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?

Evidence in the Shadows

I feel this tiny moment of relief until I look at Mom’s face and watch it go completely blank. All expression is draining away like someone pulled a plug.

She doesn’t protest or argue or even look upset. She just stands up slowly and walks toward the back door like a ghost floating across the room.

I want to scream that this isn’t normal, that families don’t do this to each other. We should all refuse together and let Dad sleep in his own stupid pit, but the words get stuck in my throat and won’t come out.

Yousef is already heading for the living room to claim the couch, and Yasmin shuffles toward the back door, coughing wetly into her hand. That night I lie on my sleeping bag in the basement and can’t stop thinking about the storm week when Yasmin got pneumonia.

I can still hear her coughing up blood on the metal shed floor. It was this awful wet sound that went on for hours while I shivered through my own punishment nights for trying to sneak her blankets.

Dad had called it tampering with rankings and added five extra nights to my sentence. He was standing there with his clipboard, taking notes about maintaining system integrity while his daughter was literally dying 10 feet away from him.

The memory makes my hands shake with rage, and I have to press them flat against the concrete floor to make them stop. Mom is in the pit right now, lying in cold dirt with just a tarp between her and the night sky.

I’m down here safe and warm by comparison. The guilt sits heavy in my chest, but I remind myself that being in the basement means I can still help.

I can still help, still plan, still figure out how to stop this. I can’t sleep knowing Mom is out there, so I sneak over to the tiny basement window and look out at the backyard.

It’s almost midnight and getting colder, with frost forming thick on the grass around the edges of the pit. The tarp sags slightly in the middle where Mom must be lying underneath.

I can see her shape moving occasionally, trying to find a position that doesn’t hurt as much. Dad’s bedroom light is still on upstairs, and I can see his shadow moving around behind the curtains.

He is probably reviewing his precious clipboard and making notes about tonight’s rankings, planning new ways to torture us tomorrow. He’s probably excited about how well the pit is working already.

He is thinking about improvements he could make or new rules he could add to the system. I pull out my phone that I’ve been hiding in my sleeping bag, wrapped in an old sock so Dad won’t find it if he searches down here.

I look at the photos I took weeks ago of Yasmin’s frostbitten toes, the skin black and dead-looking at the tips. I see the rust marks on her back from the shed floor that look like someone beat her.

My hands shake as I scroll through the images and realize I have to do something bigger than just taking pictures. I need something that might actually stop this before someone dies in that pit.

Even if it means Dad punishes me worse than ever, or adds weeks to my shed time, or invents some new horrible consequence. I can’t let Yasmin end up down there in the dirt.

The photos are evidence, but they’re not enough. Not when Dad can smile and charm his way through any conversation, making everyone believe we’re just dramatic kids exaggerating normal discipline.

The next morning I wait until I hear the shower running upstairs, then creep into the kitchen where Mom is standing at the sink. I whisper about maybe calling someone for help, a teacher or a neighbor or even the police.

I am keeping my voice low so Dad won’t hear through the bathroom door. Mom grabs my arm hard enough to leave marks, her fingers digging into my skin.

She warns me in this urgent whisper that Dad always finds out about everything we do.

She says he has ways of knowing, that he checks our phones and reads our notebooks and listens to our conversations. Anyone who tries to get outside help just ends up punished worse.

Her eyes look hollow and scared, like all the fight got beaten out of her years ago. I realize she’s been broken so completely that she can’t even imagine escape anymore.

She actually believes we’re stuck in this system forever. She thinks there’s no way out except to survive it one night at a time.

At breakfast Yousef is practically bouncing in his chair, bragging to Dad about how he made the pit 6 inches deeper yesterday afternoon. He holds up his hands to show off the blisters on his palms like they’re trophies he won.

He is going on about how the extra depth will provide better insulation or some garbage like that. Dad actually smiles at him, this genuine proud father smile I haven’t seen in years.

He promises Yousef immunity from last place for the next week as a reward for his hard work. I feel physically sick watching my brother volunteer to dig what’s basically a grave for his own family members.

He is doing it eagerly just to save himself from ending up down there. Yousef meets my eyes across the table, and there’s no guilt or shame in his expression.

There is just this cold satisfaction that he secured his safety for another week. He’s turned into exactly what Dad wanted him to be.

I spend the rest of the morning trying to understand why Dad does this. I want to know what he actually gets from watching us destroy each other every single night.

It’s not just about control, though that’s part of it. He genuinely enjoys the rankings.

I can see it in his face when he reads the results, the way his eyes light up when we have to calculate who we love least in that moment. He likes the fear in our eyes when we realize we might be going to the pit.

He likes the desperate negotiations we make with each other, the way trust between us died years ago and got replaced with survival calculations. He calls it system integrity and talks about fairness and rules.

Really it’s just cruelty disguised as some kind of reasonable family structure. He’s the only one who never suffers, never spends a single night cold or scared or hurt.

He just sleeps in his comfortable bed every night while we tear each other apart for the remaining spots.

The Breaking Point

At the school the next day I can barely keep my eyes open during first period. My head nods forward every few minutes until I jerk awake again.

The teacher’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater, and the words on the board blur together into meaningless shapes. I dig my fingernails into my palm hard enough to leave marks.

Falling asleep means I won’t be able to think clearly tonight, and if I can’t participate in rankings, I get the pit automatically. During math class, I start doing calculations that have nothing to do with the lesson.

I am figuring out how to protect Yasmin tonight. If I can convince Yousef to rank Mom second to last and I volunteer for last place myself, at least Yasmin gets the couch.

It’s not much protection, but it’s something. Keeping her safe is the only thing that still matters in this destroyed family.

The bell rings for lunch, and instead of going to the cafeteria, I head straight for the bathroom on the second floor that nobody uses. I lock myself in the far stall and pull out my phone with shaking hands.

I roll up my sleeves to photograph the bruises on my arms from three nights ago when Dad grabbed me during a ranking argument. The marks have faded to yellow and green, but they’re still visible proof that this isn’t normal discipline.

I take five photos from different angles, making sure the bruises show up clearly in the bathroom’s harsh lighting. Then I open my voice recorder app and start explaining the system in a low whisper.

I am keeping my voice factual and calm, even though my hands won’t stop trembling. I describe the shed, the pit, the nightly votes, and how Dad exempts himself while forcing us to rank each other.

My mouth goes dry halfway through, and I have to stop and swallow before continuing. I am terrified that someone will walk in and hear me, that Dad will somehow find out what I’m doing.

The whole recording is maybe 90 seconds long, but it feels like hours. When I’m done, my heart is pounding so hard I feel sick.

I delete the recording from the recent files list and stuff my phone back in my pocket. Then I sit on the toilet lid trying to calm down enough to go to class.