JULY 25th, 2014.

Sliding his hand against the fabric of his pockets, Seth pulls out his buzzing phone, placing his thumb against the top-right button with the green icon on it to answer as he presses the top half against his right ear.

He didn’t exactly want to take this call, but it wasn’t as if he had much other choice.

From the other side of the phone, a weary Tiga rapidly spits out a string of concern.

“This is Seth, correct? What, exactly, were you thinking when you handed me this site?!”

Seth’s eyes widen in surprise, taken aback by the sudden, annoyed voice over the phone.

“Did something happen…?”

A heavy sigh comes across the speaker, indicating that was indeed the case.

“‘Something’, yes, ‘something’... I settled for brute-forcing my way through the login, but do you want to know what I was met with?”

Kat, who had been standing just across from Seth as they stood in the main lobby surrounded by various employees heading back to their rooms or helping tidy up around the place for the night, tilted her head in confusion as she watched Seth’s increasingly worried expression. He glances toward her, then to the edge of the phone as he responds.

“...A little more than an art project?”

Scoffing, Tiga’s uneven keyboard clicking can be heard over the phone.

“Yes! Quite a lot more than that! I am currently sitting here, looking at the ramblings of what looks to be a sadist cult! I am in no way qualified for this.”

His eyes widen even further, and the background around him begins to blur as he focuses on the edge of the phone.

A ‘cult’…? What…?

Before he can take a moment to theorize or process the information at any surface level, Tiga continues.

“Listen to this!” he exclaims with urgency pouring out of his voice, “Quote, ‘Today, I had another dream about hurting my girlfriend… Mr. Smile, what am I supposed to do?’ Agh, this is sickening.”

Without a moment’s notice, Seth turns 180 degrees back toward the direction of his room and begins to walk forward in strides, with Kat following close behind after being caught off guard for half a moment.

‘Mr. Smile’... could that be…?

“Can you give my laptop remote access?” he frantically asks, picking up his pace.

“Yes, but… I cannot recommend staying on this site very long,” Tiga explains, sounding worried, “With domains such as these, the key is most likely passed out individually… with the host keeping track of how many users are allowed to access it.”

He was well aware of the risk, of course. Seth hadn’t dabbled in networks and such for very long, but when it was required for a case, he knew how to handle himself and generally understood the way attackers tended to operate.

Though, this is far different from anything he dealt with in the past.

Somebody’s playing a game of chess with him, currently, and he can only see one-fourths of the board.

“...I can handle it,” he replies, though the hesitation in his voice is ripe, “What do you need from—”

“Nothing at all,” Tiga responds, cutting him off, “As of now, the site is being broadcasted to your laptop. Just know, I do not want further involvement with this.”

Finally reaching the door belonging to his room, Seth clasps his hand around it and swings it open.

“Don’t worry about that. Thanks.”

Another scoff is heard over the phone. To Seth, it wasn’t a surprise… especially given the circumstances with why he agreed to help them in the first place.

“Only because you resorted to threats… goodbye, now.”

The phone goes silent as it returns to a black screen.

Looks like he’s really pissed off.

Hurrying over to the laptop, Seth pulls the chair out and sits down on it, rolling back into the perfect slot against the desk. As he does, he notices the door close as Kat slowly walks over and stands beside him. Seth places his hands on the keyboard while glancing over at her.

“Curiosity’s caught the cat?”

“Shut up,” she briskly responds, sounding annoyed by the four-legged comparison.

Did you do that on purpose?

Yeah, maybe.

Yggdrasil chuckles to himself, amused. Seth’s eyes drift down to the website, fully opened on an external window in front of his desktop. Coated in a dark crimson mixed with black boxes and white text, all over a dull gradient in the background, the site appears like something that would have been made at least five to six years ago, and that’s being generous. With a forum-esque appearance to it, the site itself is comprised of posts, containing long blocks of text detailing various happenings in the lives of these users. Next to each block is a username, the date, time, and number of comments on any given thread.

But, what stood out the most to him, was the fact that some posts had a large smile icon next to them and bright red text that read ‘APPROVED’ next to it.

Is this that ‘Mr. Smile’ guy he was referring to…?

As he begins to read through the first post, his anxiety swells and his stomach feels like it dropped down to his crotch.

Many of the posts started out like average forum posts; asking for help with a problem, wanting to know a tidbit of information, trying to find something that had gone missing, but on dontcry.net, they were all incredibly sadistic.

There were posts regarding, as Tiga mentioned earlier, boyfriends dealing with urges to assault their significant others, posts about pets making users angry enough to cause an urge to brutally murder them, and even posts about wanting to kill and dismember corrupt bosses and family members. Any corrupt, horrendous thought one could think of, Seth figured after a few minutes that they could probably find it here. To him, this felt like a truly deep, dark corner of the internet that only a specific type of people were supposed to come across.

As he continued to scroll through and read each post, he noticed a level of inconsistency with them. Some were downright horrific, while others were simply just, for example, concerning someone wanting to yell at a friend of theirs and feeling insecure about it.

At first glance, it seemed to only exist as an echo chamber of deranged, frightened, and violent thoughts, but as he scrolled down to the comments on those posts, it quickly became evident that this site had a different purpose entirely.

The users, who each had deranged rants of their own, would try their best to comfort and offer borderline therapeutic advice to the original writers of the posts, attempting to calm them down.

However, standing at the apex of this hierarchy, was the user known as ‘Mr. Smile’.

There was a very good reason that the entries containing their ‘approval’ sticker had far more engagement than the others, even to the point that those that weren’t approved seemed almost entirely ignored by every other user. Even Seth, who had zero amount of experience with this type of thing, could tell that they were incredibly efficient at what they did. Almost as if an animal whisperer was made specifically for humans.

In fact, the rate at which users reported improvement due to their multi-faceted advice was astonishing. Not only that but according to everything they said, all of this was met with no monetary compensation.

Mr. Smile, as every user on the site never failed to refer to them, treated them like their own family.

But both Seth and Kat failed to notice something incredibly important about the site’s structure as they were initially swept up by the number of posts visible.

All of the posts they read were under a category simply titled ‘ASSISTANCE’, next to ‘SETTINGS’ and ‘EXIT’. It was a very oddly made website, with none of the usual makings of one.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

However, as Seth hovered his mouse over ‘ASSISTANCE’, he realized that it was a drop-down menu as an arrow appeared to the right of the text.

When he clicked on it, two titles belonging to their respective pages showed up.

SALVATION

Which was the page they were currently on, where users would post about their urges and inhibitions in order to receive emotional support regarding them.

Yet, there was one more page available, located right underneath the former.

It was simply titled:

JUDGMENT

As soon as Seth’s eyes were met with the word, an uneasy feeling washed over him and forced shivers down his spine. The contents of the site, though they existed for a more optimistic reason than he originally assumed, were already incredibly disturbing. He can’t help but question to himself what could possibly be deserving of ‘judgment’, as it was titled. Kat’s eyes were glued to the screen as well, though the both of them had sat in silence up to this point. Neither of them could bring themselves to commentate or speak on what they had seen, and that stayed true when Seth clicked on the left mouse button hovering over the next page, as well.

The ‘SALVATION’ page disappeared, and a long black box replaced it. White text appeared against it, as Seth read it out to himself. That was something he often did whenever he felt as if a situation was slipping out of his control, or if he was frightened by something.

“...‘Welcome to the afterlife… entry requested’.”

His mind instantly panics, filling itself with different possibilities. ‘Entry requested’? Would the host find him? No, more than that, would they be able to track him back to this place? What if that endangered the lives of his colleagues if they chased after him? What if…?

But those thoughts are cut short by a notification that pops up in the middle of the page, reading, very simply:

Welcome.

What replaces it is a forum-style page, similar to ‘SALVATION’, but as soon as he starts reading the first message…

“Wait… this is…?!” Kat exclaims, taking a step back. Her eyes, like Seth’s, had widened in shock. Her pupils, shrunk, horrified and stunned by what she finished reading.

These weren’t just posts.

They were executions.

For each user who had given in to their disgusting desires.

Any that harmed or killed another.

They were punished for it.

Brutally.

Pictures of them in their underwear, chained, held up against a concrete wall with their arms spread out, hanging by them. Blindfolded and with bruises running throughout their bodies, beaten and choked until purple with their skin rubbed raw around the iron links they bound them.

It was a presentation… a performance. Seth bit his tongue as his eyes came across names he recognized from the previous page. People who were sick and twisted, yes, but seemed to have been making every effort to live a normal life in spite of their desires and horrid thoughts. Before long, he realized every user that had an ‘approved’ post was a regular on this page. Each one of them cheered in response to the suffering that was being forced upon the others, attributing to the horror show with sick recommendations of their own.

‘Rip their fingernails off,’ said one.

‘Burn their skin with a candle’, said another.

Each suggestion became increasingly vile in its intensity, and each user would vote on the method they wanted to see the most. This was nothing but a torture party for lunatics and sickos.

And the one leading all of it?

Heralding themselves as a champion of salvation?

“‘Mr. Smile’, my ass… this is just torturing criminals,” Seth spits out in disgust, grimacing at the thought. Conveniently, they documented the process themselves… too concerned with holding their followers in their fists rather than being caught.

Each user would confess to Mr. Smile, asking for forgiveness as if he could offer it to them. It seemed all of them truly trusted in him and believed that he could, though none of them appeared religious, they had a similar taste of absolute faith. In return, Mr. Smile would promise each and every one of them forgiveness as long as they agreed to meet with them in person… then they would be captured and tortured for weeks on end.

It served as both a punishment for the criminals and a warning for the users who hadn’t given in to their perversions.

Just before Seth turns his head away in disgust, naturally appalled by everything he’d read through, he catches something hidden in plain sight.

“Wait, that’s…?”

Hovering over one of the images, he zooms in to it, noticing something through the shaky detailing.

Hand marks.

A lot of them.

Turning to Kat, Seth points toward the laptop’s screen with a serious gaze.

“This one… ‘Mr. Smile’. They’re the killer.”

Kat nods, speechless from everything. Not that she was anywhere near unfamiliar with gross shows of violence, but this and its unmistakable stench of manipulation felt far different than a regular murder.

At that moment, Seth pieces it all together. The victims, the commentary on ‘bugs’, the way they were mutilated, the one who was killed outside of the apartment…

…That’s it. The apartment!

Minimizing the broadcasted window, he brings up the security footage that was running in the background and plays it again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the way the victim was running, and his body language… he didn’t know the area he was in.

It’s safe to assume that he was called there by someone.

However, he’s brought out of his train of thought as Kat places her hand on his shoulder.

“It’s getting late…. are you planning on stopping anytime soon?”

Oh, it’s eleven already.

As he breathes in and his chest expands, he lets out a semi-relieved but still stressed sigh.

“...Yeah, I’m wrapping this up. I’ll sleep after I send this to Liam.”

Kat takes her hand off Seth, retreating back to the room’s entrance.

“Well, I’m going to bed… nice work today.”

He perks up at those words, turning his head toward her as she lifts her hand to wave herself off. In an awkward response, he does the same but in a much more rigid way as she chuckles to herself, finally closing the door.

Then, his room is silent. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, especially since he hadn’t yet exited the site. Regardless, though, they finally had a big lead on the killer.

This site… and you… I’ll make sure none of you ever hurt anyone again.

After he finishes typing out the report with all of the attached evidence, he emails it to Liam, who had specified his address along with the passwords with the folders.

Now… I can finally sleep.

I earned this…

Closing down the site and removing the USB stick from his laptop, he shuts it down and closes it before sluggishly walking over to his bed, falling face-first against it.

Heavenly… this comfort is… heavenly…

Though it was a simple bed, with only a semi-thick comforter and a singular pillow, it was better than anything Seth had after the orphanage incident.

Due to that, he ends up passing out fairly quickly, drifting off into a deep rest.