“I don’t want to admit what’s happening,” he told his therapist.677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUvp0NB9Nsi
She watched him struggle for words and intervened, “How long was this?”
He looked up at her, “For a while. In fact, I can’t be sure when it started. Long ago, or I hope to god, just recently.” It happened at the first funeral, the grandfather’s, the farthest back he could remember once he noticed something was eerie. It was always thought it was just the morbidity of the music, just the shine in the tears in the majority’s eyes. “Or it was just the maroon in the building that I never liked.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMxDqaZPBkL
It was when someone was unfortunately caught smiling. A cousin had said something too wry. He writhed his hands, distraught in his face, “I remember the ill shock. At having never been given the chance to wash or return the clothes we wore to the interment several days before. At how could one of us have died so suddenly? It was almost too much. Garrett was so young. He drove recklessly over a bridge.” Rumors of either suicide or stupidity had spread like a whispering wind. “Then his ex-girlfriend smiled.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB054uph55n
She wound up dead the next day, swollen from anaphylactic shock. Peanuts. The irony wasn’t lost on her snide older sister, who was pictured smiling in the background. 677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6pJPhTe4n9
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“That was when I realized why I was feeling déjà vu,” he started to insist before the counselor cleared her throat, saying: “Are you telling me that every time someone smiled at a funeral, they died?”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDesAAqo3ha
“Yes, that is what I’m telling you,” he paled. “I kept an ever watchful eye for who was next to smile, and who was watching, because somebody had to know. Somebody responsive enough to be pushed over the edge. Maybe somebody was testing them, making them smile on purpose. Then I overheard the theory of death being contagious in the family had casually gone around at Sharon’s funeral and it made me smile before I realized what I had just done. I looked around, rather wildly. When I was becoming certain that no one saw, Father Cade smiled at a quiet repartee in his ear. Everyone saw it.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoOU35Qavit
“Don’t tell me the priest died,” the counselor leaned forward, engrossed.677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs1zwwqEeRo
“They had to summon another to do the funeral,” he rubbed his forehead, as if it could drive the headache away. “By now, half of us had given up on going to funerals. It baffled me. Is there an act more offensive than smiling at a funeral? Does this one get you murdered? Who’d kill for this small justice? The undertaker? Family? A ghost?”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSxdhoP60MQ
“So you think this is a string of correlated murders?”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxQOs6RQNTQ
“Doctor, what else could it be?” he insisted. “That’s why I’m here. To warn you.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbrgDvbkauE
“Me?” she froze, her eyes calculating.677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNTg903zn8a
“You smiled at the last one,” he slowly nodded, “when I tried to tell you that something was unusual.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi54Hpnq2pX
“You weren’t speaking about the food,” it dawned on her as she clutched her chair.677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMbv8SyaztF
“At least several watched you from afar,” he said sorely. “I couldn’t make out who.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlc6ORgBXwS
There was a moment’s pause. He caught a twitch in her taut face, a blink of her steel-colored eyes. She was thinking about her home in the mountains and her three children in her ex-husband’s custody. She was coming up with a plan of action. He murmured something that threw her off, something she never forgot. 677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ21vvbjfYHZ
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“Strange, though.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlIS8GiAKfh
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Her steel eyes transfixed on his serene stare. 677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIubd3rN2Y4
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“What’s strange?”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡftWfvNfiSE
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“Every time I caught them smiling, the killer did too.”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgfNe1bvmpT
677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBHRoKRoNUt
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