The Last Smile You’ll Ever See

They said it started as a harmless trend—another stupid social media challenge that teenagers picked up out of boredom and influencers exploited for likes. It was called The Last Smile Challenge. The rules were simple: record a five-second video of yourself smiling, tag three friends, and end the video with the words, “This is my last smile.”

No one questioned the creepiness of the phrase at first. After all, trends were born from far stranger things. It was the internet; it didn’t need to make sense.

But everything changed after the first disappearance.

I didn’t pay attention to the trend until my best friend, Neha, vanished. Her video had gone live at 11:47 p.m. on a Saturday. By Sunday morning, she was gone—no messages, no activity, no trace. Just gone.

Her parents filed a report. The police questioned classmates. They treated it like a runaway case even though Neha wasn’t the type. She hated surprises. She hated risk. She hated going anywhere without telling someone.

I watched her video at least fifty times.

At first, it looked normal—just Neha sitting on her bed, the lamp behind her giving her hair that warm halo she always liked. She smiled, a little awkward and a little playful, the way she did when she wasn’t sure whether she looked good. But the second time I watched it, something felt… wrong. The lighting seemed too bright, as if someone else was behind the camera. Her eyes looked unfocused. Her jaw trembled just slightly. And then, at the very end, I heard something—a faint exhale that didn’t sound like hers.

Like someone else breathing with her.

Two days after Neha disappeared, someone tagged me in a post.

It was her account.

She tagged me.

#TheLastSmileChallenge

@arun_official you’re next! :)

Don’t break the chain.

My chest tightened. I messaged her. No reply. I called her number. It was switched off.

I didn’t do the challenge. I wasn’t stupid. But the more I scrolled, the more videos I saw—thousands of people around the world participating, laughing, smiling, some even joking about “dying from cringe.” A few comments called it cursed, but most brushed it off.

Then more people vanished.

At first, it seemed like coincidence. Maybe some were pranking. Maybe some were clout-chasing. But then influencers with millions of followers started disappearing too. And every one of them had posted “My last smile” hours before.

Soon news outlets picked it up. Parents protested. Schools banned phones. TikTok promised to remove videos, but by then it was out of control. People continued doing it because fear only made the trend more popular.

I had one rule: do not watch the videos at night.

I broke that rule three days later.

I was sitting alone in my room, lights off, the blue glow of my phone reflecting off the walls. I wasn’t looking for the challenge—just scrolling aimlessly—but the algorithm didn’t care what I wanted. It shoved the trend into my feed like a living thing hungry for attention.

One video autoplayed.

A boy I’d never seen. Maybe 16. Laughing, smiling too wide. His teeth were clenched so hard they almost clicked.

“This is my last smile.”

Then he stopped smiling. Instantly. Like the muscles in his face had snapped.

That wasn’t the scary part.

The scary part was that the video didn’t end.

His face froze. His expression locked. And the background behind him—dark, blurry—began to shift. Something moved in the shadows. A shape. A head. A mouth.

Grinning.

I threw my phone across the bed so fast it bounced off the pillow and hit the wall.

No. I didn’t see that. I refused to believe I saw that. But my heart was beating too loud to ignore, and the shape in the darkness was burned into my mind.

Smiling.

Waiting.

The next day, someone created a Reddit thread: “Do NOT watch the challenge videos twice.”

The top comment read:

“The smile in the background gets clearer every time.”

That’s when I stopped sleeping.

Every night I felt something watching me. I didn’t want to admit it—not even to myself—but ever since that night, I couldn’t shake the sense that someone was standing in the corner of my room.

Waiting for me to smile.

I kept my phone face-down. I didn’t open TikTok. I didn’t scroll Instagram. But even then, the videos found me—shared in group chats, forwarded by strangers, even appearing in autoplay ads. It was like the challenge was… spreading itself.

Living.

Two weeks after Neha disappeared, I received a notification.

New message from: Neha ✨

Check this :)

My hand froze. My throat tightened. I shouldn’t have opened it. I knew I shouldn’t. But hope is a cruel thing. Hope makes you stupid.

I tapped it.

A video opened.

At first, it was just static. Gray lines, flickering, buzzing softly. Then it shifted. The static parted like curtains.

Neha appeared.

But not really.

Her skin was pale, stretched too tight around her mouth. Her eyes were wide and dead, staring at the camera like she had forgotten how blinking worked. Her smile was too big, too sharp, as if her cheeks had been pulled open from the inside.

She didn’t speak.

Instead, a voice whispered behind her.

A voice that wasn’t human.

A voice that wasn’t even trying to sound human.

“Smile.”

I screamed and dropped the phone. It landed screen-up, and the video kept playing. Neha’s face twitched, her jaw stretching wider and wider until it looked like her cheeks would tear.

Then the whisper came again, deeper, closer.

“Smile for me.”

I kicked the phone under the bed.

My mother burst into the room, asking what happened, but I couldn’t form words.

That night, I dreamed of smiles.

Rows and rows of teeth. Faces too wide, mouths too open, stretching into impossible shapes. Something crawling behind all of them. Something faceless. Something made of shadows and eyes. Something whispering that same word:

“Smile.”

I woke up with bite marks on my lips.

I didn’t sleep after that.

People online began theorizing about the curse. Some claimed the videos contained subliminal messages. Some believed it was a ghost haunting the trend. Others said it was an AI glitch, a virus that trapped people in their own videos.

But none of them were right.

The disappearances weren’t glitches.

They were invitations.

Every person who uploaded their “last smile” wasn’t recording a challenge.

They were letting something in.

And now it was trying to get to me.

It came to a breaking point three nights later.

My phone kept vibrating, nonstop, buzzing across my desk like a dying insect. Notifications flooded my screen:

“Do the challenge.”

“It’s your turn.”

“Smile, Arun.”

When I didn’t respond, the messages changed.

“We’re waiting.”

“Don’t keep her waiting.”

“She wants your smile.”

At exactly 3:03 a.m., the phone stopped vibrating.

Silence.

Then my screen lit up.

An incoming video call.

From: Neha ✨

My breath froze in my chest. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away. The phone rang again. And again. And again. The sound grew distorted, each ring cracking like broken glass.

On the seventh ring, it answered itself.

The screen turned black.

Then a face leaned into the frame.

Not Neha.

Not even human.

A shape with a mouth that stretched from ear to ear, teeth long and thin like needles, smile trembling with excitement. Its skin was made of flickering pixels, shifting and twisting as if it was crawling through the video itself.

Its voice was the same whisper I’d heard before, only now it was inside my room, inside my head.

“Smile.”

My jaw locked. My lips twitched against my will. I could feel the corners of my mouth pulling upward. My facial muscles strained, burning as if invisible hands were forcing them open.

“No—no—stop—”

The thing behind the screen laughed softly.

“Your friend smiled for me.”

The pressure increased. My lips peeled back. My teeth clenched so hard I thought they would crack.

“You will smile too.”

I screamed and threw the phone against the wall. The screen shattered, sparks flying. The video cut.

The smile left my face instantly.

The room fell silent.

For the first time in days, I thought it was over.

I was wrong.

The next morning, my phone—completely shattered—turned on by itself. The screen flickered, distorted lines dancing across the glass. Slowly, a face formed in the cracks.

My face.

But smiling.

Smiling too wide.

Smiling too long.

Smiling like it had no intention of stopping.

A notification appeared.

“Your Last Smile video has been uploaded.”

I hadn’t recorded anything.

And yet, the video was already spreading.

Comments appeared beneath it:

“So creepy omg.”

“This one feels different.”

“Is he okay?”

“Where is he now?”

“He hasn’t posted since.”

I tried to delete it.

I tried to report it.

The app told me:

“This action cannot be undone.”

That night, I felt something standing at the foot of my bed.

Tall.

Dark.

Smiling.

When I closed my eyes, I heard the whisper one last time.

“Thank you for your smile.”

The next morning, I checked my reflection.

I wasn’t there.

Only the smile was.

And it wasn’t mine anymore.