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When I went down for breakfast, I sat in the chair opposite my usual spot. Father barged into the kitchen. A scent of wet grass and manure, like a beast sprawled in the mist, flooded my nostrils, trampling the stench of the garlic and onion braids hanging from the ceiling. Father’s fiery snorts heated the air.

My ears had stiffened. I ducked my head over the bowl of milk, baring my nape.

Father’s hulk prowled behind me while hissing through his teeth. He yanked the chair next to mine and dropped onto it as if to splinter the wood, which creaked. He planted a fist beside my bowl.

I gulped the milk as my throat clenched, risking a choke.

His fist bulged like a club, his fingers like swollen sacks of soil. Hundreds of iron spikes bristled across its back, climbing up a forearm thick as an oak branch. As Father breathed, the spikes converged and parted.

“Today, you’ll milk the cows and shear the sheep that were your mother’s duty. Understood?”

I nodded. Crossed my ankles under the table.

Father thrust his face toward me; it felt like a cannonball sinking into the opposite end of a mattress, causing my side to cave in. His breath grazed my skin like a flame.

“Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you bolt your door again tonight, tomorrow you’ll work double.”

My muscles tensed, steely. The milk bowl doubled and quivered. I would vomit.

By the counter, Mother faced away from me—a mannequin rigged from wooden slats, draped in a sweater and an ankle-length skirt. A thin, ash-gray mane covered her head. The mannequin, hunched over the sink, trembled as she scrubbed a glass with a scouring pad. If I glimpsed her gaunt silhouette from certain angles, Mother would vanish.

“Don’t bother her,” Father said. “She agrees.”

Mother spoke in a brittle whisper.

“Obey your father.”

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Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.