Prologue:

I had lived in fear for as long as I could remember.

My life is different than most other teenagers, though no one would notice, or care, because I put on a pretty convincing show outside my prison. My name's Evangeline Masters and if you ever call me by my first name, I will cringe at the ugliness that it is. It was great for my grandmother's grandmother, but not me. I prefer to be called Eve. Not that anyone would know that, seeing no one really cares about me at all. I am invisible to most eyes and I want it to stay like that.

For one, I've learned to accept my nonexistence in their eyes. It hurts less than the bruises at least. Yeah, that's right. Bruises. And cuts, scrapes, and scars. I'll tell you about it and only because it has a lot to do with the real story. So save your pity for someone who actually needs it.

They dominate and plague my body like an illness I can never get rid of. Like my own up close and personal Black Death. My scars are the ravenous shadows of wounds I once bore on the expanse of my body. Years and years' worth of old damage done unto me, I hide under layers upon layers of clothes in hopes that they will all somehow disappear. That the ugly would lift away. That my canvas would be wiped clean of the horrid tears and distortions underneath my fabric.

Then I guess it would only leave a new slate for my father. So he could paint me black, blue, and red, all over, and over, and over again.

But you wouldn't expect Lloyd Masters, owner of virtually all corporate surf shops on the west coast of the country, community activist, and your typical present-day aristocrat living in a nice gigantic house with four shiny and expensive cars out front, to be the criminal you read about in your spruced up news articles. This man is real. This man is a monster.

And like I said, I have been living in fear for as long as I could remember.

And that is exactly what all monsters feed on.

Now, the real story? Well that's a real elmer joke right there. I know you won't believe me and I honestly don't expect you to. But I believe it's a story worth telling and it's very important to me, so pull up a chair amigo because it's gonna be a doozy.