The following version of this short story was used to create the guide: Atwood, Margaret. "Cut and Thirst." Amazon Original Stories, 2024.

Margaret Atwood's short story "Cut and Thirst" is set in Toronto, Canada and written from the third person point of view. The short story employs both the past and present tenses, and toggles between scenes from the narrative past and present throughout. For the sake of clarity, the following summary relies upon the present tense and a more linear mode of explanation.

Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy gather at Leonie's house for cheese, crackers, and gin and tonics. The women have been friends since college and regularly meet up at one another's houses. Years prior, their friend Fern was wronged by a fellow writer named Humphrey Vacher and his cohort of aspiring male writers and poets. After Fern decided not to include Humphrey's work in a short story anthology that she was editing, Humphrey tasked his cohort with sabotaging Fern's reputation. They published a series of scathing reviews of Fern's work in an attempt to slander her name in the literary community. Fern was upset by the attacks for a time, and feared that her book sales would suffer as a result. Decades have passed since the incident, and Fern is still writing in her old age. Although she is no longer upset by the matter, Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy are desperate for revenge against the men who wronged their friend. They have recently noticed a sharp decline in Fern's health and are convinced that she is suffering from stress related to the now ancient incident.

At Leonie's, the friends decide that they will murder all of the men who hurt Fern. They try to decide what the best approach would be, while reminiscing about the past and trying to remember the names of the people involved in Fern's humiliation.

On Wednesday, Myrna walks to Fern's house for her regularly-scheduled visit. On the way, she thinks about the past and remembers the events surrounding what happened to Fern. She also recalls her and her friends' early attempts at establishing themselves as writers and their time spent teaching at the university level. At Fern's, Fern tells Myrna about the manuscript she just finished and sent off. She then reveals that several of her old offenders gave her private apologies for the pain they caused her. Myrna is dissatisfied, and decides that she and her friends still need to avenge Fern.

On Thursday, Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet back up at Chrissy's and finalize their revenge plans. They decide not to kill Fern's enemies and to prank one of them instead, choosing a man named Stephen. Chrissy finds his address, gets her hair and nails done, and brings with her a tray of Ex-Lax weed brownies. She plans to seduce Stephen, feed him the brownies, and flee abruptly.

At Stephen's, Chrissy is shocked to meet Stephen's wife Rhoda. She then realizes that she has the wrong former classmate, but cannot abandon her plan. She feeds the couple the brownies and reports back to her friends shortly thereafter. The friends laugh at their mistake and decide to bring Humphrey down next. They visit local bookstores to turn over all his books, but discover the books are out of print. They go to Fern's thereafter and tell her that no one in the literary community even remembers Humphrey anymore. Fern laments how important Humphrey used to be.