Where Did You Get That Smile

Night One

The first time I saw it appear was in a dream. Clawing, climbing, tearing free of the expansive blackness that surrounded it. Its head, finally emerging through the rift it had torn in the void, slowly looked up at me. I’ll never forget that look the creature gave me. Its smile… so eerily familiar, as it spread slowly across its featureless face. I gasped for air, fear paralyzing me and forcing the scream I so badly wanted to release back down my throat. I felt it, felt the creature staring at me through that smile, that knowing, familiar smile. Without hesitation, the creature lunged at me, pitch-black claws poised to tear into my flesh and leave me completely at its mercy…

I woke up in bed next to my fiancee, covered in sweat and gasping for air, my hands balled into fists, gripping the blankets until my knuckles turned white. I took a deep breath, sat up, and carefully examined the details of the dark room. Nothing seemed out of place or out of the ordinary. My fiancee’s soft, steady breathing reminding me that I was not alone and that all I had experienced was a nightmare. I carefully laid back down, trying my best not to disturb her sleep as I got comfortable again. A few minutes passed and I began to hear the soft murmuring of my fiancee mumbling in her sleep. This was far from the first time she made noises while sleeping, so I thought nothing of it as she rolled over and snuggled into my chest, a small smile playing across her lips as we both drifted back into a restful and dreamless sleep.

Night Two

The next morning was uneventful, and I went about my day with nothing remarkable having happened. I went to work, ran a few errands, cooked dinner, watched a bit of TV with my fiancee, and eventually worked my way off of the sofa and into bed. I laid there for a while, browsing Reddit and reading the occasional article. My mind started to wander to the events of the previous evening, thinking about that creature and the familiar smile it had plastered across its head. I shivered at the thought and wrapped my half of the blanket tightly around me, unable to place the smile. I scooted closer to my fiancee, her presence helping banish the thought from my mind. I figured it wouldn’t be the best idea to psych myself out with more nightmare material before falling asleep. I set my phone down, eyes feeling heavy, and eventually drifted into a restless sleep.

I woke up, startled, and feeling a strange sense of unease deep within my stomach as I slowly became more aware of my surroundings. Something felt off. Then I realized what it was; my fiancee was missing. I sat up and threw the blankets off of me, determined to find her. I didn't hear the sound of anyone in the bathroom or the kitchen, nor did I see her when I looked around the rooms in the apartment. The front door was locked and her keys were still hanging on the hook next to the door. Slowly becoming more confused and panicked, I ran back to the room to grab my phone and call her. I picked my phone up and then nearly dropped it out of sheer confusion. She was in bed, laying there asleep. Her breathing slightly irregular, but deep nonetheless. For all I could tell, she had been there the entire time, sleeping happily with a contented smile on her face, and not woken up, despite all the noise I had been creating over the past twenty minutes. I stared at her intently for a moment, thinking about what to do next. I reached out to turn on the lamp that sat on the bedside table. As soon as I turned on the lamp, I woke up, daylight pouring in through the windows.

Night Three

I felt like I was losing it. Maybe I had been asleep the entire evening and just had a weird dream? Everything felt so real when my fiancee was gone, but I couldn’t think of any other reasonable explanation. When I asked her about it, she confirmed that she had not left the bed the entire evening, and suggested that I may have just had another bad dream. I nodded in agreement with her, but the thought of the creature ran through my mind again; it’s smile invading my thoughts and crowding them like a thick fog rolling over the ocean. I pushed the thoughts out of my mind. Weird creatures, ghosts, demons, none of those things were real. It really was starting to seem like I was just having nightmares. Nothing to worry about, as far as I was concerned.

Much like the day before, nothing spectacular happened. I went about my, thankfully short, day and made it back home, where my fiancee was already waiting for me. She greeted me with her familiar smile, one that always brought butterflies to my stomach, even after years of being together. We ordered pizza and watched a few movies on Netflix, having a decidedly uneventful and quiet evening at home. Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep on the sofa, exhausted from the prior restless evenings. When I woke up, I realized I was alone and got up off the sofa to head into the bedroom where I had expected my fiancee to be asleep on the bed.

Looking at the bed with a growing sense of dread, I felt it. A dark presence flooding the room with inky blackness, I couldn’t move, completely enveloped by the entity that now surrounded me. As I stared ahead into the darkness, I started to hear a noise like a soft muffled scream. Then I saw the claws.. Those claws from the dream as they ripped open a hole in the seam of blackness and pulled the creature attached to them through the hole it had created. I knew what was coming next as its smile slowly spread across its face and it readied itself to lunge at me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it, transfixed by the familiar smile, the smile that I still couldn’t place. The creature let out a sound through its smile that could only be described as the tortured screams of a thousand victims being torn apart by its ferocious claws. I tried my best to prepare myself to join the screaming voices when I realized why the smile was so familiar. It was my fiancee’s smile. The same one she wore when she slept next to me, or when she cooked dinner, or even when we walked through the park. The smile she was wearing the day that I proposed. The creature lunged at me, ready to drag me off into the darkness, but then… I woke up.

Day 1178

The dim overhead light of my frigid cell poorly illuminated the dull gray walls as I woke with a start, shivering despite the paper-thin blanket I kept wrapped around me. The memories started flooding through me as I thought about the vile creature from my nightmares.

My fiancée was dead, and she had been for a long time at this point. The memories started vividly replaying the scene in my mind, reliving the evening I went psycho. They told me it was a combination of multiple prescriptions that did that to me, which made me crazy, made me do it. They didn't realize I was trying to die. That I was trying to set myself free from the voices that urged me to commit atrocities; by consuming a chemical cocktail strong enough to take down even the most seasoned junkie. They didn't know this, and they never would.

I could picture it so clearly. I was standing above her, watching her plead for her life as I plunged the knife into her chest, over and over again, covering myself in her blood. They told me I had stabbed her eight times, one for every year I had known her, and that she had probably felt every one of them. All I remember was reality slowly slipping away from my grasps as I killed the demon before it could attack me. I remember partially waking up, realizing what I had done, thinking that I could save her if I could just remove her smile and keep it somewhere safe. I remember the police kicking in the door and finding me, standing there, my wife’s face in my hand, her smile hanging off of my fingers. I remember my trial, a quick verdict with a lifetime sentence. Most of all I remember the guilt that riddled my soul and shook me to my very core after realizing I had gone on a psychotic rampage and murdered the love of my life.

There’s no turning back from what I’ve done. I've realized that I am the creature that haunts me from my nightmares and that smile… that smile plastered across its featureless face was my fiancee’s; forever staring at me into eternity. Sometimes the creature speaks to me in my dreams with her voice, using her stolen mouth, mocking me with a question repeated over and over again, until I eventually wake up, shaky and afraid, covered in sweat. It asks me in a mocking tone, “That smile… where did you get that smile.”