Ever since I got pregnant, my husband forced me to wear four-inch stilettos every single day. "If I catch you secretly switching to flats, I'm cutting off your entire allowance for the month!" I stared down at the stiletto heels, utterly bewildered. "Why?" His brow furrowed, his tone immediately impatient. "Why does there have to be a 'why'?" "Just do as you're told, and you'll get your money on time. Simple as that." For the sake of the twins growing inside me, I endured the agonizing pain, wearing those four-inch heels every single day. Until my next prenatal checkup. My legs were swollen and throbbing as I stood at the billing counter in my heels, waiting for him to transfer the funds to my account to pay the copay. Suddenly, a harsh, mocking laugh echoed from behind me. "Do you guys see that? That's exactly what happens when you decide to be a stay-at-home wife." "For a little bit of cash, she'll humiliate herself and do whatever he wants." "We really have to thank Professor Sterling. It's so generous of him to use his own wife for our 'Housewife Endurance Test'!" Not far away, Ethan's ex-girlfriend was standing with a group of female college students, smirking at me with undisguised contempt. My entire body froze. My phone vibrated with a new text. [Sorry, got tied up. Transferring the money now.] [We're continuing this for another month!] Continuing? A suffocating lump formed in my throat. I accepted the transfer, and then immediately walked to the clinic's reception desk and booked an abortion. The sheer, agonizing humiliation of having to beg for money in a marriage had completely broken me. So, his money, and him. I didn't want either of them anymore. I had just clicked 'Accept' on the transfer at the billing counter when someone behind me started yelling. "Are you paying or not?!" "If you aren't paying, get the hell out of the way!" "Are women these days so obsessed with looking hot that they'll wear stilettos while heavily pregnant?!" "Watch out, you're going to miscarry that kid right onto the floor!" The impatient person behind me aggressively shoved my shoulder. Acting on pure maternal instinct to protect my stomach, I lost my balance. My body slammed hard against the heavy glass partition of the billing counter. CRACK. My ankle, elevated in the four-inch heel, twisted violently and instantly began to swell. A blinding, excruciating pain shot up from the top of my foot. My entire body began to tremble. "Serves her right!" "Thought she could just rely on a man to pay her bills? Let this be a lesson to all of you!" "If any of the students in my seminar ever decide they want to be a stay-at-home housewife, you can drop out of my class right now!" A few yards away, Chloe, Ethan's ex-girlfriend, was loudly running her mouth again. As I steadied myself against the glass and looked up, I saw a printed dossier in her hands. My name was printed clearly on the cover. [Sociological Experiment: Endurance Thresholds of the American Stay-at-Home Housewife - Subject: Maya Sterling] For over a month, I was relentlessly bullied and threatened into wearing four-inch stilettos every single day. And it was all just a prop for Chloe's sociological experiment? My lungs felt like they had collapsed. I clutched my ankle, my brain spinning with the sheer, grotesque absurdity of it all. The line at the billing counter was growing longer. I didn't go to my prenatal appointment. I walked directly toward the surgical wing. An hour later, the procedure was over. I sat in the recovery room, clutching the small, velvet box containing the ashes of my twins. I finally took off the stilettos I had been forced to wear for over a month. When the soles of my bare feet touched the cold, flat linoleum floor, my body convulsed with involuntary tremors. Ever since Ethan forced me to wear those heels... I was required to have them on twenty-four hours a day. I even had to wear them to sleep. Once, my legs were so incredibly swollen and painful during the night that I couldn't sleep. I quietly slipped them off, but Ethan woke up and caught me. He glared at me, his voice like ice. "I'm going to pretend I didn't see that this one time. If it happens again, I'm zeroing out your bank account." That night, he coldly took a roll of duct tape and aggressively taped the stilettos directly to my feet. The next morning, when I peeled the tape off, it ripped patches of skin clean off my ankles. The agonizing memory of that pain flashed through my mind again. I held the small urn tightly against my chest and took an Uber back to the university's faculty housing complex. When I reached our front door, I froze. Chapter 2 Piled up outside the door was a massive, reeking mound of filthy, unwashed laundry. "Ethan, I went through so much trouble collecting all this dirty laundry from the frat houses." "We have to make Maya wash every single piece by hand tonight." "The social experiment is entering Phase Two! You promised you'd support my research!" Chloe's voice echoed clearly from inside the living room. My fingers curled into tight fists. Then, I heard Ethan's gentle, accommodating reply. "Of course. It's all for the advancement of sociological research. Don't worry, I'll make sure Maya agrees to do it." It felt like someone had driven a spike directly through my heart. The putrid, sour stench of the dirty laundry hit my nose. My stomach violently revolted, a wave of intense nausea washing over me. I reached out and shoved the front door open. "Ethan, I am not doing it anymore!" Inside the apartment, both of them froze, startled by my sudden entrance. Ethan was the first to react. He frowned, completely ignoring what I had just said. His eyes locked instantly onto my feet. "Where the hell are your heels?!" "Did I give you permission to take them off?!" "Maya, put them back on right now!" He bent down, grabbed a pair of six-inch stilettos from the shoe rack, and violently hurled them at my feet. His face was a mask of furious contempt. My ankle, which had been severely sprained that morning, was currently a swollen, dark purple mess. I was standing in standard house slippers, my entire body shaking. "Ethan, I said I am never doing this again!" As I screamed the words, I felt a sudden, warm rush of fluid slip down my inner thighs. A common side effect of a surgical abortion is brief, postoperative bleeding. Fighting through the pain and the nausea, I limped heavily toward the bathroom. I locked the door and pulled down my pants. Blood was steadily trickling down my legs. I frantically rummaged through the cabinets looking for a pad. As I looked up toward the vanity mirror... I made direct eye contact with a glowing, active webcam mounted in the corner of the ceiling. In a blind panic, I yanked my pants up and scrambled out of the bathroom. That was when I noticed—there were cameras mounted in multiple corners of the apartment. "Oh, Maya, I'm so sorry..." "Phase Two of the experiment requires us to use video documentation for our methodology." "You walked away so fast I completely forgot to tell you." "But don't worry! My entire research seminar is female, so it's totally fine if they see a little something." A condescending smirk played on Chloe's lips as her eyes raked up and down my body. Her gaze was so arrogant and dismissive that a furious scream rose in my throat. Before I could say a word, Ethan suddenly frowned, pointing at the urn in my hands. "You've been clutching that thing since you walked in. What is it?" "And by the way, where is the ultrasound report for the twins? Give it to me." His tone was sharp and authoritative, demanding I hand over the paperwork. A bitter, hollow smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. I held the urn out toward him. "Our babies?" "They're right here in..." "ETHAN!" "I almost forgot, there's a discrepancy in the data set for my thesis! We need to go over the numbers right now!" Chloe aggressively shouted over me, completely cutting me off. Ethan immediately turned his back to me and followed her toward the door without a second thought. Just as he reached the threshold, he pointed a finger back at the mountain of filthy laundry. "Tomorrow morning, I expect every single piece of those clothes to be spotless." "And you are going to wash them by hand!" The door slammed shut with a deafening crash. I carefully, securely held the urn against my chest and walked into the master bedroom to pack my suitcase. When I finished and walked to the front door, reaching for the handle... It wouldn't open. The deadbolt was locked from the outside. "Sorry, Mrs. Sterling! Professor Sterling left strict orders: you're not allowed to leave the apartment tonight!" "Not unless you get all that laundry washed!" A group of Ethan's students laughed from the hallway outside. That's when I noticed. The mountain of filthy laundry that had been in the hallway was now piled high inside my bathroom. The reeking, yellow-stained frat clothes were soaked in the bathtub, mixed directly with the pristine white baby onesies I had bought for the twins. A freezing chill seeped into my bones. I pulled out my phone to call Ethan. The call wouldn't connect. "Mrs. Sterling, we activated a signal jammer!" Chapter 3 "Don't bother trying! Just hurry up and wash the clothes!" I stared down at my phone. Zero bars. 'No Service.' I stood completely paralyzed in the entryway. I stood there for a very long time. Until a horrifying realization suddenly struck me. I hadn't reminded my mother to take her medication today. She suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's. There was one time she missed a single dose. She wandered out of her care facility alone, wandered onto a busy highway, and was nearly struck and killed by a semi-truck. This time, I couldn't even imagine what might happen. "Open the door!" "Call Ethan right now!" "Tell him he has to remind my mother to take her pills!" I pounded frantically on the heavy door, screaming at the top of my lungs. But the only response from the hallway was the loud, chaotic sound of a multiplayer video game. They were playing Smash Bros. No one was listening to me. I screamed until my voice was hoarse and cracking, slamming my fists against the wood for several agonizing minutes. Realizing that the window for my mother's medication was rapidly closing, I panicked and sprinted to the bathroom. I plunged my hands into the putrid, freezing water, desperately scrubbing the filthy clothes. Suddenly, a sharp, searing pain sliced across my fingers. A razor blade had been intentionally hidden deep inside one of the pockets. Blood immediately began dripping from my hand, swirling into the murky water. I didn't even have time to cry out in pain. I frantically grabbed the next piece of laundry and kept scrubbing. Half an hour later, the mountain of clothes was finally clean. I clutched my bleeding, sliced fingers, ran back to the front door, and screamed: "The laundry is done! It's all clean!" "If you don't believe me, open the door and check!" But this time, not only did no one answer... Even the sounds of the video game had completely stopped. A cold, suffocating terror gripped my heart. I ran to the living room window, threw it open, and screamed for help. We were on the twenty-first floor. A pedestrian on the sidewalk far below glanced up for a fraction of a second. And then kept walking. My entire body went rigid. I collapsed onto the floor, my legs giving out. I was locked inside this apartment for three hours. I tried absolutely everything I could think of. Until I was pushed to the absolute brink, ready to start a fire just to trigger the smoke alarms. I stood in the kitchen, my eyes locked dead onto the gas stove. Just as my hand reached for the burner knob... The front door unlocked. Ethan walked in, holding a thermal container of chicken soup. "I heard you finally finished the laundry." "Come have some soup." "Your mother made it." Inside the container, the soup had gone completely cold, a thick layer of congealed fat settling on the surface. Ethan set it on the kitchen island and impatiently loosened his tie. He looked exhausted and incredibly annoyed. "Just to remind your mother to take her pills, I had to cancel my attendance at a massive departmental symposium." "Maya, that imported medication your mother takes costs over a thousand dollars a pill, and I am the one paying for it." "You need to learn to be grateful." "Drink the soup and go to sleep. Do not try to pick another fight with me." Pick a fight? Hearing those words, a momentary wave of dizzying absurdity washed over me. I have a Master's degree. It's not that I couldn't get a job. I stayed home because Ethan desperately wanted a traditional family. He practically begged me to have his children. We tried for years and years, suffering through endless negative tests. To finally get pregnant, I went through brutal rounds of IVF, which meant I had to quit my job to manage the relentless doctor's appointments and physical toll. And after all of that, he began using my "allowance" as a weapon to control and threaten me. I only ever asked him for money to cover basic groceries and utilities... and in his eyes, that made me a hysterical woman "picking fights"? My sprained ankle was currently a throbbing, swollen, dark purple mass. My fingers, which had scrubbed the filthy laundry, were sliced open and still sluggishly bleeding. Every single word I wanted to scream at him suddenly died in my throat. "Ethan. We're getting a divorce." "Divorce?!" "Maya, it is the middle of the night, are you seriously going to throw another irrational tantrum right now?!" "I'm sleeping in the study tonight! You need to seriously evaluate your behavior and clear your head!" He glared at me with absolute disgust, completely dismissing what I had said. The next morning, I woke up early, went straight to a law firm downtown, and formally consulted a divorce attorney. Carrying the drafted divorce settlement, I took an Uber back to the university campus. As I walked through the quad, I noticed that everyone's eyes were fixed on me with a burning, intense hostility. "Is that her?" "God, that's disgusting." "Professor Sterling's social experiment is incredibly impactful!" Chapter 4 "I would rather die than be a stay-at-home housewife!" "If a modern woman allows herself to be degraded to that level, she might as well just kill herself!" Students walking past me glared with unconcealed disgust and contempt. Whispers echoed all around me. I froze in my tracks. I reached out to grab the arm of a female student walking by to ask her what was going on. She scowled, aggressively yanking her arm away, looking at me like I was radioactive waste. "Get away from me!" "Don't touch me!" "Do you seriously have no idea how much you've completely embarrassed women everywhere?!" I was stunned. I opened my mouth to speak. But then I looked past her and saw a massive row of life-sized cardboard standees erected across the campus quad. There was a high-resolution photo of me, wearing the four-inch stilettos, looking miserable and broke at the hospital billing counter. There was a photo of me with blood soaking through my pants, looking frantic and humiliated as I rushed to the bathroom. There was a photo of me with red, swollen eyes, scrubbing the filthy, putrid frat clothes in the bathtub. These intensely private, agonizing moments had been blown up to life-size proportions. Underneath every single standee, a bold, mocking "warning label" was printed. My breathing turned ragged and panicked. I broke into a heavy, agonizing limp, dragging my sprained ankle as I read the signs one by one. There was no end in sight. I don't know how long I hobbled, gasping for air, until I finally reached the end of the display. There, a crowd of student journalists was excitedly interviewing Chloe. "We are so incredibly grateful to Professor Sterling for using such a vivid, real-world example to provide a crucial wake-up call to young women everywhere!" My lungs completely stopped working. I stood there, drenched in cold sweat, staring at Chloe holding court. She put on a mask of humble, academic modesty. But the sheer, arrogant superiority radiating from her eyes was impossible to hide. Ethan stood beside her, looking at her with a gentle, incredibly proud smile, absolutely beaming with admiration. My entire body began to shake uncontrollably. I forced myself to take a step forward. But the next second, I froze again. Chloe pulled out a small, velvet-covered urn from her bag. She offered a cynical, mocking smirk to the cameras. "We also discovered that our subject, Maya, has been carrying this little urn around with her all day." "It appears to be designed for cremated remains." "However, as we all know, women who choose the path of the dependent 'housewife' would never actually terminate a pregnancy—their entire livelihood depends on producing an heir for their provider." "Therefore, my hypothesis is that this is simply a manipulative theatrical prop she is utilizing in a desperate attempt to win back her husband's affection." "Tomorrow, we will be officially unsealing this urn and revealing its contents to the public." "We welcome everyone to attend the final reveal!" After delivering her venomous, calculated speech, Chloe turned and walked away with the journalists. I stared at the urn—the one holding the ashes of my children—being casually tossed back into her designer tote bag. I screamed and lunged forward. But Ethan immediately stepped in front of me, violently blocking my path. "Maya, what the hell is wrong with you?!" "Didn't you see Chloe was in the middle of a press interview?!" He barked the reprimand, his brow furrowed in deep annoyance. Then, he looked down. Seeing my ghost-pale face and the sweat dripping from my chin, he paused for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his tone softened, though the impatience was still painfully obvious. "I know this feels a little unfair to you right now." "But once the presentation is over tomorrow, you can go back to resting and focusing on the pregnancy." Focusing on the pregnancy? I looked up at Ethan, a hollow, bitter laugh escaping my lips. Tears spilled silently down my cheeks. "Ethan... do you actually believe what she's saying?" "Am I really that pathetic and degraded in your eyes?" "Open your fucking eyes!" "I am your wife! And you are letting her humiliate me like a circus animal in front of the entire university!" I screamed the words, my voice tearing, pointing a shaking finger at the endless row of degrading cardboard standees. Ethan frowned. The momentary softness in his tone completely evaporated. "Maya, are these photos not documenting objective facts?" I let out a cold, sharp laugh. He continued, his voice dripping with condescension. "If you possessed any actual self-respect or self-worth, you never would have quit your job." "I know exactly what you're going to say. You're going to say you quit to have my children." "Did I hold a gun to your head and force you to get pregnant?" "There are dozens of female professors at this university who continue teaching and publishing research right up until their due dates." At this point, the utter, absolute contempt in Ethan's eyes was impossible to miss. "Maya, you can't have your cake and eat it too." "The day you chose to become a stay-at-home housewife, you implicitly consented to transferring certain personal rights and autonomies over to me."
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