The first of its kind

13 years old. What child in this world, in this household and with this father gets that old without suffering any damage?

What child can grow that old without suffering any damage - when he has to watch every day how little he can do, when his mother is beaten up and when he has to listen to how worthless he is every day?

How does this child develop if he has to hide himself and his sister every single time he loses his temper so as not to cause any major damage?

Perhaps it will stick to this method: hiding.

But at some point, neither the cavity under the bed, nor the closet or even the garden will be enough. At some point, shyness and the submissive head tuck is no longer an option. At some point, this child flips the switch: violence is the only solution.

And at some point, they will have the courage to put this idea into practice, especially when it happens again.

No thirteen-year-old boy likes to watch his mother being beaten and his sister being dragged into the next room by her hair. And certainly no thirteen-year-old boy - who has already given it a thought - will stand idly by and watch.

No thirteen-year-old will have to watch something like this again if he can do something about it and has found the courage to do so.

But who would say no to the challenging glint of the steak knife in the drawer when the pleading cries of his sister and mother come from the next room?

Who wouldn't reach out and wrap their still small fingers around the wooden handle?

Who wouldn't want to try to help them?

Who wouldn't...know from the clanging and the sudden silence that they couldn't wait any longer?

No one.

Not even a thirteen-year-old boy who doesn't even come close to his father's height and mass. No, he pulls the knife out of the block. No matter how much his little heart is pounding. He won't stop at the kitchen door either. He will push it open and for the first time anger - real, unbridled anger - will rise up in him when he sees her lying on the floor. But he won't stop to scream or even turn and run away. No, he will walk up to this sneering bastard whose words don't even reach him - and stab him.

It's not even particularly difficult. It's even easier than he thought. The blade goes through the shirt like butter, then into the flabby bacon. As if it were nothing.

He doesn't even have to use much force to make the grin disappear. The steel is simply too sharp for that. It doesn't even take him any effort to pull it out again and ram it into the panting man a second time.

On the contrary: it even feels good. Liberating. He has done it.

The anger fades and relief spreads through the boy. Satisfaction. Satisfaction that it's over. Satisfaction that he will never hurt him, his mother or his sister again. Satisfaction that ... he has forgotten.

But that is irrelevant in the face of the buckling legs. The reasons are beside the point when the blood is seeping from the wounds, even pouring, and the face is getting paler and paler. The shorter the man's breaths, the greater the boy's tingling thrill.

Not even the screams coming back at him can distract him.

Only the dying man's firm grip, which closes around his wrist like a vice, brings him back to the here and now.