Madness. You will never truly know the meaning of the word without experiencing what I have gone through. It all started when my wife turned up dead in the creek, her face twisted into an eternal grin that bled at the corners, and her cold hands clutching a damp, smudged piece of paper with letters too distorted to read. I thought nothing of the note at the time, but now I know how important it was.
It began with the little things. Footsteps at night, strange dreams, the constant feeling that someone else was in the house. But then it got… harder to ignore.
The TV set showed nothing but static and the radio sounded garbled and distorted. Sometimes, when I walked the halls, the lights behind me would begin to dim until the light was completely extinguished. At night, the dreams have become even more vivid and terrifying.
I dream that I am in a dark, abandoned house where all the furniture is covered in plastic wrapping. I hear my wife’s screams and run to the basement door. I pull the door open on its rusty hinges and run down the stairs. When I reach the bottom I slip and fall onto my face. I look up to see that I have fell in a puddle of thick, warm blood. I look beside me and to my horror, my wife’s mangled body is lying next to me. I get up to run but behind me is nothing but darkness.
In the pitch black, I see two white, blood shot eyes, staring back at me and a twisted smile that seems much too long to be physically possible. I began to move backwards and it stepped into the dim light. Standing before me, I saw a tall, skinny man with sunken white eyes and pasty skin. He was covered in blood and his mouth… his mouth was sliced open at the edges revealing torn muscle and jagged, yellowed teeth. He began walking towards me and it seemed to get darker as he moved. I could’t move a muscle in his wake. As he got closer, I could see that the skin around his eyes had been torn off along with his nose, and that his hands were tipped with yellowed, blood stained fingernails. He began to speed up and I tried to scream but nothing but blood came out of my mouth. He just looked at me with those empty eyes and smiled, causing his torn cheeks that already made an eternal grin part in a painful manner. He watched me as more blood dripped from my mouth, and said, “Why do you look so frightened? Here, let me put a smile on your face,” he then pulled out a knife and began to slowly carve out a smile into my lips. I finally screamed a gurgling shriek and everything went black.
I woke up to find my mouth bleeding and a note on my chest. The note read, “Spread the joy I have given you to be released from your burden,” I immediately ran outside and was blinded by the light. I squinted to see my neighbors directing some men in white uniforms towards my person. They came towards me and I instinctively tried to fight them off. They pulled out a hypodermic needle and just before they injected me with the relaxant, I saw a tall, skinny, man with a large grin and empty eyes watching me as I was plunged into darkness.
I woke up in a padded cell with a straight jacket keeping me from moving. They let me write once a month and every chance I get, I try to warn others of the fate that has been bestowed upon me, but to no avail. Still, even at the asylum, the man comes to me in my dreams. Telling me to spread the joy. Spread the joy. Spread the joy. And end it all. You, know, someday, when they let me out, I might just take the JoyBringer up on his offer and spread the joy to one of you.
Credit To – EngieJack13
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January 1, 2013 at 1:15 am
This was horrible, though not nearly as hate-inspiring as others I’ve had the misfortune to read.
1. If I printed out a copy of Jeff The Killer and Smile.jpg, put both pastas through a paper-shredder and then taped all of them together again to form one long sheet, this is the exact story I would end up with.
You’ve got the carved smile, the spreading of messages, entities communicating with the protagonist through nightmares, the whole “boy with dead, unfeeling eyes and constant need to act in a deliriously joyful manner” thing, etc. It’s all there, in one big, tangled mess.
2. The mention of his wife adds nothing to the storyline. It does not need to be there, as its inclusion does nothing but give away most of the ending before the story even begins. I’d recommend getting rid of everything before “It began with the little things…”
3. I’m certainly no expert on such matters, so it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong. However, it seems very unlikely that if the protagonist is unpredictable enough to be placed in a padded cell, he would not be allowed to access the internet on a regular basis.
If his ability to understand the difference between fantasy and reality was impacted by his mental illness(es), he definitely would not be granted permission to visit websites such as this one.
4. It would be ridiculous if you described each and every activity your character undertook / emotion he experienced, and as one of your readers, I neither expect, need, nor want you to.
However, you can’t just skip from one scene to the next with no explanation of the events that took place in between. You’ve most likely seen the technique used effectively in some classic pastas, but unless you are sure you could pull it off perfectly, it’s to be avoided. It’s not a cheat code you can enter to unlock the “Scary Spaghetti” achievement, you know.
I mean, as things currently stand it looks as if his neighbours just decided to call in the guys with the butterfly nets for shits and giggles. From a reader’s point of view, this poor guy had a nightmare, and some psychiatrist decided that once the effects of the tranquilizers (which were administered without his consent), the best thing to do would be to lock him in solitary confinement, in a cell with padded walls. All because the protagonist had a bad dream.
January 1, 2013 at 7:49 am
Eh… honestly, it sounded to me like a cross between Slenderman and Heath Ledger’s Joker. It’s an interesting concept, and I’m not saying you had either of those characters in mind – that’s just what I imagined. I’m pretty sure I won’t be the last to read your descriptions of what this being looks like and what his intentions are, and draw the same conclusions.
Maybe widen the gap between your idea and those two? Does he have to be both tall and slender? Does he have to use a knife to widen his victim’s smile? (What about reaching in and ripping their mouths apart himself? Evil entities shouldn’t need a knife.)