Glasgow Smile-A Joker Story

Pain blossomed across his jaw as the knife sliced through skin and sinew.  Breath shallow and haggard met his ears and the world buzzed around him.  He felt alive, the stinging only seeming to make the world clearer.  With each pulse of heart, blood flowed freely from the wound, plip plopping  into the porcelain basin beneath him.  He echoed the sound over and over again in his head. “Plip plop plip plop plip plop,” until it  became something of a song.  “Plip plop plip plop bloody raindrops.”  He recited it out loud, blood falling into the sink with each flap of his damaged cheek.  He raised his head high enough to see his eyes in the mirror.  Black holes stared back at him.  He stared for a long time, the straight razor still raised in his hand, just the top part of it visible in the mirror.  Raising his head a little higher, he brought the rest of his face high enough to reflect back into his void like eyes.   Blood dripped from the two lines he had drawn on either side of his mouth.  “Just outlines” he mouthed.  “Now’s the time for the real show.”  He forced his mouth upwards, and with that both sides of his mouth ripped, sending blood cascading downwards.  “Plip plop plip plop.”  He grinned, admiring the blood that coated his yellowish teeth.  The pain itself existed as another entity outside of himself.  It was a twinge and that was it.   He tried to smile, but his torn cheeks just lay there.  “Can’t smile like that,” he thought to himself.  It made him laugh, causing more blood to splatter the sink and the adjacent wall.  The world spun for a minute making him even more giddy.  He turned his body around arms spread-eagled, spinning in a wide uneven circle.  Knocking into the bathtub behind him and tripping into it.  He fell to the porcelain ground. The ordeal only giving him reason to laugh louder.  His fingers caressed his cheeks, the warm blood underneath, coating his hands, the smell reminiscent to copper.  He watched with glee as his blood dripped onto the porcelain beneath him.  Tainting it; Tainting the pure a much more appropriate color.   Crawling out of the bathtub on all fours, he sat on the ground for a minute, before pulling himself upward with help of the basin.  He grabbed the twine and thread he had placed next to the sink.   Jabbing it through his skin, he began knitting his face back together.  Each jab sending a little bolt of pleasure through his body.  He got the left side done quickly admiring his work in the mirror, watching the blood ooze out from in-between the stitches.  The right side he took more time with, savoring the perfection he created with each stitch.  Each twinge from the needle, coming closer to showing just how it made him feel.  He tied a knot and allowed the needle and thread to dangle in front of his reflection. He broke the thread, slipping the needle into his pocket, just incase something came loose.   Perfection, he thought, grinning, blood oozing from his pseudo smile.  His Glasgow smile.  He applied the clown makeup he had set aside, white for his pasty, moist skin, black rings for his dark void eyes.  And to complete his masterpiece, red for his smile.  It mixed well with his own blood, stopping the flow, and filling in the creases between his stitches.   Each color serving to accent his already present appearance; just an extension of himself.  

“Now that’s smart.”  He grinned at himself in the mirror, before turning away.  “Time to make them smile.”  He tucked his razor into his coat pocket.