As I continued to read, small giggles erupted from me at some of the funnier cartoons. Reading them was always the best part of the morning. In fact, I could think of nothing better than beginning the day with laughter. Slowly, I scanned down the page, a smile never leaving my lips.
I saw her out of the corner of my eye.
She sat primly at a nearby table, back straight, legs together and hands neatly crossed in her lap. Her table was empty, and I wondered briefly if she was waiting for someone. While she appeared completely normal, something struck me as...off.
Her head pivoted slowly as she turned to look at me. A shiver bolted down my spine - her eyes were totally black - all pupils and no whites. They bored into me, burrowing the blackness into my bones. Even as my heart galloped and my pulse kept pace, I couldn't look away.
And then she smiled.
It wasn’t the sort of smile that reached the eyes, the smile that invited a good friend in for tea. Instead, it was as though someone took strings of wire, attached them to each corner of her top and bottom lips, then stretched them tight. Her teeth jutted out of her head, skeleton-like in appearance.
I tried to be polite, smiling softly as I turned away and ignored the cold chill streaming through my blood. In my peripheral vision I saw her rise and walk to the door, her body stiff as a bone. Glancing over one more time, I saw that smile again. It was bigger now, growing, taking on a life of its own. I imagined the teeth opening up and out came...
Laughter.
Such loud, raucous, disgusting laughter I’d never heard before. The sound was deafening. HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW over and over again. My hands jerked reflexively to my ears, covering them, protecting them from what tried to get in. I felt I would scream if it continued. My eyes closed, my body tensed, bracing for it...
Silence.
It was so sudden I hardly noticed. My breath escaped in a quick sigh and I realized I’d held it the entire time. I opened my eyes and looked at the doorway. She was gone. Sighing again, I laughed a little and glanced around the room, looking to see what others thought of the weird woman’s crazy outburst.
They were gone.
Table after table. All empty. The coffeehouse was absolutely filled to the brim with people drinking coffee, laughing, reading. Now it sat vacant, silent, as if the world was swallowed whole.
I laughed nervously as I gathered my things, thinking the coffee shop had closed and I just never noticed. After stuffing the newspaper and books into my bag, I grabbed my coat, knocking my cup off coffee onto the floor with a loud crash. Chuckling at my clumsiness, I bent over to pick up the ceramic shards, trying not to cut myself in the process.
Giggle.
It was soft, almost imperceptible, and when I turned towards the sound, it stopped. Then it was behind me. Whirling around, I stood quickly, thoroughly confused. The place was empty. I pirouetted around, looking for someone, until my gaze fell upon him. His hat was tilted forward, obscuring most of his face in deep shadows. The long trenchcoat he wore disguised him as shapeless, formless, unknown. With slow, subtle movements, he raised his head, flicking his eyes towards me, the bottomless depths yawning at my mind.
More giggles. They surrounded me, coming from all directions, bouncing off of the walls to meet each other in the middle, laughing in unison. My eyes darted around the room, spinning and spinning and then they were there. All there. And they were smiling. Just like her.
I backed up, trying to get away, to escape the ear-splitting cacophony. My feet seemed to stumble, and then he caught me. Turning slowly, I dreaded what I would see.
It was him. He stood silently, his face blank, his eyes hollow.
As I gawked in horror, his mouth contorted and smiled. It was the same smile of the woman earlier. His lips, his cheeks, all pulled back, forced into a deathly grin. His teeth glared at me, beckoning to me. They slowly opened, a great chasm of hilarity, and out came the loudest laugh of all.
I screamed- a rich, bloodcurdling scream that cried for the heavens to take me. Glass shattered, cups broke, and yet, the sound of their laughter seemed to rise as well, drowning out my attempts. Of their own accord, my hands plastered themselves to my ears, pressing so hard as if to squeeze my skull like a melon.
There was no escape. The sound was so loud it was pulling me in. Even as I tried not to listen, tried to ignore it, they penetrated my brain, filling it with a dense and smiling fog, laughing even more as I struggled to swim through it.
Just let go.
Echoing through my mind, the laughing voices seemed to merge and call to me.
Let it all go.
My lips began to twitch, pulling back, even as I screamed NO.
Swirling, I was, swirling downwards in a great spiral of laughter. They invaded me, overtook me. As I fell further and further, the laughter was no longer around me, it was in me, throughout me, I was the laughter as it floated in the fog. With my last breath, I gave into it all...
And smiled.
