#grimfic

Okay…I started writing a new thing and I want to share a sneaky peak of the beginning and gauge interest…I’m nervous for this one so be gentle and leave notes?

Smoke curled in the air around them as her cigarette burned, wrapping around them like a hazy privacy screen in the dimly lit hotel bar. She watched in silence as he meticulously set up an ancient tape recorder that she was sure was older than both of them, as he laid out his notebook and two black pens, as he narrowed his eyes as he carefully made sure everything was sitting at perfect 90 degree angles.

She had no idea why she had agreed to this interview. If it had been about money then she would have returned any of the many calls from The NY Times, The SF Chronicles, Time Magazine, or any of the other massive publications that wanted her story. Her father’s silence only made the many reporters more desperate to speak to her, like they thought she would have some key to understanding why he had done all of the things he was now accused of, as if she was the window into his mind. But instead she had chosen this one - this tiny, unassuming, seemingly neurotic reporter who ran his own online publication and didn’t make eye contact when he spoke. Somehow that was easier, like she could convince herself that she was just talking to that tape recorder, not to a person who would soon tell the world all of the secrets that she was preparing to unleash upon it.

“Okay,” he started, tapping his pen against the fresh notepad, “how about you start with your childhood, what your father was like? Looking back, would you ever have thought he was capable of all the things his victims are reporting?”

She took another long drag on the cigarette, looking through the smoke at her own memories, at summers spent laughing and playing, Halloweens in silly costumes, Christmas mornings that resulted in piles of wrapping paper taller than her. Not a single memory that would have made her think he could ever be the man that was described in those depositions.

“No,” she said as she extinguished her cigarette on the wooden tabletop, “there was nothing that I can look back on and think that my loving, attentive, kind father was the boogeyman.”

I know it’s not much but I’ve been working on it slowly and I’m debating where I want to start posting (here or AO3). I would love any thoughts!