Sean felt a pressure in his eardrums, as if someone were screaming right into his ear, bothering him with a pain that had no real sound behind it. The sky above was pitch black—no stars, no moon—like a completely scorched canvas reflecting utter darkness back at him. The ground… was a mix of rotting cement and pulsating flesh. With every step he took, a muffled moan emerged from beneath. As if he were walking on something alive. Or worse—something that refused to die.
And then, the laughter returned.
Not Jeff's. Not that shrill, dry laugh that sounded like it came from a slit throat.
This was different.
It was canine. Broken. And far too human. As though it were a blend of both.
The darkness peeled away in front of him like a damp sheet, revealing something... something impossible.
Smile Dog.
He wasn't alone. Its form was unstable. Sometimes it looked like a husky dog with a grotesque grin of human teeth and eyes like those from an old, faded photograph—too disturbing to be real. Other times, it mutated… sprouting extra legs, crooked tails, or even human arms emerging from its back, as if such horror was natural for it. Its eyes never blinked, locked in place, always staring. And they radiated a wickedness so ancient, it seemed older than time itself.
"Do you want to smile, Sean?" growled Smile Dog—without moving its lips.
And in that instant, hell began.
The dimension fractured into reflections, like shattered glass. Thousands of versions of Sean appeared before him, floating like human balloons, each with a carved, forced smile—a smile that none of them truly wanted to show their real selves. Dry, empty eyes. Blood running down their cheeks. Every one of them stared at him. Every one of them laughed. But not with joy. With madness.
Everything felt so wrong, so unreal, that Sean realized he was no longer fully sane.
He felt his own face beginning to break. His skin stretched. The smile Jeff had left as a mark on his face was burning—and now it was growing uncontrollably. He was smiling. He couldn't stop smiling. Even if he cried. Even if he screamed. His mind was starting to shatter like poorly handled glass.
And in that madness, he found only one escape.
The people who were standing around the boy—watching everything with both attention and horror—felt as if time had stopped. Nothing moved. Everyone was frozen by what they were seeing.
It was then that Sean threw himself into the void.
He didn't know where the knife came from. Maybe Smile Dog offered it to him. Maybe it was part of the punishment.
But he stabbed himself. Once. Twice. Three times.Not because he wanted to die—But because he wanted to wake up.
And then… everything went black.
Silence.
The afternoon breeze. The sound of a distant truck. A honk. Voices. People. Screams.
Sean opened his eyes.
He was kneeling on warm pavement, his bicycle lying beside him. His backpack was open, his belongings scattered across the ground. Someone was holding him by the shoulder. Someone else was shouting his name.
But they weren't happy to see him.
They were horrified.
Some cried. Others backed away, whispering prayers. A woman began to vomit. An old man fainted. Everyone looked at Sean like he had crawled out of a grave.
Sean was the reincarnation of the devil himself.
And in a way, they were right to believe it.
He had vanished for only a few hours—hours that for him felt like eternities—in a dimension where time didn't exist, where there was no clock to count the seconds. No trace. No sign. And now, here he was again, as if nothing had happened. Unharmed. But with that cursed smile engraved on his face, making him look like a demon reborn in a body that used to be human—though he still carried a shred of his soul.
Sean rubbed his eyes. He pinched himself. But nothing faded. Nothing disappeared.
It was real. He was still alive.
But he wasn't in the same world.
Or at least, not in the same body.
Because when he looked at his hands, he saw something else on his skin. Letters… words… printed in dry blood:
"Sm!LE :)"
His lips didn't move, but his face remained smiling.
Sean began to cry.
But his tears were black.
The people around him slowly began to distort, one by one. Everything faded to an overwhelming darkness, like a thick black veil had fallen over the world, blocking even the smallest sliver of light.
Suddenly, Sean lost consciousness—and the last thing he heard before everything turned to shadows was the scream of a woman, one who might have sounded like his mother, snapping everyone out of their trance and pushing them to act. Someone called an ambulance.
Shortly after, Sean awoke.
He was hooked up to monitors tracking his vital signs. Around him stood a large team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, even psychiatrists and psychologists—working in a rush, as if trying to save a life they couldn't afford to lose.
Not just because he was a teenager with a long life ahead of him—But because what Sean didn't know was that he was about to become something very important to the world.
"Attention, everyone! The boy's waking up from the anesthesia! Somebody, hurry and give him another dose so we can finish our work! I'm tired of seeing that damn smile on his face! It terrifies me!", shouted a nearby doctor, her eyes almost bulging out in panic as she stared at Sean.
Sean could feel her fear. And he understood it.
Even though it hurt him deeply to hear them speak of him that way, he understood the overwhelming situation these medical professionals were dealing with by having to care for his case.