My Town Killed One Random Person Every Month to Keep the Population Stable… The Day They Chose My Father, I Finally Understood the Truth – Part 4

My brother sat at the table watching us with tears running down his face. And after a while, he pulled out paper and started writing. He wrote that he wanted to help the resistance however he could, that watching the system fall apart in the square was the first time he felt anything since his girlfriend died.

Liz came by the next morning and read what he wrote, and she suggested he might benefit from working with her on healing practices, using actions to process his pain since words didn’t come easily for him. My brother nodded and wrote that he would try anything if it meant feeling less broken inside.

Over the next two weeks, the community held meetings almost every night to work on new rules and structures, and people argued constantly about what to do with the council members. Some wanted to execute them immediately as revenge for all the people they killed, and others wanted them locked up forever, and a few even suggested forgiving them.

and letting them stay if they gave up power. Audrey stood up during one heated meeting and said executing them would just make us the same kind of killers they were, that we had to find justice without continuing the cycle of violence. People shouted at her that the council members deserve to die, that their families deserve to suffer like ours did, but Audrey kept arguing that revenge wouldn’t bring back the dead or heal our community.

The debates went on for days with no agreement, and I could see people getting tired and angry and scared that maybe we couldn’t actually build something better. Finally, we settled on permanent exile, sending the five council members into the wilderness with basic supplies, but no way to return or contact the community. It wasn’t perfect justice, and some people stayed angry about it, but it removed them from power without turning us into murderers.

The day we destroyed the lottery box felt like the most important ceremony we ever had. Audrey organized it in the square where so many people had died, and she was invited everyone who lost family members to take turns smashing the box with hammers. Hundreds of people showed up, some crying and some angry, and some just standing there looking lost.

My mother took her turn first from our family, and she cried while she swung the hammer down, the wood splintering under the force. My brother went next with his face set in grim lines, and he hit the box over and over until someone had to pull him back. When my turn came, I felt both satisfaction and emptiness because destroying the box didn’t bring back my father or my brother’s girlfriend or any of the hundreds of people who died.

We left the broken pieces in the square for 3 days so everyone could see them and then we burned them and scattered the ashes. A month after the confrontation, we held the first actual democratic community meeting to discuss population management. And the conversation was messy and complicated, but at least it was honest.

People proposed voluntary moves to start new settlements in the cleared wilderness areas, and others suggested building more housing in parts of the community we hadn’t used before. Someone brought up farming techniques that could produce more food with the same land and another person talked about families choosing to have fewer children.

The meeting lasted 6 hours and people disagreed about almost everything, but nobody suggested killing people randomly to solve the problem. That felt like progress even though we didn’t have any final answers. Mom started getting better slowly after joining a support group Liz organized for family members who were forced to throw stones at their loved ones.

She still had nightmares and moments where she couldn’t look at her own hands without seeing blood. But hearing other people’s stories helped her feel less alone in her guilt. She told me one night that she thought she would carry the weight of throwing that stone at me for the rest of her life. But at least now she was learning how to carry it without breaking completely.

My brother began working with Liz on healing practices, helping her prepare medicines and assist with treating people’s injuries. And gradually he started making sounds again. They were small vocalizations at first, just noises when he was focused on his work, but Liz encouraged him to keep trying. He wrote on paper that he didn’t know if he would ever fully speak again, but he was learning other ways to communicate and help people, and that felt like enough for now.

3 months after the system fell, I was helping Audrey train new community defense volunteers in the warehouse where the resistance used to hide. We were teaching them the difference between protecting people and enforcing unjust rules, showing them how to use force only when absolutely necessary to keep others safe. Kaye worked beside me, demonstrating defensive moves, and sometimes during breaks, we talked about the people we were before the lottery controlled our lives.

We tried to imagine who we might become now that we didn’t wake up every month terrified of hearing our names called, now that we could actually plan for a future beyond the next lottery day. Over the following months, the community held weekly meetings where people argued about food distribution and building materials and what to do when someone broke the new rules we were trying to establish.

Some older residents kept saying the lottery system worked fine, and we were making everything harder by trying to change it, which made me so angry I had to leave the room during those discussions before I said something I’d regret. Audrey helped me understand that fear makes people cling to familiar systems even when those systems hurt them.

And the best we could do was keep showing them a better way existed. Three families decided they couldn’t stay in the place where they’d thrown stones at their neighbors. And we helped them pack supplies and draw maps to cleared areas in the wilderness where they could start fresh settlements.

Watching them leave felt sad, but also right, like maybe healing looked different for everyone, and forcing people to stay wouldn’t help anyone recover. My nightmares never stopped coming. And some nights I woke up screaming with my sheets soaked in sweat, seeing my mother’s face as she raised that first stone. Liz told me during one of our talks that trauma changes your brain permanently and I’d probably carry these nightmares for the rest of my life.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t also have good days mixed in with the bad ones. She was right because some mornings I’d wake up and see my brother working in the community garden we’d planted where the execution square used to be, his hands in the dirt and his mouth forming words. He was slowly learning to speak again and I’d feel something like hope growing in my chest.

Mom laughed with her support group sometimes now. Real laughter that sounded almost like the person she was before fear ate her from the inside. And watching her heal even a little bit made me think maybe we’d actually survive this and build something better from all the broken pieces.