Emese took a shower afterwards. Her thoughts were dead; they stood still and quiet in the icy city her mind had become. She tried to wash everything off; she poured hot water into her mouth to get rid of the snail oil. She tried to vomit, but she couldn’t because she was empty inside.

At last she ended up in the same room where the other children were kept. She lay down on the floor, tried to make herself so small as to disappear altogether, and she cried, because that was all she could do, even though she had no tears left.

Feri sat in the corner. He swept the lock away from his forehead; his face was pale, his eyes red.

‘I told you we should have fucked,’ he said eventually. ‘It would have been better for both of us. That at least would have been our decision.’

Andrea embraced Hugó.

‘It was so beautiful,’ she said. ‘Like she was a baby again. I think we purified her entire little soul.’

Hugó sighed heavily and happily.

‘You see how these people live? They’re surrounded by so much beauty. And we just waste our lives in the office.’

Andrea laid her head in her husband’s lap.

‘One of these days we’ll move out here too.’

Traditionally it is the women who put the essences into the larvae, after having them soaked in the holding liquid for six hours. However, men can also carry out the task.

Andrea saw how meticulous and affectionate Gergő was in his handling of the larvae, how carefully he pulled out the essences from the Tupperware containers, and how skillfully he molded them into a shape, then put them inside the larvae.

‘You have to do it through the asshole,’ he explained while he was up to his elbow in the larva, ‘otherwise it doesn’t take root.’

After he secured the essence inside, he pulled his hand out of the flesh and opened up the next container. After the essences are planted, the larvae are left to rest for the night. That’s the time the essence needs to take root in the flesh before the final step of the harvest can be observed.

At dawn the larvae are cut up.

Gergő held the larva between his knees and cut into the skin. The larva’s shell opened up like a flower greeting the sunshine.

Inside the larva lay a humanoid creature. Its face was obscured by bodily fluids and dirt, but the chain led to its mouth, disappearing into it. Gergő cut a larger incision around the chain, then pulled the chain out of the body. The entire family watched in silence. It was a moment of success or failure; a moment of life or sustained non-­existence.