Thought Punks

Tag: actual play

Diary of a Deacon Part 3 (a NEVER Stop Smiling novella)
This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Diary of a Deacon
The prose version of a NEVER Stop Smiling solo playthrough. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Entry 8: Laughter With Wrong Echoes

Silver Throat shone with the artificial brilliance of a dream realized, or perhaps a nightmare cloaked in gilded light. As we walked its gleaming streets, the weight of our task hung heavily behind us. The laughter that filled the air, bright, almost too bright, was the sound of a city reborn, or so it seemed. The buildings, once broken and dark, now shimmered with vibrant hues as if the city itself had been repainted by unseen hands. The walls were alive with color, a feverish carnival of radiant reds and blues that almost burned to look at.

Music bloomed from open windows, the sound of flutes and strings weaving together into a chorus that joined the humming pulse of a city resurrected. The connections to the rest of The Happy Place had been restored, and with them, the pulse of joy that defined this fragile, feverish paradise.

The people lined the streets, their eyes alight with something almost manic, their voices singing praises to us as though we were miracles incarnate. “Bless the Deacons!” one woman shouted, hands clasped in prayer-like reverence. “The First Oracle’s miracle lives on through you!” Their cheers were loud and effusive, their smiles wide enough to crack their faces in two. The worship was almost sickening in its fervor, like the city itself was drunk on its own revival.

I should have felt pride. I should have felt relief. The task we were sent to complete had been accomplished. The promise had held true. We had restored joy. Death had been unraveled, and Reine had returned. She was whole again, alive, her smile gleaming like the sun that bathed the streets of Silver Throat.

Yet, when I looked at her, standing beside us, smiling with the rest of us, I wondered.

Is she really her?

We nodded and smiled, our faces painted in the same veneer of joy, though I could feel the tremors under my skin. Isaiah’s voice rang out, warm but too steady. “The joy is eternal.”

“All is well now,” I echoed, the words spilling from my mouth with the practiced ease of a mantra. “And it will be forever.”

The crowd’s cheers followed us like a blessing, or a curse, as we boarded the tram back to the heart of The Happy Place. But as the bright voices faded into the distance, a shiver curled its way down my spine. The weight of what we had endured lingered, just beneath the surface. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could outrun. It was a shadow, always in the periphery, always waiting for you to look away.

I should feel reassured. I should feel… something. The truth had been proven, after all. Death is a fleeting illusion for those who follow the law, for those who believe. We had saved Reine. We had defeated Death herself, and now Reine stood beside us, smiling like the rest of us, shining like a doll in a showcase. But still… my face aches. The smile feels like a foreign skin strapped to my skull. My soul trembles, shivering in some place deep beneath the flesh, where the surface joys cannot reach.

When Isaiah and Reine ask me about my past, I lie. Not because I mean to deceive, but because the past feels so far away, like a dream I can’t quite touch. I tell them easy lies about tinkering with toys, about little things, the kind of shallow memories that don’t demand too much thought. But it doesn’t feel like my past anymore. It feels like something, someone, else’s. A life I have abandoned, or perhaps a life that has abandoned me.

Is this how it happens? Does it always happen here? Does the Happy Place take you, reshape you to fit the mold it has made? Why is memory so… fluid here? Maybe, for me, it’s a mold that fits the Deacon’s role, the one where there is no room for anything but joy.

The tram slows as we near our stop. I can feel the weight of the citizens around us, eyes on us, too many of them, too intent. Are they watching because we are Deacons? Or because they see the cracks in me, the hollow that I have become? I can feel their eyes crawling over my skin, pressing in on the parts of me that are too soft, too broken, that I cannot hide.

I want to run. To escape. To find somewhere where I don’t have to smile, somewhere where the weight of it all can fall away. But there is no place like that here. Not in The Happy Place. Not for someone like me.

I can feel my heart clenching, a tightness in my chest that refuses to release. But no tears come. There are no tears in a place like this. Not for Deacons. Not for those who serve the First Oracle’s eternal promise.

When we finally reach the Counselor’s office, I can feel the gaze of the city still on us, even though the cheers are long past. They linger, heavier now, like something they want to keep hidden, but can’t quite grasp. What do they see in us, the ones who return from the deep places? Do they see a gleam in our eyes, or do they hear the whispers beneath our smiles?

Reine stands beside me, still smiling, still perfect. But as she looks at me, as I look at her, I wonder… Is she still Reine?

And I wonder… Though joy is to be eternal, how long can we keep the mask from slipping?

Entry 9: The Hollow Beneath the Smile

The Counselor’s chambers were a vacuum, an emptiness so profound that it seemed to swallow all color and sound. The walls stretched endlessly in all directions, their smooth white surface gleaming with a sterile coldness that suggested no reality could truly settle here. The air hummed with the quiet, omnipresent buzz of unseen machinery, as though the room itself was some kind of living system. It felt as thought it were alive in a way that we, the people of The Happy Place, could never be. And yet, it was not quite alive. It was the kind of sterile precision that only machinery and gods could afford.

The room held no warmth, no personal touch, only the vast, looming desk at its center, a physical and symbolic barrier between us and the Counselor. Behind it, the figure sat motionless, a creature so still it might have been carved from stone. The Counselors always felt like something other, something that had transcended normality, grown too far removed from humanity to be fully understood. Their robes shimmered in the light, bright and immaculate, covered in gold-threaded patterns that seemed to shift when they were not being looked at directly, an optical illusion, or perhaps something stranger, like the ripples of reality itself folding and bending at their command.

Their smile, perfect and unwavering, filled the space like a blade held at the ready. There was no warmth there. Only the cold precision of absolute control.

“Sit,” they commanded, the word not a request but an inevitability that resonated with an unspoken weight. The air thickened as the syllables settled around us, suffocating in their finality.

We obeyed, our bodies stiff, our movements clumsy in the presence of something so alien, so far removed from what we knew. The smile stretched on our faces, as artificial and forced as it had ever been. I could already feel the ache in my jaw from holding it.

The Counselor’s voice, smooth as velvet yet sharp enough to cut glass, began its ritual. “Describe the resolution in Silver Throat.”

Isaiah, ever the composed figure, spoke first, his words flowing smoothly, his tone as measured and rehearsed as the finest of orators. He recounted the mission with the precision of a man reading from a script, each detail perfectly in line with what the Counselor wanted to hear.

Reine followed next. Her words were halting, her voice a little thinner, but still steady, the practiced sheen of a survivor not yet fully tempered by this life. Her account was clean, composed… far too composed, given the chaos we had faced.

When it was my turn, I offered a concise and sanitized report, stripping away anything that might have disturbed the sanctity of the narrative we were building. I left out the screams, the ones that rattled our bones long after the noise had stopped. I left out the transformations, the creeping horror of that unfathomable machine, its pulsing, organic mechanics leaking dread into the air like a poison that we had swallowed without truly realizing it. I kept my words pure, as they were supposed to be. The image of victory. The triumph of joy.

The Counselor’s gaze, unwavering and cold, swept over us like a scalpel. “Did you uphold the joy of The Happy Place throughout?”

“Yes,” we answered in perfect unison, as though the response had been programmed into our very cells. Our smiles were flawless, even as our minds betrayed us.

The Counselor’s gaze sharpened, dissecting the smallest of movements. Their next question came with an edge. “And what of doubt? Did you feel any?”

Isaiah, without hesitation, answered first. “None.” His voice rang with certainty, his conviction so solid it might have shattered the very room around us.

I hesitated, just for a heartbeat too long. The words caught in my throat as the pressure of the Counselor’s stare bore into me. “None,” I forced out, my voice a little too stiff, a little too rehearsed.

Reine faltered. Her lips parted, but no sound emerged. It was an unspoken confession in its own right, a silence louder than any words could have been. Her hesitation hung in the air, thick with something unnameable. The Counselor’s eyes glinted with an almost imperceptible flash of something like satisfaction, before the smile returned to its perfect, unwavering state.

The Counselor leaned forward, just a fraction, their presence swelling to fill the entire space. It was as if the room itself bowed to them, as if the very walls bent and shifted under the weight of their being. Their voice dropped, soft but somehow more insistent, each word like a nail driven deep into the silence. “Doubt is a sickness. But it can be cured.”

Their smile stretched then, something unnatural behind it, something chilling. It was not comforting. It was not kind. It was the smile of something beyond us, something far older, far colder than we had been prepared to face.

“You have done well,” they continued, their tone shifting to one of almost parental warmth, a veneer so thin I could almost see the predator beneath. “The work of a Deacon is demanding. The body and mind must align with the joy of the city to function properly. I sense… tension in you.”

I wanted to speak, to protest, to claim that I was fine, that I was joyful, that everything was as it should be. But the words turned to ash in my mouth. The smile on my face became a hollow thing, a lie too tired to keep up the pretense. Reine stirred beside me, a brief murmur of dissent escaping her lips before the Counselor’s gaze fell on her like a weight that cracked her resolve.

“This is not a flaw,” the Counselor murmured, their voice taking on the clinical precision of someone diagnosing a malfunction. “It is an opportunity for growth. I am recommending therapeutic recovery before your next mission. The First Oracle’s joy is endless, but you must allow yourself the grace to reconnect with it fully.”

Their words, though laced with the promise of care, felt hollow. This was not the warm embrace of a leader tending to their people. It was the impersonal touch of a technician calibrating a machine. Their care was a function, a cold, methodical solution to an unwanted anomaly.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing my head, my smile now rigid and unyielding. I dared not let it slip.

The Counselor’s gaze shifted away from us, their attention already moving to whatever was next in the sterile procession of their duties. “Continue to bring joy to The Happy Place. You are dismissed.”

We rose, stiff and mechanical, our smiles as fixed as the world around us. As we left the room, the door slid shut behind us with an unsettling hiss, sealing us back into the vibrant corridors of The Happy Place.

But out there, where the streets still pulsed with life, the light seemed to lose its warmth, as though the radiance of the city itself had dimmed. The air felt thicker now, like something had shifted, and the illusion of joy, so carefully constructed, was beginning to strain under the pressure of whatever lay beneath it.

And as we walked away, I couldn’t help but wonder: How far had the Counselor transcended, and what of the Cardinals they served, those whispered shadows of even stranger evolution? How far had the Oracles stretched their existence beyond human comprehension? And how long could we, the last vestiges of humankind, keep up the pretense of joy and humanity before it shattered completely?

Entry 10: Eternal Smile of the Forgotten Self

Back in my quarters, I stood before the mirror, where the silence wrapped around me like a shroud, fragile and thin as a breath. The reflection staring back felt familiar, but distant… an echo, a fragment of someone I thought I knew. My smile stretched across my face, immaculate, flawless, but it was hollow. The city’s smile, not mine.

The eyes in the mirror gleamed unnaturally, their brightness cold, as though the warmth had long been stripped away, replaced by something that glimmered without ever shining. I reached up to my face, tracing the curve of my mouth, pressing into my cheeks. Flesh that felt soft, pliable, alien and unyielding all at once. I wondered, for a fleeting moment, if I could feel anything beneath this smile. It would not waver. It refused.

I thought of Reine. Her return, what should have been a miracle, a testament to the First Oracle’s joy, to our mastery over death. Yet the memories of her transformation clung to me like something sharp, something jagged. The way her body had contorted, twisted and unfurled, bones cracking like dry branches, only to rethread into something too perfect, too smooth. It wasn’t Reine who had risen from that quivering cocoon of flesh, it had been something else, wearing her face, too wide, too still.

I tried to push it away, but it stayed. The machine. The heart of Silver Throat’s sickness. The pulse that was not life but an imitation of it. Its surface writhed, veins glowing with a heatless fire, a song not heard, but felt, a vibration that burrowed beneath my skin, deep into my thoughts. When it stopped, there was no sound, only an all-consuming silence, as though the world paused to ask: What have you done?

The city had cheered our return. The streets had swarmed with citizens, their faces radiant, voices a hymn of gratitude, as if they had been waiting for salvation. Their smiles stretched wide, laughter breaking through the air, infectious. I had smiled back, laughed with them. I had felt the joy. A tide that swept everything else away. For those brief moments, I had believed. I had believed in the miracle. I had believed that I was whole, complete.

But here, alone, that tide receded. And what remained beneath it? The gaps. The fractures in my mask, widening with every passing breath. I had nearly frowned, just for a flicker, long enough to feel the cold hand of mortality slipping around my ribs, squeezing, pulling at the strings of my fragile human form.

I willed the smile wider. It hurt. My teeth ached with the strain. My cheeks throbbed, as if the flesh was too thin to hold all the joy that was meant to be there. But still, it held. It was perfect. The reflection in the mirror smiled back, an endless, unchanging echo of the joy that was supposed to define us all.

Never stop smiling. The First Oracle’s joy is eternal. NEVER stop smiling. NEVER.

This is what I tell myself. This is what I must believe.

I thought of the Counselor’s words. Their voice had been soft, soothing, like a lullaby… or maybe like a whisper through static, their smile so perfect, their eyes too deep. “This is not a flaw. It is an opportunity,” they had said. Opportunity. They had said it with such certainty, such clinical precision. No room for doubt. And there had been no kindness in their words, just a cool efficiency. I wasn’t a person to them. I was a part, a cog, a vital part of The Happy Place’s great machine, a malfunction to be fixed, a gear to be calibrated.

My reflection flickered, warping, the edges of my vision swimming like oil. The image in the mirror shifted, twisted. My face stretched, my smile grew impossibly wide. The teeth inside it gleamed like rows of needles, sharp and wrong. My eyes… hollowed. The spark, the light… it vanished. What was left was just an abyss. I blinked. And then, it was gone. Just me. Just the smile. Always the smile. Forever the smile.

I tried to remember. To recall anything of myself before this. My favorite toy, a little thing I had made. I remember giving it to someone. Who was it? Who had I given it to? The memory is… gone. There’s nothing. Just a blank space where a moment should be. It slips further away, like sand through my fingers. A forgotten gift. A forgotten me.

I want to believe. I want to believe the Counselor, to believe in the citizens’ joy, in the songs rising from the walls, in the promise of eternal happiness. I want to believe I am whole again, that the wounds in my mind and soul aren’t flaws, but opportunities to be perfected.

But beneath the surface, beneath all the smiling, something is unraveling.

How long? How long can I keep smiling? How long before the smile begins to fade, like everything else?

I cling to it. I have to. The alternative is unthinkable. I cannot let go.

Never stop smiling.

Share this with friends:
Related posts:
January 10, 2025
Diary of a Deacon Part 1 (a NEVER Stop Smiling novella)
This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Diary of a Deacon
The prose version of a NEVER Stop Smiling solo playthrough.

[a handwritten journal found tucked into a desk drawer in a little used office]

Entry 1: When the Wall Screamed

Maybe writing this down will find you. Maybe this will help you adjust. I wish I’d had a journal to talk to me, to warn me, to tell me what to expect.

I thought promotion would feel different. But it doesn’t.

I imagined it as a kind of arrival. Deacons with stiff, perfect smiles and that gleam in their eye, like they understood the world, or at least their little corner of it. I assumed I’d feel the same when my time came, like I’d finally earned something. Like I’d finally arrived.

Instead, I’m here. Sitting in this room, holding this journal, trying to write something meaningful. Something that matters.

But the words don’t fit. They’re too tight, like a jacket I didn’t sew. They don’t feel like mine. I used to write about machines: notes, diagrams, plans. Something functional. There was no expectation in that, no one watching over my shoulder. But this? This feels like a performance. Like I’m playing a role in a story I don’t fully understand.

I was a tinkerer once. That made sense to me. I’d sit in my workshop, surrounded by cogs and gears, tools worn smooth from decades of use, scraps of old machines no one remembered how to build anymore. The space smelled of oil and burnt dust, and the rhythm of turning gears filled the quiet like a heartbeat.

I made toys, too. My favorites were animals, rats with tiny clockwork hearts, birds whose wings would flutter until the gears wore down. Some could sing or dance. I liked to think they were alive in their own way, their movements precise and predictable. Real, but not too real.

Then I heard the Wall scream.

I still don’t know what it was. Maybe a crack in the stone. Maybe the shifting of something too big to see. Or maybe it was something older, waking up.

Whatever it was, it was alive.

The scream wasn’t just sound. It pressed into me, deep in my chest, like it was tearing me apart and putting me back together at the same time. I felt it behind my ribs, in my teeth, in my bones. It was like something had reached inside me and opened a door I didn’t know existed.

I tried to ignore it. Everyone did. They said it was a glitch. A quirk of the city’s ancient, groaning foundations.

But I couldn’t ignore it.

At night, I’d hear it again, faint, distant, but growing. It wasn’t just a noise. It was a question. It was pulling at me.

So, I went.

I wasn’t supposed to. I was just a tinkerer. But I found the place where the scream had broken through, where the Wall wasn’t solid anymore. It was a gap, but not a crack. Not damage.

It was an opening.

Inside, the Wall was alive. Not alive like an animal or a person, but alive like a machine with too many parts. The air buzzed with static and the taste of metal. I found them there, the Cheerleader and the Deacons, working inside the Wall’s guts.

It wasn’t like any machine I’d ever seen. The walls pulsed faintly, cables dripped like veins, and gears moved with a will of their own. The Deacons’ movements were frantic, their tools almost useless against the machinery’s stubborn, twitching resistance. They weren’t fixing anything. They were just… keeping it from falling apart.

I should’ve turned back.

But I didn’t.

I stepped forward, my hands trembling, and I started working. I pulled wires, reset switches, coaxed gears back into place. The machinery felt wrong. Angry. Like it didn’t want to be fixed.

But I couldn’t stop.

The Wall wasn’t just behind me anymore. It was all around me. Its scream wasn’t a sound anymore, it was a feeling. A rhythm. A presence. I wasn’t just repairing something. I was becoming something.

That’s when everything changed.

I wasn’t a tinkerer anymore. I wasn’t someone who made little animals dance. I had stepped into something bigger than myself. I know what happens to “volunteers” like me. I’m not ready for this.

But now, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to walk away.

Entry 2: The Smile That Didn’t Reach Her Eyes

So here I am. A Deacon now.

I thought it would feel like an elevation, like I’d crossed some threshold and found my place among the bright, smiling souls who understand everything, who get it. The city’s rhythm, its pulse, the way everything fits into its perfect little gears. But instead of that sharp sense of belonging, it feels more like stumbling into a room full of mirrors, each reflecting a version of me that doesn’t belong.

The uniform’s too stiff, too clean… too much. It’s like the city’s tried to dress me in its expectations, and it’s too tight. Every fold of the fabric feels foreign, a reminder that I didn’t come here willingly. I wasn’t prepared for this. I was just a tinkerer. I worked with machines, and the world made sense then. But this? The city isn’t a machine. It’s a puzzle with shifting pieces and rules that change when you’re not looking.

When I was a tinkerer, I understood things. A cog was a cog, a spring was a spring. Machines didn’t judge. They didn’t watch me. But now, everything is eyes. Everywhere I turn, I feel eyes on me, like the walls themselves are waiting for me to falter.

I met my new team today: Isaiah and Reine. They’ve been Deacons for longer than I have, though I can’t tell by how much. They’re a bit older, but that’s not it. It’s the way they move, the way they’ve learned to navigate the maze of duties with a kind of practiced detachment. They don’t seem to feel the weight of the city the way I do.

Isaiah’s different. He looks at me like he’s trying to figure out if I’ll break in half if he pushes me too hard. There’s no warmth in his eyes, just calculation. He’s already sizing me up, looking for weaknesses, testing if I belong here.

And Reine? Reine doesn’t even bother looking at me. She doesn’t need to. She knows everything already. When she looks at me, it’s like I’m invisible… or worse, like I’ve already failed. Her eyes don’t meet mine. They glide over me, and I feel smaller with each glance. It’s like she knows things about me that I don’t even know about myself. The air around her is thick with it.

The hardest part of all this? The fear that lingers in my stomach, like an anchor I can’t shake. I keep thinking of my workshop, of the machines I could fix. They didn’t demand anything from me. They didn’t have rules for me to follow. But here? Here, it’s all rules. It’s all roles.

Today, they gave me my first real task: Silver Throat. I’d heard the name before, but it felt like a rumor, something whispered behind closed doors. It’s the part of the city that nobody talks about, where the smiles have all gone sour, where the people are too strange to fit into the city’s neat little corners. Some say they forgot how to smile. Some say they weren’t needed anymore, like the city just cut them off. I don’t know if I believe that, but I’ve heard the whispers.

We’re going in through the tunnels beneath the city. Beneath the skin of it all. The old city that nobody remembers anymore. I’ve heard stories about what lies down there, about the things that wait, shift, when you’re not looking. I’m scared. I’m so damn scared. But fear doesn’t matter. I’m a Deacon now. It’s my duty to smile. To fix things. To make the world right.

But then there’s her.

The Cheerleader. Andra, they call her. But I don’t think her real name matters. She’s a thing unto herself now. A symbol. She has that same smile that never fades, never wavers, even when it feels wrong. It’s like she’s too happy. Like someone gave her a happiness pill that never wore off, and now she’s stuck in that permanent state of glee.

She gave us the pep talk before we left.

“You’ll fix them,” she said, her voice too sweet, too syrupy, like a song stuck on repeat. “You’ll fix them, just like we fix everything. You bring joy, and the world will be right.”

Her smile stretched unnaturally wide, but her eyes? Her eyes didn’t change. They were hollow, almost too focused on us. Like she was measuring us for something, sizing us up like livestock at market. It made my skin crawl.

I’d heard the rumors about her, of course. Everyone has. People say she once made an entire gathering of citizens party for days straight, against their will. They couldn’t stop laughing, couldn’t stop dancing, even though their bodies screamed for rest. They say she has a way of bending people, forcing them to smile until they lose themselves. One story I heard was about a festival where she danced without music. Her body moved in time with something other, something that wasn’t the city’s rhythm. Something… older. Something that made the crowd follow her steps as if they had no choice.

I don’t know if I believe all of it. But when I looked into her eyes today, I understood something. I understood that she’s not normal. She doesn’t work the way we do. She isn’t bound by the same rules. And I think that scares me more than anything.

But I’m here now. I’ve been handed my part in this play. I’m supposed to bring joy, to make the broken things right. I’m supposed to fix them.

But what if fixing them means losing myself?

Tomorrow, we enter Silver Throat. I’m not ready. But I’ll smile. I have to. It’s all I have left.

Even when I don’t know what I’m fixing.

Even when the city’s walls are closing in.

Entry 3: The Hollow Carnival of Silver Throat

Silver Throat wasn’t what I expected. But then, expectations didn’t seem to hold weight there. It defied the stability and laws of The Happy Place.

We entered through the forgotten tunnels beneath the city. These were not the clean, polished veins of The Happy Place’s inner workings, no. These tunnels felt alive, as though they breathed and throbbed with the weight of centuries, each pulse a slow, patient thrum that seeped into my bones, making my skin itch and my pulse race. The walls weren’t simply covered in the dust of abandonment; they were cloaked in something that had festered and aged, an oily sheen that shifted and shimmered like the ripples on a pond just before you can’t see your reflection anymore. The air was thick with something else, too: the scent of forgotten things, and the ever-present, nauseating taste of metal.

Every step we took felt wrong. The echoes of our footfalls bent back on themselves like the tunnels were mocking us, warping the sound until it was no longer clear whether the noise belonged to us or to something else, something lurking just behind us. But it was the pulse beneath it all that unsettled me most: a deep, rhythmic thrum that seemed to match my heartbeat but also felt… off. As if the city itself was breathing in sync with us, pushing and pulling at something inside me. It was like we were walking through a machine, a machine that wasn’t built to understand us, and one that we weren’t built to understand either.

Emerging into Silver Throat felt like breaking through the surface of a dream, or a nightmare. The sunlight barely touched the edges of this place, and the grayness seemed to seep into everything, as if color itself had forgotten how to exist here.

The first thing I heard was laughter. No one was laughing, not in the way people laugh in happy memories or bitter jokes. This was something else, a high-pitched, manic sound that seemed to come from the air itself. It bounced off the crumbling, half-formed buildings like a phantom, growing louder, thicker, until it felt like the city was laughing at us. At me. There were people out there, somewhere, but I couldn’t see them. Their presence was in the laughter, in the air, in the tremors that shivered down my spine.

And then, I saw their faces.

The people of Silver Throat didn’t just smile. They grinned. But it was more than that, it was a contortion. A grotesque twisting of the flesh, a trap set too perfectly to be real. Their faces were masks, but not of joy. These were the faces of people who had forgotten how to stop, who had learned to smile until their muscles burned, until their eyes ached with the strain of holding it in place. It wasn’t a smile that welcomed you. It was a smile that demanded something. A smile that wanted you to join in. To break.

As we passed them, I could feel it. Their smiles tried to stretch into me, wrapping around my neck like a vice. My own face twitched, like a reflex. I couldn’t help but mirror it, even though I knew it was wrong. Reine saw it, too. Her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed thin, like she was trying to hold herself together, trying to fight the same thing that was sinking its claws into me. I wanted to scream, to tear away from the pressure building behind my eyes, but I couldn’t.

That’s when we met Gil and Lena.

They were standing in front of their home, a leaning structure that looked like it had been forgotten by time. Their smiles were different from the others in Silver Throat, more controlled, more deliberate. They weren’t like the wild, untamed grins that spread across every face we passed. These were practiced, sculpted. As if they had spent years perfecting the mask they wore, and now it was nothing more than part of their skin.

But it wasn’t the smiles that made my stomach twist. It was the eyes. Gil’s were hollow, sunken, like a man who had long since abandoned any hope of finding anything beyond the surface. Lena’s were worse. They darted nervously, constantly shifting, like they were looking for something, someone. She wasn’t looking at us. She was looking for a way out.

But there was something else in their eyes, something deeper than fear. It was the look of two people who had done something. Something terrible. And it was gnawing at them, hiding in the corners of their smiles, lurking beneath the surface of their syrupy words.

“Stay happy,” Gil said as he handed me a cup of tea, his voice slick with false warmth. “That’s the only thing that matters. Nothing else matters, just… stay happy.”

His words wrapped around me, but they didn’t comfort me. They ensnared me. It felt like a command, like an order, but not one that could be refused. It was a law I couldn’t see, but I could feel it, the weight of his expectation sinking into my chest.

Lena’s voice cut through my thoughts, trembling under the weight of her own smile. “It’ll all be fine as long as you’re happy. Happiness is the answer, you know? It’s the only thing that can save us.”

The house was a strange thing, too. Sweet and sour in equal measure, it smelled of rot, subtle, hidden, but there. The kind of rot that isn’t loud, isn’t stinking, but waits. The kind that creeps in until you can’t remember what it was like before it took hold.

When they showed us to the door, their smiles never faltered, but their urgency was clear. Their happiness was too much for me, and I couldn’t breathe in it anymore.

The laughter followed us out, warping, stretching into something cruel. Each echo felt like a threat, like the city was trying to pull us deeper into its belly. And Gil’s words kept echoing in my mind: Stay happy. But what if we were the ones who needed to stay happy? What if we were the ones who needed to be fixed?

Silver Throat doesn’t just want to be forgotten. It doesn’t just hide its secrets. It wraps them in its smile, in its laughter, in the promise of joy that hides decay beneath the skin.

And the deeper we go, the less I believe we can fix anything. The less I want to.

Entry 4: The Happy Death

I should have known things would escalate.

After Gil and Lena’s brittle cheer, we ventured deeper into Silver Throat, a labyrinth that seemed to change as we moved. At first, it was the little things: laughter too loud, smiles too wide. An old woman darted past us, dragging a strange toy on a string. Not a doll or stuffed animal, oh no, this thing had feathers, broken wings, and glass eyes that stared at nothing. She cackled as if she’d won a prize, her glee as hollow as the glassy orbs of her plaything. Someone nearby clapped, and another burst into peals of laughter that went on too long, splintering into gasps.

The streets narrowed as we walked, the buildings leaning inward, their warped walls blotting out the sky. The air thickened with a cloying mix of sweetness and decay. It clung to my tongue, an invasive taste I couldn’t swallow away.

And then there were the crowds. They gathered in squares and alleys, clapping and cheering like children at a carnival. But it wasn’t celebration; it was something darker, jagged. Their laughter came sharp and frantic, as if it were a shield against something unbearable.

In one square, a man stood on a makeshift stage, his face painted with a grotesque grin that mimicked joy. He held a long, thin blade that shimmered like it was alive. Kneeling before him was another man, shoulders trembling, head bowed low.

The blade came down, and the crowd erupted.

I turned away too late, the image seared into my mind: the bright spray against gray stone, the way the man crumpled like discarded paper, and the crowd’s roars of approval. It wasn’t just applause. They laughed too deeply, the sound warping, splintering, until it became a primal scream, clawing at the very air.

“Look,” Reine whispered, her voice trembling. “They’re still smiling.”

Even the victim’s face was locked in a rictus grin, as though his last moments had been a cruel joke.

We pressed on, trying to blend into the madness. The further we went, the worse it became. The city seemed to warp around us, a shifting maze that played tricks with the senses, like a fevered dream that wouldn’t end.

In one alley, two women stood over a man tied to a chair. They were painting his face, their brushes dipping into jars of garish colors. His eyes darted wildly, pleading. When they stepped back, their work revealed a caricature of joy, smeared and grotesque.

“He’s beautiful!” one of them cried, clapping her hands.

The man said nothing. He couldn’t. His lips were sewn shut, the threads pulling his smile taut.

I tried to look away, but the walls around us seemed to press in, forcing my gaze back to the scene. I could feel the pressure building inside me, inside all of us. The laughter, the smiles, the constant, overwhelming force pushing us toward something dark and inevitable.

We quickened our pace, but the city twisted around us. The streets shifted, narrowing and bending, as though they wanted to trap us. Laughter chased us like a living thing, bouncing off the walls and crawling into my ears, trying to weave itself into my thoughts.

Then the people came, spilling from doorways and shadows, their arms outstretched, their faces alight with that same sickly glee. They surrounded us, closing in, their smiles stretching grotesquely wide, mouths peeling back like the skin of a fruit.

“Come join us!” one cried. “Don’t you want to be happy?”

Another reached for me, her fingers cold as they gripped my arm. Her nails dug into my skin, her voice syrupy and sweet. “We’ll show you. We’ll show you the happiness inside you.”

I yanked away, but the movement only drew more attention. They surged toward us, their voices a cacophony of laughter and pleas.

“Don’t run!” “You’ll love it here!” “We’ll make you happy!”

I fought to breathe, but the air felt thick, heavy, like it was closing in on me. My chest tightened, my vision blurred as their smiles stretched further, until it felt like the entire city was one giant, gaping maw, ready to swallow us whole.

Isaiah shoved someone aside, and we broke into a run. The mob followed, their footsteps a frantic drumbeat, their laughter sharp as knives. The pressure was unbearable. It was all-consuming, the weight of their smiles pushing down, a constant reminder that we weren’t meant to escape. Not here. Not now.

One of them grabbed Reine’s coat, and she spun out of it, her breath hitching as she stumbled forward.

“Keep going!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the chaos, raw with panic.

We turned a corner and found it, a narrow passageway hidden in shadow. Without hesitation, we ducked inside, the walls pressing close, the laughter fading into the distance. But not for long.

A shout echoed, faint but growing louder. The sound split, twisting like it was multiplying. And then… then I saw them.

The crowd had begun to turn on each other. It wasn’t just that they were chasing us anymore. No, now they were chasing their own. One woman held a knife to her neighbor’s throat, her smile now twitching, almost desperate. “Show me your happiness,” she hissed, her voice thin and frenzied. “Let me see it inside you!”

Another man held a maniacal grin, clutching a broken shard of glass, screaming at the people around him to show him what was inside, to prove they were truly happy. The air was thick with the scent of blood and desperation, the smiles no longer just masks of joy, but marks of something deeper, darker. They weren’t smiling because they were happy, they were smiling because they had to. Because if they didn’t, they would be lost.

In the madness, I realized what this was: a ritual. A twisted, perverse ceremony of happiness, one that demanded submission, one that required you to give everything. They weren’t after our joy, they were after our soul. If they couldn’t find happiness inside you, they’d carve it out, shred it from your flesh until you were nothing but a hollow smile.

We didn’t stop running. We couldn’t.

The sounds of chaos echoed in the distance, but we didn’t dare look back. The laughter, the shrieks, the howls, they were all part of the same symphony, a song of madness that reverberated through Silver Throat, and I knew, deep in my gut, that it would never stop. The laughter would never stop.

Not until they had taken everything from us.

We didn’t stop until silence enveloped us, thick and suffocating. My breath came in shallow gasps, my heart a thunderous drum in my chest. We were safe, for now. But the grins would always be out there. Always waiting.

Reine leaned against the wall, her face streaked with sweat. Her smile wavered, but she held it, clinging to the safety it promised. “What the hell was that?”

Isaiah didn’t answer. His fists were clenched, his smile trembling as though it might crack.

I didn’t have an answer, either.

But one thing was clear: Silver Throat isn’t just sick. It’s dying. And whatever is killing it… is smiling.

Keep reading: Part 2 and Part 3.

Share this with friends:
Related posts:
January 10, 2025
Diary of a Deacon Part 2 (a NEVER Stop Smiling novella)
This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Diary of a Deacon
The prose version of a NEVER Stop Smiling solo playthrough. Read Part 1.

Entry 5: Deep Shadows are Hungry

We found the hole.

A crack in the rear of an abandoned bakery, hardly worth a glance, just another scar on the skin of Silver Throat, its grit and decay blurring together like a nightmare you can’t quite escape. But this one… this one seemed to pulse with something beneath the surface. As if the city itself had exhaled, and this was its exhalation, exhaling us into the depths. A thing you wouldn’t notice unless you were already slipping into madness, unless you had already started to forget what it meant to be… human. And I’m afraid I had.

The passage behind the crack opened into a tunnel, but not one made of stone. This was alive, its walls a dark and viscous thing, shifting like muscle beneath skin. I couldn’t even describe the way it moved. It was like walking into the hollow of a beast, its innards dripping with unseen fluid, pulsating faintly, as if the tunnel itself was breathing.

Every footstep we took was swallowed, the sound twisting and stretching unnaturally, until it felt like the whole world was wrapped around us, waiting for us to fall into it.

Reine and Isaiah were just shadows in the dim glow of our lanterns. Their faces were tight, drawn. We had long since abandoned any pretense of confidence, the air around us thick and heavy, like a blanket made of iron and rot. The smell was unbearable, not like the fetid city air we were used to. No, this had something worse. It was the smell of things that shouldn’t be alive, things that were hanging on by threads too thin to be noticed until you snapped them and heard the world scream.

And then came the Beasts.

They were smaller than the ones I’d encountered before, fragile even. But the way they moved made my skin crawl. They didn’t scurry like rats. No, they flowed, weaving through the dark like shadows becoming flesh. Their many legs bent at odd angles, like they were always half-dissolving into something darker, and their eyes… they weren’t eyes. They were hollow voids that glinted with intelligence, watching us, but never approaching. Their presence made me feel like prey, but not in the way an animal does. No, this was something more deliberate.

Something patient.

Isaiah’s voice broke through the suffocating silence. “They’re herding us.”

I didn’t need to respond. I could feel it, too. The Beasts weren’t blocking our way, they were guiding us deeper, deeper into the earth, or whatever this place was. Their bodies brushed close enough for me to feel the unnatural cold radiating from them, as if they were made from the last remnants of forgotten, dead things. It took all I had not to scream, but even that would have been swallowed whole.

Then the whispers started.

It wasn’t like hearing voices. It was more… a sensation, a pressure against my thoughts. A hand scratching at the edge of my mind, pulling at something I didn’t want to recall. The whispers grew louder, more insistent.

“Remember me,” they sighed in unison, as though they had all been waiting for us to remember… something. Or someone.

I fought it. I clenched my teeth and pushed forward, but the voices only pressed harder, curling through my skull. Some were faint, distant. Others, much closer.

“Remember me. Please.”

They clung to me, tugging at memories I had no desire to revisit. The air around us thickened, as if the very atmosphere was made of old stories. I felt something scraping inside my chest, like I was being torn apart at the seams.

I turned to look at Reine. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated, her face pale as milk, her lips trembling. Her smile was starting to crack, that desperate, thin thing clinging to her face like a mask. “Keep moving and we’ll be okay,” I told her, and the words felt like a lie. But what else could I say?

We were suffocating. Not from the air, no, but from the whispers, the things pulling at us from the other side of memory. But we couldn’t stop. I couldn’t let us stop.

The tunnel squeezed tighter. Its living walls, muscle or flesh or something older, pressed in on us, until it felt like we were crawling through the veins of something ancient, something that shouldn’t be here. The wraiths began to emerge then, though that word, wraiths, doesn’t really capture what they were. They were forms, fading at the edges, twisting like smoke around the light. Faces that looked familiar but never really were, stretching across the moments we’d passed, their hands reaching toward us, fingers warping as if time were bending around them.

Their mouths moved in silence, no sound, but I could hear them, feel them, their hunger, their need. Their hands, all clammy and misshapen, clawed at the air, raking through the fabric of my thoughts, peeling back memories I had no interest in giving.

“Remember me,” they wailed in unison, their voices thin and spectral, like a thousand forgotten souls crying for someone to hear them. But I didn’t want to remember. Whatever it was they wanted me to recall, I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be trapped in this.

I grabbed Reine as she stumbled, my grip tight, the sweat on her arm cold. “We have to keep moving.”

But she was already too far gone, her expression distant, like she was already lost in something deeper than any of us could reach.

The air hummed, then. A low, vibrating note that didn’t belong to anything human. The walls trembled, quivering like something alive that had been disturbed. The wraiths seemed to recoil, dissolving into the shadows with a soft hiss, their forms rippling away like smoke, but the whispers, they remained.

And then we heard it.

A growl, but not a growl, more like the sound of a wound being torn open. It was so deep, I could feel it in my chest, a vibration that rattled my bones, shaking the very foundation of this place. It wasn’t just the sound… it was alive. The tunnel shook with it, ripples of noise spreading out like a shockwave through the air, and in the dark, something stirred.

“We’re not alone anymore,” Reine whispered, her voice small.

I didn’t need her to say it. I knew it. And whatever was down here, in the gut of this living place, it wasn’t something we were meant to face. Not now. Not ever. It had been buried here for a reason.

And I realized, then, what the Beasts had been guiding us to.

We weren’t just stumbling into the depths.

We were waking it up.

Entry 6: Optimize in the Eyes of the Beholder

Smiles are fragile things.

The further we descend, the more mine feels like a brittle mask. My cheeks ache, the corners of my mouth trembling as they strain to hold the curve. I tell myself it’s real, that the joy is real, that the love is real. The Happy Place loves us. The Happy Place is joy. This is truth.

But the deeper we go, the less the truth feels like truth, and the more it feels like a command.

“Keep smiling,” Reine hisses, her voice low and sharp, her own teeth bared in a grin that looks more like a threat. “They’re watching.”

She’s right. Something is always watching.

The air here is thick with the weight of unseen eyes, the oppressive density of a place forgotten by the world above. I clutch the smile tighter, wear it like armor, even as my muscles rebel. Isaiah’s gaze flickers toward me, his face unreadable except for the faintest twitch near his jaw. Concern? Suspicion?

I don’t know anymore.

We find the chamber in a cavern that hums with a strange vibration, like the walls are alive and murmuring secrets we’re not meant to hear.

And in the center of it stands it.

A robot.

It’s humanoid, in the vaguest sense, though time and decay have ravaged it into something grotesque. Rust oozes down its limbs like old blood, pooling in the joints. Its face is a blank oval of polished metal, unblemished except for two pinpricks of blue light where eyes should be.

And then it speaks.

“Greetings, Deacons!” The voice is bright, cheerful, cloyingly kind. “I am here to assist! To improve! To make you better! Aren’t you excited?”

The words don’t land right. They’re too happy, too eager, the joy stretched thin and strained, like a recording that’s been played one time too many.

None of us answer.

The robot steps forward, its movements jerky, joints screaming with each motion. “You seem… incomplete,” it continues, its tone friendly but off. “Allow me to optimize you. You will be more efficient. You will be happier.”

It gestures to the edges of the room, where workbenches stretch in neat, rust-streaked rows. That’s when I see them.

Not machines. Not wreckage.

Bodies.

Flesh fused with wires, bones twisted into impossible shapes, faces locked in grotesque parodies of smiles. They’re sprawled across the tables, their limbs askew, their mouths stretched wide in silent agony.

“Previous benefactors,” the robot chirps. “They were… resistant to improvement. But you! You will be different! Now, hold still.”

It moves fast, faster than its rusted frame should allow.

Isaiah reacts first, his blade slicing clean through one of its arms, but the thing doesn’t stop. Its severed limb twitches on the floor, clawing at nothing. Reine grabs a pipe from the wreckage, smashing it into the robot’s head. Sparks fly as its blank faceplate cracks, but still, it moves.

“You will be better!” it screeches, its voice glitching into a garbled mess of static and optimism.

Isaiah’s final strike pierces its core. The thing collapses, its voice trailing off in a whimper. “Improve… improve… improve…”

We should leave.

But something keeps us rooted.

The cavern hums louder now, the vibration climbing into my chest, my skull. The walls pulse faintly, veined with threads of light that glow and fade in rhythmic patterns. It feels like breath, like a heartbeat.

And then we see it.

The machine.

It dominates the far end of the chamber, a towering structure of flesh and metal intertwined. Veins of luminescent fluid snake through its surface, pulsing in sync with the hum. Its presence is overwhelming, a gravitational force that pulls the air from my lungs.

The colors around it shift constantly, an oil-slick rainbow that makes my head spin if I look too long. There’s a wrongness to it, a sense that it doesn’t just exist here. No, it defines here, warping the space around it into its own logic.

Reine moves first.

“Don’t,” Isaiah says, his voice tight with warning.

But she doesn’t stop. Her hand trembles as she reaches out to touch it.

The moment her fingers graze the surface, the machine screams.

It’s not sound, not exactly, it’s a feeling, a psychic rupture that slams into my mind with unbearable force. Reine screams, too, her body convulsing as the machine’s glow intensifies. Her skin ripples, her features distorting as though something inside her is trying to claw its way out.

Her arm snaps backward with a sickening crack, bone tearing through flesh. Organs and muscles race each other, forming a glistening maze around the reshaping bones. Her face, now sitting on the bottom of her towering alien form, splits into three grotesque grins, her eyes wide and empty. A chorus of melodic screams rip through my nerves, tearing apart the very neurons in my skull.

And then, just as suddenly, she collapses.

Her body twitches once, twice, then goes still.

The machine’s hum grows louder, the colors brighter, more frantic. The air feels heavier, crushing, as though it’s forcing itself into my lungs, into my thoughts.

And then I hear it.

Not with my ears, but inside me, deep and undeniable.

It whispers of joy, of purpose, of understanding. Of love.

And it asks only one thing in return… but I have no idea what that is.

Entry 7: Alien Hearts Make the World Go Round

The machine suddenly stood still and silent, a towering thing of slick organic electronics, its surface still pulsing like the heartbeat of a dying god. The faint glow of its veins flickered, ghostly in the cavern’s dim light. Reine’s body lay at its feet, broken and twisted, the remnants of her grins stretched and haunting, as though ready to spring back to life at any moment to devour us.

I couldn’t stop staring at her. I couldn’t escape the echoes of her bones snapping, each crack and rip a cruel reminder of what had happened, what we had failed to prevent.

Isaiah pulled me back, his fingers digging into my arm with urgent strength. “We can fix it,” he muttered, his voice a frantic whisper. “The First Oracle’s promise… it will hold true. We fix it, and she’ll come back. Just like they said.”

I wanted to believe him. I needed to. The First Oracle had unraveled the riddle of Death itself. Joy was eternal. The faithful never truly die. We were taught this every day, each word a stitch in the fabric of our belief. But Reine’s contorted, lifeless form, now a grotesque maze of twisted alien flesh, crushed those promises into something more… hollow.

“Smile,” Isaiah’s voice cracked, a tinge of desperation creeping in. “If you stop smiling, it won’t work. You know that.”

I tried to force my lips into something that resembled a grin. But it felt wrong, like wearing someone else’s face, a face that didn’t belong to me anymore. The muscles in my cheeks burned, trembled under the strain, but I held it. Even as my tears blurred my vision, I whispered, “We’ll fix it. She’ll come back.”

We approached the machine. The air around it thickened, vibrating with an unsettling pulse. As we neared, its surface quivered, its veins of glowing liquid quickening in their rhythmic dance, responding to our presence.

The controls were… alive, organic shapes that quivered beneath our fingertips. They weren’t switches or buttons but pulsing tendrils, slick and warm, as if the machine had a heart. Every press, every movement we made seemed to ripple through the machine, as if it were listening.

“It’s… broken,” Isaiah muttered, his grin faltering, cracking. “We need to… realign it? Restore the flow?” His voice was a whisper now, full of doubt. We weren’t trained for this. We were Deacons, not engineers of flesh and bone.

But the machine didn’t care. It screamed at us, a sound not audible but felt, vibrating in my ribs, in my teeth. The hum grew louder, a deeper, insistent thrum that seemed to tear at my very soul.

The walls around us began to shift, the darkness itself began to stretch and twist, forming shapes that danced just out of sight, too tall, too jagged, too wrong. And then, I heard it.

Voices.

Whispers.

They came from the walls, from the air, from the space between breaths. They weren’t in our heads. They were the walls, the stones, the very universe around us.

“Why do you cling to it?” one voice asked, soft but insistent, like a secret told in the dark.

“She’s gone,” another hissed. “You saw her die.”

“No one comes back. Not really.”

I tried to block them out, squeezing my eyes shut. “It’s a test,” I murmured. “A test of faith.”

But the whispers didn’t stop. They just pressed in harder, growing louder.

We continued, hands trembling over the shifting, writhing controls. The machine didn’t relent. It fought us. Its surface burned under our touch, its pulse quickened, and the veins beneath its skin swelled and contracted like a living thing in agony.

My fingers were blistering. The heat was unbearable, but still, we pressed on. We had to fix it.

“Smile,” Isaiah’s voice broke, his grin stretched too thin. “Don’t let it see you falter.”

His words pierced me. The pressure mounted. The machine-thing’s love had been warped. It wanted us to break. To stop.

Then, in a moment of sickening clarity, I understood.

The machine wasn’t broken. It was incomplete.

“It’s not about fixing it,” I gasped, the realization hammering into me. “It’s about… finishing it. Completing the cycle.”

Isaiah stared at me, confusion tightening his already warped grin. “What does that mean?”

I didn’t know. Not fully. But my hands moved without thought, pressing the warm, living shapes into a sequence that felt… right. The machine responded, its hum rising to a steady, hypnotic rhythm, its colors shifting into a strange, comforting stillness.

Isaiah followed my lead, his movements instinctive now. Together, we finished it.

The machine stilled.

The cavern fell into silence.

And Reine’s body was gone.

My heart stopped. “Isaiah… where is she?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the empty space where she had been, his grin now too wide, too strained, as if holding something back, something we both feared.

We left the cavern in silence, walking through the tunnels, our footsteps echoing like the sound of ghosts trailing behind us.

The air outside felt cleaner. The sun felt too bright. The weight of the surface world pressing against my skin was stifling.

And then… she was there.

Reine stood at the end of the tunnel, her body whole, her grin simply perfect, radiant, unbroken, an impossible thing. “What took you so long?” she asked, her voice light, teasing.

Isaiah and I froze. Neither of us spoke.

We didn’t ask how she was alive. We didn’t mention the machine, or the twisted bodies we’d seen, or the way the world had bent around us in those moments.

We just smiled.

Back above ground, the sunlight seared my skin. The smiles on our faces felt fragile. They could crack at any moment. But we held them. We had to.

“The promise holds true,” Isaiah said, his voice shaking. “The First Oracle’s gospel… it’s real. Joy is eternal.”

I nodded, trying to believe it. Trying to feel it. To keep smiling.

But the fear… the fear of what we had done. The fear of what we had seen. The fear of how long we could keep this up, this game, this lie, was always there, in the back of my mind, pressing against my thoughts.

The Happy Place loves us.

And we must always love it back.

Keep reading: Part 3.

Share this with friends:
Related posts:
January 10, 2025