Bloom

Rosemary Dutton, who goes by Ro, is a 27-year-old assistant professor of literature at the University of Georgia. She recently completed her PhD at Columbia, but her personal life is in ruins: Her boyfriend Erik cheated on her with a student, and she has cut contact with her critical mother in Savannah. Ro visits the local farmers' market and stumbles into a stall run by Ash, a strikingly beautiful young woman who sells soaps, cupcakes, candles, honey, and houseplants. Ro tries a lavender cupcake sample and is overwhelmed by the richness of the frosting. Though she has always considered herself straight, Ro is unsettled by her attraction to Ash. The next Saturday, Ash has baked a rosemary lemon cupcake just for Ro. She gives Ro a snake plant, which Ro names Tybalt, and asks her to bring a photo next week. On her way out, Ro finds a flyer about a missing college student named Milla Fairfax but dismisses it.

Over subsequent Saturdays, Ash feeds Ro directly, selecting the best cupcakes for her while treating other customers with visible disinterest. Ash invites Ro to her property, a farmhouse surrounded by gardens and a greenhouse of stained-glass windows. Inside, she notes paintings with chipped corners, a sky-blue typewriter, and a sausage grinder but no TV or wifi. Ash shares that her mother abandoned her as a baby and her grandmother raised her alone on the farm. When Ro snoops and reaches for a closed door across from the bathroom, Ash reacts with sharp anger, warning that respecting boundaries is a "deal-breaker." Ash insists Ro must honor her privacy or the relationship cannot continue. They share their first kiss.

Ash prepares a lavish dinner the next evening: pork loin, black-eyed peas, fried chicken livers, and biscuits. She recounts being forced at age eight to kill and cook her pet chicken after her grandmother deemed her too attached. Later, a raccoon emerges on the porch. Ash retrieves a shovel and beats it to death, explaining her grandmother taught her to eliminate threats immediately. Ro becomes far more intoxicated than the wine should warrant. She spends the night vomiting; the tapenade comes back in rubbery gray cubes. The next morning, she discovers that a snail she brought as a gift has vanished from its jar. She drives home unsettled.

On a hike, they feed each other wild blackberries, which leads to passionate kissing. A man emerges from the trees recording them on his phone. Ash confronts him; he falls to the ground, though Ro cannot tell whether Ash pushed him or he tripped. Ash deletes his photos and cloud backup, throws his phone and keys into the river, and threatens him. She reveals she carries a sharp folding knife at all times. When Ro nicks her thumb on the blade, Ash places it in her mouth and sucks the wound clean.

That evening, Ash blindfolds Ro with a satin sleep mask and bathes her, clipping her fingernails short. Ash collects one of Ro's fallen eyelashes and swallows it. They have sex for the first time, with Ash redirecting every attempt Ro makes to reciprocate. Later, Ro finds a clay bowl in Ash's bathroom holding only Ro's clipped fingernail crescents.

Days later, Ro drives to the farm uninvited with a rare book as a gift and finds Ash furious at the intrusion. Ash warns this has ended past relationships but softens, giving Ro her grandmother's typewriter so they can exchange letters. Ash instructs Ro to write about desire. Ro writes her first poem that night and drives it to Ash's mailbox the next morning, where she finds all the mail addressed to an unfamiliar name: Elizabeth Gund. Googling the name, Ro discovers a 1970s ballerina and recognizes a framed photograph in Ash's spare bedroom as Ash's grandmother. Searching for Ash herself yields nothing; she has no online presence. Ro realizes she has slept with a woman who essentially does not exist.

The next Saturday, Ro finds Ash laughing with a well-dressed man at the market. When Ro approaches, Ash addresses her as "miss" with cold fury. Ro confronts her, accidentally breaks a pot, drops money to cover it, and walks away. At home, she presses a ceramic shard into her thumb until it bleeds and notices the clay contains unusual white chunks and specks. On Tuesday, Ash calls and apologizes, admitting she pushes people away. Ro says she cannot live walking on eggshells, but they reconcile. During lovemaking, Ash whispers her full name, Ashlyn Gund, an act of deep trust. For the first time, she allows Ro to touch her.

That night, a thunderstorm knocks out the power. Unable to sleep in the heat, Ro searches for the breaker and determines it must be behind the forbidden door. She finds a stairwell to the basement and restores power at the breaker box. Then she opens the door to the left. Inside is an abattoir, or slaughterhouse: chest freezers, a butcher's counter, a metal table under bright lights, surgical instruments, and bone saws. Strapped to a hospital bed is the voyeur from the hiking trail, missing both legs at the thigh, gagged and hooked to an IV. Ro's phone has no signal. She hears Ash calling from upstairs.

Ro hides, then attempts to escape through a narrow workshop window, but Ash is waiting outside and shoves her back in. Ash descends holding a knife, expressing sadness that Ro could not respect the one boundary that mattered. Ro asks how many people Ash has killed. Ash names her victims: Serena, a violinist; Jewel, a sculptor; Shannon, a street poet; Milla, the missing college painter whose work hangs on Ash's walls; and her grandmother Lizzy, the abusive ballerina. Ash reveals that Lizzy called her stupid, so Ash decided to consume geniuses and absorb their abilities.

Ash explains her process: She butchers bodies like pork, making sausage and cured meats. She renders fat into lard for soap and cupcake frosting. Heads go into the kiln to destroy dental records. Remains become garden fertilizer. Nothing is wasted. Ro grasps the horror: The charcuterie, the maple bacon cupcakes, the pork loin dinner were all human flesh. The specks in the clay pots are cremains, or cremated human remains. The lard in the frosting is human fat. Ash hands Ro a knife and asks her to kill the captive, David, to prove her love. With no means of escape, Ro calculates that compliance is her only chance of survival. Together, they slit David's throat.

Rosemary, now called by her full name, sits on the porch in a wheelchair, reading Jane Austen and eating Ash's muffins. Ash fabricated emails quitting Ro's job, wiped her phone, and brought her belongings to the farmhouse. Ash amputated Ro's legs and fed them back to her, ensuring Ro can never leave. Ro channels her remaining agency into poetry, persuading Ash to let her submit poems anonymously. She composes a poem embedding a hidden acrostic, a message formed by the last letter of each line, hoping someone will decode it and find her. Ash discovers the message after publication. She appears on the porch holding the bone saw, straddles Ro, pins her arms, and tells her that without hands, she cannot type. She brings the bone saw down.