5,000 Writing Prompts Written by Bryn Donovan
150 Horror Writing Prompt- Prompt # 95- The Painting looked different the last time she viewed it.
Warning: This story does become graphic and gory. If you are not into that sort of thing, please do not read or read knowing that I have warned you!
My Story
Stacey smiles as she wipes the dust from the wooden frame of her favorite painting; a meadow full of wildflowers with a fairy clothed in a dark blue dress sitting on a large boulder that sits in the middle of the peaceful meadow. The fairy’s bright teal wings spread out behind her while a light breeze brushes her long raven black hair back over her shoulders.
Stacey stares into the fairy’s stunning sapphire eyes, the fairy’s eyes seeming to stare back into her own, smiling comfortingly at her. She takes a cloth with wax on it and wipes the frame to bring out the painting more. She places her cleaning supplies down on the coffee table and takes her shoulder-length red hair down from her elastic because her hair has come free. Once all of her hair is back into a ponytail, Stacey grabs her cleaning supplies and heads off to clean the rest of her small living room of her condo.
As she cleans, she looks back at the painting, feeling like she is being watched. Not seeing anything out of place, she finishes her chores, cleaning the rest of the rooms in her condo. She puts all the cleaning supplies away under the kitchen sink before retreating into her bedroom.
She takes a shower, washing her hair and standing under the warm water for a bit longer than usual. She feels out of place again like she belongs in the painting with the fairy and not in the reality she has created. She has always felt like she shouldn’t be here but in another realm where her favorite mythical creatures, the fairies, are real.
She finally pulls herself out of her daydream and gets out of the shower. Behind her, the bathroom door slowly opens by itself, the creak of the door going unnoticed. Stacey doesn’t notice because she is bent over drying her hair with her blow dryer. She combs her hair out with her brush as the hot air pushes her hair around. She stands back up, pushing her hair back over her shoulders, waving her dryer over her hair and letting the hot air dry it. She stops when she sees the door is open behind her since she knew that she had closed it. So how did it open? Was there someone in her condo?
Stacey puts down the hairdryer on the sink and quickly gets dressed. She unplugs the dryer and holds it in her hands out in front of her so she can use it as a weapon. She steps out of her bathroom, doing her best to keep her breathing quietly. She goes from room to room, checking behind the doors, checking inside the closets, and checking every nook and cranny she could find.
Finding no one, she puts the dryer back into her bathroom and heads back to the living room. She collapses on the couch and sighs heavily, so glad that she hadn’t found anyone. She turns around to look up at the painting; the fairy staring down at her. Stacey stands up and turns to face the painting but it looks the same. Laughing to herself, she sits back down on the couch, flipping on her TV.
She finds a fantasy movie on her Amazon Prime account before she grabs the laptop off of her coffee table. In a few minutes, she is typing away on her computer as she works on her stay at home job as a copywriter. Her fingers fly over the keyboard as she works, her eyes shifting from the screen to the TV, watching the movie from time to time, only half listening to what is going on. She hears some rustling from behind her, the sounds of wings gently beating. She puts the laptop down beside her on the couch and jumps off the couch to see what could be making that strange sound.
Nothing is behind her except for the light tan wall, the back of her beat-up gray couch, and her favorite painting. Her sea gray eyes dart back to the painting. Wasn’t the fairy sitting on the boulder before? Stacy kneels on the couch to look closer at the painting, her eyebrows furring together. The fairy stands beside the boulder, her twinkling eyes now staring down at it instead of looking out of the painting at Stacey. The painting is different! The painting looks different now but how can that be? Paintings can’t move! Paintings don’t move!
Stacey steps back away from her couch and the painting as the fairy lifts her head. Her wings slowly flap open and closed and her long black hair is lifting up in an invisible breeze. Stacey stumbles and falls when the back of her leg hits the coffee table, pain shooting up into her leg. She screams when she falls and hits the ground pretty hard, her teeth rattling in her mouth from the force.
The fair grins down at her, her eyes no longer a mesmerizing sapphire but now a deep crimson red. Behind her in the field, bodies laid piled on one another, hundreds of them, and some even looking like they have been ripped to shreds.
Stacey covers her mouth, feeling her stomach churn at the gore behind the fairy. The lights flicker around her and her TV changes channels all on its own; the remote sliding off of the coffee table and banging onto the ground. Her laptop launches itself off of the couch and breaks on the ground, causing her to jump and turn where she still lies on the ground to see the laptop screen cracked and flickering beyond repair, her words now hidden behind them.
She scrambles to her feet, moving away from the horrific painting to see the rest of her living room coming to life. Stacey runs for her bedroom, slams the door shut, pushing the lock on it, and hides in her closet. She pushes herself to the back of the closet, letting her hanging clothes fall over her and hide her from the closet door.
In the distance, she can hear the TV turn itself off and lights turning off by popping and shattering to the ground. She hears something strange over the popping of her light bulbs, the same sound she had heard in the living room, the sounds of fluttering wings beating quickly in the air. Has the fairy left painting?
Stacey covers her ears as the fluttering gets closer to her bedroom door, the sound almost deafening. The handle shakes violently for a few moments then grows still; the wings beating angrily then grows quiet, her condo now hushed. She doesn’t dare move, too shaken from the strange experience and afraid that if she moves, the evil fairy will get her.
Stacey feels her pockets for her phone but remembers that she had taken it out when she had sat down on the couch earlier and it is now sitting on the coffee table. She curses under her breath at herself for not having grabbed it before but fear had taken over and here she sits with no way of contacting anyone or checking the time.
The condo grows still and a bit chilly as Stacey stays in the closet waiting for a sign that it is safe to move again. Finally, what seems like hours, her need to use the restroom forces her to leave the safety of the closet. She climbs out of the closet and runs to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She listens for any movement for a second longer before she uses the toilet.
After flushing and washing her hands, Stacey unlocks the door as quietly as she can, reentering her bedroom, her eyes darting around. She walks over to the bedroom door and leans her ear against it, listening for any kind of movement. She glances at her clock beside the bed to see that the day is already ending. How long has she been hiding in the closet?
Her stomach angrily, yells at her as somehow she has missed lunch. Unlocking the door, Stacey slowly opens the door and peers through the crack to look down the dark empty hallway. Nothing moves in the darkness so she opens the door all the way and slowly walks towards the living room.
Stacey flips on the lights as she walks, chasing away the darkness and taking away any places where demons could use for hiding. She steps into the living room, her eyes scanning the room once the light illuminates it. Her TV is off, her phone sits on the table, and her laptop still lies on the ground, the TV remote sitting not too far from the shattered screen.
She had hopes that everything had just been an awful dream but she hadn’t remembered falling asleep and the broken laptop proves to her that it had happened. Stacey stops in front of the coffee table and grabs her cell phone. She quickly dials her best friend to ask her to come to spend the rest of the day with her. She listens to the phone ring, tapping her foot impatiently when she hears a low giggle from behind her.
“Hello, Stacey.”
Stacey spins around to see the enchanting fairy standing behind her with a cruel smile on her ruby red lips. Her wings open and close slowly behind her as she takes a step towards Stacey, her dress swaying around her ankles and her bare feet silent on the rug. Stacey screams, dropping her phone on the floor and lifts her hands up to try to fend off the mad fairy.
Four days later, the front door to the condo opens and a tall brunette woman walks in, her worried glass green eyes darting around the front room. The police have already gone through the condo the day before looking for Stacey but had come up empty-handed.
All that they had found was a broken laptop and Stacey’s phone sitting on the ground dead but they had charged it and found out that Stacey had called her before she disappeared. They called her and asked her questions but she couldn’t answer them so she decided to go to the condo herself to see if she can find any information about Stacey and about her strange disappearance.
Stacey’s friend stops walking as soon as she is in front of the couch, the same couch she had helped Stacey pick out 5 years ago. She sighs heavily as she looks around the room, her eyes scanning the ground for any clues like blood or signs of a struggle. She crosses her arms over her chest, tapping her finger on her arm.
“Julia…”
The woman turns as she hears her name being whispered and sees the beautiful painting that Stacey loved. She walks closer, staring at the enchanting fairy as she sits on the boulder in the middle of a beautiful meadow of colorful wildflowers.
Julia smiles, “Well, I don’t think Stacey would want you to be sold off to a stranger. I guess you will have to come home with me.”
She gently takes a hold of the frame, lifting the painting from its perch on a metal hook. She carefully carries it out of the lifeless condo and heads back to where her car sits in the parking area beside Stacey’s abandoned car. She slips the painting carefully into the back of her small red Subaru WRX, taking time to make sure that it won’t slide around and get ruined in the drive back to her little beach house.
As she drives the few miles home, she glances back at the painting and feels happy that she had something of Stacey’s. She won’t give up looking for her friend but at least she has something that belonged to her friend. Returning her eyes to the road, she misses the fairy’s eyes turn crimson red, and her sweet smile melt into an evil grin. Laying on the ground at her feet lays a bloody mess with Stacey’s body right in the middle of it, torn to pieces.