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I’m pregnant.The knowing sits in me, low and heavy, coiled tight like dread. There’s no confirming it—no test, no clinic—but I feel it in the way my body has betrayed me, shifting in ways I can’t control. The nausea rolls over me every morning, tidal and relentless. My skin stretches tighter, my belly rounding just enough for me to notice, but not yet enough for Nathan to see. Not yet.

He doesn’t know, and I’ve turned my life into an exercise in hiding it. I’ve learned to vomit silently, crouched over the toilet, my breaths shallow so he doesn’t hear. I scrub my mouth, wipe away the evidence, and swallow the metallic taste like penance. I chew slower now, swallowing the dog food in measured bites, willing it to stay down. If he realizes—if that dark calculus in his mind clicks into place— I know what happens next.

He will kill me.

It repeats in my mind like a pulse, like a law.He will kill me.He won’t do it in anger or heat but with the same detached efficiency he used the day he dragged Cupcake out of the house. I remember

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the taut leash around her neck, her trembling body, and his face, calm and unreadable, when he returned alone.

I haven’t bled in five years. I thought it was the stress, the starvation, the slow erasure of my body’s ability to claim itself. I believed I was barren, that this house had made me incapable of giving life. But this thing growing inside me is proof that my body has a will I don’t understand. It defies the hunger, thedeprivation, the cruelty, and yet it feels like another betrayal, another way for this place to consume me.

Lately, Nathan has been kind. His kindness is never a gift; it’s a lull before the drop, a prelude to something worse. He lets me crawl into the backyard now, he’s given me air, a sliver of freedom so thin it feels like a trick. His voice has softened, his commands quieter, like he’s testing the depth of my submission. He thinks I don’t want to leave anymore. He thinks he’s won.

But I don’t forget. I can’t. I hear his voice in my head, calm and detached, the day I met Cupcake:She’s sick, and she can’t stay here anymore

I understood then. He only keeps what he can use. The moment something doesn’t serve him—when it breaks or strays too far from his control—it’s discarded. Efficiently. Quietly.

This pregnancy is a crack in the system, an anomaly he won’t tolerate. It’s not part of his plan. I’ve seen how he reacts to things he can’t control. I can’t let him find out.

At night, when his snores rumble through the walls, I press my hand to my stomach, to the small curve that feels like a question with no answer. I whisper apologies into the dark, my voice trembling.I didn’t ask for you. I didn’t choose this.The words hang in the still air, heavy and futile.

The fetus complicates everything. My body is no longer mine—it’s a battleground. The fetus is an unwelcome guest, carving out space in a house that isn’t big enough for three. There’s no room

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here for me and Nathan and this thing growing inside me. It needs to go.

I lie awake, my thoughts circling, sharp and insistent. How much time do I have? What will I do when he finds out? How do I stop this before he stops me?

The answers don’t come, only the cold, unshakable truth that this house was never built for survival. Hope doesn’t live here. Hope is what gets you dragged out back, the leash tightening around your throat as you’re led to where no one will find you.

I press my hand harder against my stomach, the faint swell a secret I can’t carry much longer. The nausea stirs again, and I swallow it down, staring into the dark, waiting for the moment I run out of time.

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The yard isslick with sun, the air syrup-thick, sweet and heady with the musk of summer heat. It clings to my skin, seeps into the folds of this moment, too lush, too alive for the small brutality that’s about to happen. Nathan’s voice drifts from the porch, low and sharp, barbed with frustration. He’s on the phone again, pacing, bourbon glass rattling faintly against the side table every time he sets it down too hard. His foot bounces, his body wound tight like the call is pulling him apart one syllable at a time. He isn’t watching me.

I crawl along the edge of the yard, the grass bristling against my palms, blades sharp and overgrown, curling rebelliously at the edges like the wild reclaiming its space. My head stays low, my movements fluid, unremarkable. The leash is slack, forgotten in the heat of his distraction. His focus is elsewhere, split between the bourbon in his glass and the static impatience of the person on the other end of the line.

That’s when I see it.

The rat.

It is round and fat, trembling in the shade of a bush, its black eyes gleaming like dark marbles, reflecting the stretch of my body moving closer. Its chest heaves, frantic and rhythmic, its tail flicking against the dirt like a whisper of panic. My breath catches, my body lowering instinctively. My fingers hover just above the earth, splayed like a trap about to spring.

The rat watches me, its gaze locked with mine, something feral meeting something broken. The air between us thickens, the space charged with the electric hum of recognition. Two animals sizing

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