On My Own

Date: 5/8/2026

You know how some dreams don’t show certain details about the world they take place in, but somehow you know those details are there? Almost like they came pre-loaded with the dream? It was dark outside when I looked anxiously through the windows of that unfamiliar home. Mom was supposed to have been here hours ago to help me. I started towards the phone on the wall to call her and check in, but thought better of it. They had been vigilant lately, cracking down on unmarried women, tapping phone lines. They didn’t know I was here—they couldn’t. My friends had moved me here in the night, and this place was only recently abandoned. No time for police to have done a wellness check. No one would think to look. They gave her the correct address didn’t they? Suddenly I doubled over, clutching my swollen belly. Between painful contractions, I slid down the wall and to the floor, biting down on the edge of the curtain just to keep myself from screaming. It would be soon. What if she didn’t make it in time? Another hour I waited in the darkness, afraid to move. Then I remembered: my friend had left me a burner phone. “Only use this if things are dire,” she’d said. Well things seemed dire now. Real dire. I stood from the floor, shifting my weight unevenly and almost losing my balance. In these nine months I had never quite got the hang of moving the two of us around. Quickly, but quietly, I shuffled over to the futon (it felt like bad luck to do this in the bed) and opened the duffle they’d given me, fishing out the burner. I flipped it open, dialing the only number I’d ever memorized besides my own. It rang once. Twice. Then, “Hello?” “Hi, Mom? Are you almost here? They’re really close together now, it’s gonna be soon. I’m scared,” I tried to keep my voice from shaking. A pause, just long enough to make me worry I’d lost her, “I’m sorry baby, I’m not coming.” My turn to pause, “…What?” “It’s just too risky. It’s not like I have your dad around to talk to the police if I get pulled over.” I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But then I guess I should have known better. Of course I had already been too much a of a burden these nine months. A liability, even to my own mother, who should have been the only person in the whole world happy to be liable. “Mom please,” now my voice was shaking. “I can’t…I can’t do this without you.” But I was already crouching on the futon, looking around the room for something to focus on for the next however-many hours. The flickering of the candlelight, maybe. “Well,” she sounded angry now, “you’re gonna have to.” Another pause, shorter this time “I am sorry, I am.” Then the dial tone. I sighed, trying not to cry, and flipped the phone closed. I looked at its dull face under the candlelight, then smashed it over the frame of the futon, it’s pieces clattering to the floor. The loudest sound I could make. You know, without the neighbors hearing.