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gsk
  • 4/29/2025
self made movies
Transcript
00:00It was the 2nd of January, 2.04 a.m., when Elijah woke to a soft, deliberate knocking at the front
00:06door. One knock. Pause. Three seconds. Another knock. He blinked into the darkness of his bedroom,
00:13the cold winter air seeping through the cracks in the old house. Pulling a blanket around his
00:18shoulders, he slid his feet into worn slippers and trudged carefully down the creaking stairs.
00:24Each step he took made the knocking speed up, an eerie, organic rhythm, faster and faster.
00:30Like the frantic beating of a heart. When he reached the front door, the knocking abruptly stopped.
00:35The sudden silence was deafening. Elijah peered through the frosted peephole. Nobody. Just the
00:41dim outline of his snow-dusted lawn under a feeble streetlight. A bitter wind howled lowly through
00:47the trees, but there was no sign of life. Shivering, he bolted the door and retreated upstairs,
00:53brushing it off as the work of some restless teenagers playing pranks during the winter break.
00:57Lying back down, he stared at the ceiling until exhaustion pulled him under again.
01:03At exactly 4.21 AM, he was wrenched from sleep by the violent slam of the front door.
01:09The sound echoed through the house like a gunshot. His heart pounded in his chest as he sat up,
01:14the room impossibly cold. Elijah turned his head towards the window and froze. Through the thin layer
01:21of frost on the glass, he could see words scrawled by a finger, smile, over and over again, covering
01:27every inch of the pain. Terror gnawed at his gut as he fumbled for his phone on the nightstand.
01:33The screen lit up with a single message, I told you to smile. His fingers trembled.
01:39Dropping the phone, Elijah bolted from the room, down the stairs, and out into the freezing night.
01:44He didn't care about slippers or the fact that he was still in his pajamas.
01:49Barefoot, breath billowing into misty clouds, he sprinted across the street and hammered on his
01:54neighbor's door. Mr. and Mrs. Calloway opened the door, faces etched with concern. They gathered him
02:01inside, wrapped him in blankets, and tried to soothe his hysterical sobbing. The police were called.
02:07They arrived at 5.42 AM, methodically searching Elijah's house from top to bottom. Nothing,
02:13no fingerprints, no signs of forced entry, no messages on the window, no strange texts on his
02:20phone, which was found beside his bed, blank and normal as if nothing had happened. The officers
02:26gave each other knowing glances before gently suggesting Elijah might be suffering from stress
02:31induced hallucinations. Maybe see a doctor, they said. Get some rest, they said.
02:37But Elijah knew. Deep in the marrow of his bones, he knew. What he had seen was real.
02:42The following evening, still rattled but desperate for answers, Elijah returned home.
02:48He could barely muster the courage to enter the house. Every shadow seemed to crawl along the walls.
02:53Every creak of the floorboards sounded like whispered voices. Still, he forced himself up the
02:59stairs and into his room. This time, he came prepared. He set up an old camcorder he found in his attic,
03:06aimed directly at his bed and the bedroom door. He hit record, climbed into bed, and pulled the
03:11covers up to his chin. Sleep did not come easy. Mercifully, the night passed without incident.
03:17Elijah woke in the gray light of dawn, shaken but alive. With clammy hands, he grabbed the camera and
03:23pressed play. The footage was grainy, the timestamp blinking steadily in the corner. At first, nothing but
03:30the quiet rise and fall of his own sleeping form. Then, at exactly 3am, the darkness beneath his bed
03:37shifted. Something long and thin slithered out from underneath. It was a man, or what once might
03:43have been a man. Completely naked, his body was a grotesque patchwork of bulging veins and stretched,
03:49skeletal skin. His limbs moved unnaturally, joints bending with sickening fluidity. He rose to stand
03:56beside the bed, towering over Elijah's sleeping body. The thing just stood there, swaying slightly,
04:02its pitch black eyes locked onto him. A massive, unnatural smile was carved across its face,
04:08so wide that the corners of its mouth nearly reached its ears. An hour passed. The creature
04:14did not move. Another hour. Still, it stared. Then, slowly, it turned towards the camera.
04:20Step by jerky step, it approached until its entire face filled the frame. Dead, black eyes.
04:27A smile that never faltered. Veins pulsating across its bald head like worms beneath the skin.
04:33It tilted its head to the left, then to the right, each movement punctuated by an audible crack of its
04:39neck bones. It stayed that way for 2 hours. Staring. Watching. Smiling. Elijah's breath caught in his
04:46throat as he watched the video continue. Finally, the creature backed away from the camera. It turned,
04:52crawled back under the bed, its grotesque limbs folding in on themselves like a spider disappearing
04:57into its web. The footage fast forwarded to Elijah waking up, stretching, and shutting off the camera,
05:04completely oblivious to the nightmare working just beneath him. Elijah's body turned to ice. His stomach
05:10twisted. The footage never showed the creature leaving. It was still there. Under the bed.
05:17He sat frozen, barely daring to breathe, the realization dawning on him with suffocating terror.
05:22He was never alone. He was never safe. He had never been safe. A sudden, soft tapping came from
05:29under the bed. One tap. Pause. Three seconds. Another tap. And from somewhere in the darkness below,
05:36a whisper. Barely audible but slicing through the silence like a blade. Smile. I told you to smile.
05:44Part 2. Beneath. Elijah didn't move. Not an inch. He sat on the edge of his bed. The camcorder clutched
05:51tightly in his hands, staring at the black screen. The echo of that whisper still rang in his ears.
05:57Smile. The tapping beneath his bed continued. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. Like fingers drumming against wood,
06:06or bone. The air around him was colder now, unnaturally so. His breath curled into mist,
06:13and a pressure weighed down on the room like something massive and invisible pressing in from
06:17all sides. He felt watched. Not from the door. Not from the window. From directly beneath him.
06:24Every instinct screamed at him to move, to run. But his body was frozen, paralyzed by terror.
06:30He dared to look down, just once. From the tiny sliver of space beneath the bed frame,
06:35something shifted. Not a full body. Just, a face. Pale. Still. Two void-like eyes, glossy and bottomless.
06:44A mouth stretched in that same inhuman grin. It was watching him. Again. Elijah screamed and jumped
06:50off the bed, nearly breaking his ankle as he stumbled back. He dashed to the corner of the room,
06:56curling against the wall, hyperventilating. And then. The thing spoke again. But not aloud.
07:03Inside his head. A voice that sounded like wet leaves being torn apart.
07:08Don't you want to smile for me? He clutched his skull, crying, shaking violently.
07:13He wasn't insane. He couldn't be. Suddenly, the door behind him creaked open by itself.
07:19Slow, dragging, screeching. The hallway beyond it was pitch black now. The lights in the house had
07:26gone out. Every bulb extinguished. Even the street lamp outside his window was dark. Somewhere,
07:32far below him in the basement, Elijah heard the sharp clang of something metal dropping.
07:37He didn't want to go. He didn't want to move. But the voice returned, louder this time,
07:42urgent. Come down. I want to show you my smile. And then, laughter. Not the joyous kind, but the slow,
07:50cracked, cackling of something that had never laughed before and was trying to understand it,
07:55trying to mimic human behavior with a broken puppet's grace. Against every shred of self-preservation in
08:01his soul, Elijah was drawn toward the stairs. Like a dream, his legs moved without command.
08:07His hand clutched the wooden banister as he descended, step by step, into the growing black.
08:12The basement door was wide open. And the smell. Oh, the smell. Rock. Mold. Something sickly sweet
08:20buried under it all. Like decayed flowers left in a sealed coffin too long. As he entered the
08:26basement, the door slammed shut behind him. The light bulb at the top of the stairs flickered,
08:31and died. Darkness swallowed him whole. He pulled out his phone. No signal. But the scream was still
08:38glowing. Enough to see a few feet in front of him. The walls were wet, weeping condensation.
08:44Shadows seemed to slither just at the edge of the light. On the concrete floor, Elijah noticed
08:49something strange. Photos. Hundreds of them. Polaroids, scattered in a messy trail. Each one
08:56showed his face. Asleep. From above. From his bedside. From inside the closet. Some of them,
09:03he was smiling. But not in a natural way. In each picture, his lips were pulled
09:08back grotesquely, stretched far wider than they should go. His eyes were blank. In one,
09:14his skin looked waxy. In another, his mouth was bleeding. He dropped the phone in horror,
09:20the scream cracking as it hit the floor. The light flickered, and then failed completely.
09:25Elijah was blind now, surrounded by shadows. And then. Breathing. Right behind him. Long,
09:33slow inhales. Wet, guttural. Then, something grazed his neck. Cold, bone-thin fingers. They caressed his
09:41skin slowly, as if savoring the texture of fear. Elijah spun around, but he saw only black. He screamed.
09:49And a mouth, wide and unnatural, opened in the void before him. Teeth. Too many teeth. All of them human.
09:55All of them smiling. You smiled in your sleep last night, Elijah, do you remember? The thing
10:01whispered from the abyss. Suddenly, pain exploded in his head. Everything went black. He awoke the
10:08next morning. In bed. Sunlight filtering through the window. Birds chirping. His phone sat beside him.
10:16Normal. No cracks. No messages. Had it all been a nightmare? He stood up slowly,
10:22walked into the hallway, and noticed something different. A mirror. One he didn't own. Hung
10:27just outside his bedroom door. Curious, Elijah stepped in front of it. And froze. His reflection
10:34was smiling. But he wasn't. His own face was still, lips closed, brows furrowed. But in the mirror,
10:42he was grinning. Ear to ear. And his reflection didn't blink. Instead, it leaned closer from the other
10:48side of the glass and whispered with a voice Elijah now knew too well. I told you to smile.
10:54The mirror shattered. And from behind the glass, the pale man began to crawl out again.
11:00I told you to smile. Part 3. Reflection.
11:03Elijah stumbled backward as the mirror exploded, shards flying past him like razors. But he didn't
11:09bleed. He couldn't. Because what crawled through the broken glass wasn't just stepping into the world,
11:15it was pulling him in. The pale, grinning thing. The one with hollow black eyes and bloated veins,
11:22lunged forward. Its elongated arms snapped outward, spider-like fingers gripping Elijah by the throat.
11:29And then, darkness. Not the darkness of sleep. Not the void of unconsciousness. No. This was another
11:37place. Elijah opened his eyes and found himself in a space that didn't make sense. A mirror world.
11:44Everything was reversed. Upside down, the walls bled shadows. The floor pulsed like flesh. The air
11:51tasted metallic. He turned, only to see his bedroom, but not quite. The bed was soaked in some black,
11:58tar-like fluid. The walls were covered in photographs, thousands of them, all showing him.
12:04But not as he remembered. In each one, his mouth was stretched wide, his eyes rolled back,
12:09his limbs bent at unnatural angles. Some showed him tearing at his own face. In others, he stood in the
12:16corner of rooms he'd never been in, smiling. Always smiling. You live here now. The voice echoed from
12:23every surface. It was his own voice, but corrupted. Deeper. Slower. Smiling. From behind, something began
12:31to rise, a wall of mirrors. And in each reflection, Elijah saw a different version of himself. All
12:38smiling. All staring back. One was missing its skin. One had hollow sockets where the eyes should be.
12:45One was simply a wide mouth, nothing else. Then, one by one, the reflections began to whisper.
12:52Smile. Smile. Smile. Smile. Smile. Smile.
12:55Smile. He covered his ears, but the voices were inside his head now, laughing, echoing, chanting.
13:01You didn't smile when I asked you to. Now you'll smile forever. The floor beneath him cracked open.
13:08Hands emerged. Thousands of them, all bone thin, twitching, reaching up. Grabbing his legs,
13:14pulling him down into the floor that pulsed like a beating heart. Elijah screamed, but there was no sound.
13:20Only a faint snap as his jaw began to stretch. Unwillingly. Bone cracking, muscle tearing.
13:27He was being forced to smile. Tears streamed down his face. He thrashed, but the hands were stronger.
13:34And then. He saw himself. Standing in the mirror. Not trapped. Not broken. The other Elijah. The smiling
13:42one. It tilted its head, and walked away. Into the real world. Back in the normal world,
13:49the new Elijah woke up in bed. He stretched, humming softly, that permanent smile stitched
13:55across his pale face. He looked at the photos on the dresser. His neighbors. His co-workers.
14:01A mailman. All of them sleeping. All of them smiling in ways they shouldn't. He picked up a knife.
14:08Walked downstairs. And whispered to himself, chuckling, let's go make someone smile today.
14:13One week later. The police were baffled. Elijah was gone. His home abandoned. All mirrors shattered.
14:21His phone found beneath his bed, filled with footage of him smiling in the dark,
14:26eyes wide open, unmoving for hours. The last image on the phone was a selfie.
14:31A single word was carved into his cheek, bleeding still. Smile. And from that day on,
14:37people around the neighborhood reported strange things. Faint tapping on their windows at night,
14:43knocks at the door, and when they checked their phones, photos of themselves they never took.
14:49Always sleeping. Always smiling.