The Origin of Laughing Jill

## The Origin of Laughing Jill by SabrinaNightmaren

Let me tell you a story, not a bedtime story but a genuine story.

This is the story of Laughing Jill and Mary and every word is true. Mary was a lonely child, that was an understatement for a city child.

Even the rich children had lots of friends. Maybe it was because her dad was an entrepreneur and designed most of the industry for 19th century Glasgow, Scotland. Her dad was crazy, another understatement. Mary was a quiet girl, at the school she attended, she was a high achiever due to her parents' high expectations of her, so she was made to study as much as possible. One Christmas she was showered with expensive presents as usual, but she didn't want another pony to add to her five already or another expensive dress. She wanted something simple like a Jack in the box. Or a friend. Yes, that was what she wanted, what she truly wanted. A friend.

She walked upstairs after thanking the servants with a fake smile and walked to her room, it was the way her parents thought they could buy her happiness. A large for poster bed, with velvet curtains, giant fluffy pillows, a walk in wardrobe and a fluffy tiger fur rug. Mary knew there was something odd when she walked in, she saw a small box on her bed, it was painted bright colors on each side. It had a little crank on the pink side. On the opposite side, the blue side, there was a carved note, it said; merry Christmas Mary. Have a Laughing-Jill-in-The-Box. That was weird, Mary thought that there were only ever jack in the boxes never mind laughing ones. But for curiosity's sake she sat cross legged on her bed and started turning the crank as pop goes the weasel plays. But it sounds like a voice was getting louder as she turned it.

*Round n' round the mulberry bush* *The monkey chased the weasel* *The monkey thought t'was all in good fun* **POP!**

A loud pop sounds as when the thing was supposed to sound there was a cloud of dust. Mary thought it was just a prank until she saw her. It was a girl who looked in her mid teens, with long magenta hair that fell to her waist, she wore a long dress that puffed out naturally, she was so colorful, she had panels of every color over her except for the white lace on her chest and the bandages covering her stomach. "Ah its so good to get put of there" she says in a soft voice before looking around to face Mary and starts giggling "sorry sweetie I'm Laughing Jill your new best friend!" she smiles sweetly at Mary with big purple eyes as Mary saw her pointed nose with a colorful cone on the end of it. "Ummmm. Hi Jill I'm Mary." Mary stutters shyly. "I know that I know everything about you, I am designed to be your friend, I like what you like, love what you love, and hate what you hate." Jill smiles climbing onto the covering sheet of the bed and laying down giggling.

"Ok so how is this possible?" Mary asks. Curious. Jill stops giggling and hangs her head over the side. "Never EVER question good things because they'll always make you feel bad!" Jill says before grabbing the frame and rolling off so she was hanging onto the frame before landing lightly on the floor as if she weighed nothing. "Why?" Mary asked before having a piece of hard candy thrown at her gently. "What did I just say?" Jill asks before putting a piece of candy in her mouth smiling. "Don't question it?" Mary asks shyly. "Exactly. Mary get dressed and we can play some games" Jill says jumping down onto the bed and swinging her legs up to reveal a pair of kneehigh boots. "That's unladylike Jill!" Mary says shocked before walking over to her closet. "Where I come from we can do whatever we want" Jill says as Mary gets changed. "We can eat however much candy we want ride whatever animal we want and so much more!" Jill stands up stretching before she asks "do you want to play in the snow?" "My mum and dad say that its dangerous" Mary says shyly. "Its the most awesome thing to do, wrap up in warm clothes and meet me downstairs" Jill giggles before disappearing. "Mary put on her warmest clothes before walking out to the garden where Jill was waiting with a clump of snow in her hand

THUD!

The snowball hit the wall next to Mary giving her a fright due to the moving snowball that just missed her face. "C'mon Mary have some fun!" Jill says laughing while scooping up more snow and throwing it at a servant, hitting him in the face. "But its not right Jill" Mary says before following the colorful clown girl. "What? having fun?" Jill says confused. "I don't like it!" Mary complains. "You do like it Mary! That's why I'm doing it. You really want to join me but your afraid of getting in trouble." Jill says, tossing a snowball between her hands. "I don't" Mary says again. "Then why is there a snowball in your hands?" Jill says looking at Mary as a snowball appears in the little girl's hands. "Give it your best shot!" Jill taunts before dancing away through the statues in the garden.

Mary throws it hitting a servant straight in the face as Jill hides behind them. "Miss that is outrageous!" the servant says scowling at Mary. "But Laughing Jill dared me to do it!" Mary complains pointing at Jill. "Who is Laughing Jill?" the servant asks angrily, moving the hair out of his face. "She's my friend look behind you!" Mary shouts frustrated, and about to cry. The servant turns around as Jill touches his jaw, making him shiver. "There is no one here" he says looking around but he can't see Jill. "Miss you are going back to your room." Mary was taken back to her room by the servant, Jill sneaking up behind the servant as he walks in after Mary and puts a snowball down his shirt, making him squirm. Jill starts laughing and Mary giggles, making the servant even angrier.

This went on for years. Jill and Mary would play every day having fun and getting into trouble. Mary was wrong, she enjoyed having fun, playing games and pranks. Her parents thought she was joking around with her imaginary friend until she turned twelve. She was supposed to be a mature soon-to-be teenager. But she still blamed everything on Jill, who was always hiding behind the person who got Mary into trouble until one day...

"Mary!" Mary's dad Henry shouts from his study. "Yes father?" Mary says as she walks in, dragging her feet. Jill following invisible to everyone except Mary. "You need to stop this. Jill isn't real and she never has Ben nor will ever be." Henry says looking down at Mary who hat turned into a rebellious little girl. Mary wouldn't wear as big, fancy dresses that she should. She looks more like a child from the street. "She is real" Mary mutters under her breath. "Stop that Mary. Both me and your mother are worried" Henry is close to shouting as he brushes down his fancy business suit. "Then where is mother? If she cared about me she wouldn't be getting drunk would she?" Mary says getting mad. As Jill sits on the desk, giggling. Jill hasn't aged at all. She sit looks the same as she did when Mary first met her. The only differences were that now she always had a maniac grin on her face, and her colors had faded a bit. Nothing noticeable though.

"Don't say that about your mother" says Henry, now very angry with his rebellious daughter. "I can say what I want its not like she cares about me!" Mary shouts before getting slapped in the face by her furious father. Jill, now very angry, kicks Mary's father square in the back, causing him to lurch forward, loose his balance, and fall to the floor with a THUD! From the floor, and with blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, Henry says "I will not try my own daughter as a witch, but you are going away, to a place where they will teach you that Jill doesn't exist!" Henry shouts struggling to get up as Jill sits on his back, scratching things into the back of his suit. "Make me" Mary says as two nuns walk in, heads bowed. "That's what these women are hired to do" Henry says as Jill punches his back, stunning him as he gasps for breath. "JILL" Mary shouts as the women drag her out of the room, as Mary struggles to escape their grasps. "Mary!" Jill shouts. Everyone, for the first time, hears her. "I'll be looking for you." Jill says silently as her first and only friend is taken away from her.

Jill was already slowly loosing her color. But now she was losing it much faster due to Mary's unhappiness. She couldn't see Mary, but it was Mary's mind that was doing this. Jill tried to leave. But she couldn't. Her box was still here, and it wouldn't allow her to leave the house for more than an hour each week. Jill was going crazy, the servants were finding flipped tables, broken furniture, torn wallpaper. By every single disastrous mess they found there were scraps of dullened fabric, that obviously was once bright and filled with color. As Jill's sanity slowly wore away, her dress began to remake itself. Panel by panel, strip by strip. Mary's mother stopped drinking about a week after Mary was taken away. She had started crying about how wrong they were. Jill joined her in these breakdowns. But she never cried like Mary's mother did. Jill never cried. Though she did miss Mary ever so much.

Mary wasn't doing any better, the nuns were drilling it into her head that Jill was a demon, that Jill was evil, that she should never converse with Jill or speak of her ever again. Mary was pretending to respond to the treatment when in reality she hated every second of it. She hated ever single one of them and wished that they would all just go die. She had her own room. And with that privilege she began carving things into the walls. On the door there was, if there truly is a god, he will beg for my forgiveness.

After a year of this Mary was allowed to see her family again. At her own house. Mary wasn't interested in seeing her family again though. The only person she wanted to see... was Jill. Mary was escorted into her house by the nuns, where her family was waiting for her. Everyone was there, even the servants. Everyone... except Jill.

"I see you gave up believing in her Mary!" Henry says happily. He continued praising her until he saw a tall figure walk into the room evilly giggling. Everyone turned to see the source of the horrifying noise. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary" Jill giggles as everyone looks at her for the first time ever. Jill was much taller now, that was her main feature. Her hair was longer, and black. It fell in uneven strands around her knees. Her once colorful cone nose was now black and white. Her eyes were insane. The pupil had become inhumanely small, and where its original boundaries were, there was a black line. Separating the now two different shades of purple in her once kind, loving, yet mischievous eyes. Though the scary thing that had changed. Was her dress.

The once bright and colorful dress was now black and white. It was shredded at the bottom, and had gotten much shorter. Mary's once colorful friend, was now monochrome. "Jill what happened?" Mary asks after a moment of silence. Suddenly the room was filled with hysterical, maniac laughter.

"You really want to know?" Jill asks, walking over to Henry. Towering over his compared small frame. "When this bitch sent you away, it drove me insane!" Jill the. Whispered in his ear, "I will do the same thing to all of you" Jill stood up straight again, and looked directly at Mary "do you remember how you were before you met me? That's how I was. Just probably worse. Lonely, depressed, angry, so sad that I couldn't even eat candy." Jill flicks her arm and candy slides out of her sleeve. "Mary say the word and we will be together forever. With none of these idiots to keep us apart."

"Jill I ca-"BANG!

Mary falls to the floor as Jill feels something pass through her body. The clown turns around to see Mary's mother there, with a gun in her hands. Mary's death made what little bit of Jill's sanity was left: snap. In another room the Jack-in-the-box from all those years ago, burst into a million pieces.

"You're a monster." she says, her brown hair covering her face, "You can't die!"

"To kill me you killed Mary!? Your daughter, YOUR ONLY CHILD!!??" Jill starts laughing, "watch your back you old hag." Jill says running past Mary's mum, sticking out a now claw-like hand towards her, slicing open Mary's mother's dress, and scratching her stomach, still laughing. "Sleep with one eye open honey." Jill threatens before disappearing in thin air.

Later that week Mary's mother was walking through the house, minding her own business, Jill's threat still looming in the back of her mind, when she walks into her living room to meet with an unwelcoming sight. It was the two nuns hanging from the chandler by two ends of one rope. They had their stomachs sliced open with untidy gashes, and fresh blood was dripping from their corpses down onto the floor.

On the wall, written in fresh blood, were the words, "I warned you sweetie. Now, what's that behind you?" Mary's mum stepped back, horrified. And turned around slowly to see a black and white face staring at her. Jill was holding her husband's most recent invention. It was a saw that was designed to cut down trees without needing more than one person. And it was covered in blood.

A high pitched bloodcurdling scream hose through the house as Jill raises up the chainsaw, and brings it down into Mary's mother's stomach, making her cough up blood and fall to her knees. "I warned you honey." Jill says as she pulls the chainsaw out of her stomach.

As Henry walks inside he is greeted with the sight of his wife hanging from the light fitting as well. The writing had changed to, "I warned her, she didn't listen, I warned you and yet here you are. So my question remains the same, what's that behind you?"

Henry turns around to hear the door open and soft singing "Mary, Mary, dead just maybe, how does your tombstone show? With moss that swells and snow that fills the holes?" Jill walks in slowly swinging the saw in her hand and giggling. "What do you want demon?" Henry asks, grabbing one of the tools to stoke the fire from its holder, and holding it threateningly at Jill.

"Isn't it obvious?" Jill says, paying no mind to his sketchy weapon. "Revenge. You killed my friend, my only friend. YOUR OWN. DAMN. DAUGHTER!!" Jill shouts revving up the saw. "An eye for an eye. A life..."Jill shoves the saw through his stomach, laughing. "For a life!"

"Yo*u witch*!" Henry hisses.

"Nothing new here." Jill says, blandly shoving the chainsaw up through slicing through his ribs.

Jill is still out there. Her story has been replaced with another but the story still remains; what's that behind you?