:) – Part One

I asked my Dad about Mr Smiles and he just laughed. Dad’s friendly with all the police in town because they come into our pub on their days off, so I thought he might know something, but he just laughed.

I’d heard all the rumours online, and I guess I wanted some kind of reassurance. People had been talking about Mr Smiles, the weird videos he’d send and how people disappeared after watching them, so I asked my Dad.

“Don’t worry Nicki!” He said with a grin. “It’s all a hoax or something.”

I asked him again tonight and his face went pale. He started to cry, demanding to see my phone, making me promise not to watch the video, but it was too late.

You get a message on your phone. There’s no number, no way to reply. The contact name just says “Mr Smiles”, so you click it, right? It’s a video of this guy, smiling at you. Right at you, like he knows you’re watching. He doesn’t make a sound, he doesn’t move, he just stares and he smiles. He looks like a regular guy, there’s nothing creepy about him, except the way he stares.

It starts to feel uncomfortable, because he won’t stop staring, and you feel a little uneasy, but for some reason, you just can’t look away.

Then he moves. Not much, just a little. He shifts in his seat, and you can see that out of view of the camera, his hands are moving, but he’s still staring at you, smiling, and you’re staring back, wondering what the hell it all means.

He slowly begins to lift a piece of paper into shot, and for a second, you don’t focus on it because you’re still transfixed on his smile, but then you look down, and you read the messy scrawl across the paper.

“Can I come over tomorrow?”

He waits for a response. I’ve looked it up, some people just didn’t say anything for a few minutes, I even heard of one girl who closed the video, locked her phone and didn’t look at it for a few hours, but when she opened it, he was still there, staring, smiling and waiting for an answer to his question.

She tried to delete the video but it kept reappearing. She reset her phone and when she rebooted it, the video was still there. She borrowed her sister’s phone and it instantly got a message from him.

No matter what she did, or what any of them did, he’d always wait until they answered, so eventually, she answered.

So did I. I told him no, obviously, and his smile vanished. He scowled down the camera, his face scrunched up as he reached for a pen and began scribbling on the other side of the paper, a frustrated sigh escaping his lips and quickly becoming a snarl.

I couldn’t tell if I was imagining it, but his face seemed to be changing. His teeth, bared as he snarled seemed sharper than before, and when he looked up at the camera, ready to present his message, his eyes seemed glazed, as if the whites were taking over the irises. It didn’t make sense, but the more I looked, the clearer it seemed that something was wrong with his face.

“Are you sure I can’t come over?”

I read the words back a few times in my head before nodding, anxiety burrowing into my stomach and filling it with dread.

He threw the pen and paper off camera and glared at me, his eyes seeming to glow as he raised his head, his sharp teeth on full display. I couldn’t take my eyes away from him, even though he frightened me. It was something about the way that he stared, as if he was right there with me.

I wanted it to be a hoax, or a prank, just like my Dad had said, but what Mr Smiles did next made me so sure that it was real, and that I was about to discover what everybody else who’d seen the video knew.

He leaned closer to the camera, staring right down the lens, his eyes now a solid white and his skin pale and rough.

“I’m coming over tomorrow night Nicki.” He whispered, in a voice that sent shivers down my spine, and then, the screen went black, and the video ended.

It’s been a few hours. My Dad called the police, and they’ve said they’ll have an officer outside tonight, but I don’t think it will be enough. I can’t explain why, but I just know he’s coming. Not tonight, of course, but tomorrow night, like he said.

I don’t know what he wants, or what he’ll do, but as impossible as it sounds, I know he’s still watching me.