Preggers

by Joseph Monninger

When Dale and Ellen Swasey attend a Rescue the American Child convention outside of Boston, they hear a doctor describe something called hatching. Passionate right-to-lifers, the Swaseys decide they must kidnap a young pregnant woman and keep her safe until the child is an inevitability. Dale and Ellen fantasize about their as it sounds out of context, we named this imaginary girl “Cindy.” Again, it was just make-believe. It became a code word between us, one we could use with other people around. “Do you think Cindy will like this?” Ellen asked when we bought a lamp or table. “She’ll love it,” I said. “I sure hope she does,” Ellen said. “It goes with the dresser.” That’s how it all got started. Afterward I told Ellen, you give a name to something and it becomes real.Set in a farmhouse in New Hampshire, Preggers is in the tradition of John Fowles’s The Collector and Herbert Lieberman’s Crawlspace. Terrifying and mesmerizing, this is a story of what goes on behind our neighbor’s closed doors.

188 pages, Paperback

Published October 14, 2021

About the author

Joseph Monninger was an American writer and Professor of English at Plymouth State University. He lived in Warren, New Hampshire.