The world was a hazy blur of pain and muffled sounds. I remember waking up in my own bed, but it didn’t feel like mine. My head throbbed, my body ached from a thousand unseen bruises, and a thick, cloying silence hung in the air. My husband was there, his face etched with a concern that I, in my drug-addled state, mistook for love. His mother, my mother-in-law, stood beside him, her usual sharp gaze softened by what I thought was sympathy.
“You’re home, darling,” my husband whispered, stroking my hair. “A bad accident, but you’re safe now. We’ll take care of you.”I mumbled thanks, too weak to question why I hadn’t been in a hospital for longer, or why my room felt… different. I trusted them. They were my family.
Days bled into weeks. My room became my entire world. The curtains were drawn tight, blocking out the sun. My phone was gone, “lost in the accident.” My laptop, too. “Doctor’s orders, darling,” my mother-in-law would coo, bringing me bland food on a tray. “No stress, no external stimuli. Just rest.”
A black gown in a box | Source: Midjourney
It sounded reasonable at first. My injuries were real. The pain was constant. I was dependent. But as the physical pain began to recede, a different kind of ache started – a gnawing unease. I asked to go outside, even just to the garden. “Too soon,” my husband would say, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. I asked for a book, for a magazine, for literally anything to break the monotony. “Rest your eyes, dear,” his mother would insist, her voice like velvet, but with an underlying steel.
The door was always locked. I heard the click every time they left. At first, I thought it was to keep me safe, to prevent me from falling. But then, I tried the handle one afternoon, when I was alone, and it was undeniably, firmly locked. A cold dread began to seep into my bones. They weren’t protecting me. They were holding me prisoner.
My mind raced. What was happening? Why? I tried to catch glimpses of the outside world through the smallest cracks in the curtains, but there was nothing. Just the brick wall of the house next door, or maybe the garage. I couldn’t tell. My disorientation was profound.
A serious woman | Source: Pexels
My body, meanwhile, was behaving strangely. Beyond the aches of the accident, I was constantly nauseous. My stomach churned, and I felt a profound fatigue that no amount of sleep could cure. I mentioned it, hoping for a doctor. “Just the trauma, dear,” my mother-in-law said, her eyes too bright. “We’ve got special medications for you.” She’d bring me small, unmarked pills twice a day. They made me drowsy, heavy. Too drowsy.
I started trying to piece things together. Overheard snippets of conversation from the hallway. “She’s getting suspicious.” “We can’t let her find out.” “It’s for the best, son. For all of us.” My husband’s voice, always lower, always hesitant. My mother-in-law’s, firm and resolute.
One evening, desperation clawed at me. I needed to know. I refused the medication. My mother-in-law argued, then relented, leaving it on the bedside table. I pretended to take it, then hid it under my tongue. Later, feigning sleep, I heard them talking outside the door.
A woman looking unsure | Source: Pexels
“It’s working,” my mother-in-law whispered. “The new dose… it will be over soon.”
“But what if she remembers?” my husband’s voice, a tremor in it.
“She won’t. The trauma, the medication… it’s a blank slate. We just need to ensure the other problem is handled.”
The other problem. What “other problem”? My heart pounded against my ribs. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of unknown horrors.
Days turned into a suffocating eternity. I stopped asking questions. I ate what they gave me. I feigned compliance, all while my mind buzzed, trying to find a way out, to understand. One afternoon, my mother-in-law left my room in a hurry, called away by a sudden phone call. She’d left her handbag on the dresser. My chance.
My hands trembled as I reached for it. Keys, a wallet, a handkerchief… and then, tucked deep inside a zippered compartment, a folded piece of paper. It looked like a medical report. I snatched it, my fingers fumbling as I unfolded it, my eyes scanning the foreign medical jargon.
A nervous groom | Source: Pexels
My blood ran cold.
My gaze snapped to a date, two weeks before the accident. And then, the words, clear as day: “Positive pregnancy test. Approximately 8 weeks gestational age.”
A wave of nausea, sharper and more intense than any I’d felt before, washed over me. I gasped, clutching my stomach. I WAS PREGNANT. I didn’t even know. How could I not know? The accident… my baby. Was it still…
Then, my eyes darted to another section. “Follow-up required for complications arising from blunt force trauma… uterine hemorrhage… probable spontaneous abortion.”
NO. NO, NO, NO! My baby. My child. It was gone. The accident. IT TOOK MY BABY.
Guests at a wedding | Source: Midjourney
The sound of footsteps in the hall. PANIC. I shoved the paper back into the bag, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. I lay back, feigning weakness, tears streaming silently down my face. My husband entered, carrying a glass of water.
He saw my tear-streaked face. His expression softened with what seemed like genuine sorrow. “Are you in pain, darling?”
I couldn’t speak. My mouth was dry. The paper burned in my mind. Pregnant. Accident. Loss.
That night, they left the TV on in the living room, just barely audible. I pressed my ear to the door, desperate for any shred of information. My mother-in-law was talking, her voice low but clear.
“It was the only way, Robert. You saw the test results. We couldn’t let it happen.”
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“But an accident? You could have killed her!” My husband’s voice was strained, angry.
“A necessary risk. A small price to pay to protect our legacy. Your bloodline.”
“She didn’t know. I didn’t even know.”
“Precisely! And we couldn’t have her discovering the truth from that thing. A child with her blood… it would have undone everything. Exposed the truth to the world.”
My breath hitched. My bloodline? What was she talking about? What truth?
Then, the words that shattered my entire world, ripping through the last shreds of my sanity.
A bride talking to guests | Source: Midjourney
“Your father… he always told me tales of our family, the ancient bloodlines we had to protect. And the branch, the disgraced ones, the ones we exiled from the family tree centuries ago for their crimes. The ones with the mark, the prophecy. I saw it in her medical file, Robert. A unique genetic marker. She is a direct descendant of them. The ones who tried to seize control, the ones with the cursed blood. And her child… your child with her… IT WOULD HAVE UNDONE EVERYTHING. IT WOULD HAVE VALIDATED HER CLAIM TO OUR NAME, OUR FORTUNE, OUR VERY IDENTITY!“
My husband was silent.
My mother-in-law continued, her voice chillingly calm. “The accident wasn’t just to end the pregnancy. It was to make sure she was too weak, too disoriented to ever remember what the doctors might have noticed. And to ensure she understood, once we were through with her, that she would never bear children again. NEVER. NOT WITH OUR BLOOD. NOT WITH HER CURSED GENES.“
I slumped against the door, my body trembling uncontrollably. Cursed genes? Disgraced branch?
A woman facing down while holding a bouquet | Source: Pexels
My mind raced back to old family stories my grandmother used to tell, hushed whispers of a distant, estranged branch of our family, fallen from grace long ago, almost mythological in their wickedness. Stories I’d dismissed as folklore. Stories I’d never connected to this family.
My family. His family.
My husband didn’t just lock me in to hide the truth about the accident, or the lost baby.
He locked me in because his mother discovered I carried the blood of their ancient enemies, and I had unknowingly become pregnant with a child that would legitimize a bloodline they had spent centuries trying to erase.
And he was letting her slowly poison me, break me, so that I would never be a threat to their lineage again.
I was not his wife. I was a genetic threat. And my baby was a pawn in an ancient, horrifying war I never knew existed.
A large screen at an event | Source: Unsplash
The silence from the living room pressed down on me, heavier than any pain, colder than any dread. My husband… the man I loved… he knew. And he let it happen. He let them erase me.
I closed my eyes, picturing the tiny, unborn life that had once been inside me, an innocent victim of a hatred that stretched back generations. The pain was not physical anymore. It was spiritual. It was absolute.
And I knew, with a horrifying clarity, that I would never truly be free. Even if I escaped this room, I would be forever bound by the curse of my own blood.
