Mirth

I loved horrifying images.

Pictures that could make one feel uneasy or even utterly terrified fascinated and delighted me; though they worked their charm exceptionally well on me. I had trouble falling asleep most nights with the visions of these nightmarish things invading my mind and leaving it a smoldering wreck. From The Rake, to “RightXD,” to the illustrations of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, I had a host of things in my head to keep me up at night. I was enthralled and terrified by nearly all of them.

The only exceptions were the images I’d created.

It was March of my junior year in high school. I loved working with the copy of Photoshop installed on our school-issued laptops, and I made photo manipulations relatively often. The only thing they had in common was a complete lack of terror. One day, I set out to change that. I found a song on my iPod that I’d acquired on a whim months prior, set it to loop and searched on Google for the perfect picture to make my monster. I found an image of George Marks.



The name wasn’t familiar to me; but the picture, with George’s gaping smile and his wide eyes, was exactly what I’d been searching before. It didn’t take me long, perhaps forty minutes at the most. I altered his face, added some trickling fluid, and put a filter over it all.



I was in love.

I quickly fell into a habit, making one altered photo after another, naming them all something along the lines of ‘LAUGH’ or ‘IMLAUGHING’ or ‘WHYNOTLAUGH,’ relishing every moment of it. I relished the horror of the images I’d made; I showed them around and got similar, aghast reactions from every last one. I relished the ease of which I could make the pictures. Most of all, I relished my absence of fear.

In time, I came to call these images my children. Before long, I had a folder filled with dozens of my children. They were macabre, Hellish, and all mine.

My infatuation with the images grew to unsettling heights. I would print out several of my children and hang them up in my room, pox of a terrible disease on an otherwise average room. I would cut them out and make casings for my personal affects: my iPod, my wallet, even my laptop was covered with them. I would mutter things under my breath like “I am laughing.” or “They’re not laughing.” Sometimes these mutterings would escalate further, leading me to speak or even scream these messages of mirth.

My parents were indeed concerned; this wasn’t the first time I’d experienced some form of psychosis. In 8th grade I was tormented by visions of a small girl in a pink dress. Her straw-like hair dangled in front of her face, and the bits of flesh that clung to her face were completely absent about her mouth.

She would chase me, her exposed teeth chomping at me ceaselessly as I ran myself down and collapsed. She would laugh and stab me to death with a large, bloody kitchen knife. I simply would not die; it always took dozens of stabs to finish me off. Her laughter was terrible. I went to counselling and after a short time, the visions stopped. Bearing this in mind, my parents scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist for me.

I wasn’t thrilled in the slightest.

I never felt at rest in a psychiatrist’s office. I was used to being the quiet, observant one, and a psychiatrist is quiet and observant for a living. If nothing else I felt like my mind was being invaded when they would ask me questions. Between the threat on my identity and the feeling of intrusion, I protested visiting a psych vehemently. They would not be moved; I was going whether I liked it or not.

In the psychiatrist’s office, I sat in the reclined chair. Dr. Ridley (or Pauline, if I so desired) began our arduous session with the same, cookie-cutter question all psych doctors ask: “Where do you think this all began?”

I told her everything that I’ve told you so far, and she did exactly as I’d expected; she sat, nodded, scribbled something down on her clipboard, studied my face, scribbled, nodded, studied, scribbled, scribbled, nodded, scribbled, studied, nodded, studied, scribbled, nodded, all the way through my story.

I almost hoped she’d stop me in the middle of my story and ask other questions, offer explanations, hell, give me a hug, something! She said that she would research what I’ve told her and cross-reference any existing previous cases to determine a course of action. Almost pleasantly surprised, I smiled and nodded, thanked her, got the hell out of that clinic, and drove home. However close to being pleasantly surprised I was, I was still bitterly disappointed. I knew I had a problem, and I almost wished she had a solution.

Almost.

I was still in love with my children. My walls were now completely plastered with them. Their hollow, empty eyes and their big smiles made me feel so welcome. I opened my computer to be greeted by George, who was the background for my desktop. I opened the folder where my children lived: MIRTH. As I flipped through the dozens of horrors I’d made, I felt more at home than I ever had anytime else.

Yet tonight, something felt wrong. Perhaps it was my acknowledgement of my obsession that made the faces feel a little colder, their black-and-white faces glow unnaturally and their empty eyes burn.

I began feeling uneasy as I made my way through the folder. Every so often, my eyes picked up on text that would appear in the middle of the photos. The one phrase that kept repeating was “WHY FATHER” The more I scrolled and browsed my children, the more my blood began to chill and my skin began to crawl. Other text began to appear: “WE LOVED YOU,” “WE TRUSTED YOU,” and “FATHER LOVE US” popped up with increasing frequency. I don’t know why I kept scrolling. I felt like I was tumbling down a spiral staircase and I could only stop when I–

when I reached the bottom.

The last photo was of me. It was amazing: it was in full color, my eyes appeared as though they’d been gouged out, and my jaw stretched far below my neck. My lips were peeled back in mirth to expose long, discolored teeth. It was beautiful, brilliantly executed, and it made me scream. I didn’t make this. I didn’t–

I’m not sure what actually happened after that. The line between reality and delusion blurred. My mind completely derailed. The photo on the screen shouted “LOVE US AGAIN!!” in a tremulous, inhuman voice. I fell out of my chair, wailing. I landed on my back and stared up at my walls, from where all of my children stared down and laughed. In unison, they all began to chant “WE DO NOT LOVE YOU ANYMORE, FATHER! WHY AREN’T YOU LAUGHING?!” They laughed and screamed and the blood from their eyes dripped onto my face. Their faces drew closer and closer to mine. I knew it had to be a psychotic delusion but was it? How could I be so sure? I scratched at my face madly before digging my fingers into my sockets to pluck my eyes out and–

And I woke up. There were no screams now, only whispers. I could still hear my children whispering to me. Their voices slipped into my ears ever so gently: “We don’t love you.” “You should be laughing.” “Laugh, father.”

I laid in a wretched agony for what could have passed as an eternity. I went to rub my eyes before I realized that they were still in my palms. I chuckled as I tossed them out of my hands. I’m not sure when my parents came into my room. Their quivering, weak voices simply faded into existence. Their voices rattled on endlessly; “What did you do? Look at you! Oh my God what happened to you?”

I smiled.

I leapt up and grabbed them by their necks, choking the life from their bodies as I whispered through a mirthless grin, “Why not laugh, children? Why aren’t you laughing?”

I laughed.

Mirthfully.