The Unsmiling One

A grim figure paces endlessly down an empty corridor. A pale man, worn by time and hollowed by vice, he is a stranger to his own reflection. His home is a monument to decay-a place where the winds tangle with his thoughts and the silence feels crowded.

His greatest enemy sits at the heart of his cage: a giant mirror. It is said that after midnight, glass reflects more than just the light of the room. It unearths the guilty pasts we've buried and the versions of ourselves that exist only in the minds of others.

Step into a gothic, surreal odyssey of the soul. Through the lens of a fragmented mind, The Unsmiling One offers a truly haunting exploration of what remains when the lies finally stop.

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Author's Note:

The Unsmiling One is a story I've written for Wattpad's Open Novela Contest 2026. It's a gothic, supernatural and psychological horror story I've written based off a poem I've once written called "Θάνατος χωρίς νικοτίνη" (Death without nicotine). I chose the prompts #76 and #77 ("Your reflection smiles before you do and then begins mimicking things you never did" and "Everyone in town remembers you differently , as if each person has lived a completely different version of you.")
This story represents one of my first attempts at writing in the present tense with a first-person narrator, aiming to capture the immediate, visceral decay of the protagonist's world.