You stare at the glowing alarm panel like it’s grown teeth.
Lily’s little fingers crush your wrist, and her whisper turns into a tremble.
Your front door, the one you’ve opened a thousand times without thinking, now looks like a wall.
You try the handle anyway, because denial is a reflex.
It doesn’t budge. The deadbolt holds like a promise made to the wrong person.
The keypad chirps again, soft and smug, as if the house is reporting your panic to someone who enjoys it.
You back away from the door and force your voice into something steady.
“Okay, baby,” you say. “We’re not stuck. We’re just… changing plans.”
Your mind moves fast, skipping over fear like stones across a river.
You pull your phone from your pocket.
No service. Not even one pathetic bar.
You glance at the Wi-Fi icon and see it’s dead too, like the house has been unplugged from the world on purpose.
Lily’s eyes dart toward the hallway.
“Mommy,” she whispers, “I heard something.”
And then you hear it too.
A faint thud.
Not from outside, but from inside the house, deeper than the walls, like a footstep being careful.
Your stomach drops into your shoes.
Derek didn’t just lock you in.
He locked someone in with you.
You grab Lily’s hand and guide her toward the pantry because it’s the closest space with a door and a solid frame.
You don’t call it hiding. You call it “a quiet game,” because your daughter’s fear is already too big for her body.
You lower yourself to her height and cup her face gently.
“Listen to me,” you whisper. “No matter what you hear, you stay behind me. Okay?”
Lily nods so hard her hair bounces, and you hate that she understands.
Inside the pantry, the air smells like cereal and canned tomatoes.
Your fingers shake as you scroll for emergency contacts, but your phone just sits there, useless, a glowing brick.
You press your ear to the pantry door and hold your breath.
The sound comes again.
Closer now.
A soft drag on the floor, like something heavy being pulled.
Lily’s mouth opens to cry, but you press one finger to your lips.
She bites her own sleeve to stay quiet.
Your eyes snap to the emergency folder you grabbed on instinct.
Inside, under insurance papers and birth certificates, there’s something your mother insisted you keep: a printed list of numbers.
The old-fashioned kind, because paper doesn’t lose signal.
You remember Derek laughing at it once.
“Paranoid,” he called you, kissing your forehead like that word was affectionate.
Now the paranoia feels like a life raft.
You spot the landline number.
Your heart stutters.
There’s a landline in the kitchen wall, dusty, rarely used, the kind of thing you forgot existed because you trusted the world too much.
You swallow, squeeze Lily’s hand, and whisper, “We’re going to the kitchen. Quiet feet.”
You move like your body is made of glass.
Every step is a negotiation with the floorboards.
When you reach the kitchen, the silence feels staged, like a room holding its breath for a punchline.
The landline sits where it always has, beneath a framed photo you never liked.
You grab the receiver.
Dead tone.
Your chest tightens so sharply it’s almost pain.
You slam the receiver down softly, angry at yourself for hoping.
And then you notice the framed photo above the phone.
It’s you, Derek, and Lily at the beach.
Derek’s arm is around your waist, his smile wide, his eyes bright.
In the corner of the frame, nearly hidden, you see something you never noticed before.
A small black box mounted behind the photo.
A backup battery.
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