The Smiling Man: A Scary Story, or The Tragicomedy of a Maenad

It was a pleasant day. Sara was cutting tomatoes in the kitchen. With each stroke, the knife cut cleanly and hit the cutting board with a thud. Sara cut with a regular rhythm. Each thud kept up the pleasantness of the morning just a little more, until it quivered, nearly fell, then was renewed by the next thud.

The phone rang. It was David.

“Yes, honey?” Sara said.

David’s heavy breathing broke the pleasantness of the morning.

“Lock the doors,” David said, his voice coarse and raspy. “Close the blinds.”

“Is everything okay?” Sara asked.

“Listen to me,” David said. “You don’t have time. Lock the doors. Close the blinds. Now.”

“Can you tell me what’s happening?” Sara asked.

David hung up. As she called again, she closed all the blinds in the kitchen.

David didn’t pick up. Sara went to the master bedroom. In the middle of the room, staring straight at her, was a man. His arms and legs were inhumanly long. His eyes were wide open, staring. He was smiling.

Sara screamed.

“Cut!”

The smiling man immediately went limp. He trod off the set, his styrofoam arms dragging behind him. Sara followed. Once she stepped over from set to reality, she was Mayna.

Mayna was twenty-five years old, with a twenty-year acting career. She first debuted in a family sitcom as the mean little kid. She had been in a few B-grade movies after that, but she made her breakthrough when she was eight as an ex navy’s daughter suffering from cancer. She remembered learning to cry on cue by applying acidic paste beneath her eyes. She landed on the cover of a magazine. Then, her career dipped. After a series of failed fantasy movies and a publicized quarrel with a well-known director, she found herself back in B-grade movies.

Mayna couldn’t leave the industry. All she knew was film. When she looked back at her life all she saw were her films stitched together like multicoloured celophane. Those memories were more real, more beautiful than her memories off the set. When she confessed this to her friend, she called her sad. Mayna didn’t see how. Acting allowed her to be more than one person, live more than one life. She thought that made her life richer than anyone else’s.

Maybe I could try music, Mayna thought.

Music had always filled the moments between scenes. It made her heart shudder whenever she found a new sound. But she had no musical talent.

The bathroom tiles clicked as Mayna walked. She washed her hands, scrubbing with her nails, leaving red marks. She splashed water on her face and looked into the mirror. She had a crusted-on look, with pasty foundation and matte red lipstick. Mayna smiled. She smiled with her teeth clenched, and nose flared.

She drummed her fingers on the sink and tapped her feet. The rhythm calmed her, but soon she heard other sounds mixing in, sounds that weren’t hers, that confused her and made her ears ache and her head spin. The sounds got louder and louder and louder, and she opened her eyes wider and wider and wider and smiled, smiled, smiled. Then she stopped. What do you think you’re doing, ruining this… this art?!

Water dripped down her cheeks. She once had a dog named Molly. Molly smiled sometimes with that wretched little dog mouth. Whenever Molly smiled, Mayna wanted to kill her. So one day, she got a kitchen knife and strode over to that smiling dog and stabbed it with a steady rhythm, and she laughed because she had won. She spread the dog’s stomach open, exposing wet, funny-looking organs. She felt their fading warmth in her fingers. She lapped the blood up. She couldn’t remember the taste, because that wasn’t important.

Mayna filled her hands with water and lapped it up. Her heart shuddered, as if it was something alive.

She looked again at the mirror. She was ugly. Her mouth open and a sound escaped, like a scream, but soft and sharp, like opera. She sang, jumping and gliding and turning over and under, and it seemed like she could break through.

She was shaking. She clenched, holding herself stiff and graceful. She danced. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was beautiful. She rolled her head sideways and arched her back. Nobody could move like this, she thought. An act for myself.

She snapped her head forward and rolled her wrists. She felt how her nails dug into her palm, and how her ligaments strained. Her knees buckled, her waist bent, her face contorted. All of a sudden she realised that her eyes were closed. She opened them violently. How could she miss her own act? When she watched, she couldn’t feel. When she felt, she couldn’t watch. Her voice reached a crescendo, and she dragged her nails down her wrist, drawing blood. Pain was pleasure. She wanted to finish. Her heart shuddered again.

Mayna screamed.

An intern hurried in, bringing Mayna’s song and dance to a jarring and beautiful end. Mayna passed the intern without looking at her, but she could feel the intern’s eyes on her exposed neck and shoulders. Her skin tingled. What was she thinking? Mayna thought. What was she feeling? Shock? Fear? Amusement? Was her soul crying out, ‘Encore, encore?’

She returned to the set. She didn’t look around to see whether anyone else had heard her song. She felt at rest. This was familiar. She was Sara.

The next scene was in the kitchen. She was to fend off the monster with a kitchen knife.

“Action!”

The smiling man moved towards her. She saw on his styrofoam arm a little patch of peeling paint. She saw in the corner of her eye the salsa stain on the shirt of the cameraman. She looked into the smiling man’s eyes. She wanted to kill him.

So she did. She stabbed him with sharp, rhythmic movements. The cameraman screamed. This annoyed her. The sound was mixing in with her rhythm. This was not enough. She pushed the smiling man away and raised the knife to her stomach. She hesitated. Had she lived enough? Was she satisfied? Couldn’t she act one more character? One more scene?

She heard faraway shouts. Yes, she thought. This was enough. This was all.

Stab.

Stab.

Stab.

The familiar sensation of warm blood streaked down her hands. People were closing in on her to break her rhythm. She had to finish.

Stab.

Stab.

Stab.

Stabstabstabstabstabstabstab–

Someone grabbed her arm. She thought she could fight, finish, but she felt herself let the knife go and succumb to her rescuer.