Event time

It’s the night before the party, and I am awake, staring at the calendar, knowing tomorrow is the date I either free myself or plunge myself deeper into this mess.

I lie on my back in the secondhand queen bed, one hand resting over my belly that I have worked hard to get back to being flat, and try to picture what tomorrow will look like. But my brain refuses to render anything except the calendar, the fridge, the ugly little smiley face.

Sleep comes in fits and starts. When it’s finally morning, I don’t even hear him approach—just the sudden, percussive whap-whap-whap of the old hairbrush on my door.

“Rise and shine, kiddo! Big day!” His voice is too bright, like he’s auditioning for a toothpaste commercial.

I **** myself up, “One moment, and I’ll get dressed.”

He glances at the pink hoodie and pajama pants I’m wearing. “Don’t bother. You won’t be needing any clothes tonight.” He holds out a black cloth bundle, tied with a length of silk ribbon. “Just bring this.”

I untie it, revealing a black mask with no eye holes, and a pair of disposable flip-flops.

“Really?”

He shrugs. “You’re the one who wanted the game. Now, let’s go.”

We drive in silence. The venue is on the edge of town, just past the suburban sprawl and tucked between a golf course and a shuttered strip mall. The sign says “Leisure Club,” but the building looks like it used to be a steakhouse. Dad parks in the lot, then points to a service alley around back.

“You go in that way. I’ll meet you inside after the party starts.” He puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes. “You’re going to do fine. Just do what they tell you.”

I get out and walk the length of the alley, hugging the bundle to my chest. The back door is painted maroon and has a discreet “Deliveries Only” plaque above it. When I knock, it opens with a groan.

A young woman in a chef’s coat, the sleeves rolled up to show a sleeve of rainbow tattoos, looks me up and down. “You’re late,” she says. “Strip. Everything off. Leave it in the bin.”

Her voice is flat, like she’s talking to a child or a robot. I look past her and see nine other women, all naked except for identical black masks, sitting on metal folding chairs in a line. Some have their arms folded across their chests, others fidget with their hands in their laps. One is biting the tip of her thumb hard enough to leave a mark.

I strip, folding my clothes and tucking them into the plastic tub by the door. My skin prickles with cold and embarrassment. The tattooed woman points to a set of frosted glass doors at the far end of the corridor. “Shower. Use the blue soap. Mask on, then come back here.”

The shower is one big open stall, lined with those weird plastic mats that feel both sticky and slippery at once. There’s no privacy. I step in, let the cold water blast me, and scrub down with the industrial blue soap that smells like a cross between hand sanitizer and floor cleaner.

When I’m done, I dry myself with a scratchy towel, lie down on a metal cart, and pull the mask over my face. The Chiefs cover my body and the bodies of the other nine masked women in food.

Then, the tables, one by one, are rolled out of the prep area and into the main hall. My own table tilts as it’s wheeled across a threshold, and for a brief moment I imagine myself sliding off and shattering on the floor, sashimi and all. But the men pushing me are careful. There’s a momentary darkness, then a rush of noise.

I’m flat on my back, arms at my sides, legs together, a full dinner service balanced across the plate of my body. Under the food, the chill of the metal table seeps into my bare skin. The black mask over my head prevents me from seeing anything. A little slit at the nose is the only thing keeping me from suffocating, and the inside smells like someone sprayed it with cheap vodka and Febreze to cover the last girl’s perfume. The mask presses in around my jaw and cheekbones, hollowing out my hearing so every sound on the other side of it feels distant and warped.

Even with no eyes, I know the men are right there, orbiting the table, peering down at my naked, food-covered body, taking in every detail. The food covering me: sashimi, sushi rice, some kind of orange roe that’s melting in the body heat pooling under my belly button, sticks in places that regular soap and water will never reach. I can feel it between my breasts, along the insides of my elbows, even tucked in under the arch of my right foot.

The voices swarm in: the ****-casual, male laughter of businessmen at a networking event, highballs clinking, the sticky whisper of expensive shoes on tile. I listen for familiar inflections, any clue to tell me who’s here.

My father is easy to pick out. His voice carries the faux-warmth of a CEO at a company Christmas party, full of loaded invitations and veiled threats. “Dig in, gentlemen, the club paid extra for this round.” The words bounce off the ceiling, returning heavier, stickier, as the men step forward.

A hand, dry and papery, floats down onto my left thigh. Fingers splay and squeeze, pushing a seaweed-wrapped nigiri against my skin until it bends and crumbles. I hear a grunt of amusement, and the sushi vanishes, leaving a wet patch and a burning stripe of wasabi that threatens to set my leg on fire.

The men trade comments in low voices as they eat, but every so often, a familiar one will echo up from above my head, then loop around my left ear and lodge itself in my memory like a fish hook. The first one I clock is my old elementary school best friend’s dad, a man with a voice so nasal it could clear paint from a car bumper. He spends most of his time talking about the market, but when he leans over to take a roll from my sternum, I hear the awkward intake of his breath. He makes a joke—something about “eating well tonight, boys”—and it’s so out of place that I want to snap my own neck just to make it stop.

Then there’s the husband of my high school softball coach. His voice is deeper, almost gentle, but the hands are all wrong—callused, insistent, with fingernails that rake my ribs and pluck at the sticky rice. I can feel him linger, not just for the taste but to press into the doughy give of my flesh, kneading it like he’s checking for ripeness.

The last one I recognize, and I’d know this voice anywhere: my high school principal. I should have known my father would have invited him, because I have told him multiple times about how much of a huge perv I thought the principal was. He talks only in single syllables, and when he reaches for a dumpling that’s been perched just to the left of my pussy, he intentionally misses and pushes his finger deep into my pussy, and before licking his finger and leaving the dumpling where it was.

The laughter gets lower, meaner, as the food disappears and the focus shifts to the body underneath. One of the men grabs the curve of my stomach and jiggles it, saying something about “good breeding stock.” Another trails a chopstick from the hollow of my throat down to my belly button, circling, circling, before tracing the outline of my trimmed pubic hair. My breath gets shallow. I try to go somewhere else in my head, but every molecule of sensation is tuned to what’s happening on my skin.

When dessert arrives, the men are drunk enough to think it’s funny to pile dollops of whipped cream on my nipples and then suck it off, one after another. The sensation is so surreal—ticklish, cold, then abruptly burning hot when someone bites down hard enough to bruise—that I start to shake. At first, it’s just my legs, but then my whole body starts trembling, like a fish on a dock waiting for the killing blow.

The room quiets as the next phase of the ritual begins. I can tell by the way the men close in, the way their voices drop, that something’s about to happen.

“Contest time,” my father announces.