Flash Fiction Friday: Smiley Man

by Jonathan Byrd

We tied the blindfold extra tight and still that damn Smiley Man went on smiling. The yellow bastard smiled when we caught him in the street. He smiled when we put the dirty burlap sack over his head, and he was smiling when we took it off.  He smiled through the questioning. He even smiled when we hooked the car battery to his genitals.

We took him out to the yard to be among the gray frowny faces. He walked around yellow, cheery, and smiling. We released several of those green, sick faces. They vomited all over and around the Smiley Man, and yet he kept smiling. We were pissed, so we decided to release some of the red angry faces. The red angry faces charged across the yard and beat the yellow smiling ass unconscious. When we cleared the yard, we saw that the yellow man, though unconscious, was still smiling. Through the blue-green bruises and the dried orange blood, the man was actually smiling.

He sat in his dim cell among the rats and dripping water and stared between the bars, smiling. We weren’t disturbed by this, we were livid. How could this man still be smiling? That is when we decided that man himself must go.

We pushed him against the worn, chipped walls. There was no ceremony. Side arms were drawn and shots were fired. Orange blood sprayed from the Smiley Man and splattered against the wall. The body slid to a sitting position and fell over. The smile never left his face.

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Jonathan Byrd has been writing since the fourth grade. His fiction has been featured on The Mustache Factor and it forthcoming on 69 Flavors of paranoia.