"Why is she smiling?" Mom asked, gesturing to the painting before me. I shrugged, though I'm not sure I was paying attention. My eyes were rooted on the spot, unable to look away. It was a fair question. Why was she smiling?
"That's just how she is," I replied. "She likes to smile."
In truth, I had no idea why I'd drawn that smile onto her face. It just felt...right.
"How'd you make her Drystan?" Mom said, her hands reaching out as if to touch the girl within the portrait. The next few seconds were a blur. One moment I was holding a paintbrush, the next I was grasping at her wrist, clamping down so hard I felt the bones shift inside her hand.
"Ow!" she yelled, wrestling her arm from my iron claws. "What was that for?" she glared.
"You might ruin the paint!" I said, already turning back to see the painting again. I sighed in relief. "Ok, it's alright." I said, more to myself than anyone else. The painting was safe. It was fine. I realized how pretty she was. She looked almost like me, I realized. But there was one difference.
She radiated confidence. Her head held high, she stared at us as if to say we were ants underneath her feet. Perhaps we were. Her hands were clean, I noticed. Mine were constantly speckled with drops of paint.
We could be friends, I thought. I'd never had a friend before. Was that odd for a fourteen-year old? I'd never thought about it before. I was more focused on my painting. I smiled, watching as the light shone off my masterpiece.
"What's her name?" Mom asked jokingly. "Your kid needs a name, you know."
I rolled my eyes, but decided to indulge her. "Leila. Her name's Leila." I decided. Mom smiled, waving at the painting with a chuckle. But something in her movements felt...stiff. Like she was forcing the emotions out.
"Nice to meet you Leila."
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Normally, when I finished a painting, I'd keep it in storage or something. Nothing fancy, just some place where I could keep my drawings and sketches and look back at them when I needed to. But Leila had enchanted me. Something about her was magnetic, alluring. Like the scales of a snake getting ready to strike.
"You stare at that thing every morning," Mom told me, setting down our plates for dinner as I stared at the photos in the living room. A lot of them were of me when I was a baby. Mom never took them out, even when we had to repaint. I never knew why. I stared at the drawing on the far left. My dad died a while back, and that was the only picture I had of him.
One I'd drawn myself.
Three stick figures holding hands around a bunch of flowers. Simpler times.
You were naïve, said the voice in my mind. Maybe I was. I remembered waiting at the window everyday, waiting for dad to come home. Every time the doorbell rang I'd run to get it, each time my hopes diminishing more and more as the years passed.
No 4-year-old should have to go through that. I didn't even get to see his body. It's all just a blur now.
"Drystan?" Mom said, sitting down on the couch. "You okay honey?"
I nodded, my stomach turning at the sight of the drawing. Something sticky and unpleasant lodged itself into my throat. My legs quivered. "Y-yeah. I'm fine," I told her. "Just heading off to get an early night's rest."
I didn't stop shivering until I entered my room. The only reason I stopped was because I decided to try screaming instead.
There, in the center of the room, drops of red streamed down the portrait's eyes.
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"Honey, could you explain what you told me?" Mom prompted, gesturing towards the man in white again. Honestly, I was beginning to regret telling her what I saw.
"The painting was crying blood," I told them, examining the doctor's response. His wrinkled face was gaunt and skeletal, like someone had doused his skin in bleach and stuck him in a wringer. His little clipboard seemed surgically attached to his skin.
"Could I see the painting?" he asked. Mom nodded, pulling out her phone to show the doctor the portrait. She looked so thin...she hadn't slept a wink yesterday, having spent all night consoling me. Her skin was pale, and scrolling through her phone seemed physically taxing.
If the doctor was scared, he didn't say anything. He was surprised, really. "You drew this?" he asked, amazed. At this point, I was used to people being shocked. I nodded, before waiting for him to continue.
At the end of the day, he informed us that the hallucination was nothing to worry about and that I was simply stressed, which he supposed made sense considering the nature of the project. He ended his report with a big thumbs-up and a grin, which I managed to return gracefully.
Well, I hope so. I'm not entirely sure whether or not the reason people get scared when I smile is because I look like the Cheshire cat, or because there's ghosts following me around all the time. I wish it was the second one. That would be cool.
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We were driving back home when it happened.
I'm still not sure what it was. One second, my mom was driving us home, tired but alert enough to not go beyond the speed limit. The next she fell asleep and only woke up when we almost hit a deer. The poor thing got so spooked it ran back into the woods.
Mom was really mad at herself. But something was off about how she showed it. She was annoyed, definitely, but every single movement of hers seemed so slow. And the way her face moved seemed almost like she was in pain. Huge, sagging bags were forming under her eyes.
"Mom, are you okay?" I said, cornering her in her bedroom (thankfully we managed to make it back alive).
"Y-yeah, I'm fine sweetie," she said, walking back and forth to her dresser as if she wasn't sure where she was going. "I just need to...oh..."
That was the last thing she said before she fell to the ground.
That night was the worst night of my life. Every moment spent waiting for the ambulance to arrive felt like hours. Every so often, my mother would shudder to show she was alive, the color seeping rapidly from her skin.
They had to wheel her into the vehicle. She couldn't even lift a finger.
When I came back home, I came back alone. The doctors assured me she was stable, and that I could go back home tonight. I didn't pay attention to any of that. I just walked. The house was desolate and empty, as if all the life and color had been pulled out of it.
Red liquid flowed down the stairs. I didn't even need to look at it to know what it was. The scent of metal was enough. I opened the door. There she was, sitting there in her cold, pristine glory. Streaks of red trickled down her cheeks, curving around her suppressed smile.
"Why is she smiling?" Mom had asked. At the time, I hadn't had an answer. But now I did. She was smiling because she knew that every time someone saw her smile, their fates were sealed away. Locked away with all the paintings I'd kept in my closet, or in the attic, or somewhere in a cold, dark, foreboding storage room, never to see the light of day again.
Forgotten.
It's happening to me too. Leila's coming for us all. But I think I can stop her. Or at least, keep her alive long enough to keep myself alive. You see, I think there's a trick to her. I asked around. Turns out the doctor's suffering the same thing I am. The same thing my mom is.
I'm sorry, but my mom actually managed to walk today. You see, I don't think she can focus on everyone at once. She needs time to work through her victims, to be able to control them in the way she does.
I've tried destroying her. If she doesn't appear in a canvas, she'll find her way into a photo. If not a photo, then a video-tape. I can't get rid of her. She's everywhere. So, here I am, eating away at the last few hours of the night.
You've seen her too. If you're reading this, you've seen her too. Hope isn't lost yet. If you've seen her...all you have to do, is spread the word.