Sammantha Allen took all her cues from her mother, Cynthia stoltzmann and Sammantha was the one in custody of Ame now.

Sammantha knew discipline was a fact of life, and it was harsh but that's how they grew up. So when Ame came along, nobody in the house questioned Sammantha's punishments for Ame.

A little similar to Ame's former house, this house was overcrowded too. Sammantha and her husband, John Allen had four kids and there were about maybe half a dozen kids in the house, her grandmother stayed there too. Bottom line is twenty-four people lived there.

When it came to punishing Ame in this house, punishment was the wrong word for it. She was either belt lashed or beaten with a wooden paddle named “butt-buster.”

She was still treated differently from the other kids in the fetid, overcrowded house, either in terms of punishment or during meals where Ame was always given small portions. She weighed less than sixty pounds and she was always hungry. She didn't get the same food the others got, she wasn't one of their own, not one of their tribe, not deserving.

Fear, loneliness, sadness, was all you would see in Ame's blue eyes, the constant emotion she had the most was fear.

One time, the family had made Ame walk barefoot for fifteen minutes on the pavement in 45° heat and there was another time when John Allen made her put her hands and feet on the floor and arch her back unnaturally for three hours and when she complained it hurt and collapsed, he lifted her into the arch again.

Family disciplinarians sometimes made Ame eat hot sauce, but she got used to it so they forced her to eat dog faeces.

When the other kids were being punished, they were put in a small chair for a timeout but Ame was put in a storage box.

The box was a plastic locker 31 by 12 by 14 inches. It had latches to secure the lid and Ame was about forty-eight inches tall, she was ten years old and they made her be in the box many times, whenever they crammed her into the box, nobody thought twice.

John Allen would roll and throw the box around with Ame locked inside, sometimes they'd throw the box, with Ame in it, into the swimming pool and other times, Cynthia stoltzmann would sit on it while Ame whimpered inside.

Sometimes, Ame would push the lid with her feet to get air, the only airways were small holes under the handles, otherwise, it was airtight.

Ame neared her eleventh birthday, she was born July 24, 2000. On July 11, 2011, someone in the house said Ame had gone to the freezer and taken a popsicle without permission and again, without thinking twice the Allens crammed her into the plastic box.

The night of July 11, the Allens stuffed Ame into the locker and snapped the latches, –since they learnt that she had begun to lift the lid with her feet– and they put the box in the garage.

That night, the mercury never dipped below 95°.

Sammantha warned her husband that the girl could escape so John went to a gate in the backyard, grabbed a padlock, locked the box and took the key. The couple planned to go to bed and check on Ame in an hour.

However... They didn't!

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That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.