The Moonflower Hotel

For the next few days, Victor wandered around the domain. It was weird because winter passed and it got pretty warm. It smelled really strange, as well. The sun was shining brightly on the sky yet it still felt chilly but that wasn’t the problem; the problem was that it smelled like the ground was burning.

Victor was bound to get lost at some point and he did. He walked into the forest with the thought of finding the lake and he remembered the way but he still got lost somehow. The trees were tall and they mysteriously bloomed over the night. The man touched the trunk of a tree and frowned; it felt very soft and malleable. He looked for some kind of insects but there were none.

As he walked deeper into the forest he realized the grass was the one giving off that burning smell. He tore a blade of grass and pulled it under his nose but cringed in disgust and threw it away before he left.

When he walked inside the hotel, Guillermo noticed the disgusted expression on Victor’s face and couldn’t help himself but speak.

“Is there something wrong?” The receptionist asked his expression pretty much the same.

Victor glanced at the young man over his shoulder and shook his head. He hurried up the stairs yet when he passed the mirror, he slowed down.

Guillermo frowned. It’s been such a long time since someone got entranced by the hotel. Victor Abbot was an innocent victim; he wasn’t like the rest.

“He’s just a fad. She’s going to play with him for a while and get rid of him when she gets bored.” He mumbled under his breath.

Guillermo glanced over his shoulder, just in case someone heard him. No one was close enough but he caught sight of Abel’s cold blue eyes from the restaurant.

Aida was staring at the artwork on the third floor. The man in the painting was smiling happily while holding his wife’s hand. Aida’s eyes scanned the image to the smallest and most refined line but her favorite part was the woman. Her green eyes were beautiful and held nothing evil; she was an angel that came on Earth to bring joy. She was sure she was never going to meet that angel. It was too far for her to grasp, too bright for her to look at. It was just impossible.

“Excuse me?”

The manly tone wasn’t familiar. She blinked before she turned her head to the new man. She recognized him as a new guest. No, it wasn’t just a guest.

“I know you said it’s all right if I don’t pay my stay here but I thought about it and I can’t accept that. Let me at least repay you in some way.” His facial expression was easy to read because he was sincere and blunt.

“In time, John. All the right things happen at the right moment. Your moment is not here yet.” The beautiful woman answered in the most polite tone John has ever heard.

Feeling his throat sore and having nothing else to address to her, John retreated. He was on the way back to his room when something caught his eye. It was a mirror hung opposite a portrait. He walked closer and stared at his reflection before his eyes moved on the image in the back, leaning closer so he could satisfy his curiosity. John almost hit his head against the mirror but it was worth it because he saw the face of the man in the portrait shift. He swore he saw him frown as well so he turned around quickly, but nothing seemed out of order. The new guest looked back into the mirror and saw the face of the man glaring at him. In one fast movement, his face came out of the mirror and snarled at the guest. The young man screamed and fell back, his heart beating terribly fast and legs trembling in fear.

“What was that?” He asked himself.

Downstairs, Victor was standing at the bar, drinking glass after glass of scotch. The one giving the alcohol to him was none other than Abel whose main purpose was to talk as little as possible with the man he hated.

“This hotel is weird.”

Abel heard Victor mumble between drinks.

The young man raised an eyebrow and leaned against the bar. He didn’t even think about responding to him. Once Victor raised his head, Abel could see the light fading slowly from his blue eyes.

“Did your new guest arrive? I remember you said something about it.”

“He arrived,” Abel responded in his usual cold voice. His answers were usually one or two syllables so it surprised Victor when Abel opened his mouth to say more. “He is wandering the hotel on his own. You may meet him.”

For some reason, it sounded a lot like Abel was giving him the approval to meet that guest. Besides, Victor was sure he didn’t know whoever the new guest was; it was a guy from what he understood but that was all.

“Hey, kid! Pour me anything this guy is drinking but make it double!”

Abel eyed the new person before he scowled and left.

Victor was dumbstruck. He was sure he heard the voice of a friend and colleague. When the man sat next to him, Victor’s head turned to the opposite side. For some reason, he didn’t want to assure himself that he was right.

Abel came fast with the drink and placed it in front of the new man. He didn’t leave, like a normal bartender, he remained there like a statue.

“Ah, this hotel is really high quality,” The man continued. “Though it’s low profile.” He added quickly in a low murmur.

His attention moved on Victor and the older man could feel the eyes on his head.

“Is the hotel treating you the best too?” Victor nodded. “Good. It feels like it procures everything you need; like magic.”

Abel raised an eyebrow and leaned forward.

“How did you get here?” Victor asked.

The man raised an eyebrow and placed his hand on his shoulder. Victor tensed.

“You remind me of a friend. He’s usually the one who answers questions with other questions. Smartass bastard. Always the intellectual but he is a great architect.”

Victor couldn’t help but smile a bit.

John was a man with pride and didn’t linger on the stranger for long. He straightened his back and glanced over his shoulder, noticing someone entering and sitting at the far table, near the window. Unlike Victor, he felt like sharing his opinion out loudly.

“That woman right there, she looks so lonely,” John mumbled.

Victor took a peek over his shoulder and realized the stranger was talking about Amelia. He suddenly started to remember the woman from the portrait. She and Amelia were identical but wore different dresses.

“She looks like she’s fading.” John continued.

Victor frowned and turned his attention back on his glass of alcohol. When John made a sign to Abel to bring him another drink, he saw Victor’s profile. That was enough for him to recognize his former colleague.

“Victor?!” The surprise was only on John’s side. Victor’s mind was full of questions.

Abel’s watery eyes could see the sudden change in Victor’s behavior. Those orbs were staring at the young man with intensity. He remembered what Guillermo told them, that Victor stopped and looked at the mirror, not at his reflection in it. That only meant he started to figure it out. The last person who did that was Guillermo himself and by the time he realized what the mirror was, the magic sucked the life out of him.

Amelia glanced at the bar and smiled when she saw John jumping on Victor in happiness. Once she felt the cold gaze of those omnipresent cold eyes, her smile dropped and she turned to look on the window. Amelia sighed when she remembered what Victor was.

“A fuss,” She reminded herself. “An offering to the Devil.”

“Victor! My God, how did you get here? No, wait. Where have you been for the past year?!” John asked bewildered. He truthfully didn’t have any hope left to find his colleague.

“Here.” His answer was short but significant.

John’s eyes widened and moved on Abel for a moment before they moved back on Victor. The bohemian soul of Victor Abbot was famous in their business and most architects and building companies weren’t ready to risk their money and reputation for his grand ideas. They got only two projects before Italy and both of them proved to be troublesome.

“Did you close the deal?” Victor asked after a few moments.

John’s eyes widened a bit before he started to laugh nervously.

“Not really, no.” The younger man responded, a bit flustered that he got to tell Victor that. “After that dinner slash business meeting you disappeared and without you, our associates dropped the bargain. Besides, we had to finish it in two years and that was close to impossible.” John sighed and drunk the rest of his glass. “You got us in so much trouble, Victor. I had to pay damages and our little firm went bankrupt. Right now there is some mafia man who said that one of us slept with his wife and-“ John turned to Victor and saw his eyebrows furrow. “Did you?”

Victor didn’t need any explanation and neither did John. The younger man glared at his former friend and launched at him. He punched him quite hard because Victor actually fell. John got up and threw a few more kicks before he got content with the amount of blood on Victor’s face.

“You got hit by your friend?”

After John took his small revenge, he rushed out of the restaurant. Amelia saw the whole episode, just like Abel, but she was clearly less amused by it. Abel couldn’t help but feel happy with how the meeting between John and Victor turned out.

Amelia helped Victor get up and led him into the closest bathroom, which happened to be the staff bathroom. She grabbed his face and scanned it with a frown.

“Is that really a friend?” She asked again.

“Yes. I guess I deserved it. It seems some bad men went after him because of me.” He explained calmly.

“What did you do so badly for him to punch you?” Amelia started to take care of his bleeding lip and nose.

She knew exactly how to disinfect the bruises without hurting him much. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it lightly, making Amelia look into his eyes and smile.

“I am a bad man, Amelia.” He recognized.

She didn’t believe him because he didn’t look like someone who would hurt someone.

“I’ve been searching for Aphrodite my entire life.”

Amelia raised an eyebrow since she didn’t really know who that was and what had to do with him.

“Aphrodite is the Goddess of Beauty. I’m drawn to beauty and beauty is drawn to me.”

“That sounds so cheesy.” Amelia laughed. “So, what did you do? Cheat?”

“No. I had relationships with married women. I made them cheat on their husbands without regret and without thinking how their husbands would feel afterward.”

Victor was being sincere for the first time in his life and it was all because Amelia was pretty much the only woman who could match up to that beauty.

“I did too. I made men cheat on their wives.” She stated in a normal tone like it was nothing.

“You? I don’t think so. Maybe you got forced into doing it but your soul is so naïve and beautiful.” He pulled her closer and touched her nose with his. “Nothing you have done will make me see you in a bad light.”

His words cut deep in Amelia’s heart. There he was, the man she’s been longing to meet her entire life, a charmer and he seemed interested enough to become loyal for her. She loved the butterflies and small faint blush that he would arise in her cheeks. She was falling in love bit by bit with a lie.

“I’m not real, Victor. You need someone who can give you real love and affection. You need someone real.”

“But real is not perfect. You are.”

She was left speechless. He wasn’t getting the point in her sentence. The subject wasn’t about real or fake beauty, it was about real or fake people.

She leaned back and sighed. Amelia couldn’t believe how oblivious that man was and how superficial he was, in some ways.

“You say that my soul is beautiful but you can’t see my soul. You only see what I show you and that’s how you’ve been living your whole life.” She started in a scolding tone.

Victor was taken aback by how fast her expression changed.

“I was a whore for my whole life. My job is to seduce men, become their pretty sin and lie. That’s who I am. My soul has been rotting in this hotel for as long as I can recall and no one ever left.” She whispered the last sentence before she left him alone.

Once she got in her room, she couldn’t help but regret everything she said. It was all true but it hurt a lot to recognize her true self to someone who would have loved her anyway.

Aida was upstairs, listening to Voix de la Nature while Abel was behind her, looking out the window. Dark clouds were covering the sky slowly and the wind picked up. The forest seemed to understand what was about to happen and was using the upcoming storm as a way of communication. The branches were swaying wildly, hitting each other, making high pitched noises. The music was only complimenting the scenery, covering the tension outside.

Aida had her eyes closed while she was swaying her hand in rhythm with the music. She didn’t seem upset about how Amelia and Evan were subtly trying to make Victor leave the hotel. They were smart enough to know that was impossible. She already targeted him in the moment she saw him hurt, on the street. He was perfect from every visual aspect but once she talked to him, it got even better.

“What do you want me to do with John?” Abel asked while staring ahead with a dead expression. He couldn’t help but admire the scenery.

“Nothing. His soul is not needed, though I could use him to lure Victor into my web.” She responded, her eyes remaining closed and her expression containing that serene appearance.

“He got close to Amelia,” Abel started, glancing at his master from the corner of his eye. She didn’t react at all, if anything, she was content with how things turned out. “Is that part of your plan?”

“No. Amelia is taunting him with her innocent appearance and nothing else,” Aida spoke and opened her eyes. “Use Amelia’s real personality on John. I’m sure she caught his eye already.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” The blue eyes man asked softly.

“It always works, Abel. Trust me.” She chuckled darkly before she closed her eyes and let herself go with the music.

Surprisingly, John was quite a chatty man. At breakfast, the next day, he grabbed Evan while wandering the hotel and dragged him along in the restaurant.

“So, Evan. You’ve been living in this hotel for a while now, haven’t you?” John asked, without the slightest idea what he was getting into.

“I come and go.” The Irish man responded curtly.

“People love this hotel, don’t they? They can’t help it! So much beauty contained in such a large domain. It has everything one desires.” John continued while sipping from his tea from time to time.

The wide smile on his face was definitely different from the glint in his eyes. If Evan didn’t know better, he would have bet John was playing with fire and he was aware that he was going to get burned; he was aiming for that, actually.

“Beauty deceives people and takes their attention from what is truly in front of them,” Evan responded, making the situation even worse.

Since the young man was so keen on learning everything about that hotel, the Irish man might as well give him what he wanted. John was going to die anyway. It was either going to be fast, outside the domain or slow and painful, inside the hotel.

“I know. I considered this vague conception of what beauty really is. I worked with Victor, after all. That guy has been searching for perfection his whole life.”

Now, Evan was curious why Victor was so persuasive about that subject. He might as well get his answers.

“He loves his mother a lot,” Evan started while pouring a glass of wine for himself. John’s eyes glistened at the sight and Evan poured him one glass too.

In the back, sitting calmly at her table, Amelia was watching the two men interact. Victor wasn’t there, which only meant Aida was taking care of him. Her eyes didn’t move from the two men, not even when Abel arrived at her table. He placed something under her tissue, something small and easy to hide

“Take care of it.” The young man mumbled coldly before he left.

When Evan started the mother subject, John started to talk a lot about how much Victor loved his mother, divined her even.

“She used to tell him stories when he was young. I think she read him too many stories with a happy ending. The prince was always coming to the rescue, there was a climax point and he would come at exactly that point in the story in order to save his princess. For a while, I think Victor’s princess was his mother. From his point of view, she was perfect. But with time, his mother grew old and she got sick. She died.” John stated with pity in his voice.

Evan’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe that Victor’s mother died since he was talking about her as if she was alive.

“Yes. I had that expression too when I found out. Victor talks about her in the present not in the past so you can’t figure out that she’s actually dead. Something is wrong upstairs, if you understand me,” John continued, pointing at his head. “He can’t grasp the reality so he reminisces his childhood. He remembers the young woman who was telling him stories based on Greek mythology. She was a history teacher,”

“He told me.” Evan interfered shortly. “But why these certain stories? Why doesn’t he remember something else?”

John shrugged before he gulped down his entire glass of wine. He smiled and leaned a bit over the table.

“He’s been looking for the woman who would be able to take his mother’s place. That’s why he’s never married and cheated on all the girls he ever met.” John whispered like it was some kind of secret.

Evan was taken aback, completely unaware that someone was eavesdropping on their conversation. He couldn’t even look at Victor the same way after he found out of his trauma. His mother died and that triggered something in his head; he was deranged, slightly, but nonetheless deranged. That put him in a different light because finally, Evan could understand why Aida was genuinely interested in him.

Victor Abbot was broken. Just like the rest of them, Victor Abbot was a perfect candidate for the Moonflower Hotel staff. Aida saw it from the moment she laid eyes on him, she saw deep into his soul and saw the sorrow. Perfection was impossible to find in the world, no matter the century.

Victor Abbot was looking for perfection, though. Victor Abbot was searching for death.