Struggling to cope with her childhood trauma, seventeen-year-old Nina Miller finds herself on the verge of death, overdosing on prescription medication. As her consciousness slips, something reaches out from the dark – an ancient and calculating entity offering salvation. Nina utters the word “deal” and miraculously survives, but not without great cost.
Nine years later, Nina is deliberately single, still broken, and sharing an apartment with her childhood friend, Casey. As they both get ready for a night out, Nina's birth control is quietly sabotaged. This results in an unwanted pregnancy that turns her life upside down. While Nina may have forgotten her deal, the entity hasn't, and her positive pregnancy test marks the beginning of a new phase of his game.
Unable to bring herself to terminate the pregnancy, Nina endures a series of the surreal and unsettling events leading up to the birth of her child. It becomes obvious that the people around her are, at times, someone else entirely.
After Nina's son is born, glimmers of motherly love suggest Nina is beginning to embrace her new role, but even the tender moments are tainted by the entity's presence. His tactics intensify as his patience diminishes, eroding Nina's trust in Casey and pushing her to the brink.
Nina is forced to seek refuge in the last place she ever wanted to go: her childhood home, where foul memories of sexual abuse linger and her estranged mother still refuses to see the monsters right in front of her – until, finally, she does. It becomes clear to both women that an entity is stalking Nina, pretending and shapeshifting in a bid to take her child.
Desperate, Nina attempts to destroy the entity using the same drug that nearly killed her, but the plan fails. What follows is a harrowing face-off as the entity reveals its most hurtful and personal form yet: her late father – a specter of the abuse that still defines her. Nina finds herself trapped and alone, with the entity demanding she hand over her child. In a moment of instinct, quick wit, and newfound maternal resolve, Nina manages to turn the tables, beating the entity at his own game by accepting the terms of a new deal he didn't mean to offer her. The new deal clears Nina's debt and saves her child from an unthinkable fate.
Years later, after growing her family and reconnecting with her mother, Nina faces a horrible truth: someone she loves has made a deal of their own, and the entity is back, ready to collect on the outstanding debt. In these final moments, a deeper, hidden layer of the story is revealed: the entity is the notorious deal-maker, Rumpelstiltskin.
