There was a town no one remembered on any map. It lay cradled by endless fields of sunflowers that stood tall and golden under an eternal blue sky. The townsfolk called it Laughter's End—a place where laughter was not just joy, but a law.
The town gleamed like a forgotten postcard: pastel houses, cobblestone streets, and white picket fences all spotless. Everyone smiled, but the smiles were never quite right — stretched thin like painted masks.
Mira Bloom was eight and a half, with freckles scattered like stars across her cheeks and bright ribbon-tied shoes. She lived in a cream-colored house that smelled of vanilla sugar and warm paper. Every morning, she skipped through the streets with her red leather Joke Book tucked under her arm, eager to share her favorite jokes.
"Why don't skeletons fight?" she would ask anyone who passed. "Because they're lazybones!"
The townsfolk laughed in perfect, rehearsed unison, their eyes never quite blinking.
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Laughter wasn't just a habit—it was a rule. The town had three ironclad laws:
1. Never cry where someone can see you.
2. Never open your curtains at night.
3. Never read from the back of the Joke Book.
The townspeople whispered stories about the "Bluebell Day" festival—the one day when the children told the Closing Joke to seal the town's safety for another year. Mira had waited all year to be chosen to tell it.
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On Bluebell Day, the town square was a sea of yellow and smiles. Mira stood at the center, heart pounding, Joke Book open in her hands.
"What do you call a skeleton who won't fight?" she asked.
The crowd held their breath.
"A lazybone!" she laughed.
The laughter erupted like a wave—perfect, endless, but hollow. The bell tower chimed with a giggle that rippled through the air. Mira smiled proudly, but then she noticed something strange.
The pages of her Joke Book flipped on their own. A new joke appeared at the back, written in shaky handwriting she didn't recognize:
"What did the little girl say after the sun stopped rising?"
"Nothing. Her mouth was full of teeth that weren't hers."
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A cold shiver ran down Mira's spine.
She glanced at the crowd. Their smiles had grown too wide. Their eyes stopped blinking. They were frozen — their faces carved in smiles that didn't reach their eyes.
The bell laughed again. The sunflowers around the square twisted their faces toward her, their petals like jagged teeth.
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That night, Mira couldn't sleep. She heard scratching behind her closet door. The Joke Book whispered from her bedside.
She opened it. New jokes spilled onto the pages:
"Why do we laugh?"
"So the Thing underneath forgets we can scream."
"Where do the children go when they vanish?"
"Back inside the joke."
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The next morning, her best friend Ella was gone. No one spoke of her. Her desk was empty, and her parents' windows bloomed with sunflowers growing through the glass.
Mira asked the teacher. "Where's Ella?"
Miss Petal smiled a smile too wide and said, "Who's Ella?"
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Mira knew she had broken the rules. She opened the curtains that night.
The sunflower fields were gone, replaced by a black sea that pulsed like a heartbeat. Something monstrous stirred beneath the earth—something made of limbs and grins stitched from other faces.
It saw her and waved.
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Mira ran to her parents, who stood smiling in the dark.
"Why are you smiling?" she cried.
They only pointed at the Joke Book on the kitchen table.
Mira tried to close it, but it bit her fingers. Blood soaked the red leather, and the book laughed—a sound that echoed from the earth itself.
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In the morning, the town was silent. The laughter had stopped. The sunflowers wilted. Mira stood alone in the square, smiling, holding the Joke Book open for the next reader.
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When strangers find Laughter's End, they hear giggling first. Then a voice, soft and sweet:
"Wanna hear a joke?"
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END