Through the Cracks

                   I remember a little girl. She was a pretty little girl, not any trouble to anyone. She was average and young when it happened. But her story is a horrific one.
                   She had to have been only five or six, not old enough to understand, but able to know that something was wrong between the two. She was hiding inside a vent when it happened, barely moving as a mouse who watches for the cat who is looking to eat it. Paralyzed with fear, she couldn't move even if she wanted to.
                   It hadn't always been this way. It used to be safe with mommy and daddy. It used to be a happy time, a joyful time, full of laughter and smiles. But that wasn't how it was now. Now, there was nothing but fear. A fear that drained the blood from her limbs, making it run cold and left her feeling numb.
                   "Where is she?! Where is my daughter?!" Her father's voice boomed through the house. The sound of things falling with loud thuds and a vase braking made her tense up.
                   "She's not going with you! Now get out of my house!" her mother tried to hide the fear, desperation, and despair in her voice, but the little girl could clearly hear it, knowing that her father must have too.
                   She was used to them fighting. Used to it getting louder. But with each fight, with each argument, it progressively got worse. She covered her ears with her little hands and pressed them with all her might, trying her best to block out any sound. Her eyes shut tight and she tried not to make a peep.
                   Her mother's scream made her snap her eyes back open. She struggled to see where they were. But there was no one anywhere in the room. Her breath was caught in her throat; she was unable to make a sound, as the sight of blood pooled on the floor.
                   Her eyes scanned the area, as she leaned a little closer to the vent, unable to see her parents, or where they may have gone. It was deadly silent; no more shouts of anger, no more yelling or thundering tones. The only sound she could hear was the sound of her own heart, beating widely with terror.
                     Suddenly a lamp fell on the far side of the room, catching her attention. Subconsciously she leaned forward and turned ever so slightly, to see what had knocked it over. All sound had been muffled through fear, but she knew her mother was pleading as her father towered over her with a piece of glass from a broken vase.
                   She could see a large cut on her mother's face, and a few on her arms. Blood drenched the hem of her shirt and on each of its sides. Blood dripped off the piece of glass in her father's hand and through the fingers of his closed fist. Her mother was running from her father, backing away, wide-eyed with fear, and her hands in front of her trying to prevent farther injury. She tripped over one of the little girl's toys, one that she was told to put away.
                   Her father took the piece of vase and impelled it into her mother's back. A cry of pain and strained breaths came from her mother as blood oozed out of the new wound, dyeing the white shirt completely red.
                   The look in her father's eye was stone cold. No emotion; no anger, no remorse, not even a satisfaction or enjoyment; only a look of indifference. She watched as his knife carved into her mother's back and her blood, gushing everywhere. The carpet forever stained crimson. She felt distant, as if it were all a bad dream, NO, a nightmare, that she would soon wake up from. The cries from her mother weren't real, this wasn't really happening. Her screams of pain, of anger, and mainly, her screams of fear, the fear of death, they weren't real, it couldn't be.
                   Her father was covered in blood, but he wasn't done. He picked her mother's head up by the hair, took his knife and ran in across her throat, as if it were butter. The little girl's eyes were wide with disbelief, she couldn't even breathe. He stood up, and looked straight at her, blood dripping off his clothes, his knife, and his hands. He took a step toward her, and it she knew he had seen her.
                   A blood curdling scream rang throughout the house, but she didn't know where it had come from. She soon realized that the scream was her own. That her nightmare was in fact, reality. I then realized that the little girl, so sweet and innocent... was me.