Seeking Justice: Tarah's Quest for Truth

I remember the day I found out my dad was a serial killer. It was a hot day, and I had spent it cleaning out my closet. Like any good daughter would do, I sorted through all my clothes and picked out the ones that were too girly for me to keep, and put them in one box. The others that were still in style went into another box. So when I finally finished, I took a break and opened up the first box to throw away some old photos from back when I was younger. And then it happened—I saw him.

My dad.

It wasn’t just one photo of him, or one of those pictures where he was just in the background. No, no, no. It was a never-ending stream of images that were all related to one thing: murder. My hands trembled as I dropped the photos on the floor and began to look at them all again. There was a picture of him with a knife in his hand, blood dripping off of it onto his jeans. Another featured him holding a woman’s head as if he was about to take her life in that very moment.

The woman… she looked so much like me! Was she… my mother?

“Oh God…” I muttered under my breath as I picked up another photo of him surrounded by dead bodies, most of them women wearing pink shirts. Then another one showed up where he had tied up the same woman from before on what appeared to be an operating table, with surgical tools laid out beside her in preparation for something horrible and inhuman.

But what could it mean? Was he only pretending to be a serial killer? No, he couldn’t have been faking this—he looked absolutely ecstatic every time he held a knife in his hand or stood over someone else’s body! But why would he want to kill so many people? He was always nice to me!

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and I turned around, startled by the sound. “Yes?” I asked loudly while walking towards it slowly, still looking at those awful photos in my hands. Who could it be?! My boyfriend knew better than to visit me right now—it had been almost two weeks since we last saw each other because he simply couldn’t handle the fact that my father is a serial killer! But who then? Maybe I should hide these photos somewhere…

I opened up the door timidly after taking another look at those pictures and saw nothing but darkness outside. The sun had set long ago and now only street lamps illuminated our little town from afar… Except there seemed to be one lamp that was exceptionally bright for some reason—so bright that it made me squint my eyes tightly shut for protection against the light! And then all of a sudden it went dark again, with only silence audible all around me.

That silence really frightened me even more than something loud would have done; being alone outside at night seemed like something that would happen only in horror movies! Something told me not to step outside until someone came along and saved me… but another part demanded that I go out there immediately because they might get hurt if they weren’t inside too!