Tonight on Yahoo! News:

Children from military families are twice as likely to die from severe abuse as other children are, according to a North Carolina study.

--Read more here...

The butcher knife was grey and flat and it was held to my neck. His scruffle digging into my cheek like barnacles. His breath hot and wet with the stink of rage filling my nostrils. I didn't dare cry. He liked it when I cried. I knew the butcher knife. I had seen it before.

* * *

The salad was lime green and Fraggle red. The croutons were my favorite. I liked the sound they made between my teeth. Crunch crunch.

"Did you know that they cut off peoples' hands for stealing?"

Crunch crunch.

The chopping block was so thick and the salad so green. I took another crouton.

"Yep, they chop off thieves' hands."

Crunch crunch.

I reached for another, but his hands as thick as the chopping block clenched my wrists. His hands were so big they spanned my whole arm to my elbow. I was jerked toward the chopping block. My pulpy fingers splayed upon the coarse wood. The croutons looked so crunchy.

"1."

He began to count.

"2."

I looked at my pink flesh against the brown wood.

"3."

The butcher knife came down. I watched as it came down between my fingers still dirty under the fingernails. The salad was so green and the croutons so crunchy.

"Weren't you scared?"

Crunch crunch.

I was four years old.

* * *

A year later, my dad, who was an aviation mechanic for the Navy, was using me as a hostage against my mom with the same grey butcher knife to my neck.

I still didn't flinch.

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