Chapter 38

It started with a rumor passed between morning commuters and late-night bar staff: people in Aldermead were smiling more than usual.

Not polite smiles. Not tired courtesy. Real, lingering smiles—held too long, too wide, like something inside them had just been told a perfect joke and couldn’t stop laughing.

At first, it was charming.

The baker greeted customers with an unnaturally bright grin, flour dusting his cheeks like pale snow. The bus driver smiled the entire route, teeth visible even when he wasn’t speaking. A schoolteacher stood at the board, smiling so steadily the children began to feel uneasy answering questions at all.

By noon, it stopped being charming.

People couldn’t stop.

It wasn’t emotional. It was physical—like a muscle locked into obedience. Smiles stretched wider through the day, slow and unstoppable, as if invisible hands were gently pulling at the corners of every mouth, inch by inch.

Doctors called it stress. Then a neurological spasm. Then mass hysteria.

But hysteria doesn’t make skin tighten like paper.

By late afternoon, the town square filled with people standing still, all of them facing different directions, all of them smiling the same impossible smile. Lips trembled as they pulled farther than they were meant to. Some tried to press their hands over their mouths, but even under pressure, the smiles continued to grow beneath their palms like something blooming in the dark.

A man near the fountain tried to scream.

Only laughter came out.

It wasn’t his voice.

The first face tore just after 4:17 p.m.

A woman outside the pharmacy had been smiling so long her cheeks had gone numb and pale. The skin at the corners of her mouth split first—small, neat lines like paper being folded too many times. She blinked, confused, still smiling as blood traced the shape of her grin.

Then it widened.

Not suddenly. Not explosively. Just steadily, as if something inside her had decided the smile was not yet complete.

She collapsed when it reached her ears.

After that, it spread faster—not the smiles, but the breaking.

People ran, still smiling. Others stood in place, resigned, as their faces began to stretch past recognition. Conversations turned into distorted echoes of joy, syllables breaking apart into something that sounded like celebration.

By sunset, Aldermead was full of smiling silhouettes beneath a bruised sky.

No one knows what caused it. Some say a gas leak. Others blame a new medicine trial. The children who survived—those who were far enough away when it began—only ever describe one thing the same way:

“They all looked so happy… until their happiness didn’t fit anymore.”

And long after the town was sealed off, travelers report something strange if they pass too close at night.

From beyond the barricades, where no lights remain, you can still hear it:

Quiet laughter.

Stretching.