The Smile Video

I had a friend named Micah growing up. He was always a little bit off from everybody else I knew, and I assumed he had some sort of mental disability, probably aspergers.

Around age 14, Micah told me about a youtube video he found entitled simply "The Smile." He told me about youtube videos he had stumbled upon all the time, so I didn't really pay attention to this one.

As time went on, it seemed his issues were getting worse. He kept talking about the video, almost obsessively.

I asked Micah's single mother if he had been talking about it to her. She said she hadn't heard anything about the video, but she would talk to him about it. Upon talking to him, asking what the video was, she was very upset with me when Micah made absolutely no mention of it.

I asked a few of my friends that were also friends with Micah, but none of them had heard him talk about the strange video either.

I was really worried about Micah, so I decided to get on the net and watch the video to see if I could get to the bottom of things. I was a bit shocked when it wasn't in the many pages of search results I clicked and scrolled through. It would make sense if the video didn't have that many views, as it would be quite hard to search for.

The next time I saw Micah was just about a week after my search. He was becoming less functioning, and I felt sorry for him. I asked if he would show me the video, and what he did next was borderline crazy.

He slipped out a piece of paper and pen from his pocket, as if he was waiting for the day I would ask. He wrote down the exact youtube url and handed it to me with a sly look on my face. Something seemed very fishy. I thanked him politely and rushed back home to look up the video.

I typed in the address in my browser and hit enter, tightening my legs around the chair I was sitting on, expecting the worst.

404. Page not found. I instantly knew that something was terribly wrong.

I ran as fast as I could to Micah's house, which was just over a mile away. I pounded on his front door. No answer. Even worse. I was both paranoid and scared for Micah, and those emotions make you do things you normally wouldn't do.

In an extreme fight or flight moment, I grabbed a stray wooden plank and smashed the kitchen window open, I jumped in, slightly cutting my leg, and rushed to Micah's bedroom.

I swung open the door, and bile immediately filled my mouth and spilled out onto the floor.

Micah was sitting at his computer, his head facing the opposite way his body was. A knife drew a line of dark red blood from Micah's face to the floor.

The worst of all was his smile. It seemed that even though the rest of his body was limp, his face had been frozen. Large cuts extended his mouth to his cheekbones, his hideous smile showing each and every one of his crooked teeth. His mouth was filled with blood, and if his neck hadn't been snapped, I'm sure he would've choked on it.

Before calling the police, I took one glance at the computer screen and made out two words that would absolutely haunt me for the rest of my life.

"Video deleted."