NoSleep SubReddits

SMILE

Credits: username- FormerTrenchCoat

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.