I had always believed I was an orphan.
My grandparents had raised me since before I could remember, and though I sometimes asked about my parents, their answers always carried the same half-smile, half-sorrow expression, as if I had asked them about ghosts.
They told me my father was gone, far away, doing something important—so important that he could not come back for me.
My mother was never mentioned at all. I assumed she was dead.
And then, the day I turned fifteen, everything changed.
Grandmother sat me down at the kitchen table after dinner,her hands trembled as she held my wrist.
Grandfather said nothing—only stared at his empty plate with his jaw clenched.
Grandmother whispered, "Maya, it's time. You must go back to your father."
The words didn't make sense.
Go back? I had never been with him.
I stared nervously, waiting for them to explain. Instead, Grandfather finally raised his eyes to me, hollow and dark, and said:
"He's been waiting."
Waiting.
For me.
*******
The mansion rose like a shadow over the hills, far from the small, cramped house I had called home all my life.
It wasn't just large—it was monstrous, sprawling with too many windows, too many angles that seemed designed to watch me instead of welcome me.
The iron gates creaked open as if they hadn't been touched in years, though the lawns were perfectly trimmed and the hedges pruned into rigid, unnatural shapes.
I clutched the handle of my small suitcase as I walked to the door, my heart battering between excitement and dread.
When I knocked, the sound echoed a little longer, as if the house itself was hollow.
The man who opened the door was tall, pale, his age impossible to place, maybe in his early fifties or late 40s.
He looked as though he'd been carved out of wax and smoke.
His black suit was pressed so sharply it seemed to cut the air.
He gave me a sweet smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Miss Maya," he said. "We've been expecting you."
The butler. His name, I would later learn, was Holist.
And though he would call me Miss with mechanical courtesy, I would never shake the feeling that to him, I was less guest than experiment.
He led me through corridors lined with portraits—faces I didn't know, painted eyes that followed me with hunger.
And then, at the end of the hall, the office doors opened.
My father was inside.
I had rehearsed that moment a hundred times in my head: what I would say, how I would throw my arms around him, how he would cry and tell me he was sorry.
And when Mr. Reaman turned in his leather chair, when his gray eyes widened at the sight of me, when he rushed forward and crushed me into his arms, I believed—for one shining second—that every lonely night of my childhood had been worth it.
"My daughter," he whispered against my hair. "My little Maya. Please forgive me."
I cried into his chest.
I asked why he had left, why he hadn't come for me, why he had vanished from my life.
His answer was a knife wrapped in velvet: "There were… urgent matters. Things you cannot yet understand. But I am here now. And I will never let you go again."
I nodded, hugging him tightly.
*********
The first month was paradise.
The mansion became a palace. Dresses, books, food finer than anything I had known.
Servants who bowed at my footsteps. My father walked with me in the gardens, laughed at my childish jokes, studied my face as if memorizing it anew each day.
For the first time in my life, I felt wanted.
But paradise does not last, does it?
The third month began with a nightmare.
I went to his office one morning, eager to give him a good morning hug.
I knocked, then pushed the door open.
He turned toward me, papers in hand, irritation on his face.
"Who are you?" he asked.
I laughed, thinking he was joking. "Father, stop with the joke, you're not finny at all."
His eyes narrowed. "Father? Don't be absurd. I have no children."
Then something in me cracked.
I stared at him, unable to breathe.
His face was the same, but the warmth was gone.
His eyes—those eyes that had cradled me with love a day ago—were blank, cold, like staring into a stranger.
Before I could answer, Holist appeared behind me.
He placed a hand on my shoulder, firm and cold. "Sir is only tired," he said smoothly.
"Please, Miss Maya, allow him to rest. He works too hard."
I nodded and left, still trembling.
That night, I called my grandparents.
I told them everything, my words tumbling out in panic.
But instead of the outrage, the concern, the urgency I expected, there was silence on the line.
Finally, Grandmother whispered: "Do not upset your father. Promise us, Maya. Do not upset him."
Then the line went dead.
I stood there in shock, looking at the phone.
*******
The days that followed blurred into madness.
Sometimes my father embraced me, called me his daughter, showered me with gifts.
Other times, he passed me in the hall without recognition, demanding to know why a stranger girl wandered his house.
I confronted Holist.
He always gave the same answer, with that eerie calm: "He is unwell. Memory fades. It is not your place to question."
But I saw more than memory loss.
I saw the way the servants glanced at me with fear when he forgot me.
I saw the locked rooms, the corridors I was forbidden to enter.
I heard footsteps pacing at night, though when I opened the door, the hall was empty.
And worse, I began to doubt myself.
One morning, I woke up to find photographs in my room—photographs of me with my father at picnics, at parties, smiling as though we'd spent years together.
Photographs I had never taken, in clothes I had never worn.
"Proof," Holist said when I demanded answers. "Proof of your happy life."
But proof for whom? For me—or for him?
The truth came in fragments, like shattered glass cutting me as I pieced it together.
The portraits on the walls—so many women who looked like me.
Not exactly, but enough to make me tremble.
Their dates of death were all the same: young. Too young.
I found a locked drawer in my father's office.
Inside, letters from my grandparents.
Letters begging him to "keep control," to "not repeat the mistakes."
And then, one night, I woke up to whispers in my room.
At the foot of my bed stood my father.
His eyes were glazed, his lips moving.
"You are not her," he said softly. "You can never be her."
I froze.
"Who?" I whispered.
He did not answer. He only left, the door closing with a click that felt like a prison cell.
The butler told me the truth last. Or enough of it to shatter me.
"Your father," Holist said one evening, his face carved with a sad smile, "has always loved too deeply. Your mother—ah, poor waman—she could not endure his affections. Nor could the ones who came after. So fragile, these women. So easily broken."
I stared at him in horror. "My mother… what happened to her?"
His eyes glittered. "Some things, Miss Maya, are better left in the walls."
I ran.
Through the corridors, past the portraits, into the forbidden wing.
The doors groaned open.
And I saw them.
Rooms filled with relics: torn dresses, cracked mirrors, strands of hair in labeled boxes. Photographs of girls—always girls, always with my father smiling beside them.
And in the final room, a chair with restraints.
Rusted, but not abandoned.
I collapsed, gagging on my own breath.
When I returned to my room, my father was waiting.
His eyes were wet, his hands trembling.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I don't always remember. But when I do, I can't bear it. I see her. I see your mother. And I see what I did."
He reached for me. I pulled away.
"Maya," he begged, "please. Stay. You are all I have left. Don't leave me too."
And for a moment—just a moment—I saw not a monster, but a broken man, shattered by guilt, haunted by memory.
But then I remembered the portraits.
The relics. The lies. The photographs that had been rewritten.
And I realized the truth.
I was not his daughter.
I was just a replacement.
The rest of the story is not clear, not even to me.
I remember running. Screaming.
The walls seemed to close in, the house groaning with secrets it had kept for too long.
Holist's footsteps behind me, steady, inevitable.
My father calling my name, his voice cracking like old wood.
I don't remember how I escaped. Perhaps I never did.
Sometimes, when I wake at night, I hear the creak of the mansion gates.
I smell the roses from the garden, too sweet, almost rotten.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, heavy and cold.
And sometimes, I wonder if I'm still in that house—if I ever left at all.
Because in the end, how do you hide from your father…
when he lives inside your blood?
Stream Commentary; Tape #42 "How To Hide From Father"
[The screen hums alive. Kai's goggled face leans into the static, lips forming a cold grin]
"…so… Maya learned the truth — or at least the fragments of it.
A mansion dripping with gold but rotting with secrets, a father who forgets her face every morning, and grandparents who pretend not to hear her cries.
A paradise that eats its own child"
[@Ovesix: It makes no sense… or maybe it makes too much sense. A man rich enough to buy silence, powerful enough to erase memories — his own, and perhaps hers too. Did Mr. Reaman really forget his daughter, or did he simply choose to erase her from the script of his life? Wealth gives men strange tools, doesn't it?]
[@Jaija: But Daddies shouldn't play hide-and-seek with daughters! That's cheating! Poor Maya… she thought she found her forever hug, and then—poof! Daddy turns around and says, 'Who are you?' That's not a game]
Psychotic One (low chuckle, voice sharp like broken glass):
[@642: Oh no, it is a game. A twisted one. Every morning she has to remind him she exists, every night she has to wonder if he's smiling at her… or at a ghost. Delicious torment. What if he's pretending? What if he enjoys watching her break… one memory at a time]
[@Enchomay:Or maybe it's not the father who's at fault. Maybe the mansion itself keeps swallowing pieces of him. Maybe the grandparents knew, that's why they hid her away. Perhaps Maya isn't cursed with an absent father, but a house that refuses to let love stay whole]
[Kai tilts his head, goggle lenses flickering, then joins with a quiet sigh.]
"You all ask good questions.
But remember this: monsters don't always live under the bed. Sometimes they wear suits, kiss your forehead, and hand you keys to your new room.
Maya's father — was he cruel? Or was he broken long before she arrived?
A man obsessed with control, maybe afraid of being seen for what he truly is.
His mind collapsing like the mansion walls he hides inside.
And her grandparents… oh, don't look at them with pity.
They knew. They always knew.
But guilt is easier to bury under another generation than to confess."
[@Jaija:Maya's still there… isn't she? Wandering those halls, asking why no one remembers her name…]
[@642: Maybe she doesn't even remember her own name anymore. Maybe that's the trick. Maybe we're all just… someone else's forgotten children…]
[@Ovesix:….It is not only a tale of memory, but of morality. How far does a family go to protect itself from its sins? They don't heal the wound. They cover it. They bandage it with lies until the flesh rots away]
[@Enchomay: Maya's tragedy… is society's tragedy. The way we bury secrets in children. The way fathers wear crowns built on silence. The way love is promised like inheritance, but delivered like poison]
[@Jaija: It's not fair… she waited fifteen years. Fifteen years for a daddy-hug. She must have counted the days with her grandparents — dreaming about what he'd be like. And then—he doesn't even remember her name. He doesn't even remember her face. That's not fair. That's the cruelest birthday wish]
[@Enchomay: Calm down. Listen. It's not simple cruelty. It's obsession. The man was obsessed with burying the past so deeply, he erased it from himself. Maya was not forgotten because of age or illness. She was… removed. Perhaps by his will, perhaps by someone else's. But it was a choice, I think]
[@642: A choice? Ha! He enjoyed it. Don't you see? Every morning, she greets him, and every morning he looks at her like a stranger. Imagine the terror on her face, the cracks forming in her mind. He fed on that confusion. He watched her break like a little doll and pretended it was just… fatigue. Oh yes… fathers like that don't need knives. Their smiles are the sharpest]
[@Enchomay: But what if it was not him? What if the grandparents raised her in lies? What if the mansion itself kept the truth sealed like a tomb? Maybe Mr. Reaman's memory was never whole to begin with. Maybe he built his empire on blood, and to protect him… the grandparents gave him Maya as a sacrifice. To keep him sane. To keep him… human]
[@642: i don't get what you mean]
[@Jaija: Stop! Stop saying that! The grandparents loved her! They kissed her forehead and told her bedtime stories! They— they wouldn't hand her over like meat! They wouldn't—]
[@Ovesix: Love is not always what you think it is. Sometimes love is another word for obedience. Sometimes 'protection' is simply training you to endure pain without screaming]
[@Jaija:…then Maya was never loved at all?]
[@642: Oh, she was loved. But not the way you want. She was loved like how a knife loves flesh. Like how a song loves the silence it shatters. The grandparents loved their secret. The father loved his control. And Maya… Maya was just the rope tying it all together]
[@Ovesix: Do you guys think she's still there? Walking the mansion halls? A girl without a father, without grandparents, without truth… only mirrors and doors that don't remember her name]
_____
(After a long silence, Kai finally speaks)
"Enough.
Listen to yourselves. You're arguing over the shape of the knife while the girl is still bleeding.
Maya's tragedy isn't just her father's cruelty.
It's not just the grandparents' silence.
It's the entire system of lies we all call 'family.'
Her father was immoral — not only because he forgot her, but because he chose his comfort over her truth.
His obsession wasn't wealth or power… it was control.
Control over memory. Control over which pieces of the past deserved to exist.
Her grandparents… they were cowards.
They gave her a childhood full of love, yes, but only to delay the moment she would be devoured.
That is not protection. That is… grooming her for tragedy."
[@Jaija: So what do we do, Kai? What do we do when the ones who are supposed to love us… are the ones who break us?]
(His goggles glinting, voice sharp)
"You survive. You endure.
And you remember. Because memory is rebellion.
When they tell you to forget… when they tell you the past doesn't matter… hold onto the past more tighter.
That's how you win against families like Maya's.
That's how you break their chains."
[@642:But what if remembering kills you, too?]
(Kai, with a chuckle, then silence)
"Then at least you die free.
Better than living as someone else's obedient shadow."
[Kai leans closer, voice dropping to a chilling whisper — directed at the reader.]
"So here is your warning, listeners: look closer at your family portraits.
Do all those smiles belong to people who love you… or to people who need you to forget?
Remember Maya, the girl who lived in a mansion but died in silence.
Don't let their kind of love trick you into obedience.
Because sometimes… the people who claim to protect you are only protecting their secrets."
[The static grows heavier, a faint sound like a child's voice whispering "Daddy?" echoing through.]
(Kai straightening, tone shifting into a cold tease)
"Enough mourning. Dry your eyes.
Because the next tale will not ask you to cry… it will ask you to judge.
The title is simple. Direct. And every one of you will have to decide the answer.
"Who Killed Alia?"
STREAM ENDED