The dresses stack up around me, pile down, make weight on top of me. Scents rise up from the threads to greet me, smells of flea markets and old perfume and hidden sweat.

A yellow fabric falls over my nose and mouth like a hand over the face, taking my air. I go dizzy from the lack of oxygen, my eyes close against the fabric, the weight of it like Jarred’s body pressing against me.

LOW SOUNDS OF GRUNTING AND panting through my open window wake me in the night.

I follow the sound across the field to the deep red door of the barn.

I crack the door, and I press my eye against the peeling red wood.

Inside, my father is shirtless, covered in blood, bottle by his side. Piles of meat surround him. He shoves a handful of the red into his mouth. His eyes glint with some level of madness.

A small gasp escapes my mouth, and my father’s eyes flash up. He’s at the door in an instant.

“Well, look what we have here,” he slurs. Small flecks of meat land on my cheeks when he speaks. “Spying for your mother, huh?”

“No, I just heard...”

He yanks me into the barn, shutting the door behind us.

“You’re going to help me,” he says.

“What’s going to go—”

“Drink up,” he says, handing me the bottle.

I take a swig. It burns clear down the throat.

“This is all gonna go bad soon,” he says again.

He sinks his hand deep into the meat and pulls out a clump.

“Get started,” he says, handing me the meat.

My throat tightens, but I force my lips open and slide it into my mouth.

I picture snakes in the wild, consuming men whole. I picture women swallowing swords, great sharks consuming millions of fish at once. The meat slides down my tight throat, begins to work through my knot.

“Good,” he says. “We won’t waste this harvest. We’ve worked too damn hard.”

We eat all night, the bottle between us, an endless midnight dinner, eating until it feels we might split open.

In the morning, in the bathroom mirror, red is smeared across my face. I grin into my reflection, a wild animal.

AT SCHOOL, A PHRASE IS NEWLY scratched into the wood of my desk: KNOTTY BITCH.

Red rushes to my cheeks.

A line-up of my classmates’ faces flicks through my head: Jarred, Sophia, the other kid with the lazy eye.

“I know you did it,” I hiss at Sophia, pointing at the words on my desk.

“What do you mean?” she asks. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Just admit it. Just admit you carved it into my desk.”

“You’re fucked up,” she says. “Fuck you.”

◆The word knot comes from the Old English cnotta, meaning an intertwining of ropes

◆The knot was a symbol of the bond of marriage from the early 13th century