A Breathtaking Hobby

A Breathtaking Hobby

A Parenting Problem

Chapter 1 by Budgieping Budgieping

Anyone might find a little fury animal lying dead in their garden from time to time, with its mouth open and its little pink tongue sticking out. Therefore, the fact that I was frequently finding such poor creatures behind the potting shed never struck me as being particularly odd. I was just glad my little daughter, Linda, hadn't found them. She was upset enough already, what with her mother leaving us for a former family friend of ours. Frequent reminders of were the last thing she needed, so I gave the poor little critters a hasty but decent burial in the garden's compost heap.

As it was, Linda became a bit of a recluse, chosing to keep herself to herself as much as possible and do you know what? To this day, she hasn't changed in that respect. Occasionally, when still at school, she'd be invited out to a potential friend's house, but she just didn’t want to mix and therefore nothing ever came of this. I was concerned of course, but she assured me she was happy with her own company and we were certainly okay together so that was that, but then again, that was then!

On leaving school, Linda had no idea of what sort of career she'd like to pursue. While she was making up her mind, she took a job of going door to door distributing various advertising leaflets. The pay was crap but she liked the freedom it gave her. She worked when she wanted and within reason, pretty much where she wanted. Being unusually strong for a girl and keeping herself fit through aerobics, she had no difficulty in coping with the physical demands of the job and was surprisingly happy in her work, considering the boring, undemanding and repetitive nature of what it was she was doing. Still, I was an "anything for a quiet life" sort of person and therefore just happy she was happy - until girl's strangled bodies started turning up with alarming regularity.

First, there was that schoolgirl whose partially unclothed body was found behind a parade of shops. Then came the nurse, discovered propped up against the hospital waste bins. Police found signs of sexual molestation on both bodies but neither girl was . With Linda working street to street, I was naturally concerned for her safety and told her so. She simply told me not to be such an old worry guts and kissed me with unexpected enthusiasm on the lips before hastily changing the subject - and that was that really! Linda kept on going to work, I kept on being a frequently kissed old worry-guts and girls kept on getting strangled all around us, or so it seemed.

This spree was causing near panic in the community, and understandably so. But Linda wasn't bothered in the least. Whereas many females were staying safely behind locked doors, Linda was merrily skipping off to work, seemingly without a care in the world. She carried the leaflets, her water bottle and other personal goodies in a large shoulder bag that, rather like the Beatles' Lovely Rita on the Sgt. Pepper album, "made her look a little like a military man." Maybe that would keep her safe. I certainly hoped so. Naturally, with everybody being so careful, the frequency of killings began to drop. "Perhaps the killer's losing interest" I quipped one morning over breakfast. Linda just gave me a particularly rueful look that I took to mean she thought my comment was in bad taste. But that was then of course. I now know it was actually a look of escalating frustration. A simple enough mistake to make on my part, but how was I to know? My balls are hairy, not chrystal! I'm not clairvoyant and I can't read minds. With my 20/20 hindsight however, I now see this was but one clue amongst many I missed which could and should have alerted me to the fact that something most abnormal was going on with my lovely little girl. I guess I just missed that one . . .

But what else was I missing?

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