I first met in person with Mary E. in the summer of 2007.
I had arranged with her husband of fifteen years, Terence, to see her for an interview.
Mary had initially agreed, since I was not a newsman but rather an amateur writer gathering information for a few early college assignments and, if all went according to plan, some pieces of fiction. We scheduled the interview for a particular weekend when I was in Chicago on unrelated business, but at the last moment Mary changed her mind and locked herself in the couple’s bedroom, refusing to meet with me.
For half an hour I sat with Terence as we camped outside the bedroom door — I listening and taking notes while he attempted fruitlessly to calm his wife.
The things Mary said made little sense but fit with the pattern I was expecting: though I could not see her, I could tell from her voice that she was crying, and more often than not her objections to speaking with me centered around an incoherent diatribe on her dreams — her nightmares.
Terence apologized profusely when we ceased the exercise, and I did my best to take it in stride; recall that I wasn’t a reporter in search of a story, but merely a curious young man in search of information.
Besides, I thought at the time, I could perhaps find another, similar case if I put my mind and resources to it.
Mary E. was the sysop for a small Chicago-based Bulletin Board System in 1992 when she first encountered smile.jpg, and her life changed forever.
She and Terence had been married for only five months.
Mary was one of an estimated 400 people who saw the image when it was posted as a hyperlink on the BBS, though she is the only one who has spoken openly about the experience. The rest have remained anonymous, or are perhaps dead.
In 2005, when I was in 10th grade, Smile.jpg was first brought to my attention by my growing interest in web-based phenomena. Mary was the most often-cited victim of what is sometimes referred to as “Smile.dog,” the being said to smile from the image, and whose personality is one of pure malice.
It is said that Smile.dog visits its victims in their dreams, prompting them — gasp! — to spread the word by showing the image to others and often driving them insane.
When I contacted Mary, I had every intention of verifying the truth of the legend. Even though I was a total skeptic back then, I felt I owed it to myself to see if there was any actual evidence of the Smile.jpg file — if it existed at all.
One night, deep in an obscure Tor forum, someone replied to one of my posts with a simple message:
“Check your inbox.”
The email had no text. Just an attachment.
Smile.jpg.
File size: 46 KB.
Format: .jpg
Filename: never_sleep.jpg
I stared at it for twenty minutes, mouse hovering over the file. My heart pounded like a ritual drum. I wanted to delete it, burn the drive, erase the memory of the moment.
But I opened it.
There are no words for what I saw.
Just a… dog. But not a dog.
Its grin was stretched too wide, with too many teeth.
The background was a red hallway, or maybe a meat locker. The colors were wrong — they bent in your eyes, like heatwaves over asphalt.
Its eyes — they twitched when I wasn’t looking directly at them.
In the corner, there was a single phrase, in Comic Sans of all things:
“SPREAD THE WORD.”
That was three weeks ago. I haven’t slept more than two hours since.
When I close my eyes, I see it — sitting at the foot of my bed.
I can’t scream. I can’t move.
I’ve emailed the file to six others.
I told myself it was for research.
But the truth is, I just wanted it to go away.
I don’t know if it will.
If you’re reading this… I’m sorry.
Please, don’t look for it.
Smile.dog is watching.
“Smile.Dog” plays on modern digital anxieties such as desensitization, overexposure and paranormal phenomena.
The forbidden gaze and the cost of knowledge. The consequence to giving in to the temptation of seeking forbidden knowledge. The lurking anxiety that as dangerous as the internet already is, maybe there is still a new even more potent way to maim our hearts and psyche.
Maybe irreparable harm is only a download away.
ASTROBAR2000 