Things got worse when my father made me wear my mother’s clothes, and he even called me his wife. He was a psycho, and no one knew this except for me. He didn’t allow me to apply for any varsity, and he said he wanted me all to himself the following year. He told my teachers that he would take me to an overseas varsity whenever they asked why was I not applying. I didn’t have a phone, but whenever I had a chance, I communicated with my boyfriend but never told him what was happening to me.

When the results came out, I had passed so very well and my results were at the top of every learner in my province, but I didn’t go to any varsity to continue my studies.

One day, while I was alone in the house, I decided to put on my mother’s favourite dress, the same one my father had told me never to wear. It had pockets and when I decided to put my hands in them, I came across two letters. They were both written by my mother to me. In the first one I read, she was expressing her undying love for me. That really made me cry because it was then that I realised that my mother was not only my mother, but also my father because she was everything my father could never be.

In the second letter she told me about everything that took place when I wasn’t there, and the main reason why my father hated her. The letter went on and revealed that she had installed a camera in their bedroom without my father’s knowledge. This happened in the early days of the year 2017, the year she had died. The reason for that was that she was scared for her life and felt my father would kill her.

She instructed me to bring the footage to the police should she die mysteriously. The footage was in the loft. The camera records were for four years, and she saved each day’s footage in the cassette. I was certain that it was still recording during the time I was reading the letters. I quickly ran to the loft and cut off the camera connection and took the cassette and put it where only I could find it whenever I wanted it. The camera was in the same room my father raped me, so you can understand why I cut off the connection. Luckily, my father went on a vacation with his new girlfriend for two weeks, and I had the house all to myself. I went and hid in the loft and watched the footage.

He beat and raped my mother every night. The day my mother died, she woke up and went to fix my father breakfast. She served him breakfast in bed. He took one bite and started beating my mother and strangled her till she died. He went out for a few minutes and came back to the room. He kicked my mother’s lifeless body. That angered me. He then faked his cry and called our family members.

A week after my mother’s burial, he brought a girl in the house. She was his girlfriend, I assume, because they used my mother and his bedroom. That was how bad he hated my mother. When the footage started showing what he was doing to me, I switched it off, kept it safe, and left the loft. I was so done with my father. I wanted to do something. That was when I decided to do something bad to him. He came back and continued raping me. It was on the 16th that I decided to end his miserable life. I woke up, went to the kitchen to take a knife and I stabbed him to death.”

“Do you know how many times you stabbed him?”

“No,” I said.

“You stabbed him 39 times.”

I was happy when I heard that. My mother died at the age of 39. I avenged her death and set myself free from that monster. I was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and even though I’m still doing time, I can’t wait to be released and be able to enjoy life freely in this world without my father.

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