"We do whatever we enjoy doing. Whether it happens to be good or evil is a matter for others to decide."

- Ian Brady, along with partner Myra Hindley, was responsible for the  'Moors Murders' that took place between 1963 and 1965 in England. They killed five children and were sentenced to life in prison.

Chapter 22

When I awoke it was to the sound of batteries clattering against the ground. My eyes snapped open, my senses sharpened, and my thoughts began to gather.

My father was replacing the batteries in my recorder. I could hear him gently sliding them into the socket and the soft click the 'rewind' button made as he pressed it. I could smell the sweetness of his cologne, seeping off of his clothing and into the surrounding air, tempting me to cough. But I couldn't see him because all the lights were still off in the early hours of the morning.

I sprung up from my bed and slammed my hand onto the light switch. The room flooded with white light, illuminating my father's stocky figure, which faced the wall away from me. He stood hunched over what was left of my desk. The papers and files were not in their usual neat piles. Instead, they were clustered in messy heaps like a mini tornado had swept through my room. All my draws were open and the contents were spilling out onto the floor. Even worse, it looked as if my father had tired to hack into my computer, as a lockout timer was displayed on the screen.

"What are you doing?" I whispered, panic and fear welding together inside of my chest.

"Finding the truth." He said, without turning to face me.

He then did the one thing that made my blood run cold with silent terror, like something out of a nightmare. He pressed the play button.

The sound of deadly guilt began to seep into the air around us, flowing from the mouth of a friend. My father had managed to rewind it to the perfect moment of partial confession.

"I—I black out. I lose time sometimes... its what happened when—when I first did what I did to get in here, Emily. So I don't know—I don't know if I killed him."

Muffled, but clear, George's voice told my father what he wanted to hear. I no longer had a chance to prove his innocence. In my fathers mind, 'I don't know' comes from confusion, confusion comes from guilt, and guilt comes from committing murder.

George was already a dead man.

As the thought dawned on me, the air seemed to still and time seemed to slow. A deafening ringing clogged my ears before it exploded inside of my head. I wobbled on the flat surface of the floor and clutched my head, pleading with all the God's to rewind time instead of the recorder.

The second click of the recorder sounded like a firing cannon. Then, as quickly as it came, the noise stopped. And so did the recorder.

A thick silence settled over the room. My heart thudded loudly. The recorder dropped to the ground.

"You knew. You knew and you didn't tell me." His voice came out in a harsh whisper. Deadly, like a viper waiting to strike.

I knew I had to be carful with my words and decided not to reply. I needed to know what he was thinking before I jumped to conclusions. But if I knew one thing for sure, it was that I needed to defend my friend, no matter what the consequences were.

"You had a chance to tell me at dinner. But instead you chose to lie to me." He spat, continuing to face the wall. I could see his shoulders rising and falling quickly and the back of his neck turned red. He was more than angry.

"Dad, I—"

"He is guilty of this murder. Now I am sure of it." The crack of his knuckles made me to flinch backwards as he curled his hands into fists. I was afraid of the man I called 'father'.

But my love for George was stronger than that fear.

"That proves nothing. He did not confess to the murder, he confessed to memory loss." I pointed out, trying to undermine his logic.

"You of all people should know that's a lie." He spat, quickly turning to face me.

His expression was enough to send a knife of terror straight through my heart. Eyebrows sewn together with the stiches of fury, lips drawn down by the hooks of disgust, and eyes ablaze with the fire of anger, he looked like the devil himself.

A shot of panic quickly laced my blood, pushing me to prove my father wrong. I couldn't lose George, not after what he told me. I was all he had.

"He wasn't lying!" I cried, stumbling backwards from the strength in my voice.

"He was. The evidence is enough to say he is the one who killed Harvey."

"No its not! What about the other murders? The ones that happened while he was locked up? What about the guards I'm investigating?" I desperately scrambled through my mind to find something—anything that would prove that George was innocent of the crime, but my father wasn't buying it.

"This isn't about the other murders anymore, Emily. This is about who killed Harvey James. And we both know who did." His expression turned dark, sinister, and unforgiving.

"But it wasn't him!" I cried, surging forwards with desperation. I clutched my fathers shirt, hoping that I if I could change his mind in the slightest, he would let George go. "Just give me a few more weeks to prove it to you that he's innocent. Ill find the evidence. Ill find who really killed Harvey."

My voice must have sounded like a plea, and I guess it was, because my father's lips curled to look at me in pure disgust.

"I gave you months to figure this out, Emily." He said my name like a curse, like it was filth, like it wasn't birthed from his own. "No. I have given you enough time, but you are an amateur. You shouldn't have been trusted on a case this big, you're just a stupid kid." And with the last word he pulled away from me as if I was diseased.

The action should have been enough to tear my soul apart. But my body had another idea. Shock set into my veins, freezing the tears that threatened to rise to the surface of my eyes and cementing my body upright.

"You're just like the rest of them." I whispered, staring straight into his eyes. "You so desperately want cases to be closed so you can sit around all day and pick which prisoners to beat up. You don't want justice. You want relief. You want the easy way out. The quick way out. And that makes you corrupt. Worse, it makes you weak."

I knew I had struck a nerve as the veins began to protrude out of his neck. He approached me like a lion; shoulders hunched and face tilted downwards, like he was ready to attack. He stopped only when he was a mere inch away from my face.

His hand flew upwards faster than the eye could see and grabbed onto my face. His fingers dug into my cheeks as he began to squeeze, nails drawing a slither of blood. I locked my gaze with his, attempting to hide the fear and uncertainty that clouded my thoughts. Would he really hurt me? Would he really hurt his own daughter?

"I. Am. Not. Weak." He seethed through his teeth, spraying me with saliva.

I stood my ground and tilted my chin upwards, face still in his tight grip.

"Then why are you ignoring the facts?" I said through the pain of his fingers. His eyes darkened at my words, but he loosened his grip on my face and took a step away from me. My cheeks were momentarily relieved, but my mind wasn't.

"I'm taking you off the case. I'm taking your recorder. And I'm stripping you of the rights that came with this case." He stepped away even further, almost as if he was afraid to say what he did next. "You wont see George again."

I closed my eyes, drew a breath through my nose and released it out of my mouth. All my negative emotion; all the sorrow, all the doubt, all the uncertainty, was replaced by an anger so powerful that it overcame the pain that came with my fathers words.

"You wont stop me from seeing him. Not this time. I wont let you convict an innocent man." My voice was laced with the power of determination. Nothing would stop me from staying true to those words.

"I will and I can. It's time you realize that George is a danger to the other inmates. He doesn't need to be convicted, he needs to be put down." He slowing made his way back to my desk and began sorting through the papers.

"You're not saying what I think you are, are you Dad?" I whispered, still unmoving, powerless to physically stop him.

He didn't answer my question.

I watched as he bent down to pick up my recorder and tucked it into his pocket. He collected George's file from my desk, along with the files of the other suspects, and neatly tucked them under his arm, as if they were merely the morning paper.

Dipping his head, he opened my door and stepped out into the hallway.

"I have to make a phone call." He said before pulling my door shut and turning out the lights, leaving me shrouded in the darkness that consumed my mind, and the possible outcomes the event may have.

For the first time in my life, the endless questions that filled my brain were turned away from prison life and were focused on my own life. Specifically, my father.

That day, I had seen a whole different side to him. The side that I never wanted to see, the side I never imagined he had. So I had to ask, was it all a lie? Was the father I grew up with, the one who was intelligent, gentle and kind, hiding his true self from my mother and I? Was he a corrupt man, who locks up innocent men and makes others die for crimes they did not commit?

And among all this mess, there was only one thing I could see clearly. I could no longer tell the difference between the people I had been taught were monsters and the people I had been taught to love, because they were all the same.

They were all humans. They were all liars. And whether it be of emotions, lives or people, they were all murderers, one way or another. 

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Update because I had a free day and felt inspired. (not edited-sorry for typos)

What do you think is going to happen next?

What is Emily's father going to do?

What is Emily going to do?

Find out in the next chapter ;)

Comment your thoughts 

xx Charli