Smile!
I taste iron and blood. My vision is hazy, but I can see that I am in my master bathroom. I'm sitting in a chair, too weak to move. Everything is fuzzy. Oh my God. What is this?! Oh no. I see it in the mirror. It's some sort of entrapment device locked around my head. The only parts that I can see of my face are my eyes and cheeks. Everything else is linked in to this contraption somehow. I can't notify the police about this. If I do, they will find me. Who are they? Perhaps I should keep writing this down. It may keep me from going insane, and it also may help me remember how I got into this horrifying predicament.
Let's start with who I am. I'm an overseer at a multinational corporation. I make $50,000+ a year. The company I work for does international financial business every day. Am I a target of some sort of crime syndicate? No, no... then how the hell did I get here? If it wasn't anything work related, what was it? Oh. I know what happened now. It's all coming back to me.
Everything started seven years back. My wife and I had been happily married for over two years. At that time we were financially stable and more in love than ever. She had always wanted a child, and so had I. We made quite a few attempts. After a few weeks, our hopes had finally come true. My wife was pregnant with a beautiful baby boy. Sadly, this triumph was short-lived. Our doctor had discovered during an ultrasound that my wife had a miscarriage. She, needless to say, was completely devastated by this news. She cried for nights and nights with me at her side. After a while, though, she moved on.
We tried a year later and succeeded. My daughter Lauren was born. Her birth effaced my wife's painful memories of our first attempt at conceiving a child. As for my pain, it never really went away. I have been sad ever since. She had pushed me to move on; to let the past be the past. I didn't rehash the misery every day, but I couldn't break away from the gloom of losing my boy. He had left this world before getting a chance to enter it. To this day, to this moment I write on this paper, it hurts. She never understood that.
That didn't stop her from trying to help me. She had me see a psychiatrist regularly. It helped alleviate the loss, but not seal the wound completely. I would say the person that helped me get through all of that was my daughter. Before her mother changed her, anyway.
Around five months ago, I stopped the psychiatry sessions. They were becoming a financial burden, and the therapeutic effort was at a dead end. After my wife had found out, she became a lot colder towards me. Between us talking less, the condescending side comments about me stopping therapy, and her brainwashing my daughter, our marriage was on a steady decline. I should have seen the red flag when she refused to file for divorce. She claimed that we'd make things work. That I could be lifted from the bleak state of depression that hung above me like a storm cloud.
It turns out that this had been part of an intricate plan that went into effect soon after I cancelled my appointments. One night, my daughter called me downstairs. It was 10:18 p.m. She sat at the table with an innocuous look on her face. I asked if she needed anything. She told me that she needed a glass of ice water. As I opened the cupboard, Lauren giggled. I didn't have time to turn around before my wife knocked me unconscious with a crow bar.
A bright light was shining in my face. That's all I saw at first. When it was pulled away, a twisted scene filled my eyes. My wife and young girl were standing in front of me. I woke up with the metal device that is currently bound to my head. I was also tied up. On my work bench, my tools laid spread out. Lauren walked over to the tools shortly following her mother whispering something in her ear. Her hand hovered over an electric drill, a rusty hacksaw, and a box cutter.
At first I denied what I was seeing to be reality. This girl certainly couldn't be my offspring. This girl gleefully choosing what weapon to torture me with was the same girl that I raised from birth and taught invaluable lessons. Then I realized: I no longer loved this girl. If this was truly what she was going to do, I would have no problem sending my unwanted child to her grave.
Lauren decided on the hacksaw and began to laugh. As she walked towards me, I couldn't help but think how utterly wrong this picture looked. My daughter and I, ready to end each other's lives. When she approached me, she laid the hacksaw at her side. Surprisingly, she also took the tape off of my mouth. Then my wife began to speak to me.
To memorialize verbatim what exactly she said would be too difficult a task in my current state of mind, so I'll paraphrase. She essentially told me that it had not only pained her to see me sad, but that it also angered her. She channeled this hate into her daughter, that way she would have a distraction for this master plan of hers. The objective of the plan was to make me happier by force. Oxymoronic as it may have been, there was nothing I could do to get out of it.
My left arm screamed in pain when Lauren began to cut into it with the rusty hacksaw. She made sure she rubbed the rust flakes in my exposed veins and nerve tissue. Both she and her mother were laughing like loons during the entire ordeal. I couldn't even cry out in pain. This thing probably has some sort of mouth plug. Even now, I can't remove it.
Mere minutes of cutting seemed like hours. The pain was so intense that I can't even begin to describe it. Good thing Lauren didn't do it to my right, or I couldn't even write this. It was her mother's turn now. My wife grabbed the electric drill. Using the shortest and sharpest drill bit I had, she began to penetrate my chest. I couldn't decide which was worse, the sheer pain of this forced attempt to make me happy, or not being able to scream out my mind's internal frenzy.
It didn't take long for me to figure out that she wasn't drilling holes. After it was in about an inch, she would drag it. This made deep lacerations in my flesh. When done with my chest, she moved down to my stomach. Once it was inside an inch, she asked Lauren to come over. Lauren said this to me before dragging the drill across my abdomen:
"It's time to make you smile, daddy."
With that, she pressed the button and dragged. I was certain that I was going to die. My organs should have fallen out, and I should have died in that chair. Even then, however, this didn't happen. My wife my innards in my stomach as the opening grew wider, scratching them to make them possibly bleed. When it was as open as could be, my wife asked Lauren to fetch her sewing kit. Oh no, I thought. What could they possibly have in store now?
Nothing physical. My daughter held my organs in while my wife stitched my abdomen back together. It seemed as if everything had ended. Besides the fact that there was still a metal contraption stuck to my head, that is. My wife and daughter untied me. Before they left for the last time, they bode me this parting instruction in unison:
"When you wake up, you will be able to find the key to happiness."
And here I sit. The room looks normal. I still can't get this thing off of my head. How the hell can I ever be happy again? My family tortured, and then abandoned me. I'm a freak. I have lost the only things which provided my life with sustenance and meaning. I have nothing else. After getting this off my head, I think I'm going to end it.
Wait. What's this? It's a small key. A key...that must be it! There has to be a keyhole somewhere on here. It's on the side. And... there! Whoa. It still won't come off. It will not get out of my mouth. This isn't physically possible. It isn't possible unless...
It's stuck. It seems as if I've been given an ultimatum. I rip my mouth open and risk death, or I leave it on and risk discovery. I can't let anyone know about what happened. Not right now, at least. This is what I must do. If I don't, I'll die of poisoning or dehydration, whatever comes first. Oh my God. IT HURTS SO BAD! AAGH!
(Blood is splattered all over the page. It makes the paper brittle in certain spots.)
The hardest part is over. Looking in the mirror, this device's objective has become dejectedly apparent. I have no cheek muscle. All of my teeth are exposed, right down to the gum. I'm bleeding profusely. Oh no, no. I'll never be able to normally speak again. They don't make artificial muscle for this portion of the face. I can't even express my hopelessness. I will never able to frown or smile again.
SMILE! I knew there was something good that came out of this. Now I can never stop SMILING!
Is this a knife? Let's find out if this hurts. I should be just fine without this eye. I didn't even feel it come out. What's this! I can SEE from this socket! Let's take out the other one. How WONDERFUL! I can see my eyes in the sink! Who needs those when you have a permanent SMILE on your face!? These ears are getting annoying. Wow. It's simply cartilage and nerve. I can hear so much better now!
You'd be surprised at how much you can do with an everlasting SMILE on your face!
My wife and child are probably sad that they had to do this. I'll make them SMILE again!
What about everyone else? They need to SMILE too! Especially YOU! Turn off that screen and put a SMILE on your face!
You look so frightened. Don't be! Just SMILE!
SMILE!
(A smiley face is crudely drawn in blood at the bottom of the page.)
Credited to Dubiousdugong
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