He had been vomiting for three days. He couldn't even pay back the debts, let alone paying for the medicines.
Slowly he sat up, supporting himself against the bed with his hands. Bearing a new wave of nausea, he rushed into the toilet and started to retch again.
Children's laughter came from the windows.
He dreamed of a clown last night. It never stopped laughing. "Life grins at you and plays a Joker." Without a reason, he recalled a sentence from a story he had read before.
He raised his head, and started to laugh.
"Ha, ha, ha."
Children's laughter beyond the windows grew louder.
"Ha! Ha! Ha!"
He laughed loudly as well. He looked at the mirror. He in the mirror was laughing joyfully.
Ha! Ha! Ha!
He couldn't catch his breath and coughed violently. But he in the mirror laughed even happier.
It's so strange that this mirror does not reflect.
He held out his hand. The smiley face on the mirror bit his hand. He wasn’t painful at all. He saw a twenty-inches long tongue wrap around his neck. He happily watched himself to be eaten by a smile.
The laughter from the children outside grew even louder, along with screams and gunshots.
The girl always felt that the boy is a gentle person.
The boy always felt that the girl is a cheerful person.
The boy loved the girl, and the girl loved the boy.
The boy loved cars, and the girl loved the wild. So, the boy took the girl for a ride in the wild. The car was borrowed from the boy's father. It was an old jeep. For some reason, the boy always got a sense of peace whenever he sat in the car.
The girl at the back seat poked her head out of the car and yelled happily. The boy heard the innocent voice. A slight, loving grin appeared at the corner of his mouth.
The girl saw a tree ahead, blossoming white. She cried for a garland. The boy stopped the car to break a branch, covered in white blossoms, from the tree. A frightened white butterfly flew in front of the boy's eyes.
The girl laughed, happier. The boy lost in his thoughts as he made the garland. If I saved my lucky money this year, I would be able to buy a cat for the girl. He thought.
The girl was still laughing.
The boy turned the radio on. Pleasing music flowed out of it. The boy enjoyed the symphony mixed from the music and children's laughter. He took a bottle of perfume which the girl gave him on his birthday, and dripped several drops on the finished garland.
The boy turned around with the finished garland, ready to give it out.
The boy saw several smiling faces growing out of the seat like parasites. Those faces laughed and chewed on the girl he loved. The girl had been long dead. Tongues stuck out from the faces, pierced through the girl's eyes, and into the brains. Some faces grew from the girl's body, just like how the white flowers grew on the garland.
The boy finally knew why the girl had been laughing all day.
The soldier opened fire with his team. Tongues of fire spread onto the street. Countless smiling faces laughed together like children. They danced vibrantly, shapeshifted into crooked figures, and became translucent dark smokes that floated towards the evening glow.
The soldier watched his teammates as they ran ahead of him. Their flames burned down another smile-coated house.
The soldier heard his teammates scream. He looked at the ground. A dense carpet of smiles covered the ground, gnawing his teammates' feet. Following a brisk laughter, his teammates sunk into the ground. They were eaten by the land.
The soldier suddenly remembered that he had been to this street. When he was little, grandpa always brought him here to get sugar-coated haws.
So the soldier continued firing flames. He watched as his childhood memories burned down.
A flaming house collapsed. A humanoid bearing a large belly, charred, ran out while waving her arms. One of her faces was crying. The others broke in cacchination.
The soldier sensed a smell of scorched meat.
He frowned. He recalled once when he and a friend roasted stolen bacon together. Being young, they knew nothing about controlling the temperature, and the bacon resulted in this kind of smell.
He still remember how that friend ended in. That friend burned himself and his face-covered family with gasoline.
The flamethrower's fuel was depleted. The soldier pulled out his pistol, and, aiming around him, pulled the trigger in vain.
There were too much of them. Smiling faces grew everywhere. Dense faces covered the land, the houses, and the skyscrapers as if they were a layer of skin. Faces from every direction all laughed at the soldier. Their tongues stuck into the air and weaved into a thick web. It even obscured the sunset, like a dark cloud.
The soldier pulled the trigger again and again.
The soldier once liked to laugh, too.
The soldier remembered that this city was too once filled with laughter. But that was normal laughter. In those days, laughter meant joy and pleasantness. In those days, laughs won't eat people.
The soldier laughed as well. He tossed a grenade into the sky. Flesh spilled around along with shrapnel. Those dense tongues were broken in the explosion. New tongues fork at some ruptures. New smiles form at others.
The soldier pulled the trigger again and again. There was only one bullet left in the magazine.
A smiling face joggled towards the soldier, who slit the face with a saber. Countless small bulging smiles pushed out of the slit. Several eyes were squeezed out and became new faces when flying midair.
Pointlessly, the soldier backed to a safe zone where faces were burned out by fire, and watched as the clear ground shrank.
The soldier wanted to pull the trigger again, but he didn't, because there was only one bullet left in the magazine.
The soldier wanted to save this bullet for himself.
The soldier missed his mother, his home, everything that was gone after the appearance of the smiles.
The soldier pointed the pistol at his head.
The soldier pulled the trigger for the last time.
"Ha! Ha! Ha!"
The soldier looked at the gun. The bullet wasn't fired. He laughed. He saw a smiling face growing out of the gun. Its sticky, fishy tongue licked his eyes.
You sit up from the creaky iron bed and squint at the pale light over your head.
How strange, your arms itch oddly today.
You are one of the last survivors. To stay away from the smile monsters, you hid in the underground fortress built by the government.
You are the last humans.
You crunch on the stale bread. There aren't much food from the surface left, and underground farming techniques are still immature. But you survived. In this kind of world, being alive takes the greatest fortune. You stepped out of the door, wearily, scratching your arm.
You entered the cafeteria. Together with other cooks, you cut hard, dried vegetables. The fan makes a dull, humming noise on the numbing gray wall. Suddenly, a wet, cold sense appears on your arm. It turns out that you accidentally cut your itchy arm.
You cursed and looked at the cut, annoyed. What you see next makes your hair stand on end. You see millions of faces swimming in your blood like tiny insects.
They are smiling at you.