You need help.

Mommy and Daddy have been having lots of fights lately.

They fight every night. I pretend to be asleep, but really, I hear the screaming through the paper-thin walls of our tiny house.

Last night, I heard a vase break, and I heard Mommy crying. Daddy then started crying, too.

Today at lunch, as Daddy sat at the head of the table and Mommy sat opposite of me, I noticed the purple marks on her neck and arms. I wanted to ask her, but there was a chilling silence this afternoon that I just couldn’t find in myself to break.

So after lunch, as I sat reading my book, Mommy came up to my room and shut the door. She grabbed my hair in her fists, her face red and tear-blotched. I screamed in pain as she thrashed me against the headboard of my bed. Again and again. I passed out for a while after that.

I missed dinner. And now as I lay in bed, I hear the screaming. More throwing things, more vases breaking. More crying. There was a short silence, and then I think I heard Mommy scream. It ended abruptly.

Something made me get out of bed. I went outside. The door to the basement was open.

I went downstairs. One dim light was glowing, and a foot behind it, Daddy stood, hunched over a long table. It was much too dark to see anything.

‘Daddy?’ I ask. He turns around, and I see what’s on the table. It’s Mommy’s body, pale and lifeless, blood oozing out from various spots. Daddy’s hands are red, he’s holding a butcher knife in one.

He looks at me, forming words in his mouth. ‘Sweetie..’

‘Don’t,’ I say, walking towards him. He looks at me with tears in his eyes.

I look at my mother’s body.

‘Can I help?’

He smiles.