The Hell You Call Home

Sophie Ay

My name is Rachel Daniels but my friends call me, Red. Five years ago, I killed my father. 

Mom, Yaya, Melissa and I . We killed Dad that day and ever since, I have wondered if we did the right thing but Melissa, my older sis says we did, and if she believes it, then I guess it's true. He did deserve to die. 		

For as long as I could remember, our Dad was always the life of the party. He was a socialite and friendly at the parties he threw almost every weekend, but behind the grey walls of our haunted mansion, he was a monster. Strict, egomaniac and stoic, he was a dictator who never wanted to be overruled. Every rule he made had to be strictly followed and when he spoke, no one was to speak. His rules were easy to me but as teenagers, my siblings must have felt constrained so they rebelled a lot. I was little, maybe eight or nine, thus I was always eager to please him. He said 'No friends at home' and I had none at all. Not by choice though, everyone at school avoided me because of the rumor that our house was haunted by the woman, who lived there before, and tragically slipped down the stairs one morning and died in it. Another one of Dad's rules I strictly followed was ‘Stay indoors always. I never left the house, after school for years. I was intelligent, and great at school so he was always proud of me. 

I guessed I never wondered why my older sister, Mellissa despised Dad... he never liked her either. I was always so mad at her for calling him the Devil and kept pestering her to tell me why but she never told me. I only found out years after that he had molested her. 

For as long as I could remember, I was always Daddy's girl. 

I know I should have guessed that trouble was lurking when Melissa kept insisting I switched school or be sent to a boarding school far away. I should have seen the signs when Dad told me I was becoming prettier. Should have ran like hell when he started to read me bedtime stories in his bosom. 

I was so naive and never suspicious, which was how he got to me the first time. The naive little me let him into my room that night, unaware of what he was coming to do. The first time it happened was two weeks after I had clocked ten. He had suddenly entered my room, gazed at me for a while and then said,

My Daisy girl, Daddy is sad. You love Daddy, right? Oh, how I had nodded childishly like a child, ever so glad to help my Daddy. When he told me all good girls helped their parents and like the good girl I was, I wanted to help. Which was how he pinned me to the bed easily and forced himself on me even as I screamed, helplessly; my tiny voice never heard, as his big palm covered my mouth. After that night, he apologized and told me it was a mistake. He didn't mean to hurt me, and sure I believed that, after all, he was my lovely Dad. That was his apology every time he came back, until Mom found out. She was furious, so upset that she had confronted him but, it hadn't gone well as I'd imagined. They got into a huge fight and he almost battered her to death. It wasn't their first fight though, as they had always had fights at home, but it was the first time it was about me. 

That day, I cried myself to sleep in Mom's arms.

The black clouds started to come with the rapes.  

At first, they happened once a day but later, they became frequent. I began to have multiple black clouds around me day and night. I would suddenly black out then suffer a short term memory loss. It became so frequent everyone started to complain. In school, my grades began to slip too. Yet the more my teachers complained, the worse I had it at home. Everyone thought I was slacking off on purpose but deep down, I was fast becoming an empty shell.

Dad had died on a normal day. There had been nothing special about the day it happened. No clairvoyance that our lives would be altered in a flash. What we had firstly heard was Mom's voice. It sounded low but not weak.

I want a divorce, Martin. Please, just let us go. I heard her plead.

“Let you go? You all belong to mine! Dad had thundered out, expecting her to back down as always but she hadn't. Mom had kept pleading as their voices became clearer. Mellissa, Yaya and I came out of her rooms and saw them by the stairs. I hadn't know about the divorce but she had. She confessed that she and Yaya had been talking to Mom about it for years and finally talked her into it. It had taken time but they had made plans for our future lives and all that was left, was Dad agreeing to the divorce. I couldn't help but smile at the idea of leaving the hell we called home but when I recalled his threat to chain me underground if I ever tried to escape, I lost hope and became scared. 

He wouldn't let us go, I had whispered sadly.

True to my words, Dad had refused to sign the papers despite Mom's pleas. I don't know who started the fight but before we knew it, Dad was hitting Mom with his Golden walking cane, as she tried futilely to fight him off. The more he hit her, the harder she fought. Each blow descended harder than the first just as her frail hands scratched his face. I stood there wishing I could help but the black clouds came again. I think Mellissa and Yaya had gone to help Mom and when Dad tried to hit them, she had sprang up too fast to shield them and he had slipped. He must have tumbled countless times down the stairs, where he laid.

He was bleeding where his head had cracked hard and it was obvious from the pool of blood that he was dying. A loving daughter would have called for an ambulance. A loving wife would have ran to her husband. A precious family would have rushed him to the hospital. But we had done nothing. We couldn't move.  

We just stood there, transfixed as he took his last breath. Thankfully, he didnt cry for help so I guessed he must have understood why we were selfish not to help. After his death and as per his will, we had him cremated along with his prized possession: his golden cane.

After Dad's funeral, Mom sold the haunted mansion and we relocated to Lagos for a fresh start. A little while after, I got admitted to the university and left for London while Mellissa went to New York for her studies, but now she just travels around. Yaya chose the Caribbean for his exploration and left too. Only Mom remained in Nigeria. We all underwent therapy for a while, and like the therapist had said, we had all gone through something that was capable of breaking even the strongest of us and we had to heal in our different ways. Luckily for me, I had found my own healing process. 

The beautiful sceneries help keep the monsters away, so now, I dont see them anymore. Even the black clouds too. And whenever I feel them returning, I find myself reciting the poem from my favorite Kdrama movie,

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