The first time I killed a man

It was the first time I'd killed a man, something I haven't thought of in a very long time.  You'd think something like that would stick with you, like it would haunt you in the night, but it turns out that's not the case.  At least, not anymore.  Its like anything really, it gets easier the more you do it, as horrible as that sounds.  He attacked me in an alley when I was alone.  You see me, you know how big I am.  Faced up against a man his size, I was terrified.  I had watched what they did to my family, you know I was helpless to stop them.  So there I was, completely at his mercy.  And the worst part?  He recognized me.  I was the one that got away, the one that had slipped through their fingers.  It wasn't going to happen a second time.

He grabbed me, shoved me against the stone wall and pinned me with his forearm against my neck.  I couldn't breathe.  I couldn't think.  I started to panic.  The thoughts of what he had done to them, what he would do to me, roared through my head like thunder.  I couldn't hear him as he spoke, but I felt his spit against my face on the tip of each word.  He wanted it, the thing that had caused so much suffering, so much bloodshed.  That stupid book that clung to my body like a vice.  He grabbed it, pulling it by the belt I had slung around it.  It was caught around my neck and as he pulled it only choked me more.

Something happened, though what it was I did not know, a commotion of some kind drew their attention away from me.  I could only stare at the man holding me there, the man that held the only thing in this world I still cared for in his hands.  What happened next I didn't think through, how could I?  I didn't know what I was doing.  It was like something took hold of me, guiding my hands together as they clapped loudly next to his chest.  He barely had time to look down as the blinding light filled the stone path.  I felt an incredible weight force me back against the wall as his forearm was pulled from my throat.  I collapsed into the dirt and my eyes shut.  That was it.

The man that rescued me, the one that had caused the commotion in the alley, later told me what I had done.  It took weeks, but I finally got it out of him.  He told me how the man had collapsed, thrown across the alleyway, his body a crumpled mess.  The raw power I had unleashed was like that of a bomb, one that sent him flying backwards into the adjacent wall, shattering every bone in his body and turning his insides to mush.  He was dead before he hit the ground, while I had only managed to faint.

Do you want to know the worst part?  I never even knew his name.