SHORT STORY: Weaponized Smiles

A short story exploring the crossroads of social anxiety, misanthropy, jealousy and money.

Albert was a private person. He preferred to organize his life in way that enabled him to compartmentalize relationships, to keep like-kinds in similar buckets.

His work associates were relegated to the office except for the occasional happy hour. Neighbors were good for fence conversations, friendly waves and The Greene's Annual Backyard BBQ. Friends too were divided into several buckets, defined loosely by how they came into Albert's life. College friends, the Thai food Meetup gang, gym friends, others. Albert believed this type of relationship management was a common sense approach to protecting his privacy while allowing him to explore and expand upon his various personalities and ideas. Things were going great for Albert. In happy little social silos he developed a complex understanding of his nuanced personality, the factors underpinning his motives, and how to effectively communicate with a broad range of people on deep levels, intellectually and intimately. A quiet, isolated childhood created a shut-in, a boy full of social sensitivities, quirks and anxieties. Albert's relationship management technique allowed him to methodically breakdown his protective barriers, shed his isolation, and find comfort and pleasure in the company of others. Of particular note, his wrenching anxiety, his crippling paranoia, dissolved and from it emerged the best version of Albert.

But that was last year. In the time between, things had changed. A convergence of sorts seemed to have taken place. Albert's friends, neighbors and coworkers, all formerly distinct personalities with normally fluctuating emotional responses, started to amalgamate into a unified persona. Oddly enough this persona seemed to constantly lavish praise, pour on excessively positive sentiments and even give tangible gifts to Albert. Everyone, to a person, was abnormally nice and charitable. It was subtle at first. Albert noticed that regardless of who he was with, consensus always seemed to glom to his ideas. 'Hmm, where should we go for dinner. Well Albert suggested Baja's. Oh great, I love Baja's. Me too. Me too! Hell yeah, Baja's here we come!' Then, more and more people offered him unnecessary gifts. 'Albert you can borrow my car if you like.' Albert had a very nice, brand new car. 'Albert, here, take my record collection.' Albert didn't own a turntable, nor did he have room in his small apartment for thousands of records. Nor was he much of music fan, he liked movies. Finally, basic conversational praise got weird, overly effusive, 'I'd say Albert's probably the best cook I know'. Albert was certain he had never cooked for his gym friends. Ever.

There seemed to be a closing in, a circling of excessive charity and goodwill from all sides. "Which is strange," Albert thought, "these are people I know, my friends, neighbors. They're supposed to be supportive and generous, am I just being paranoid?" Albert focused on his theory of paranoia and objectively measured it against the ever-increasing social largess. As time passed and the instances of excessive goodwill only increased, Albert lucidly dismissed the possibility of paranoia. Irrefutably, something was going on, however, confirmation of this social aberration was virtually impossible given the convergence factor - everyone around him was behaving in this excessively charitable manner! Without a curmudgeonly outlier to consult for confirmation of the weirdness, Albert was left to his own devices. And as the goodwill continued increasing, Albert noticed a new trend. The smiles. The odd, permafixed, Plasticine smiles. It was as if everyone, literally everyone, caught some little-known disease causing them to smile indefinitely, irrespective of the situation. Constantly smiling. Albert felt boxed in by a crowd of telemarketers, salespeople, Mormons. Curvaceous smiles with embedded angles. "And why does it seem that people are looking at me more often? What the fuck is going on?" Paranoia reemerged as a possibility, something to monitor for. Albert decided to keep a spreadsheet to track smiles-per-person in an attempt to quantifying the perceived anomaly, but gave up a week later after realizing that the data tracking was feeding into the paranoia probability. Paranoia was becoming more possible.

Albert began fearing interactions. His efforts to keep his social anxiety in check weren't working. He was no longer the architect of his social existence. His methodology for compartmentalizing relationships no longer maintained a healthy environment, the new thing with the goodwill and plastic smiles wrecked his confidence. The people around him no longer conformed to typical social modalities, everyone lacked the ability to produce appropriate responses. As a test, Albert played around with some passive aggressive behavior. Result? Smiles, as if it were all a silly game. He blatantly sabotaged several friends just to measure their responses. Again, smiles, a weird sort of apologetic gullibility slathered all over the faces of the victims! Albert, mild-mannered Albert, even went so far as to punch a buddy in the face (twice, hard!) because his inebriated friend spilt beer on Albert's shirt. Immediate forgiveness, and, smiles. Those motherfucking smiles. Albert realized that he was dangerously close to a scenario when his shit was to become completely lost. Paranoia continued to creep.

Fingering the brochure for Paxaphil, Albert found cold comfort in the prospect of medical resolution. "Nothing long term," he rationalized, "just an adjunct to assist in the reconfiguration of the thought process. A little talk therapy, some pills to recalibrate the mind. Simple and logical. A precise, targeted fix for an emerging bout of psychosis, albeit (Albert hedged) on a minor level." Albert felt a blip of optimism from his ability to step back from the situation and pursue a resolution amid his mental murk. A sense of empowerment manifested as he swallowed that first pill and imagined it colliding with his gastric juices, blooming into renewed confidence.

A couple weeks of steadily declining empowerment found Albert curled naked, clawing his itchy arm bloody, cramped between the toilet and the wall waiting for the next dry heave. The smiles were getting nauseatingly intense. The mere thought of being in the presence of smiling people caused stomach gurgles. Not only that, people were pursuing him in new ways. Neighbors who otherwise kept their distance, stopped by with hungry smiles to check on him. More than a couple pies and cakes found their way through his door, passed off with smiling excuses, 'oh I was just in the baking mood today.' Albert's Tuesday gym partner, smiley-ass Ron, attempted to jovially kidnap him, take him to the gym lest he miss yet another week. Ron's wincing, smiling visage cycled through Albert's head as he slumped behind his closed door after the attempt, remorseful for the latest left hook connecting to a friend's face. Albert's slow, careful analysis of his declining social situation had been a failure. The pills and therapy were a failure. In his most recent therapy session, he was fairly certain he detected an upward curvature in his therapist's lips as he detailed his correlated digestive concerns. "The fuck's funny about diarrhea anyway?"

Deciding to rely once again on his (now deteriorated) mental faculties, Albert set out to get to the root of his situation, devise a plan forward. First he took two weeks vacation from work. Second, he drafted a tempered, self-deprecating email to his friends describing his erratic behavior of late, promising to reconnect with everyone concluding a two week convalescence. Lastly, he bought an 18-volt drill and a box of screws and proceeded to screw shut every door and window in his apartment ensuring his uninterrupted privacy.

The first five days were devoted to essential oils, warm baths, and mindful meditation set to a looping soundtrack of waves crashing on a beach. On day six, Albert emerged from his therapeutic cocoon in a docile yet focused mental state, and immediately set forth to solve the "social problem." Albert started with the facts. Obviously there was a collusion of sorts underway between the people in his life. Albert didn't claim to know how or why his disparate social silos became united under an irrationally charitable/smiling front, but the evidence was clear to Albert's newly cleared head. Stated plainly, Albert was absolutely certain that the people in his life were bound together and smiling in unison. But why? After ten days of repeatedly crashing his computer from excessive open browser windows, reality crystallized for Albert and a theory emerged.

In direct conflict with his privacy-oriented existence, Albert had been quite vocal about his previous struggles with social anxiety, his social isolation. He shared these past afflictions generously with friends believing that the healing properties of catharsis would help him evolve out of his predicament. And it did, he grew massively from the purging, however this sensitive information about Albert was now being leveraged against him. Jealous of his social progress, Albert's friends had united in his opposition with a sort of herd mentality, bathing in quiet cynical chatter behind his back, chatter aimed at marking Albert's social demise. Their idea, as Albert saw it, was to develop and deploy a scheme of irrational charity as a tool to evoke Albert's previously eradicated paranoia. This, in turn, would cause him to revert to his previous anxious/antisocial state and eventually, with enough inane smiley pressure, tip Albert into the vacuous realm of insanity. A victory for the fittest in the game of social survival. "But why, why would they do it?" Albert continued investigating.

Equal parts bleak enlightenment and virulent contempt found Albert concluding his convalescence with a focused read of Flaubert, Larkin, Moliere. This literary elixir helped Albert develop his response to the social salvos launched by his so-called friends. It became apparent to Albert that humans were disgusting creatures programmed to advance whatever maniacally selfish scheme was jiggling around in their skulls at any given time. Of supreme repugnance, these schemes often have little or nothing to do with the self-advancement of its plotters and are devised purely as a mechanism to push the target down, elevating one's own sense of self in the process. To watch another person wallow in misery and angst is to enjoy the relative comfort of one's own life's circumstances, or so Albert had convinced himself. The only rational response to a world of vicious social predators is to disassociate, completely detach. Albert was fully prepared to disconnect from humanity to find happiness once again. A somber weight was lifted.

On the evening of the fifteenth exhausting day, Albert fell into a deep sleep of resolution while cooking eggs on the stove. After breaking down his door four days later due to complaints of a funny smell, police discovered the body of Albert slumped over a battery charger for an 18-volt drill. The corner's report cited smoke inhalation as the cause of death.

Wait, let's back things up.

Judith was a horrid bitch. As if it were a badge of honor, Judith relentlessly referred to herself as such to everyone she knew, everyone she newly met. To her mind, this set clear expectations and allowed her to play ball as hard as she liked without worrying about unforeseen consequences. She expected vitriol, she expected people to handle her roughly. To get what she wanted, she would disingenuously shed her bitchiness, talk sweet and then evaluate whether or not the bait was taken. She loved the many shades of nuance in conflict, the myriad personalities of people and how each person handled themselves in caustic situations. Judith also like to talk. She enjoyed sewing intricate social webs of discord, confusion and intrigue: her tenuous playground of sorts. Judith was good at this, very good. Amid the fire-alarm-like chaos she manufactured, she slithered like a watchful vagrant, snatching up the valuables dropped in the scramble. Judith was a horrible yet incredibly strategic bitch. She harvested peoples' emotions and valuables the way rural Asians thresh rice.

In line at the local QuickMart, Judith did her best to hide among her generous coiffure as her frumpy, waffling neighbor lumbered up to the register. Focusing her entire attention on the pregnant point-of-purchase displays, she successfully avoided Albert's detection, however her tirelessly curious ears couldn't help but absorb every sound wave splashing between Albert and the QuickMart clerk:

Clerk: That'll be $13.46 sir, and would you like a Powerball ticket? Jackpot's up to $1.8 billion!

Albert: Uhhh. Uhmmm, well, no, I don't really think I need one of those things.

Clerk: Y'sure? Can't win if you don't play!

Albert: Well, uhhhh, I just...

Judith's thoughts: Ah, for fuck's sake, schmuck, grow a pair, learn to answer a simple question with conviction.

-------SIDEBAR: Judith struggled from extreme mental diarrhea, as such, she was compelled to overlay imagined commentary on every conversation she was privy to. SIDEBAR------

Albert (cont'd): uhhhh, ok, yeah, sure, why not, I'll take one.

Clerk: Excellent, this is your lucky day my friend, and since I convinced you, you're obligated to share your winnings with me! Haaa! Ok then, what'll your numbers be?

Albert: Uhhh, well...

Judith's thoughts: Fuck me, let's get a move on...

Albert (cont'd): Uummm, perhaps you could pick the numbers for me, since we are sharing the prize and all.

Clerk: Sounds like a plan! Ok, your, or rather OUR numbers are going to be 2,4,6,8,10, and lucky Powerball #12!

Albert: Oh, OK, great, thanks. Take care.

Clerk: Oh, oh, oh, don't forget your ticket! We can't win if you lose it!

Albert: Oh, right, yeah. Ok thanks, bye.

Judith's thoughts: Who the fuck nearly forgets a lottery ticket, then puts the goddamn thing into the grocery bag to rub up against the milk, get all soggy? Tedium incarnate Albert is. He is quite possibly the dullest, most unaware, blank-headed dumbass on planet Earth. OH SHIT, HIDE QUICK, HE'S LOOKING BACK!

That Saturday, Judith found herself nearly choking to death on a chicken wing as the announcer pulled a red #12 ball from the plexiglass orb. This is, of course, after he plucked five little white ones with 2,4,6,8 and 10 stamped ten times on each ball as if to do battle with Judith's incredulity. Her brain performed oxygen deprived somersaults through a word salad of ideas and roughly hewed concepts: oggy milk ticket dumb motherfrump sucking dolt in the plastic bag of holy shit did that asshole lose or destroy that little paper square worth nearly 2 billion Washington motherfaaaaa!

Judith woke up excessively hung-over the next morning and set out to spin what she knew would be her most ambitious web to date. She realized at the outset that a sophisticated persistence was going to be necessary both to gain the needed intel and to hitch all of Albert's connections to her lottery wagon scheme. It wouldn't be easy, hell no. And all the smiles, all the bile-infused smiles ("oh, the smiles!") required of her to fully ingratiate herself to the king of all dullards. Judith's only modicum of optimism lay in the realization that she was an expert in her craft. If anyone on planet earth could pull off a duplicitous con job requiring the coordination of numerous socially disconnected people of unknown allegiance to Albert, it was Judith. Kill him with kindness, perfectly achievable.

~end