A Razor Sharp Smile

Trigger warning: Violence, assault, gore

Time did not exist here.

She had not known how long she’d been trapped in this in-between. Had forgotten her name, her face, the feel of the sun on her skin. She did have skin once, she thought. A body too. But that was long ago—or maybe just yesterday.

Time did not exist here.

She was once someone. Someone with hopes and dreams. How fragile those had been to have slipped through blood soaked fingers, as he poked and prodded and ripped them out of her one by one.

Yet it did not end. She did not end.

It was different now, though. Existing.

She did not breathe, or feel in the way she had before. She was different now, created again, born again, through those same sticky fingers that had ended her life too soon. She felt herself stretching and morphing as his hand brushed over paper with charcoal, black as the midnight sky the night he buried her. He had drawn her smile painstakingly wide, with teeth like razors, and her eyes—those of her mother that she had cherished so much—were dim and decayed. She was covered in patches of moss and wrapped in thorns, the cuts an everburning reminder.

She did not know the face that stared back at him now. Though she knew it was not hers, not in every way that counted. She became his own dream of her. A trophy to keep. A girl to trap. An image of nightmares tacked to his wall, forever his.

The first time it happened was with the girl he took after her.

This girl had golden hair, so bright it lit ablaze the otherwise cold, lifeless room. Her dress was glittered with embroidered sunflowers, rustling slightly with every step. She moved to the window on the far wall and with a strained exhale, shoved it open. The window creaked and shuttered with age, dust exploding into an angry cloud around her. The few sketches garnishing the walls stirred as a breeze filtered in, and the drawing of thorns and blood and teeth shifted awake for the very first time.

She noticed the golden girl immediately, that expression full of innocence and laughter plastered on her face, an immovable sculpture come alive. She wondered if maybe she had looked like her once too. His next muse. His next soul to steal.

The room was filled with his art, which the girl began examining meticulously. She moved closer and closer to the darkest corner of the room. To the monster that awaited in the shadows. Her brows scrunched and her delicate nose crinkled as the two girls, their fates intertwined, locked eyes.

"Why do you draw such morbid things, A.J.?" The girl said, shifting to look behind her shoulder as footsteps approached, shaking the floor beneath them.

She tried to scream, to warn the girl made of sunshine and life. Her fingers twitched against the tangled up branches, reaching out, but the thorns impaled her, digging in deeper, trapping her forevermore. It was no use. She did not exist, she was no longer real. She was just a dead girl made of paper and darkness.

A figure appeared in the doorway, with an oily smile and hands always splattered with something, and gave an innocent shrug. "It's the only way for the nightmares to stop. It helps refocus me, so I can paint those pieces you adore, Jackie."

Jackie. A name. A life. Who had Jackie been? Who could she have become, if she had not met this man?

The man sauntered over to stand next to Jackie, and they both peered at the trapped girl. He caressed the paper, and she felt a phantom shiver creep down her spine.

She wondered what these feelings were, if she could no longer truly feel. Was her mind playing tricks? Was it a way to keep her spirit alive, keep her hanging on so that she would not give into nothingness?

"It's the first in a new collection of mine." The man said, his expression shifting as he muttered more to himself than to Jackie. "But I swear I drew her arms behind her."

"Well, I for one, hate it. She looks so hopeless, so trapped. It's...macabre. Don't you dare draw me like that today, okay?"

He gave Jackie a thin smile in response, his eyes darkening, and gestured toward the door. "Would you like some tea or coffee before we begin?"

Jackie nodded and turned away, looking back just once before she was gone.

Many girls passed through this room, and most never left. She didn't—couldn't—keep count after Jackie. Too many faces of monsters and creatures that were no longer human stared blankly back at her. Walls became littered with wicked illustrations, but she often looked to the girl engulfed in flames on the wall across from her, the sunflowers around her wilted or bleeding or burning.

There was nothing she could do but watch. Could not close her eyes as the horrors unfolded. She tried to get lost in anything else. A pesky housefly had become her strongest companion as it danced and jumped and filled the empty room with its buzzing sound. It even landed on her, and she reached her hand out once more, against the pain and the cuts, if only to touch, if only to let it know it was not alone. It lasted a day, just like everything else in this room. The carcass a bitter reminder that this was not a place for the living, but a shrine for death and his monsters.

At times the man unknowingly gave her a small mercy and played music or opened a window so she could pretend to feel something—anything. She hated herself for it, but she came to need his presence. It was better than the nights she spent alone in the dark when he was off somewhere far away. Those nights it was just her and his monsters, all staring and watching and waiting like a pack of hungry animals. Lusting for blood. For anything at all.

One night, she did not know when, maybe years or months or seconds later, a girl with hollow eyes wandered into the room. She seemed to recognize the girl made of nightmares immediately, a secret tear wiped away as quickly as it came. When she spoke, but a whisper to the shadows, the dead girl felt pain, she truly felt it, not her mind nor the thorns, but a beautiful ache deep within her that she had long since forgotten. Her heart beat once more, something he had not drawn and could not take. Its thumping grew louder within her, awakening her.

This grief-stricken girl staring up at her had her hair and her mother's chestnut eyes. And she had come for her. She had not been forgotten. And she would not forget herself. Who she was, her heart, her very soul. She remembered then, that she had wanted to live. She remembered fighting. Remembered what it was like to be alive.

The whisper of her younger sister grew louder, as she repeated one word over and over again."Maya, Maya, Maya."

She knew then that her sister would not come out of this room alive, and that fragile heart of hers, the one that just learned its own name, shattered completely.

She should not have come here. There was no point in saving a broken, dead girl. She screamed again, this time breaking free of the thorns. Her sister froze at the movement, eyes wide, as if she saw her. As if the drawn girl had actually moved. Run, she mouthed, throat filled with dirt.

Her sister stumbled backwards, into the man mere steps behind her.

"What's wrong?" The man said, holding her. He chuckled as he saw her staring at the dead girl. "I know, I know, some have said these sketches are a bit...dark."

She pushed away, her eyes frantically shifting between the two of them. "I-I should go."

"Please stay, at least for some tea. It'll soothe your nerves." Concern seemed to lace his voice, but his face teetered with unkept rage. This was not part of his plan. He liked them happy before, savored the contrast of emotions for his work.

"Let me go."

But the man did not obey. He threw her against the wall, pressing his knee into her stomach.

"Don't be like this." He said through clenched teeth, but her sister took the opportunity to grab something from her pocket. A pen.

She clicked it once, and as he turned, she stabbed him straight in the eye. He buckled over in pain, covering his bleeding eye. The monsters on the wall pressed in closer at the metallic smell, at the taste of blood. More, more.

Her sister scrambled for the hall. She was a fighter, but he was stronger, for this was his domain and she wouldn't make it out before he found her. He ripped the pen from his eye and stalked toward his prey.

She could not watch any longer. She had remembered, and for what? To see her sister die and become a monster like them? And so she clawed against the paper, scratching and tearing up the very prison that had created and trapped her. For her sister, for herself, for the girl of sunshine and sunflowers.

She was a nightmare come alive. A monster in the flesh. And with that razor sharp smile, stretched far too wide, she stepped out from the shadows and tore into him.

Time started again, and it was hers for the taking.