With Love and Regret, From Mamma

(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

You can thank the wonderful artist @hugthedragons for my book cover. Go Check her cover making thread because it's wonderful.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster, And if you gaze long enough into an abyss,  the abyss will gaze back into you.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

                                                                ~In the Beginning~

"There's that feeling again"

Paola couldn't help but roll her eyes at her best friend Catalina, who always felt someone's gaze upon her. This always seemed to be a topic of conversation among the two twelve year old girl's, one that had grown tiresome for Paola who honestly didn't even believe Catalina and simply wanted to go and play. 

The feelings of being watched, the anxieties, the fear all started when Catalina had turned ten, her parents had decided to take her on a trip anywhere she wanted to go. Catalina ever the romantic had dreamed of visiting Verona Italy, the city of love. Of course Catalina and Paola who had spent practically everyday of their lives since birth together could not be away from each other for a whole month, what would they do alone and without the other? The two girls didn't have to plead or beg much to get Paola and her family to travel to Italy to. 

The first week was perfect, followed by another week of Bliss. The two girls did everything and anything that caught their interests, watching Shakespeare's plays in the park, visiting ancient ruins, writing letters to Juliet, eating exotic foods, nothing was un-graspable for the two.

As they visited the city they heard rumors of an exclusive and secret restaurant that only the richest of people could visit. Naturally the talk of this mysterious restaurant peeked the girls interest and their parents hired investigators to find people who could take them to it. However the secret restaurant was just that, a secret, and the only information they investigators could find was the name, La Bellezza Fuga.

Bitterness surrounded the girl's fourth and final week, neither would smile until they where sitting on La Bellezza Fuga's very best dining chairs. As their trip was coming to an end a man named Nario, who had overheard them speaking of La Bellezza Fuga at a tourist shop he occasionally worked at, approached the the two families, told them he had heard that they where looking for the restaurant and that for a price he could take them there.

The Journey prolonged the families stay in Italy because to reach their destination it would take them five days. The windows were tinted from the outside and inside and so the families could only see their own reflections and nothing else, the ride was long, bumpy and uncomfortable. 

At last their treacherous journey ended and they were greeted with a wondrous beauty they had never seen before, didn't even know could exist. They stood avast what most of been one of God's favorite paintings, trees over a hundred feet tall surrounded the beautiful golden Mansion with arches of trees providing shade and the birds a beautiful harmonious melody. A mountain lay to the east and it cradled a river and the forest that surrounded it- the water flowed into a small pond a few feet from the gigantic mansion.  A beautiful young girl with caramel hair and honey eyes stepped out of the carefully carved gold house, leading the family in and seating them. Food was ordered and the family talked with all the beautiful women workers in the room, which  their was many, ignoring their troubled eyes and strange clothes. 

Catalina ever the curious child went of to explore, Paola at her heels. The two wandered avast the Restaurant opening doors, kicking ones that wouldn't open, running around the antique home. It was fitted in Renaissance styled furniture, with paintings of Dukes, Princesses and Nobleman and woman. The house contained a deep sense of sadness, as if happiness had never shined it's light upon it.

The floor boards creaked and whined under their footsteps and to Catalina it sounded like the weeping of a women. Every time they took a step the floor beneath them howled and whined and the girls quickly became accustomed to the protests of the house, so much so that they almost didn't hear the squeaking of hinges in need of oil or the deliberately slow turn of a knob. 

Catalina slowly turned her head to the left, a door was slightly cracked open, one that she clearly remembered kicking before because it was closed. She remembered the uncontrollable anger that had risen within her because it was the door with the prettiest knob and closed off to her curious mind.  

"Wasn't this door closed before" she asked Paola.

 At the same time that Catalina asked her question, the girl's names were called. Paola just shrugged her shoulders and went running back to the restaurant part of the house.

That was the very first moment that Catalina ever experienced what it was like to be watched. She stood in that hallway for a while; a terrible feeling that something was wrong made the hairs on her arms stand and the back of her neck sweat. Doors to her left and right, portraits, paintings and pictures all around her, the floor a pretty maroon color with walls painted a light gray only enhanced her unsettlement. When her name was called once again she reluctantly shrugged of the eerie feeling and ran to the safety and comfort of her parents. Father and Mother scolded their beloved daughter for not coming sooner after they had called her so many times- Catalina wished she had never gone exploring, never even entered the stupid restaurant or bothered looking for it, all she wanted now was to go home and get rid of the terrible feeling swarming in her gut.

What Catalina did not know was that behind the door with the beautiful knob lay something monstrous, terrible, and cruel- A young man with a mesmerized look on his face- And behind him lay a single potrait, the only one she had missed and the most important. 

The one of her.