TASHIE

1.THE SUICIDE

My dad and I are different. We are not savants, or prodigies, or geniuses, but through some quirk of genetics our brain’s processing speed is phenomenally fast, our memory is not bad either but nowhere near the so called ‘photographic memory’ but still pretty good. However, this doesn’t equate to either of us being particularly clever in academic terms, our IQs are most likely just in the high range, boosted there by our processing speed which is off any normal range. My name is Natasha, ‘Tashie’ I am 16 years old at the start of this story and my dad is Benjamin, ‘Ben’, he is 50 years, don’t worry about my mom’s name as she is not in the picture. WE live in Howick a small little town close to the capital city Pietermaritzburg. Mom knew my dad was a quick thinker, yet she still had an affair with our next-door neighbour, Brian. Dad could process thousands of bits of irrelevant information which would eventually point to the one succinct piece of information that pointed to her having the affair with Brian, who coincidentally the very next day came over to our house with his gun and committed suicide in my mom’s bedroom. Dad was ‘interviewed’ by the police, mom was ‘interviewed and temporarily detained’, and because at 16 I was “not of age” and still at school, I was temporarily moved to a ‘safe house’.

By the end of the week, mom had been released, left home and disappeared, dad cleared, yet I was still stuck in the ‘safe house’, I was then moved to a temporary foster home for ‘short-term’ foster care until dad could get his act together and work out some arrangement for my care at home. Dad’s solution to the problem was simple yet effective, he took in an attractive boarder, Sheila, who, for a price, stood in as a mother figure for social welfare purposes and I was released from foster care into the loving arms of a woman I didn’t know and who my dad was paying for sex and housework. I was glad to be back.

I had known mom was having an affair even before dad worked it out, I think mom worked on the principle that ‘girls should stick together’ in keeping their secrets, well that didn’t work out since it was me who dropped the one bit of information that led to her downfall, in dad’s lap. OK maybe earlier I implied it was subtle, it wasn’t, it was a condom wrapper, and I moved it from under my bed, sis they were having their sex on my bed – I felt like dumping all the bedding in the washer, but instead I moved the condom wrapper to under the side table alongside dad’s chair. I suspect that dad’s initial reaction may have been similar to mine as in “what, they’ve been having sex on my chair!” but he more than likely realised that some little tattle tale had moved the condom wrapper from where they found it, to where he was sure to find it.

Brian’s suicide was most strange, since none of us were in the house at the time, we all had rock solid alibi’s, well moms was a bit shaky which is why she was detained, the question is who let him into the house, or had mom given him a key, which she denied. If he did have a key then personally, I think we are all lucky to be alive as he could have snuck in at night, shot us all then committed suicide, that would have made more sense to me than sneaking into your lover’s house in the middle of the day and committing suicide in their master bedroom without leaving a note saying something like “I can’t bear this deceit anymore and I can’t live without you so goodbye... bang!”. “Hmmm” the thought just struck me; maybe he wasn’t mom’s lover maybe he used to sneak into the house lie on my bed with his penis out with a condom on and fantasize about me. “No... I don’t think so” at least I hope not, otherwise I might be the prime suspect in rigging his murder to look like a suicide. My alibi looked solid, I was at school, but truth be told they wouldn’t have a clue if I was in class or not, I could have got a classmate to hand my work in which would provide forensic evidence of my having been there but was I really? Anyway, I didn’t do it, I do suspect dad, but no clue how he could have done it. Mom wouldn’t have done it unless she dropped the gun by mistake and it went off accidentally, but then what would they have been doing with a loaded gun in the middle of their sexcapade? OK I don’t want that question answered thank you!