"You know Cory-" Nick began.
"Nickey, don't," I sighed.
Tommy fingered through file after file until he grinned and announced, "Smile Dog! It's your turn, Cory!"

I sighed and gave a warm grateful smile to him, taking the file.
I flipped the file open, sat on one of the crates, and began to read.

"Smile Dog.

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 her room, refusing to meet me. For a half-hour, I sat with her husband as we camped outside the bedroom door. I listened and took notes as he tried fruitlessly to calm his wife.

The things Mary said made little to no sense but fit in with the pattern I was expecting: though I couldn't see her, I could tell she was crying, and more often than not her objection to meeting me centered around incoherent diatribe on her dreams -- nightmares. Terrence had apologized profusely when we ceased the exercise. I tried my best to take it with 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 Terrence had only been married for 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 openly spoken about the experience. The rest have remained anonymous, or are perhaps dead.

In 2005, when I was only in the tenth grade, smile.jpg was first brought to my attention by my burgeoning interest in web-based phenomena; Mary was the most often cited victim of what is sometimes referred to as "Smile.Dog" the being Smile.jpg is reputed to display.

What caught my attention (aside from the obvious macabre elements of the cyber-legend and my proclivity towards such things) was the sheer lack of information, usually to the point that people don't even believe in its existence. They think it's a rumor or a hoax.

It is unique because, though the entire phenomenon centers on a picture file, that file is nowhere to be found on the internet; certainly many photo manipulated simulacra litter the web, showing up with the most frequency on sites such as the imageboard 4chan, particularly the /x/- focused paranormal subboard.

It is suspected that these are all fakes due to not having the same effect that the original smile.jpg is believed to have. The effects are namely onset temporal lobe epilepsy and acute anxiety.

This purported reaction in the viewer is one of the reasons the phantom-like smile.jpg is regarded with such disdain since it is patently absurd. Though, depending on whom you ask, the reluctance to acknowledge smile.jpg existence might be just as much out of fear as it is out of disbelief. Neither Smile.jpg nor Smile.Dog is mentioned anywhere on Wikipedia, though the website features articles on such other, perhaps more scandalous shock sites as ****** (hello.jpg) or 2girls1cup; any attempt to create a page pertaining to smile.jpg is summarily deleted by any of the encyclopedia admins.

Encounters with smile.jpg are the stuff of internet legend. Mary E.'s story is not unique; there are unverified rumors of smile.jpg showing up in the early days of Usenet and even one persistent tale that in 2002 a hacker flooded the forums of humor and satire website Something Awful with a deluge of smile.dog pictures, rendering almost half the forum's users at the time epileptic.

It is also said that in the mid-to-late 90s that smile.jpg circulated on Usenet and as an attachment of a chain email with the subject line, "SMILE! GOD LOVES YOU!"

Yet, despite the huge exposure, these stunts would generate, there are very few people who admit to having to experience any of them and no trace to the file or any link has ever been discovered.

Those who claim to have seen smile.jpg often weakly joke that they were far too busy to save the picture to their hard drive. However, all alleged victims offer the same description of the photo: a dog-like creature (usually described as appearing similar to a Siberian husky), illuminated by the flash of a camera, sits in a dim room, the only background detail that is visible is a human hand extending from the darkness near the left side of the frame. The hand us empty, but is usually described as "beckoning".

Of course, most attention is given to the dog (or dog-creature, as some victims are more certain than others about what they claim to have seen). The muzzle of the beast is reputedly split in a wide grin, revealing two rows of very white, very straight, very sharp, very human-looking teeth.

This is, of course, not a description given immediately after viewing the picture, but rather a recollection from the victims. These victims claim to see the image endlessly repeated in their mind's eye during the time they are, in reality, have epileptic fits. These fits are reported to continue indeterminably, often while the victims sleep, resulting in very vivid and disturbing nightmares. These may be treated with medication, though in some it is more effective than others.

Mary E., I assumed, was not on effective medication. That was why after my visit to her apartment in 2007 I sent out feelers to several folklore and urban legend oriented newsgroups, websites, and mailing lists, hoping to find the name of a supposed victim of smile.jpg who felt more interested in talking about their experiences. For a time nothing happened and at length, I forgot completely about my pursuits, since I had begun my freshman year of college and was quite busy. Mary contacted me via email, however, near the beginning of March 2008.

Added by MooseJuice
To: jml@****.com
From: marye@****.com
Subj: last summer's interview

Dear Mr. L.,

I am incredibly sorry about my behavior last summer when you came to interview me. I hope you understand that it was no fault of yours, but rather my own problems that led me to act out as I did. I realized that I could have handled the situation more decorously; however, I hope you will forgive me. At the time, I was afraid.

You see, for fifteen years I have been haunted by smile.jpg. Smile.dog comes to me in my sleep every night. I know that sounds silly, but it is true. There is an ineffable quality about my dreams, my nightmares, that makes them completely unlike any real dreams I have ever had. I do not move and do not speak. I simply look ahead, and the only thing ahead of me is the scene from that horrible picture. I see the beckoning hand, and I see Smile.dog. It talks to me.

It is not a dog, of course, though I am not quite sure what it really is. It tells me it will leave me alone if only I do as it asks. All I must do, it says, is "spread the word." That is how it phrases its demands. And I know exactly what it means: it wants me to show it to someone else.

And I could. The week after my incident I received in the mail a manila envelope with no return address. Inside was only a 3 ½ -inch floppy diskette. Without having to check, I knew precisely what was on it.
I thought for a long time about my options. I could show it to a stranger, a coworker... I could even show it to Terence, as much as the idea disgusted me. And what would happen then? Well, if Smile.dog kept its word I could sleep. Yet if it lied, what would I do? And who was to say something worse would not come for me if I did as the creature asked?

So I did nothing for fifteen years, though I kept the diskette hidden amongst my things. Every night for fifteen years Smile.dog has come to me in my sleep and demanded that I spread the word. For fifteen years I have stood strong, though there have been hard times. Many of my fellow victims on the BBS board where I first encountered smile.jpg stopped posting; I heard some of them committed suicide. Others remained completely silent, simply disappearing off the face of the web. They are the ones I worry about the most.

I sincerely hope you will forgive me, Mr. L., but last summer when you contacted me and my husband about an interview I was near the breaking point. I decided I was going to give you the floppy diskette. I did not care if Smile.dog was lying or not, I wanted it to end. You were a stranger, someone I had no connection with, and I thought I would not feel sorrow when you took the diskette as part of your research and sealed your fate.

Before you arrived I realized what I was doing: was plotting to ruin your life. I could not stand the thought, and in fact, I still cannot. I am ashamed, Mr. L., and I hope that this warning will dissuade you from further investigation of smile.jpg. You may in time encounter someone who is, if not weaker than I, then wholly more depraved, someone who will not hesitate to follow Smile.dog's orders.

Please, stop while you are still whole.

Sincerely,
Mary E.

Later that month, Terrence contacted me with the news that Mary, his wife, had killed herself. While cleaning up the various things she's left behind, closing email accounts, and the like, he happened upon the above message. He was a man in shambles; he wept as he told me to listen to his wife's advice.

He'd found the diskette, he revealed and burned it until it was nothing but blackened plastic. The part that most disturbed him, however, was that the diskette had hissed as it melted. "Like some sort of animal," he said

I will admit, I was a little uncertain about how to respond to this. At first, I thought, perhaps it was a joke, with the couple belatedly playing with the situation in order to get a rise out of me.

A quick check on several Chicago newspapers' online obituaries, however, proved that Mary E. was, indeed, dead. There was, of course, no mention of suicide in the article. I decided that, for a time at least, I would not further pursue the subject of smile.jpg, especially since I had finals coming up at the end of May.

But the world has odd ways of testing us. Almost a full year after I returned from my disastrous interview with Mary E., I received another email: --"

I jolted out if my reading when Nick got a notification on his phone. He quickly turned it to vibrate and read what it was.
"Text from the boss,
Hey, tell the guy in the attic to turn off the lights, you're being way too obvious," Nick read.

"What!" Tommy shrieked quietly.
"But, no one's in the attic," I murmured.
"This is bull! I'm out!" Tommy announced.

"No, wait," Nick growled, "we're in the safest spot in the mansion. Right beside the back door, and they're in the attic so they're far away."
"Besides if they're by the main stairs and you make a book for it now, they'll see you," I added.

Tommy sighed angrily and slid to the concrete floor.
"At least if they do come down the stairs we'll hear them creaking all the way down," Tommy sighed.
"Exactly!" I nodded.

"But jeez, you two would be the worst in a horror film," Tommy noted.
"And why is that?" Nick scoffed.
"Wait for the thing to come to get us, that is what you're suggesting," Tommy reminded us.

I chuckled and nodded, asking, "finish the story while we wait?"
The two others nodded and I returned to the story.

"Something, something, something- ah!

I received another email:

To:jml@****.com
From:elzahir82@****.com
Subj: Smile

Hello,

I found your e-mail address thru a mailing list your profile said you are interested in smile.dog I have seen it it is not as bad as everyone says I have sent it to you here. Just spreading the word.

:)

The final line chilled me to the bone.

According to my email client, there was one file attached, naturally, smile.jpg. I considered downloading it for some time. It was most likely a fake, I imagined, and even if it weren't I was never wholly convinced of smile.jpg's peculiar powers.

Mary E.'s account had shaken me, yes, but she was probably mentally unbalanced anyway. After all, how could a simple image do what smile.jpg was said to accomplish? What sort of creature was it, that it could break one's mind with only the power of the eye?

And if such things were patently absurd, then why did the legend exist at all?

If I downloaded the image if I looked at it, and if Mary E. was correct if smile.dog came to me in my sleep demanding me to spread the word, what would I do? Would I live my life as Mary had, fighting against the urge to give in until I died? Or would I simply spread the word, eager to be put to rest? And if I chose the latter route, how could I do it? Whom would I burden in turn?

If I went through with my earlier intention to write a short article about smile.jpg. I decided I could attach it as evidence. And anyone who read the article, anyone who took an interest, would be affected. And even assuming the smile.jpg attached to the email was genuine, would I be capricious enough to save myself in that manner?

Could I spread the word?

Yes, yes I could." I read.

"Jeez," Tommy murmured into his knees.
"So wait, did he look at it or Nah?" Nick asked.
"Uuuuh, leave that for interpretation?" I suggested.

CLINK CRASH!
Everyone jolted our heads up at the ceiling as loud cluttering erupted from above.
"Oh god."