Bittersweet

The bittersweet vines kept growing, no matter how hard the girl and boy tried to cull them. Don't miss this sinister fable of family dysfunction by Jacqueline Knirnschild

Photo by Tuncay Uyar on Unsplash

By Jacqueline Knirnschild,

The girl and the boy pulled at the white-speckled vines that twisted around the blueberry bushes. Snip, snip, snip. Their shears cut into the stalks that seemed to grow thicker every year. The wrinkly, decaying red berries of the bittersweet squinted at them. The sun was setting earlier every day.

The girl came across a base she thought she had cut just the other day. Three new vines had sprouted, climbing their way up the bush. She clipped the branches off and put the stub in her pocket. The boy yanked hard on a stalk, trying to rip out the roots, but a loose vine flung forward and hit him in the face. He got up and tried again, but it was no use, the root systems were too deep.

At dinner that night, the girl tried to show their mama the evidence.

“They’re growing back faster than we can cut!” she said.

“Damnit!” Papa yelled. His spoon clattered to the table. “I just near burned myself!”

“I told you the soup was piping hot,” Mama said tiredly.

“Well, it wouldn’t be if you put a pat of butter in it like I asked.”

“You asked no such thing! Besides, with your belly, I don’t think you need any more butter.”

And the bickering went on.

The girl put her hand in her pocket and ran her finger along the piece of bittersweet. She felt a new growth on the side. She took it out and nudged her brother. They watched in amazement as the scraggly stem lengthened, pointing a crooked finger toward their parents.

The girl and boy were sent back outside the next day to cut more bittersweet. They tightened their scarves and trudged through the tall, moist grass. A grey cloud hung above them.

“I miss summertime,” the boy said.

The girl nodded in agreement.

At the end of the summer, the whole family used to go blueberry picking together. Papa would sing folk songs while they plopped berries into their mouths and, occasionally, their buckets. Mama would jump out from behind the bushes and tickle the children until Papa came over and swung her around in his arms. Then they’d walk home, and Mama would bake a blueberry cake. Usually, they all ate the cake together, oohing and aahing at the deliciousness, but in more recent years, Papa would push his chair in, and go smoke his pipe outside. The first time it happened, the boy asked, “Why doesn’t Papa like the cake anymore?” Mama said, “Oh, he likes the cake just fine.” She brushed some crumbs under the rug, forced a smiled, and put on her apron. “He likes the cake just fine. Everything is just fine.”

Now, in the blueberry patch, the vines had spread and stretched, gripping onto more plant limbs than the day before. The cutting had only led to more sprouting.

“We’re going to have to pull them out by the roots,” the girl said.

“But that’s too hard!” the boy exclaimed.

“I know, I know, but we have to try.”

They teamed up to yank out the thick vines that were choking the blueberry bushes.

“One, two, three!” they said and pulled together.

The boy fell on his back into a tangle of bittersweet. One poked him in the eye, and he started crying.

“We’re not big enough,” he said. “We need Mama and Papa.”

“I know,” the girl said. “But . . . they can’t see it. They just can’t.”

“Cutting it just makes it grow back,” the girl said again at dinner that night. Her voice was more urgent, frantic than before. “We have to yank the roots out.”

“No, no,” Mama said. “That’s impossible.”

“Yes, for once I agree with your mother,” Papa said.

The girl pulled out the piece of stalk from her pocket. Four stems had already grown from it. Another shot out, reaching toward the children.

Late at night, the girl crept down the stairs to listen to her parents argue. She watched their shadows sway. She heard a fork scrape against a plate, then liquid pouring, the slam of a glass on the table, guzzling.

“Why do you have to drink so much?” Mama asked.

A chair scudded; water rushed from the faucet.

“Here, give me that,” Mama said.

“I’ve got it,” Papa said.

“Let me do it.”

“I said I got it!”

Something shattered in the sink. Papa’s shadow loomed on the wall, growing larger and larger. The girl began to cry, waking the boy.

The parents sent the children back for another day of cutting. A light layer of snow covered the dead leaves of fall. The skies were dark, a blustering storm approaching.

The bittersweet had expanded; tangling, winding itself around anything it could latch onto. The blueberry bushes, once hearty and full of potential, were withered to sad nothings. And the nearby tree branches were falling, cracking under the weight of the red berries that winked against the white of snow.

“I’m scared,” the boy said. “I don’t think we should be here.”

“I know it’s a little scary,” the girl said. “But it’s just a plant–it can’t hurt us. And think of how happy Mama and Papa will be when it’s all gone.”

They set out, cutting as close to the earth as they could, but more stems emerged from beneath. Then the bittersweet began regenerating before their very eyes, growing five times as fast as they could cut; the craggy arms grabbing at everything, squeezing knobby fingers around the necks of the bushes and trees, choking, strangling.

The boy screamed and the girl ran to him, struggling amid the vines that were wrapping around her legs. Ropes of bittersweet pulled the boy to the ground.

“Mama! Papa!” the boy screamed. But the vines only hastened, entwining their way around his small limbs, twisting around his neck, squeezing the breath out of him. The girl clamped her shears around the thick vine, pressing and pressing until it finally sliced apart, but no sooner did both sides grow five new arms.

The vines grabbed the girl, pulling her down next to the boy, who was disappearing, sinking into the earth that was quickly becoming a monstrous snarl of bittersweet.

“Get Mama,” the boy gasped.

The girl slashed at the vines and ran to the house for help as fast as she could, dodging the bittersweet’s advances. She made it inside, slamming the door behind her and collapsing. From the window, she saw the bittersweet wrapping itself around the house, squeezing. Debris fell from the ceiling as the walls constricted. Rain started pounding against the roof. Mama ran down the stairs.

“What’s happening?” she said. “Where’s your brother?”

“The bittersweet . . .” the girl said. “It–it got him.” She erupted into sobs. Mama grabbed Papa’s scythe and ran out the back door. When she emerged, the whole yard was full of sinister, bittersweet monsters. Vines were curling in on themselves and reaching out, retching, cracking, snapping. Then there was a faint cry. The cry of her baby boy. Mama slashed through the mess, the tangle, cutting into the small red berries that oozed like blood. She hacked madly, the scythe a mere appendage of the instincts that were guiding her to her son’s whimpering. Then she noticed something else moving toward her son. It was large and dark with two sets of eyes and teeth. She lifted the scythe to strike.

“Stop!” her husband screamed. The eyes and teeth were those of the family’s horses, pulling him on the plough. He had come to help.

They reached the boy who was gasping for his last breath of air, cinched between countless bittersweet vines. Together, with the scythe and plough, Mama and Papa released him.

The bittersweet fell.

The next day, Mama and Papa went out and dug up every single bittersweet root they could find, destroying the blueberry bushes in the process. Mama would have to plant more the following year.

They thought they had finally conquered the beastly bittersweet, but then, less than a week later, the vines reemerged, turning inwards, wrapping around themselves. Mama and Papa both blamed the other, arguing that “someone, not I, though, of course,” must have been lazy; must have missed a few roots here and there. “We wouldn’t have this mess in the first place if you wouldn’t have let things get out of hand,” Papa snapped at Mama.

They tried spraying the plants with poison, which seemed to work for a little while, but then, the monstrous bittersweet reared its head again. Finally, Papa couldn’t take it anymore. He packed his bags to leave for good. But before he left, he went out and dug deep trenches around what had once been their blueberry patch. He lit small fires throughout the snarling mess, doused water on the outskirts, and watched the flames destroy everything. Everything that is except for one small chunk of bittersweet that had escaped and writhed its way into his pocket.

Jacqueline Knirnschild is a writer currently based in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Poetry South, Full Stop, MORIA, and The Cleveland Review of Books, among other publications. Her fiction received first place in the 2025 Steve Grady Prize, and she holds an M.A. in English from the University of Maine.