Paint Me Pretty By Ey3cann8bal198

“The mask doesn’t hide the pain—it makes it beautiful.”

I. Before the Paint

Landon “Lanny” Merrick was never quite right—but not in the way the town liked to whisper. He wasn’t violent. He didn’t scream at the moon or torture animals or light fires like those late-night YouTube horror lists suggest. Lanny was quiet. Gentle. Too gentle for the rust-rot town of Durnsville, where boys were expected to hunt deer before they could shave.

He grew up in a small gray house with water-stained walls and a single mother who rarely left bed. His father, a soldier, died overseas when Lanny was six. After that, his mother stopped talking much—except to warn him about “the voices in the walls.” Some nights, he heard her whispering to the dark, then laughing like someone told her a joke only she understood.

By thirteen, Lanny spent most of his time alone. His room was filled with sketchbooks—hundreds of faces, eyes too wide, smiles too tight. He had a fascination with emotion, but didn’t seem to understand how to show it. His own expression was always blank, distant. But his drawings screamed.

Kids at school called him *Lanny the Softie.* He never fought back.

The only class he cared about was art. There, he excelled—portraits that made teachers uncomfortable, self-portraits that changed week to week. Sometimes they showed him grinning with sharp teeth. Other times, he had no face at all.

It got worse when he turned fifteen.

He started wearing makeup. Thick black lines under his eyes. White powder that made his skin look like porcelain. A smile painted up to his ears—huge, grotesque, and broken.

He said it made him feel “visible.”

The counselor tried reaching out. Said Lanny might be struggling with delusions. Early schizophrenia. Suggested hospitalization. But by the time the paperwork went through, Lanny was already gone.

And so was his mother.


II. A Room Painted in Silence

Police were called when the mailman reported a rancid smell and swarms of flies. What they found inside 13 Vickers Street was like a stage for some twisted art installation.

Every mirror in the house was cracked.

Every wall was smeared with charcoal drawings—faces screaming, bleeding, melting into each other. And in the upstairs hallway, lit only by flickering candles, was a message scrawled in dripping black paint:

“SHE COULDN’T SEE ME. NOW SHE SEES.”

His mother was found in the bathtub. Her face had been covered in white makeup. Her mouth torn into a massive smile. Her eyes painted shut.

No fingerprints. No signs of forced entry. Just a trail of black footprints leading out the back door, into the woods behind the house.

They never found Lanny.

The case went cold. Until kids started whispering about **Pretty Lanny.

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III. The Forest Game

Sometimes when people visit the forest they hear “THE MASK MAKES ME PRETTY. LET ME MAKE YOU PRETTY TOO.” after hearing this people would start getting very paranoid and seeing things but police refused to do anything

Durnsville has one rule now: **Don’t go into Cradle Woods after dark.

The older kids dare each other to do it. Bring a flashlight, a cracked mirror, and black eyeliner. Stand in the old clearing behind the Merrick house—what used to be a backyard before nature swallowed it—and whisper:

“Pretty Lanny, pretty face, Show me where you left no trace.”

If the wind answers, if your mirror fogs, if you see someone just out of view—turn off your light and run. Because if he likes your face, he might follow you home. And if he *doesn’t*?

He’ll help you “fix” it.