They locked a pregnant woman in a wooden box, while her husband loudly began planning the funeral and one woman suddenly could not hide her paling

My husband’s friends laughed while my pregnant body could barely move inside the narrow wooden box, and only then did I realize for the first time that Levan had already planned my death.

At first I got used to the sound of wood. In the heat, the boards swelled and crackled around me as if the box wanted to breathe. At night, when the cold descended, the wood contracted and every sharp splinter pierced my dress.

I could not stand. I could not lie down completely. My knees were bent toward my stomach, and with both hands I protected my still-small belly. The baby moved inside, and each time I whispered:

“Hold on a little longer, my little one. Mother is here.”

Levan called this punishment.

On the first day, at noon, he opened the small window. A strip of sunlight came in from outside and my eyes burned. Three men stood behind him. One held a camera, and another held a glass.

“This is how you will learn obedience,” Levan told me. “You kept telling everyone that you planned to run away from home. Now this is your home.”

“Give me water,” I begged.

“Say thank you first.”

They began to laugh.

He slid in a crust of bread and spat directly on it. Then he waited until I picked it up. I did not pick it up. I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes.

“How long will she last?” one of the men asked.

“Forty days,” Levan answered. “Then I will tell everyone that she was ill and I could not save her.”

That night I ate the crust of bread anyway. Not because of him. Because of the baby.

He brought almost no water. I waited until dawn, when drops of condensation appeared on the inner wall. I pressed my lips to the board and licked each drop. The wood tasted bitter, but those few drops left me alive.

From the second week on, I no longer counted the days by hunger. I counted them by sounds. The morning visitors were noisy. In the evening Levan walked alone around the box and repeated his own words.

“I will stand on the right in the church,” he would say. “I will put Mother in front. I will say that I cared for her until the last minute.”

Once I could not stand it any longer.

“Are you preparing the text for my funeral too, Levan?”

His footsteps stopped.

“You still have a voice?” he asked quietly.

“I am still alive.”

He kicked the board so hard that the box shook. The baby jumped inside my belly, and I clenched my teeth from the pain.

On the twenty-third day, a board in the lower corner lifted slightly. It was not an exit, but it left enough space for a finger. I tore off a thin strip from the inner seam of my dress. With a splinter I scratched four words on it: I am alive. I am pregnant.

Then I wrote more. When they gave me food. What Levan said. Who came to see him. I folded each small piece and hid it under this board.

I realized that my suffering would become convincing only if someone found its traces.

Instead of the forty-first morning, the fiftieth night came. The window opened wider than usual. Several people were with Levan. Their shadows fell on the floor.

“At last, you understood your place,” he said.

I bowed my head. I had one of the notes clenched in my hand.

Suddenly a woman’s shoes stopped at the lower crack. The woman was not laughing. A small piece of mud clung to her shoe.

I slowly slid the note toward her.

Levan was still talking about my funeral when the woman bent down, looked at the paper, and her fingers touched mine. Then she lifted the paper into the light and…

The paper was already in the woman’s hand when Levan suddenly straightened. He did not need to look at it. The large, crooked letters were still visible: I am alive. I am pregnant.

“What did she give you?” Levan asked.

The woman took one step back. I was lying on the floor, my hand still extended through the crack. My heart was beating so hard that I thought its sound could be heard outside the box.

“It is just paper,” Levan said.

“It says that someone is here,” the woman replied.

“She is my wife. She has hysterics.”

“Your wife lives in a box?”

The smile disappeared from Levan’s face.

“This is a family matter. Get out of here.”

The woman looked at me for the first time. Only my bloody fingers were visible through the crack.

“Are you in there?” she asked.

It was difficult to speak, but I answered anyway:

“Yes. Please do not leave.”

Levan extended his hand.

“Give me that.”

The woman clenched the paper in her fist and stepped back again. A small copper-colored watch was on her wrist. Light reflected on its glass, and at that moment some hope appeared in me, as small as the strip of sunlight that entered the room.

“Ma’am, who are you?” she asked Levan.

“She is my neighbor. Too curious.”

“You said that nobody lived in the house,” the woman told him. “Then why is there a woman here?”

Levan looked first at her, then went toward the lock of the box.

“I will explain everything now.”

“No, first I need to understand her.”

Levan put his hand on the lock. The metal clicked under his fingers. I immediately realized that the next moment would change everything.

“Open the door, Levan,” I said.

“Be quiet.”

“If you are right, why are you afraid?”

He opened the lock quickly. Cold air struck my face. I had been in darkness so long that the colors outside hurt me. The woman immediately knelt. Her face was pale, but her voice was firm.

“Do you have water?” she asked.

Levan stepped in front of her.

“Do not come closer.”

“A pregnant woman is dying of hunger and I should not come closer?”

“She is pretending.”

“Then we will call a doctor.”

Levan grabbed the woman by the wrist. Her copper-colored watch struck the board and the glass cracked. The woman groaned from the pain, but she did not release the paper.

“Let go of my hand,” she told him.

“No one will leave here.”

“Someone already has,” the woman said, looking at the door behind him.

The sound of an engine came from outside. Then another one. Levan froze for several seconds.

I could not hear anything, but for the first time I saw fear on his face.

“Whom did you call?” he asked the woman.

“No one.”

“You are lying.”

The woman bent toward me and said quietly:

“I am Tamar. I work in the district medical service. Your neighbor has been calling me for weeks and telling me that strange sounds come from the house. I came here specially today.”

Levan heard this.

“You planned all this?”

“No,” Tamar answered. “You planned it.”

At that moment a man’s voice sounded from outside the door.

“Tamar, open the door. It is the police.”

Levan turned toward the box. He was holding something heavy. I saw only his shadow and placed my hand on my stomach.

“If you lock the box again,” I told him, “this time my voice will not be heard by you alone.”

He took one step forward. Tamar quietly put my paper in her pocket and looked at the phone screen.

“Levan,” she said, “everything was already recorded before you arrived.”

His eyes widened for the first time, as if he himself had been locked inside the box.

But he still did not know exactly what Tamar’s phone had recorded…

Tamar’s phone still had the voice recording turned on. I learned this when the police officers entered the room and one of them placed the phone on the table.

Levan was backing away. He held a heavy iron object, but no longer knew where to hide it.

“This is all a misunderstanding,” he said. “My wife is mentally ill.”

“Then this should not be your voice,” Tamar replied.

She played the recording.

Levan’s laughter sounded first.

“Forty days will be enough. Then I will tell everyone that she was ill.”

Silence fell in the room.

Then his second voice sounded, more clearly:

“My mother will sit in front at the funeral. We will tell the doctor that the pregnancy did not exist. If they find out about the baby, everything will become noisier.”

Levan looked at Tamar.

“That is not my voice.”

“You said it yourself,” Tamar told him.

“The recording has been edited.”

The police officer picked up the phone.

“The recording will undergo examination. Now put your hands behind your back.”

Levan looked at me. There was anger in his eyes, but fear was hidden behind that anger.

“Nino, tell them that nothing happened.”

I felt my throat dry. For forty days, I had heard my name from him only as an insult. Now he pronounced it as if he still had a right over me.

“It happened,” I said. “Everything happened.”

The doctor who entered with the police officers immediately knelt beside me. He put his fingers on my wrist.

“The pulse is weak. We must go to the hospital immediately.”

“The baby?” I asked.

“First let us think about saving both of you.”

Tamar gave me a bottle of water. The glass from her broken watch shone on the bottle. I took two small sips and cried. Not from pain. Because a person was giving me water, and not Levan.

The police officer took my hidden pieces from the inner corner of the box. He arranged them on the table: dates, descriptions of food, words about the funeral. On the smallest piece was written: “If you are reading this, I am still fighting.”

Tamar took the papers in her hands.

“This is more than enough,” she said.

Levan then realized that not only my words existed. There was his voice, my notes, witnesses, and the doctor’s conclusion.

“Nino,” he whispered, “you are my wife.”

“I was a woman who needed your protection,” I answered. “And you planned my death.”

The police officers put handcuffs on Levan. He no longer resisted. Only when they placed me on the stretcher did he shout:

“Tamar, this will destroy you too!”

Tamar answered calmly:

“Not me. The thing you did will destroy you.”

In the ambulance, the baby touched me strongly with its belly for the first time. I closed my eyes and felt its movement.

But at the hospital reception, the doctor unexpectedly handed me another paper.

“This is signed in your name,” he told me. “As if you refuse treatment and allow your husband to make every decision instead of you.”

My signature was on the paper.

I had never signed it.

Tamar looked at the document, then at Levan’s arrest report, and said quietly:

“This story did not end with the box. Someone managed to leave his trace in the hospital too…”