My Dad Makes Us “Vote” On Who Gets To Sleep In A Bed Or A Dirt Pit. My Brother Just Betrayed Us To Save Himself. How Do I Escape?

The Ritual of the Rankings

What was your family’s cruelest rule? Every night my dad made us vote on which family member deserved to sleep in a real bed and who had to sleep in the metal shed outside.

If you refuse to rank your own mother and siblings from best to worst, you automatically got the shed. Dad sat at the head of the table with his stupid clipboard, reading out our names like some sick game show host.

“Time for rankings,” he’d say, smiling while the rest of us stared at our plates.

He was always exempt because he managed the system, which meant he slept in the master bedroom every night while we tore each other apart for the remaining spots. The best bed went to whoever got ranked highest, which meant an actual mattress, soft pillows, warm blankets, and your own room with a door that locked.

Second place got the couch in the living room, while third got a sleeping bag on the basement floor. Fourth place got the garage with just a yoga mat, and dead last slept in the shed.

By the time I was 12, I’d spent dozens of nights in that shed. We all had, except for Dad.

One night when I was 13, all my siblings ranked me last because they were pissed I’d lost my shoe and made them late for school that morning. The metal floor burned cold through the gasoline-soaked blanket while rain hammered the roof like gunshots.

Spiders dropped from the ceiling onto my face, and mice ran over my legs while I shivered until my bones hurt. The rankings destroyed us in exactly the ways Dad wanted.

My brother Yousef sabotaged everyone else constantly to look better by comparison. He’d hide homework, break things, and blame others, starting fights right before dinner to make someone look bad.

Once he put sugar in Mom’s gas tank so she’d miss work and look irresponsible to Dad. She spent three nights in the shed while her car got fixed and slept soundly on the couch.

Playing nice never worked because someone always needed a scapegoat to avoid last place. Good grades and finished chores meant nothing when the alternative was freezing on metal flooring.

Every dinner became a silent calculation of who you could sacrifice tonight. It was about which family member you loved least in that moment, whose suffering would hurt you least to cause.

My sister Yasmin had perfected crying on command and would sob during dinner about her previous nights in the shed, instantly earning sympathy votes. Yousef made deals and promises, trading future high rankings for votes now.

Mom tried staying neutral, but that just meant everyone ranked her low for not having allies. She spent more nights in the shed than anyone.

After years of this, we barely spoke except to negotiate votes. Family dinner was just Dad reading rankings while we glared at each other across the table, calculating betrayals and planning revenge.

I kept a notebook tracking voting patterns, looking for alliances to exploit or weaknesses to target. Trust between us had died long ago, and love followed shortly after.

A Grave Dug for the Family

Then Yasmin got sick during a week of storms, running a fever so high she couldn’t sit up at dinner. Dad’s rule was absolute because no vote meant automatic shed placement.

She lay there shaking and delirious, too weak to even point at names on his list.

“Rules are rules,” Dad said, marking her down for the shed before carrying her out there himself while rain poured through the rust holes.

By morning she had pneumonia and was coughing up blood on the metal floor. Still too sick to vote the next night meant another automatic shed placement.

I tried sneaking her extra blankets, but Dad caught me and called it tampering with rankings, which earned me five nights in the shed as punishment. I spent those nights listening to my baby sister dying 10 feet away while Dad made notes about maintaining system integrity.

Mom finally defied Dad and took Yasmin to the hospital, but by then something in Yousef had permanently broken. He’d do anything to avoid the shed, including recording conversations for blackmail material and putting laxatives in food before ranking day.

He spread lies about Mom that made Dad scream at her for hours, guaranteeing she’d get sympathy votes from us. The doctors asked about Yasmin’s frostbitten toes and the rust marks on her skin, but Mom lied and said she’d been camping.

They didn’t believe her but couldn’t prove anything without Yasmin talking, and she hadn’t said a word since getting sick. Dad punished Mom with two weeks straight in the shed, and she came back thinner and quieter.

One night, Dad announced a new development in his system.

“The shed wasn’t the bottom anymore because he dug a pit behind it with just dirt walls and a tarp on top,” he explained, visibly excited about his innovation.

“For whoever ranks last starting now,” he explained.

The shed will be for second to last.

Yousef immediately volunteered to dig it deeper in exchange for immunity from last place for a week, and I knew we were completely lost. My brother was literally digging a grave for his family members to sleep in just to avoid it himself.

Mom had given up entirely, automatically ranking herself last every night with a defeated smile. Yasmin remained too weak to vote properly, which guaranteed more shed nights.

The pit was almost finished, and tonight someone would sleep in dirt. I stare at the hole behind the shed, with dirt walls packed tight and the blue tarp stretched across the top like some kind of twisted camping setup.

My stomach twists into knots as Dad walks out the back door with his clipboard, that sick smile spreading across his face when he sees us all looking. He taps the clipboard against his palm and announces that tonight marks a special occasion because someone gets to be first in the pit.

Yasmin sits slumped at the kitchen table inside, barely able to hold her head up. I know if she can’t vote again, she’ll end up down there in the cold dirt.

I make myself a promise right then that I’ll take her place no matter what it costs me. Even if Dad adds extra punishment nights or makes up new rules to hurt me worse.

The sun is setting, and the temperature is already dropping, with frost starting to form on the grass around the pit’s edges. Dad calls us inside for dinner, and we file in silently, taking our usual spots around the table.

He sits at the head with his clipboard ready, smiling that awful smile again. It’s the one that says he’s enjoying every second of this, and we all stare down at our plates to avoid making eye contact with him or each other.

Mom speaks first in this flat, empty voice that sounds like all the life got sucked out of her. She ranks herself last the way she always does now, with that defeated little smile.

Yousef leans over and whispers that he’ll rank me second to last if I support him for the couch. His eyes are cold and calculating, like he’s working out some business deal instead of deciding where his family members sleep tonight.

I want to punch him in the face, but I need allies if I’m going to keep Yasmin safe. So I nod slightly and watch Dad making notes on his clipboard.

Yousef starts his usual performance, reminding everyone in this cheerful voice how he helped with dishes and took out the trash today. He conveniently leaves out the part where he broke the bathroom faucet this morning and told Dad I did it.

Yasmin tries her crying routine, but she’s too weak to make it work. Tears just slide down her pale cheeks without the dramatic sobs that usually get her sympathy votes.

She’s shaking from fever or cold or both, and I can see her trying so hard to participate but failing. The whole ritual makes me physically sick, but I force myself to go through the motions anyway.

I am ranking people in my head and calculating who I can sacrifice tonight. Refusing to vote means automatic pit placement, and I can’t help Yasmin if I’m the one down there.

Dad reads through each name slowly, savoring the moment while we call out our rankings one by one. When Dad finishes counting the votes, he looks almost disappointed for a second.

Then he announces that Mom gets the pit and Yasmin gets the shed. Something about his tone makes it clear he was hoping Yasmin would end up in the pit for the big debut, but the numbers worked out different.