The door opens slowly. My father steps in and makes his way to my bed.

“Want to go on an adventure? Like old times?” he asks.

I can smell sharpness on his breath again, but I nod.

“Nothing crazy,” I say.

“Deal,” he says. “That’s what I was thinking too.”

Out in the fields, we walk under the cold moon light. The colors of the world are inverse: Black grass, black sky, white stars, blue light on our bodies. I know the path we are taking. My muscles know the way.

“So, how’s the big city treating you? You too good for life back here on The Acres now?”

“You know it’s not that. Just hard to get all the way back here.”

“What’s the job like?”

“A job.”

“I knew you’d get one like that.”

“You didn’t know shit!”

My father lets out a low howl of laughter under the moon.

“I never knew shit, that’s true.”

“How’s business?”

“Not exactly booming,” he says.

“What’s happening?”

“Well, you know, freight costs are up, demand is down.”

“How bad is it?”

“I’d say pretty bad. Some of the harvests have been poor too. The meat coming out of the quarry is just weaker than it’s been.”

We fall into a silence until we arrive at the gates.

MY FATHER PULLS THE KEY FROM THE thin cord around his neck and unlocks the Meat Quarry. He pulls two flashlights from the pile and hands one to me. The meat scent is thinner than I remember it.

“We’ve got some new veins here,” he says. “Had to find some new paths when the big one dried up.”

We wander through the old caverns to the new. The old caverns have meat with less wetness to it, a slight matte to the flesh. Deeper in, the walls get wet again, that new-meat smell thicker, intoxicating.

THE DEEP RED SMELL BRINGS IT BACK: MY body pressed into the walls, into the ground, the taste of his salty mouth on mine, the feeling of him inside of me, my head shaking against the wetness.

My breath leaves my body, I cannot fill my lungs, I stretch a hand out to rest it against the quarry wall, that red moisture beneath my palms again, tears streaming down my face.

“Let’s go see this new cavern your brother discovered. Might be some real prime meat there. Come on, get a move on there.”

My father shines his light forward and keeps walking. He doesn’t notice the dampness of my face, the heave of my back wrenching against the sorrow.

THE NEXT EVENING, THE HOUSE IS PRIStine, candles lit across table, my mother in the kitchen, cooking, her knot covered in a red apron. She is her best self. She hugs me close, our knots touching beneath the fabrics.

“There you are,” my brother says as he walks in. “What’s been going on? Haven’t seen you in ages.”

I press my head into his shoulder.