daddy knows best

1

Once again, I was by myself in my home. The only faint thing I could hear was the raindrops on my glass in the pitch-blackness. My dad used to leave the house at night, usually around midnight. I would always ask him where he was going and if I could join him because, as you may know, being stuck alone in a house in the countryside isn't the best thing. I needed to distract myself and staying at home by myself didn't work for me. I lost my best friend a year ago, when I was actually round her house. It traumatised me for a long time, and when I finally woke up, she hadn't. I'm a 16-year-old girl named Martha Williams. After my best friend passed away, I relocated from my city to an isolated countryside since school was too much for me and because so many jerks kept asking me if I was okay because of my friend's passing. This seriously fucked me over. I don't think moving to the countryside was the best for my dad as he started acting really weird. You may be asking why I only ever talk about my dad   Well, my dad says that the last time I saw my mother was when I was 3 years old, so I never really got to know her well.

This is when I started to realise that I've had enough of him leaving me alone all the fucking time as I lay in bed one night, staring at my plain white wall. My dad had just yelled from downstairs that he was leaving and would be back in the morning, so I didn't even bother opening my mouth to speak. He left within a second. I watched him leave in his hideous yellow truck from the window. If he was attempting to seduce women and that's why he was leaving the house all the time, that truck was not going to be effective. Okay, fine, I'm sorry. Let's go back to the story. I go downstairs to watch television because staring at a white wall isn't going to be the highlight of my day. When a news report comes up on my screen, I roll my eyes because I find the news to be so boring. However, this was about a mass murderer in my city, I was actually shocked, so maybe this would be the highlight of my day. However, this could be quite good because I've always wanted to identify crimes and solve the cases. Even though I'm a teenager living in the middle of nowhere, you can't undervalue what I can do.

I begin to take this murder seriously and begin to investigate it. I sat there for hours on end learning exactly when, where, and at what time they were slain. Finding it was difficult because, strangely enough, the news doesn't want to say much. I was able to determine that the majority of those murdered was between 3 and 4 am. The evidence for the murder scenes was always around the local pub, and I found it so weird, when I used to live in the city with my dad it was his favourite bar, he would go there all the time, imagine if something happened to him if we still lived in the city. I wouldn't actually ever know what time my dad would come home when he was out, I would be asleep, but I would always wake up to the loud noise of my washer, he would be washing his clothes at like 5 in the morning it was so annoying.

I would follow the news reports throughout the week and take notes, but there was one piece of evidence that made my heart sink: it was claimed that the murderer was seen lurking around the pub 30 minutes before he discovered a victim. The man in the photo looked exactly like my dad, even though he was partially covering his face. I know it could have been a simple mistake, but something about this photo didn't feel right to me. I really needed to gather more information about my dad to reassure myself because I already knew he wasn't the murderer, but I couldn't sleep at night of the thought. That evening, I waited for my father to leave the house before I started investigating.