Laughing Outside Crying Inside Novels & Stories

He threw his head back and let out a hysterical laugh at the gray sky, tears and snot streaming down his face, laughing until it felt like his insides were being torn apart. He staggered back to the basement apartment like a soulless corpse

I could imagine blood staining my hands. I shoved it down, a startled gasp on my lips. Shaking my head as tears pricked my eyes. I hated my body sometimes. If I was sad, I cried. Happy…I cried. Even if I was angry and all I wanted to do was spew curses…all I could do was cry. I walked fast away from the table, but I could hear them laugh. "Why'd you do that? Girl's a real butterface." Another guy chuckled. "But that ass though."

Tears burn unexpectedly at the back of my eyes. "I don't need you," I choke. 'You do. You always do,' The voices rise until they're all I can hear. A choked sound punches out of me...and then I'm laughing. It bursts out of my chest, echoing off the bathroom walls. My shoulders shake with it, my head dropping forward as I clutch the sink. It doesn't sound or feel sane. Tears roll down my face, mixing with the water still dripping from my chin. I laugh harder.

"I am." The laughter shifts. It doesn't stop but it changes — it becomes something wetter, the way weather changes, and I realize I'm also crying, which I didn't notice beginning, and I am laughing and crying simultaneously at my kitchen table at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday, and my mother is watching me with the expression of someone witnessing an inconvenience. "You know what," I say. My voice is strange. Layered. The laughter and the crying and underneath them something that is very quiet and very, very done. "Take it."

She had stopped crying but felt feeble and stared at herself in the mirror. She did not have the right to cry, as she was the one who pushed him away. She stared through the mirror, feeling numb after the pain passed. With no sensation left, she stood quietly and chuckled. Sometimes, laughter is more despairing and more hollow than crying. If a person cries, it means that person is still feeling the pain. But when the pain is over and laughter sets in, it could mean something worse. The knuckles of the hands holding the steering wheel turned white, and blue veins popped up on his forehead as Mark clenched his jaws tightly. He hit the steering wheel with his fist and made a ton of noise.

Door’s unlocked so bring that mouth I miss so much. My breath slipped out of me in a soft, pathetic sound and I dropped the phone onto the blanket as if it burned me. My heart cracked so loudly I could almost hear it. And then… something strange happened. I started laughing. Who in their right mind would laugh right now? Oh, right. Me, apparently. “Oh my God,” I choked out, laughing harder. But tears started spilling down my face at the same fucking time. Talk about perfect timing. I probably sat like that for minutes — laughing and crying, crying and laughing — until the laughter faded and only the tears remained.

His gaze returned to me, disappointment clear and heavy. “I’ll make her apologize.” I lay sprawled on the cold deck, my body barely responding to my own will. Small stones scraped against my skin, one skidding dangerously close to my eye. Around us, people moved quickly—around her instead. “It’s okay, don’t cry.” “We all know you didn’t mean anything by it.” “She’s clearly overreacting.” “Adrian, seriously, how did you even put up with this?” Someone let out an awkward laugh. “She really knows how to turn nothing into a spectacle.”

I feel tears sting so badly in my eyes, threatening to fall out… I want to cry so bad… I want to feel the tears dripping out… but… I wallow in it… After what finally seems like minutes—if my thoughts aren’t wandering—I hear another voice outside… before the door finally opens, and then someone fumbling with the lock outside… it creaks open…

It cracked out of me high and ridiculous and I clapped my good hand over my mouth and it kept coming—a wet helpless hiccup of a laugh—and my eyes were spilling at the same time and I could not stop either one. Charlie froze halfway across the room. “Did I—” he started. “No,” I said, behind my hand. “No, you didn’t—” I was crying. I was laughing. I did not know which one I was doing. They were watching me with five identical alarmed faces and that made it worse, and I laughed again into my palm and a tear ran into the bandage at my wrist. “I am sorry,” I gasped. “I do not know why I am—”