Board Thread:Writer's Showcase/@comment-4665292-20180608193616/@comment-4665292-20180609081629

I intentionally left it open to interpretation, but the general idea is that the demon was Mara (hinted at by every sentence in every paragraph beginning with the same letter, and the sentences in the last two beginning with each of the letters in order; M, A, R and A respectively), and the plot is inspired by how that demon tried to seduce Buddha. Maybe for people who aren't familiar with that particular demon, it could be confusing, but clearly it's not too confusing since all of your interpretations are valid.

The father did rape his daughter (who wasn't really his daughter but Mara's, as per mythology) thinking she was different women he was dating because she was the demon's daughter and as such the demon could create an illusion of her looking like whatever he wanted her to look like, but it could also have been because the father was still not over his wife's death in childbirth and the daughter was the last connection to her, so he raped her because she looked increasingly like his wife (hence the rapes getting worse with time as she grew up; he could've simply thought it was all in his head, that he fantasised about her, but was unaware of the fact that he actually acted on said fantasies).

The rapes escalated by the end of November because it was not only the girl's birthday but also the anniversary of her mother's death, which he at least subconsciously blamed her for. Not only that, none of his relationships lasted longer than a year because he was an abusive dickhead in general to all the women he dated, who were all actually his daughter (who, again, wasn't really his daughter); if the abused women would've stayed with him too long, that could've breaken the illusion and as such the demon made him think she was a different woman whenever he got too abusive.

There's also an implication that she experienced particularly extreme sleep paralysis (thus, even with years of therapy, it was assumed that it was all in her head), which was also blamed on a creature called Mara in Slavic and Germanic folklore. Whether the sleep paralysis was caused by the demon or not doesn't really matter because either way she thought it was all in her head, as did her therapist(s).

The ending is meant to be open to interpretation as well: it's the main implication that he killed himself, but he could have killed the daughter instead and the drifting away could be taken to refer to him physically drifting away, as in fleeing from the scene of the murder; his mind would be heavy with guilt, fear and longing over his daughter (guilt for the murder, fear because he could be caught, and longing because he loved her as if she was his own child). In that case, his desire to find his wife in a next life wouldn't be immediate; I guess the wording of the last paragraph could've been more vague to make that a more obvious alternative, but I felt like "in another life" rather than something definitive like "in the next life" was vague enough to hint at the possibility of it meaning that he hadn't taken his own life.

Maybe it's a little vague, but well.

PS: Is the correction by Squidmanescape really a correction? I mean, wouldn't "led" be just as correct as "had led", if not more...? I don't want to revert it because that'd make me look like an asshole who's overprotective of his stories, especially if it's actually (more) correct.