Now that I think back on it, I should have known. The signs were so clear. I’d lived under the same roof with him for nearly eighteen years. How can you grow up calling someone “Dad” and not see the monster inside? I knew he disappeared at all hours of the night and went who knows where. I thought he was having an affair. God, I wish. Isn’t that pathetic? To actually wish that your father was cheating on your mother. When I saw him in town tonight, heading into an alley behind that bar, I thought that’s what I’d catch him doing. But what I saw was so, so much worse. Oh, God. I should have known. There were so many signs… Like the fact that I have never, ever seen him eat. Until I followed him tonight… And the fact that when I was little, he never, ever told me not to be afraid of the dark.