The Glass Smile

( this is a horror allegory that i’ve written based off of a dream i had :p )

He lived in a room without windows, lit only by the glow of a hundred screens whispering the same thing over and over: the whores are not what they seem.

One day, something warm crossed his path—a woman-shaped light with hair like spilled ink and eyes that met his without flinching. She spoke, and the air bent toward her voice. But the screens had trained him well. Kindness is mockery. Beauty is rot. 

They sat across from each other in a café that smelled faintly of dust. She laughed, and to him it sounded like a knife sliding out of its sheath. So he made a plan.

When she agreed to come to his home, he decided the test was complete: the world had sent him proof. He took her in his hands like something spoiled, and in the morning there was only her head, floating in a jar of pale water.

Days slid by. His skin forgot what blood felt like and turned the color of milk left too long in the sun. His cheekbones sharpened until his reflection looked carved from the same brittle stuff as the skull beneath her face. The jar was no longer just hers—it was his too, a mirror he could not move.

Sometimes, he woke to find her hair waving gently in the jar as though stirred by a current. Once, he thought she mouthed his name, and his bones hummed like tuning forks.

When the loneliness thickened until he could barely breathe, he set a bottle of white pills before himself like an offering. But just as the first pill touched his lips, a cold hand sealed his mouth shut from behind.

It was her voice—thick as syrup, close enough to stain him—whispering:

“We are pure now. We will stay that way.”

The jar on the shelf clouded, and in the glass, he saw two faces pressed together, grinning the same impossible grin.