TALES OF TERROR

Teeth.jpg

Due to Daniel's strange new behaviour of locking himself in his room until early hours; and Lilly never went anywhere without texting us, this was pretty weird. I went over to his door and gave it a knock, and sure enough the door just opened right up. It wasn't locked or anything. I just assumed he and her had gone out with some of his poncy art friends, but it wasn't like Daniel to leave his door open like this. I've always been a nosy son of a bitch, so I stepped inside to see if there were any signs that he had gone somewhere. His keys were gone, his jacket was gone too but he'd left his wallet on his desk. The other thing that was odd was that he'd left his laptop on his bed, and it was still on. The screen was still lighten up. Curiosity got to the best of me. Perhaps this could be my chance to find out about this art project he'd been hiding. I mean, Daniel was a "fine artist" so it could have been anything. I noticed that he had a USB plugged in, and two files on the screen. One was called: "Dentist Photos" and the other file was a singular image named: "teeth.jpg". I clicked on the "Dentist Photos" file and there was just pictures of people's teeth and plastic models of teeth. It was nothing interesting. I clicked back off the file and decided to check out "teeth.jpg".

The image would be forever burned into my brain. It startled me so bad that I slammed the laptop shut, shaking as I sat back. I wasn't sure if I wanted to lift the screen again, but I knew I had to or Daniel would know someone touched his laptop. I lifted the screen again, staring at the image for a brief moment before clicking away from it nervously. I then made a decision. I needed to show this to Josh and Lilly in the morning. This was seriously messed up. I mean I knew that Daniel was an artistic kinda guy but this was just insane. I quickly bolted it back to my own room; and scoured for my USB drive. I eventually found it and darted back to Daniel's laptop where I copied the image onto my USB. I stared at the image for a little while longer. I was trying to dismiss the image as a mere photo manipulation but, there was just something so wrong about it. Perhaps it was the black soulless eyes, or the fact that whoever or whatever this creature was, was pulling up its mouth in such as weird and disturbing way. It almost looked forced. Like whoever this creature was, was forced to pose in this way. I shook it off as a mere thought and fixed up the laptop so it didn't look tampered with before I went back to my own room. Soon enough I heard our front door open, then the sound of footsteps, then Daniel's door locking. Daniel was back home..but there were no signs of Lilly.

The next morning I waited until Daniel had gone out for one of his lectures, and since it was a Friday Josh and I had the morning off. I decided now would be a good time to show Josh the image. I asked him if he wanted to see what Daniel had been hiding from us, and he confusedly but also eagerly said yes. I brought my laptop into the living room and loaded up my USB, and opened the image for us both to see. Josh's expression fell into shock before he spluttered.

"W..What the fuck is that thing?!" I could tell just by his reaction that both of us were thinking the same thing. This couldn't have been an art project image. There is no way that this would pass as Fine Art piece, would it? I mean sure art can be creepy at times but, I can't imagine his teachers would appreciate such a creepy and disgusting image.

"I know that Daniel can be a creepy son of a bitch but..that isn't right. We've got to show Lilly thi-" We both cut off one another. We paused briefly before looking at one another with confusion. Where was Lilly? I realized that she hadn't come back with Daniel last night and neither of us had seen her that morning. When I explained to Josh what I did last night, he began to worry. Lilly was never the kind to just sneak off and not tell anyone. I picked up my phone and began to ring her mobile. For a while there was silence. Then, just from Lilly's room we heard a faint buzzing sound. Josh got up and walked into Lilly's room rather quickly (he'd never been one to go into girl's rooms) and came back out holding Lilly's phone in his hand with a worried look on his face. Lilly was gone, and we had no way to get a hold of her.