“I will kill you,” my father warned my mother.

My father had a soft voice and he hardly got angry. I guess this is what made my mother not heed his threat. She simply continued to peel the carrots and also replied to his threats with soft curses. I don’t know what the argument was about because I had just got in from school when they were already at it. My father clicked his tongue in annoyance as he passed my mother in the kitchen. I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t paying any attention to their argument, albeit I was terrified as I have never seen my parents, not even once, argue like that before.

I was in the living room watching TV and I hesitated to go and see what was happening in the kitchen as crockery was being smashed. My mother was crying loudly and my father was busy clicking endlessly. I heard cupboards banging and cutlery falling to the floor. Something was very wrong.

When I decided to stand up and go see what was happening, I couldn’t believe what I saw. My father had both his hands around my mother’s neck, strangling the life out of her. My mother was backed against the kitchen wall and couldn’t do anything to save herself against the monster she called her husband. She tried to beg him to stop, but no sound escaped.

I don’t know how she managed to do it, but she set herself free miraculously and dashed for the door. Within a few steps thinking she was outside, my father got a hold of her pink skirt and yanked her back inside. I was standing by the corridor watching all this happening. My parents were really fighting — an intense physical fight that I had never seen before. My father punched my mother in the face and she collided with an open drawer that had cutlery in and fell, cluttering loudly to the floor.

I will never forget seeing my father picking up the knife and stabbing my mother twice, without hesitation. He stabbed her in the back and while she was laying on the floor trying to recover from the first attack she was again stabbed in the neck, killing her instantly. Seeing that she was no more, my father sliced his own left wrist and fell on the floor seconds later.

Tell us: What would you have done if your parents were fighting so violently?