to tap wildly on the floor below my desk and I simply nodded as I grinded my teeth with dangerous pressure. I heard his footsteps echo through the building as they got further and further from me. At that point, my sense of reality was held together by thin strings, but I kept telling myself all I had to do was get through a few more hours of work and I could go home to my girlfriend and put this unsettling day behind me. Sadly, I was quickly proven wrong when only a few minutes later, my office phone began to ring.
I dreaded what I might hear on the other end and let it ring for a moment. I debated on just ignoring it entirely until I saw the caller ID was from my boss’s office. So, I reluctantly plucked the phone from its dock and answered, “Yes ma’am, what can I do for you?” I managed to get out the words with only an ounce of shakiness in my voice. “I need you to come to my office immediately, I’ve got some concerns I want to address with you!” The tone of her voice sounded upbeat, but not freakishly so like my other coworkers. “Yes ma’am, I’m on my way.” I hung up and took another deep breath to prepare myself. I was both irritated about the lecture I thought was coming, and looking forward to it.
My boss was a good person, but she was also the no bull-shit kind. She was known for being stern with employees and I myself experienced her anger on a few occasions. But today, after everything, I found myself almost hopeful to receive an irate lecture from her.
I made my way through the building, being sure to ignore any overly-excited greetings from coworkers as I swiftly walked through the maze of cubicles. I arrived at the open door to my boss’s office to find her standing with her back to me, gazing at something out the window as if in deep thought. “Sit down, please,” she said. I did as instructed. “What’s this all about, boss?” I asked, genuinely curious. “You know what it takes for a clock to work properly, don’t you?” she asked sarcastically. I sighed with relief at the normalcy of her demeanor, but still rolled my eyes and readied myself for the classic cogs in the clock metaphor. “Yes ma’am. All the cogs must work together or the gears won’t turn.” I said. “Right!” she responded with more excitement than I was comfortable with. “If even one cog isn’t spinning, all the efforts of the others are wasted entirely!” She continued.
“I don’t understand. Am I late on a report? Was there a deadline I missed?” I asked, my concern real. “No, nothing like that,” she said, keeping her back turned to me as she took a step closer to the window. “It’s just that a couple of your coworkers informed me that you aren’t acting like a team player today!”
I thought back to my coworkers and their horrible smiling faces, gulping vomit back down into my heavy stomach as I noticed the inflection of her words heightening. “But don’t worry, I know how you can be a team player!” She offered. I strained my eyes in an attempt to make out the wry image of her reflected face in the glass, but to no avail. Then, in an automated response, I asked the most idiotic question I’ve ever asked in my life, “How?”
At last she turned to face me and a choked gasp clawed its way out of my throat reflexively as I stared back at the thing that eyed me barbarically from across the room like a small rabbit in the blinding headlights of a car. Her lips tore across the rubber-like substance of her face that was not skin and parted hideously, revealing a mouth filled with too many white bones to be human teeth. And the fat, bulbous things that sat where her eyes should have, bulged out like bubbling tumors from their sockets and gloated down at me vigorously. The way the thing’s not facial muscles contorted and stretched as it spoke shouldn’t have been able to form syllables. Yet from them came the same, appalling statement that every face had echoed throughout the day. “Smile!” it said. “After all, it’s a beautiful day!”
The last threads of my psyche snapped and I screamed. Blood wetted the corners of my lips as they expanded well beyond their normal limits. Tears flowed down my face from both pain and fear as I ran from the room and out of the building. I’d left my car keys on my desk, but I didn’t dare turn back for them. Instead, I just ran down the side-walk, trying in vain not to look at the monstrous smiling faces which surrounded me. I heard cheerful voice after horribly cheerful voice tell me what a beautiful day it was and to smile. I covered my ears as I ran through the thickening crowds as they began to engulf the walkway. I ran into the middle of the street in a frantic attempt to avoid them. My lungs burned and my legs ached as I sprinted well beyond what I would have previously thought possible, but the voices kept coming, “Smile,” “Smile buddy!” “It’s a beautiful day!” “Smile!”
“Shut the hell up!” I shouted back through wheezing breaths. The bodies began to pour out of the entrance to seemingly every building and the drivers-side from seemingly every car. Their numbers climbed to absurd digits until I was engulfed in a sea of revolting smiles. It was like the entire city had conjoined on a single block. Still, I continued to run. The choir of voices deafening, overlapping demands no longer sounded human, but I knew what they said all the same. I pushed through them, not caring how young or old, nor who or what I might be injuring. Finally, I pushed out of the ocean of monsters and saw a clear road ahead. Despite the agony my body was in, I forced my numbing legs and wheezing lungs forward toward the clearing in the street.
As I tried desperately to distance myself from them, I made the horrible mistake of looking back at the flood of nightmares that followed not far behind me. Their faces, oh god, their faces! The abominable images of swollen mouths and cancerous eyes seared permanently in my mind as the last thing I saw before I felt an incredible force slam hard into me and the world went black.
I jolted awake to find myself in a dark hospital room. “Woah woah, it’s okay, you’re okay now!” I heard a familiar voice say. It was my girlfriend. It was too dark to make out her details, but her silhouette still brought me comfort and I eased back into the bed I found myself lying in. “You’re in the hospital, you were in an accident!” she explained. I took a moment to think, the events of what led to my being there not quite clear in my mind. “I…got hit by a car?” I asked as the memories began to return. “Yes! The doctor says you were super lucky though! Just a broken leg, some broken ribs and mild bruising, but he said you’re going to be fine!”
A wave of relief washed over me as she took my hand and squeezed it gently. “The doctor said it’s going to be a long recovery, but he did recommend something that he said will make it go much faster!” A pervasive chill inched its way up my spine as I listened to her voice more closely and heard a recognizable inflection. “What?” I asked, dreading the answer, but not yet entirely certain why. She leaned forward, putting her face closer to mine and allowing for just a hint of its features to become illuminated by the quickening beep of the heart monitor and said, “Smile.”