The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Painted
by A.F. Stewart

I am what you made me.

Here in the darkness, constraining me with these masks, smearing on the pretty paint to hide my flaws, compelling my cheerful smiles. You created this disguise, my crimson clown face that hid who I am. But those stains of scarlet are scars, running deep beneath the flesh, echoes of all the damage, all the lies I believed.

Remnants of my defective inner child.

I wept for her, but no longer.

Now I am free.

For no one questioned what happens when the mask breaks.

No one saw the monster growing underneath.

I take the lipstick and smear the red over your dead lips, slashing the red in lines across your unseeing eyes, and giving you a red tip to your nose. You wear the mask now. You are the clown.

The last thing I do is pull the scissors out of your throat.

After all, there are other people to kill.

.

Fiction © Copyright A.F. Stewart
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

 

More from A.F. Stewart:

Visions and Nightmares

Tragedy spares no one… and takes no prisoners.
In the twilight shadows, secrets are revealed past the whispers of madness.

Wander into the realm of the old gods with Elenora, where humanity and marriage are a prison.
Step through a looking glass of dark horrors with an Alice you never knew.
Join with Zenna to seek the truth as her death by magic grows closer.
Journey with Olivia as she crosses paths with a monster of the forest and runs for her life.
Watch Isobel summon the faerie to solve her problem of an unwanted husband.
Shiver as Doctor Killbride experiments with corpses to create life from death.
All that and more await within the pages.

Ten stories. Ten women.
Who will survive? Who will fall? And who will succumb to their inner evil?
Find out in Visions and Nightmares.

Warning: This book contains disturbing scenes that may be upsetting to some readers.

Available on Amazon!