Creepypasta

The Grinning Man

Hey everyone :3 Here's another story for today :D Enjoy!
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I have a story to tell you, but I beg you not to read it. Please, don't. I know it sounds stupid, but by the time you understand why, it will be too late. I know this will not deter many of you, but without this simple warning to ease my conscience, I may not be able to go through with this. And I desperately need to go through with this. Let me start at the beginning.

I have an old friend, Joe, who I've known since grade school. I'm in my late twenties - so is he - and he's been my friend for at least half of that time. I'd say that we knew each other pretty well after all of that time. This may seem irrelevant and uninteresting, but I have to stress this; I know him, and I know him well. What he did was... it was nothing he ever could have done without some outside influence.

On the night of Friday, January 23, I was driving to his apartment to pick him and his roommate up; we made plans to go out, hit a couple of bars, and generally have a good start to the weekend. When I arrived, there were a number of police cars and ambulances outside the complex. I was, of course, curious, as I, like many people, rarely see such sights. As I got closer, I noticed a body covered in a bag in the street, surrounded by glass and no more than a few feet from a badly dented car.

I'm rather horrified, coming to the conclusion that someone was hit by a car and killed right outside the complex. As I finished gawking, I made my way inside and up the stairs to the third floor. That's where my friend's apartment is, and that's where I found it wasn't a simple accident.

The police were upstairs as well, talking to residents and taping off one of the apartments. My friend's apartment. Panicked, I asked one of the officers what happened, why my friend's apartment was taped off. I told him I was supposed to be meeting them for drinks, and asked if they were okay. The officer told me that it appeared that Joe had butchered his roommate with a kitchen knife and thrown himself through the plate glass sliding door into the street below.

I was a ghost, shaken so badly I could barely answer the simple questions the officer asked me upon finding that I knew the victims. My mind couldn't process it. I knew him. He'd never do such an atrocity. It didn't make sense.

I made my way back to my car in silence and drove home as though on autopilot. I couldn't get the shock of it all out of my head. My wife asked me what happened and I explained it to her. She was shocked as well, but... she didn't know him like I did. I told her I needed a bit of time and went to my room. She let me be. Lost, I found myself at my computer. I'm not really sure why I did it, but I found myself checking his email.

I know the passwords he commonly used, so it was hardly an issue to find the right one. I thought perhaps he had friends online who I needed to tell, or maybe I thought I'd find a window into what caused this. I really don't know. If I knew then what I know now; I would've never done what I did.

I scrolled through his inbox, looking for familiar names. Joe, I, and several friends kept in touch online, and I instantly recognized several of those names in the last few days. The most recently opened email was what looked like a spam email with an attachment and no other information. Curiosity got the better of me and I opened it. The file itself was a picture, named nothing but a seemingly random string of numbers. It was simply a man, seemingly normal at a glance, but the longer I stared at it, the more disturbed I became.

He stood, staring, with a grin, sinister and unsettling, with eyes that were both vacant and focused at the same time. That terrible grin seemed to widen the longer I stared, and for minutes I was fixated at that horrible face, eyes burning as they stared back at me with equal intensity. Finally, I tore my gaze away to find the only other thing in the email: a single word. A word I can't repeat. Not yet. I need to tell my story.