So you want to hear my story, huh? Straight from the horse’s mouth, as they say. Why not? Maybe you’ll actually listen to me. That’d be a nice change of pace.
I’m sure you’ve already read the version in the papers, the account my erstwhile coworkers gave about my “breakdown”. I’m certain the morons went on and on about how “normal” I seemed, how they couldn’t possibly have imagined what was secretly going on in my head. “Oh that Madeline, I never would have guessed!” Pricks. It’s probably because there isn’t anything wrong with me. I’m perfectly sane, which is quite a remarkable feat, I’d say, given my circumstances. They’ve pumped me so full of drugs I feel higher than a goddamn hot air balloon, but I’m trying my best to stay lucid, trying my best to remember the truth.
Well, I say perfectly sane, but that’s not entirely true. I’ve got to stay honest, I have to be consistent. If I start telling lies, even little ones like that, I’m no better than the gaslighting quacks insisting that I’m a danger to society. Prior to my imprisonment- sorry, my institutionalization, I was diagnosed with a mild form of obsessive compulsive disorder. Nothing too severe, you understand, no intrusive thoughts telling me to kill the president or to peel off my own skin or anything like that. I just have a tendency to be a little fussy about people touching my things and have chronically scaly looking skin from the frequency with which I wash my hands. I was on medication, I was dealing with it. I doubt anybody even noticed.
Now, of course, they’ve been giving me all sorts of wonderful diagnoses, a veritable smorgasbord of neuroses and complexes. All the usual suspects are there; paranoid schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder, I believe one doctor even suggested dissociative identity disorder, though I’ve never shown even the slightest sign of having some sort of separate personality. But it makes them feel better to give me labels, to categorize me as something that they can understand. The language changes of course, one must accede to the endless demands of the euphemism treadmill, but we all know what they think I am; a madwoman. To them, I’m just a frightful maniac, a slasher out of a bad horror film who tried to cut up some innocent, normal person because the voices in my head told me to. They’re too blinded by their own idiotic dogma to accept the truth; that the world is not as they think it is, and we are not alone.
I’d better start at the beginning shouldn’t I? As you almost certainly already know, I used to work as a bookkeeper for my local grocery store. I basically was in charge of counting the money from the tills to ensure that there weren’t any discrepancies, and consequently spent a lot of time alone in a nice, soundproof little booth, away from the hustle and bustle of the endless parade of idiot customers. Of course, I had to wear gloves, I can’t stand handling money without them, but ever since the pandemic nobody really bothered me about it like they used to when I was younger.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses though, there were downsides to my job. In addition to being bookkeeper, I was also a customer service representative, which meant that whenever some moron called the store asking if we carried such-and-such brand of cereal or the like, I was the one who had to answer the phone. Besides this, I also had to answer any inquiries at the service desk, and deal with the horde of senile geriatrics for whom the phrase “rewards app” may as well have spoken in Ancient Greek for all the understanding it elicited. I’d also have to deal with the occasional geezer telling me to take off my face mask, insisting that the pandemic was over. In truth, while I did wear it partially out of a desire to keep myself safe from germs, the real reason was that I simply hated having to fake a smile. I’ve been told I have something of a “resting bitch face”.
Nevertheless, as far as jobs go, bookkeeping wasn’t too bad. I managed to tolerate it to the best of my ability, and while I never made any real friendships with my coworkers, we all got along just fine, more or less.
That is, until she arrived.
The elderly store manager, one Aaron Reed, gathered us all up one afternoon for an impromptu store meeting, where he cheerfully announced that he would be retiring in a few weeks, and that we would be welcoming a new manager to our humble little store. Aaron was always one for dramatics, and with a flourish of his hand, out from behind the door to the manager’s office stepped Marie Vasilka.
From the instant I saw her, I hated her. Now, I must make it entirely clear, I’m not prejudiced, the hatred wasn’t born of some irrational bigotry. It wasn’t as though she were ugly in some way either; she had a bland sort of beauty to her, the sort of prettiness that appeals to the widest possible audience, the lowest common denominator of aesthetic preference. She wore a full face of makeup, her light brown hair was set up perfectly in some trendy but modest style, and she wore well tailored slacks and a perfectly fit black turtleneck. Everything about her was almost unnaturally perfect, like a digital camera filter was permanently applied to her so she always appeared in just the right light.
I’ll admit that all these details didn’t jump out at first. Instead, what affected me the most, ensuring immediately that I would not get along with her, was her smile. There is a certain expression, unique to the field of customer service, that denotes someone who feels perfectly fulfilled in that most degrading line of work. A grin representing such infinite shallowness that the mind boggles trying to conceptualize it. Marie Vasilka had the unmistakable, hollow smirk of someone who genuinely tried their absolute best to live her company’s values, who really did believe in the timeless maxim “the customer is always right.”
When she introduced herself to us, my suspicions of her soulless devotion to her career were instantly confirmed. She had a perfect customer service voice, that slightly too high pitched tone of polite concern that could immediately soothe even the most cantankerous of coupon clipping grandmothers. Her every motion was like that of an actress playing a role in a cruddy B-movie, stiff and wooden. She represented everything I hated about this job, all the worst aspects of the service industry rolled into one smiling, polite package.
Still, in spite of my immediate revulsion upon interacting with her, I tried my best to be as cordial as I could stomach, and made an effort not to roll my eyes when she remarked upon how I had “such a lovely name.” I’m not an asshole, after all, I understand that the universe doesn’t revolve around me and that it takes all sorts to make up this world we live in, regardless of whether or not I like them.
As it turned out, my first impression of Ms. Vasilka being a chronically happy workaholic proved to be entirely correct. As Aaron went about training her, she always had that same blandly polite smile upon her face. The worst part of it all though was her insistence that every single one of the other employees should share in her peppy, optimistic view of life. Even while Aaron was still guiding her around the store, getting her acquainted with the various departments and the like, she couldn’t help but comment on things that might be improved.
She’d point out when cashiers were standing about with nothing to do, waiting for customers, and tell them to work on cleaning up the check stands. She would always notice when a shelf could use a bit of tidying up, or some item needed restocking. She seemed to get some sort of perverse joy from efficiency, as though she had no higher aspiration in life than to be a beautifully gleaming cog in some vast, perfectly calibrated machine.
Eventually Aaron did good on his word with regards to his retirement, and we had a little going away party for him, complete with cake, balloons, and the like. Marie was there of course, and I took note of the fact that she didn’t partake in any of the refreshments, instead just making sure to engage everyone she could in some bland small-talk, the exact sort of conversation I always despised. I tried to quietly excuse myself a bit early, insisting that I had some work to do in the booth (a lie). On my way out, however, Marie stopped me, tapping a hand on my shoulder to grab my attention. Her hand felt stiffer than it should have been, as though I were being prodded with a stick rather than human flesh.
I turned to see her smiling face, eyes staring straight at me with uncomfortably direct eye contact. Do you want to know what she said?
“Do remember to smile Maddie; it’s an important part of serving our customers!”
As I believe I mentioned, I wore a face mask to work, for the express purpose of not needing to deal with any of this nonsense. Point blank, I asked how she knew if I was smiling or not, given that my mouth was covered. She replied that “You can always tell if someone is smiling Maddie, even if you can’t see their mouth. Why heck, sometimes people smile with their mouth, but not with their eyes. I think it’s really important for our customers that we smile with our whole face, don’t you?” The whole time she spoke, her face was locked into that perfect, happy grin. She was, as she put it, smiling with her whole face. It made me quite uncomfortable.
I mumbled some sort of generic grunt of agreement, and turned to leave, but she grabbed me by the shoulder and quite forcibly turned me back around to face her. Marie’s hand was hard upon my shoulder, a vice grip in fact. I was baffled, not to mention frightened, but all Marie had to say was “I’m sorry, I don’t quite think I heard what you said. Do make sure to enunciate properly Maddie, it’s only polite!”
I forced a smile and carefully spoke the words “I understand, thank you Marie. May I go to the booth now?” Marie nodded, replied that I may, and then went back to join the party.
The whole affair scared me, more than I at the time thought it should have. By the time I got back to my booth I had myself a short cry, because there was something so utterly terrifying about Marie. I’d described her earlier as moving like an actress in a bad film, but you must understand I don’t mean that as if to say she was faking her persona, it’s just that she genuinely happened to behave in that way. All the shoddiness of bad acting with all the sincerity of real life, a person who was fundamentally wrong on some level.
It was that night after her bizarre order for me to smile that I had the first of the nightmares. I’ve never been much of a dreamer, you understand, so when I do have one I’m inclined to remember it. This particular dream was among the most vivid I’ve ever experienced.
I was all alone in the grocery store, there were no other coworkers or customers about. I was simply walking through the aisles, completely solitary, yet with an intense feeling of being watched. Every security camera seemed to be pointed directly at me, a beady mechanical eye judging my very soul.
After a few minutes of aimless wandering about the store, growing increasingly tense and paranoid, my dream self was startled by an announcement on the intercom.
“Maddie, could you please come to the office? Maddie, to the office please?”
It goes without saying whose voice it was. Nobody else ever calls me Maddie.
I didn’t want to go to the office, the whole idea sent a shiver down my spine, as though someone had poured ice water down the collar of my shirt. But I didn’t have a voice. In that manner unique to dreams, I unwillingly felt myself begin to walk steadily towards Marie’s office, one agonizing step at a time. All the while I could feel her smiling eyes watch my every movement through the myriad cameras.
I finally reached the door to the office, closed, but with a sign attached to it saying “Come right in!” in bold comic sans. Below the tacky letters was a picture of a yellow smiley face. I felt myself push open the door, revealing the office.
It was sparsely decorated, with not so much as a picture of Marie’s family on the desk, though in retrospect I doubt that she has anything we’d be likely to call a family in the normal sense of the word. She simply sat there, smiling, unmoving, like a wax statue. I sat down in the chair opposite her, and we began to stare at one another.
The staring, oh dear God the staring. It went on for what felt like hours, nightmare logic permitting my eyes to remain open despite the impossibly long stretch of time. It didn’t stop them from hurting, though. The whole time I could feel my eyes itching, begging me to let them close, but I couldn’t. All the while, Marie continued to look at me, eyes effortlessly remaining open, the smile fixed upon her face.
She didn’t say anything, no words were spoken between us. She didn’t even seem to breathe as far as I could tell. We just sat, each of us the other’s mirror, locked in some sort of hellish staring contest that I knew I could never win. Even though the nightmare permitted me the strength to avoid blinking for lengths of time that would be unimaginable in the real world, I still knew that I would have to eventually.
Finally, after perhaps 2 or 3 hours, I could feel that I was going to give in, that my eyes would blink. I was terrified, sweating with the fear of what would happen. Wanting to shriek from the painful effort it took to try and keep my eyelids open, but unable to muster even a whimper, I felt my strained, bloodshot eyes begin to close against my will.
I woke up in bed bolt upright, screaming at the top of my lungs.
As I said, that was the first of the nightmares. They began to recur every single night, always the exact same way, never deviating in the slightest of minutiae, save that the demoniac staring contests lasted longer each time. Fairly soon it began to feel as though I was spending more time in those dreams than in the waking world.
The lack of rest began to affect me after only a few days of these terrible dreams. I felt listless, paranoid, and stressed all the time. I was scarcely able to tolerate the customer service portion of my job, having little patience for those idiots with their completely banal problems, and I found myself making frequent errors in my bookkeeping work as well. However, I did my best to perform my duties to a satisfactory extent, as I couldn’t bear the thought of being called up to Marie’s office, to be forced to turn my nocturnal terrors into a waking reality.
As the days turned to weeks and the dreams showed no signs of fading, I’ll admit I found myself acquiring a certain fixation on Marie Vasilka. I suppose it is rather difficult not to focus on someone who makes nightly appearances in your dreams. I took to observing her covertly, peeking glances at her whenever I could, though I never dared to go up to her office if I could help it, at least when I knew she was there.
I began to notice things, things that I never would have realized unless I was paying such close attention. For one thing, I never once observed Marie eat or drink while on the clock. At first I assumed that she merely took her lunch breaks in her office, or perhaps in her car, but it became increasingly obvious that Ms. Vasilka didn’t even take any breaks. She would clock in, work continuously without pause for what seemed to be 9 or 10 hour shifts, and then clock out. She never even took so much as a bathroom break.
Then there were the physical details, things that I hadn’t noticed at first but stuck out plain as day now that I was obsessively observing her. I realized with some confusion one day that despite how much time I’d spent looking at Marie, both in my nightmares and the waking world, I hadn’t the foggiest idea how old she was. Something about her face seemed timeless. I found that I must have drastically underestimated the amount of makeup she wore when I first met her, because increasingly it seemed to me that her face had a frankly unnatural shininess to it. There was something odd about her skin too, an abnormality of texture that more closely reminded me of some sort of rubber than living tissue.
The final revelation, the thing that thoroughly convinced me of the fact that there something supernatural about Marie Vasilka, was her eyes.
I was observing Marie assisting a customer from the comfort of my booth, as it was fortunately equipped with a one way mirror through which I could keep an eye out to see if anyone approached the service desk. I watched her listlessly as she patiently conversed with the middle aged gentleman who had interrupted her walk of the store. As she calmly and politely answered his questions, nodding at the appropriate times, I began to be overcome with a dawning sense of dread.
This interaction went on for nearly 10 minutes, and yet, in all that time, not once did I see Marie blink.
Throughout the rest of that shift, I kept my eye out for Marie, always trying to see if I could catch her blinking. If she blinked at any point, even just once, I could have told myself that I simply was suffering from some sort of mental breakdown. I could have told myself, as the doctors at this fine institution insist, that I was just going crazy. But she never, ever did.
Now, I’ll admit, from an outside perspective, my next decision may sound a touch drastic, but you have to understand my position. I was spending what felt like at least 12 hours each night just staring at Marie’s unblinking, monstrously smiling face, her eyes boring into my own like power drills. Everyday I felt weaker and more tired, the dreams weighing down upon me like a lead weight and sapping away any strength I should be getting from sleep.
I had to kill her.
I knew that if Marie was dead that I wouldn’t have the dreams anymore, I just knew it. I will assert again; I am not insane, I am as healthy and stable as anyone could be given my situation. But I hadn’t gotten any proper rest in weeks. My life was falling apart around me. When I got home from work I simply collapsed in bed and immediately would have the nightmares again, there was no freedom from that woman, that witch. I’d lost over a dozen pounds since I first met Marie, since I never had enough energy to cook proper food anymore, and only barely had the strength to get takeout once a day at the most. If I didn’t kill her, she would kill me, do you understand? It was me or her. Madeline or Marie. The choice was obvious.
I’ll grant that I didn’t have the most elegant plan in the world. She seemed to work 7 days a week, so I decided that I’d simply wait till one of the days I had off, lurk in the parking lot until she clocked out, bash her brains in with a baseball bat, and drag her body into the trunk of my car. I didn’t really have much of an idea for what to do with the corpse beyond simply dumping it in the woods, but at that point I was so desperate to be free that I figured I didn’t have time to plan things out that far ahead.
Luckily, I did know what Marie’s car looked like, and where she tended to park. I’m not much of a car person, and in fairness I was not in an emotional state conducive to thinking very clearly at the time, so I can’t tell you the exact make and model, but it was just as inoffensive and blandly pleasant looking as she was. It was silver little subcompact, the sort of modestly priced vehicle with good gas mileage and such a universal appeal that anybody could have owned it. The only reason I was able to distinguish it from the others of its kind was the custom license plate; “SM1L3(:”.
I lay in wait for hours, slamming down energy drink after energy drink to keep myself awake and alert, keeping a sharp lookout. I got close to nodding off once or twice, but I stayed focused, I had a goal; I was going to take back my dreams from this grinning freak. It was a long, agonizing wait, but eventually my patience paid off, and I saw Marie come walking into the parking garage, still smiling that self-satisfied customer service grin.
Conditions were nothing less than perfect. She hadn’t seemed to notice me, and her path was such that there would be a brief opportunity where her back was facing me. Nobody else was around, and it was late in the evening. There would be no witnesses, no one around to hear if she tried to fight back.
I steadied my breathing and tightened my grip around the baseball bat, readying myself to end the nightmare. Time slowed, the seconds seeming to drip like molasses, and in the silence of the parking garage I could hear my heartbeats loud and clear. Finally, the moment came, and I lunged at her, swinging the bat with all my strength as I let out a strangled cry of rage.
I expected a thud, or perhaps a crunch, something like what they play in the movies when someone is hit with a blunt object, you know? That satisfying, meaty sound that lets you know someone isn’t getting back up. It didn’t sound like that at all though, not even in a little. Instead there was a loud smashing noise, like a vase being dropped upon a tile floor, or a brick being tossed through a window.
Regardless, Marie’s body fell to the floor, limp and lifeless. There was no blood, but at the time I didn’t think about this, I was too giddy with adrenaline to notice. I stuffed the baseball bat down the back of my hoodie so I could have both of my hands free, then started dragging the corpse back to my car. It was lighter than I expected, she couldn’t have weighed more than 80 pounds at the most, which was drastically inconsistent with her height and apparent size. I figured beneath her concealing clothes she must have been completely emaciated.
I tossed the body in the trunk and drove home, cackling to myself as I did so. Again, I’m not crazy, I know how this sounds, but I was just so relieved. I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep, to finally have a chance to rest. All I had to do was dispose of the body and I was set. I would finally be free.
I made it home without incident somehow, a minor miracle between the lack of proper rest and intense mix of emotions I was feeling from killing someone. As justified as it was, I still couldn’t help but feel guilty. Taking a life, even that of some unnatural, idiotically grinning customer service sorceress, doesn’t exactly rest easy upon one’s conscience. As I pulled into the driveway I was beginning to question myself, wondering if I had made the right decision.
Surely she must have people who will miss her, I thought to myself. I began to worry about the police, and started to consider the options I could take to dispose of the body. I came up with the idea of disposing of her clothes separately from the rest of the body in order to throw off the trail, thinking that if investigators found her clothes in the nearby river they’d be unlikely to check the woods.
I had one last task ahead of me before I could finally have a pleasant night’s sleep, and I swallowed down another energy drink in order to keep myself awake. After making sure nobody else was around to see, I carried Marie’s body into my garage and shut the door. I grabbed an old tarp and some duct tape that I planned to use to wrap the body, and then set about removing the clothes.
I started with the shoes, pulling them off with ease (Marie always seemed to wear comfortable but professional looking slip-ons). It was when I removed the socks that I got my first surprise. At first I assumed they must have been some sort of prosthetics; one foot was crudely hacked from wood, and the other seemed to have been taken from a department store mannequin of some sort. Unsettled, I decided to move up to the shirt instead, not wanting to have to deal with Marie’s mismatched feet. I soon discovered, however, that if anything the feet were the least strange part of her.
As I pulled off her turtleneck, I was confronted with an utterly bewildering sight. I don’t quite know how to describe it, not because it was in any way difficult to comprehend, but saying it back now just sounds almost… silly. Her entire body seemed to be composed of nothing but, well, garbage.
The main bulk of the torso was a loose sort of cage made from chicken wire, filled in with various nonsensical objects in the place of internal organs. There were two long, partially deflated balloons, of the sort a clown would use to make balloon animals, in the place of lungs. Where the heart ought to have been was a broken alarm clock, though I can’t be sure if this was always broken or if it was merely damaged in her fall to the ground. The stomach was a translucent, plastic grocery bag, filled with what looked to be the severed limbs of plastic dolls. Her intestines were a number of toy rubber snakes tied together. I could go on, naming the inane, utterly pointless knick knacks that made up the false body of Marie Vasilka, but it doesn’t matter, none of it matters.
My eyes wandered up to her face, that strangely perfect smile still stretched across her lips, eyes still open, staring blankly upwards. I could see now it was a mask of some sort, rubber and clearly fake. I have no idea how it had seemed so lifelike before. I pulled it off, trembling as I did so. Beneath the mask was one of those glass mannequin heads, the sort you use to display hats, the back of it shattered into a hundred pieces from the force of the baseball bat. It was filled with a string of unpowered Christmas lights.
I didn’t bother taking off the rest of the clothes, I just wrapped it up in the tarp, clothes and all, and dumped in about a mile into the woods, around a hundred yards off the side of the highway. I mean, it’s not like it was an actual body. The most I could get in trouble for was littering.
By the time I finished disposing of Ms. Vasilka’s remains, it was nearly 1 in the morning, and I was well overdue for some sleep. My mind was utterly unable to process what I had experienced, and I was completely numbed to the impossible thing I had seen. All I felt was a desire to go to bed and have the whole affair over and done with. Rationalizing what happened was a problem for the next day’s Madeline.
Of course it wasn’t that simple. Why would it be? Whatever powers that be have clearly decided that my life is clearly not one which is meant for happiness.
This time there was no build up, no wandering through the aisles of the grocery store. I simply lay down in bed, closed my eyes, and then I was there in the office, face to face with that thing.
It wasn’t wearing the mask anymore, nor clothes. It just sat there, staring without eyes, a blank, transparent glass head filled with softly shining Christmas lights, atop a body composed of nonsense and garbage. Even without a face, I could tell it was smiling at me. And so I stared at this thing, this mockery of the human form, until my eyes burned with the effort to keep them open, and I once again awoke screaming.
But that wasn’t what got me locked up in this nuthouse as a madwoman. Oh no, not in the slightest. It was what awaited me when I arrived back at work the next day, exhausted and borderline suicidal.
I walked into the break room to clock in, only to find all was adorned with ribbons and balloons, with a big cake on the table, decorated with the words “Happy Birthday Marie!” In the corner of the room sat a punch bowl and a number of glasses. Many of my coworkers were already digging into their own slices of cake, and chatting pleasantly as they drank from glasses of punch.
I stared at the decorations blankly, wondering when they would notice that Marie wasn’t here for her own celebration. Then I felt a familiar, hard tap upon my shoulder.
“Hello Maddie.”
I turned, and saw her smiling, as always. She looked none the worse for wear, despite having been hit with a baseball bat, wrapped in a tarp and dumped in the woods.
“Why aren’t you smiling, Maddie? This is a party after all. Feel free to have some cake and punch!”
From behind me, someone dropped their glass, a loud shattering noise piercing the haze of polite small talk and idle chatter. I was reminded of the sound Marie’s head made when I smashed the back of it with my baseball bat.
What happened next… well, I’m not exactly proud of what I did, but you can hardly blame me, can you? I’d been through so much, and I’ll admit I lost my temper. I can appreciate that without context, seeing your coworker grab a cake knife and try to slash at your manager’s face while screaming “You’re not a real person” does seem somewhat alarming. I’m not surprised that they held me down and called the police. I’m not surprised that they took me here.
What was surprising though, what keeps me from just “getting better” and becoming a functional member of society again, is how many others there are. I’m sure you’ve seen it, haven’t you? The way the receptionist never stops smiling? How effortlessly polite all the orderlies are? How the doctors always seem to maintain eye contact just a bit too long for comfort? I still have those dreams you know. Those terrible, agonizingly long dreams. But Marie isn’t the only one staring now. There are so, so many of them.
- - -
The above statement was given by Madeline Engelhardt, a patient at the ________ Psychiatric Hospital. Her former manager, Marie Vasilka has declined any requests for interviews, beyond stating that she “wishe[s] Maddie the best in her recovery.”
Police did investigate the spot where Ms. Engelhardt claimed to have dumped the “body” described in the above narrative, concerned that perhaps in her delusional state, she did in fact commit a murder, simply hallucinating that the victim was Marie Vasilka. Investigation did not recover any body, though an old tarp was found at the scene, along with a partially shattered glass mannequin head.