"Haha, very funny, Patrick. What did you need to tell me?" I laughed nervously, begging that he's joking. He looked pained again.

"Alice, it's true. He's my brother." I tried picturing him with a family like Patrick. It was nearly impossible. I hadn't given much thought to his family, though. Why would I? I mean, it's not as if you'd look up the complete back story of someone who wants to kill you, right?

"But....but you look nothing like each other!"

"Neither do you and your mother anymore. That smile changes a face. You saw yourself, right? Do you look the same as you did before?" I thought about it. I had seen myself in the mirror, right? That was me....but, then again...I knew that that was me.....What if I hadn't known that it was me? What if I didn't know it was a mirror?

"But my mother recognized me!"

"Alice, I know. This is my brother. It isn't exactly as if he carved a smile in his face yesterday, you know?" But an image doesn't change that much over years, does it? "Alice, remember yesterday in the park? He didn't recognize me, Alice. You have to think about it, Alice. That smile is self-inflicted. A person with such strong insanity that he doesn't recognize his own brother...." His voice faded. Wow. It's.....weird.

"But how did it come to this? Did you have bad parents or something?"

He shook his head. "Not at all. Our parents were great. We had some of the best influences around us, actually. It just happened....it's a long story."

"I've got all the time in the world. At least, if your brother has the decency to let me stay alive." He sighed and began his story.

"The whole thing begins back in England. This seems really stupid, but, before this all happened, he even had a name. David. Real good name for a serial killer, eh? David the killer....that sounds like a comic book. So, David's a few years older than me. About....twenty-one or something like that. I forget. I haven't seen him in a long time, you know? So, anyway, David...he was such a happy kid. He was always laughing, always just joking around. That is, until he was about....thirteen. He started getting home a few hours later than he should. That worried my parents, so they asked me to go with him, and tell them where he was going. They were worried he was....you know, doing drugs and stuff.

'Dave, where do you always go after school?' I asked him. He just smiled at me, but this smile was....different. He didn't have his usual joking smile.

'If you want to, you can come with me. Then you'll know.' he said. I, being the unsuspecting child, nodded. Just nodded. After school, he was waiting for me, that smile on his face. He didn't have his.....bloody smile yet. Just a normal face. 'There you are' he said. 'I thought you'd never come.' He started to go in the opposite direction of our usual way home. He walked, with me following him, until we came to an abandoned street, around the outskirts of my town.

"We walked and eventually came to this old building. It was literally crumbling on the edges, and it really looked as if no one had been there in a long time. 'You're in for a real surprise, Pat.' he said to me. He wasn't lying. We went in, and I instantly noticed the smell. It was a metallic smell that I wasn't familiar with back then. I know now that what I smelled was....blood. I even saw some here and there, and I was really frightened. 'There's nothing to be afraid of, Patrick. It's nothing bad.' He 'calmed' me. He led me to a door. 'Do you want to open it, Patrick?' I shook my head, because the smell was coming from there.

'D-Dave....how did you find this place?'

He chuckled. 'I was exploring with my friend Chris. It was really fun. I loved playing here.' He opened the door, and I got the biggest shock I could. There were people in there. There were corpses, hanging from the ceiling, I recognized Chris as one of them.

I whimpered. 'Dave....how did this happen?' He just laughed.

'It was so fun playing here, Pat. So...much....fun.....Aren't they funny?" He laughed as he nudged one of the corpses, and it swung.

'They look so terrified, Dave....It's so frightening...'

He frowned. 'But they can't! We're playing!" He took something from a box in the corner of the room. He turned around.....and I recognized the object as a....a knife. He went to the corpses, and began carving those smiles in their faces. 'Now they're happy, aren't they, Patrick?' He turned to me, but realized how terrified I was. He looked sad, then his face lit up, as if he'd just had an idea. He started carving his own smile in his face.

'See? We're all happy!'

I screamed. 'What's wrong? Aren't we happy?'

'No! Dave, why are you doing this?'

'I found out the truth about life.'

'That's crazy!' He frowned once more, but his face lit up again.

'You need a smile, too!' He started walking towards me. I screamed again, and ran outside. I kept running and running. I ran through town, all the way to my parents' house. It's unbelievable how no one saw us. No one seemed to notice us. How? I don't know. I was inside when my parents noticed me.

'What's wrong, Patrick? Did something happen?' I just looked at them with wide eyes.

'Mummy, Daddy, Dave's gone insane!'

They looked confused. 'How? what happened?'

'He's been killing people! That's what he's been doing during those hours!'

My parents looked very serious. 'Patrick, death is a very serious matter. You can't joke about it. Now, what did he do?'

'I'M TELLING YOU, HE KILLED PEOPLE!' Suddenly, the door behind me broke open.

'Awww, did Patrick ruin the surprise? And I was wanting to tell it to you myself....' He looked sad. It was unbearable. His scars were still bleeding, staining his shirt. My mother screamed, and my father.....was gone. I thought he was a coward, when he appeared behind David, with a huge book. He knocked David out, and I cried. I cried so much.

'Daddy! That was my brother!!!!'

'He was your brother, son. This is no brother of yours, it's no son of mine. It's a monster.' He called the police after that. They said, they couldn't arrest him, but they sent him to a very isolated asylum in America. That was how I lost my brother........"

I was in shock. He.....lost a brother. He lost his brother to insanity. "That's where he brought you, didn't he, Alice. You were at an asylum."

"Y-yes." His eyes were a bit teary. "Alice, this person....David's ruined so many lives. He's ended so many lives.....it's unbearable. The insanity changed him into what I saw yesterday."

"But...how did you know it was him? How did you know where he is?"

"This is where his asylum was. The asylum's been reported to have been found with all its caretakers dead. Murdered. I knew it was him because I recognized him, Alice. But he didn't recognize me...."

"Are you two done?" My mother frightened me.

"Mom....can we go to the park?"

"Again? But why?"

"I need to get my mind off of things." And so we went.

"I'm really sorry about what happened to you, Patrick." We were just sitting on a bench. I recognized it as Tara and my bench. It was a bit awkward since all Patrick did was stare at the ground. He looked up.

"Don't be. It's not your fault. I should be sorry for not getting rid of him back then. It would be so much better if he was gone...."

"No! Look, you shouldn't think that way! You would've been killed, for fuck's sake!" He shrugged and we both sighed. There was a silence until I broke it. "You know, I can't believe someone would throw away such a good life. Why would someone do that?"

We looked up alarmed when we heard a voice. "I can tell you why, little Alice."