Each piece of art will be paired with a short story of 200-1000 words. The art will be at the bottom of the chapter.
The prompt list I'm using can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUSzT18LbFp/?utm_medium=share_sheet
No one really knows how my grandfather died. The first I heard, it was from natural causes, but a cousin of mine said that was just because they couldn't find any actual cause of death. Which was weird, considering he was found in his office, bleeding from his eyes and ears.
My grandfather was a good man. We got along, mostly because I was shy, curious kid, and he was an old man who could talk about his travels for hours. He had the most stereotypical office too, full of oaken bookshelves cluttered with memorabilia of places he'd visited. I could just point at something random, and he'd have hours of stories just about that one knickknack.
One day, I finally asked him about the mask.
It resided on one of the top shelves of his bookcase, sandwiched between old encyclopedias and atlases. It was porcelain, and shaped to resemble a female face, but two sharp horns protruded from the top. A red painted pattern ran down the cheeks from the eyes like tears.
I must have been around twelve at the time, so I don't remember all of the details of the story that came with the mask, but to my best memory, he had picked it up somewhere in Europe.
He'd been at a flea market, just looking around, when he found a stall that sold all kinds of masks. Theatre masks, Halloween costumes, masks that looked to be from all over the world, from Africa to Japan. The porcelain mask had caught his eye, mostly because it looked quite old compared to most of the others.
He asked the salesman where it had come from. The salesman answered that he didn't know, but had picked it up at a thrift shop because it seemed valuable. My grandfather, though frustrated with the lack of an answer, bought it anyway. I remember he described it as "calling to him."
For years, he'd said, he'd been looking for the answer as to the origin of the mask. He looked into masks from all over the world and all throughout time, but nothing seemed to quite match up.
When I asked him if he'd ever worn it, his eyes looked far away for a second. He then said something I would never forget.
"No. It wants to be worn. I don't trust that."
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