Smiling

He was always laughing. No matter what he did, there was always that hint of a smile dancing around his face, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. With every subtle joke he played on you, every comic prank, the gleam would grow until it was no longer a gleam but a hint and then an outburst of laughter, both infectious and hateful to your ears. You hated him for it. He would never be serious, never sober. You could be crying, sobbing, hysterical and he would just stand there with his enigmatic, charming, hateful smile on his face. I never saw anything that could wipe it off. Mercurial, solid, so self-confident that you wanted to smack him, flitting from person to person, always with that ghost of a smile on his face. You always wondered if he took you seriously, or if he was laughing at you from behind his smile. And then he would smile at you, differently, a long, slow smile that spread across his face and you knew it was as serious as he had ever been in his life, and you discovered that you liked him after all, and the world stopped on his smiling as he smiled, just for you. Legend has it that he was smiling as he died. I believe it. Death would not be a bogey monster to him, just another adventure for him to conquer, for him to explore. And he would be laughing as he did it.