After she was gone, the house changed its shape—silence lingering too long between meals, stretching itself into every corner like it had always belonged there.
And my father changed with it.
He stopped speaking gently, stopped wasting words on softness, and began to speak only in commands, his voice like gravel dragged across my skin.
Then my elder brother was sent away. “For his own good,” my father had said, eyes flat and dead.
As if exile could ever be kindness.
As if anything he ever did again would be anything but punishment.
After that, I became the only one left in the house with my father—a man who used to be my protector and now suddenly turned into a monster I did not know.
Three days after my brother’s disappearance, he dragged me down into the cellar.
I begged the whole way, my heels scraping raw against the stairs, nails clawing at his arm until they bled.
He threw me down like discarded meat.
The door slammed shut above me with a sound that still lives in my nightmares.
A place that swallowed time and hope and everything human.
The first time the door closed, I remember thinking it would open again in minutes.
Thinking he wouldn’t really mean it. That he would come back laughing, tell me it was all a cruel joke, pull me into his arms and say he was sorry.
He never came back for days.
There was only cold stone beneath my knees, damp walls that breathed moisture and mold into the air, and darkness so complete it felt like it was pressing its thumbs into my eyes.
I screamed until my throat tore.
I cried until I vomited.
I pissed myself in terror when the rats started moving in the corners.
I was starved for three days before my father began to come every night.
The nightmare began that fourth night.
He assaulted me.
I screamed until my voice cracked and died.
Then the others began to come.
Almost every hour. Strangers. Men who smelled of alcohol and cigarettes and hatred.
They came and went in shifts, while my father stood by and watched at times, unmoved.
“Hold her.”
“Behave, you worthless bitch.”
Every time I fought, they slapped me until my ears rang, kicked my ribs until something cracked inside me that never healed right.
They laughed when I cried. They laughed harder when I stopped fighting.
