TOXIC BLOODLINES 1/4

THE BLIZZARD

KIMBERLY

Christmas lights lit up the streets... it surprised me that people still found the time to hang them up despite everything. I shut my eyes to try and remember what it felt like to be one of those happy families, what I'd be doing at this very moment. My aunt would have Sara and her cousins over with Ian to help us put up decorations. Aaron would complain, as usual, she and I would argue over the color scheme, and Ian and Sara would be in the kitchen stealing candy canes.

My aunt loved Christmas. She just loved the spectacle of it. Our house used to be the brightest this time of the year, and the loudest from how much my uncle would complain about his electricity bill. He was a bit of a Grinch when it came to the holidays. He'd give us a whole lecture on the history of the 'English Messiah', 'He was born in Palestine', 'He wasn't born on December 25th.' etc. And we'd sit at the dining table and smile and nod while Aunty Aminah riled him up even more... he never caught onto our inside joke.

My favorite and most chaotic Christmas memory was four years ago when Sara and Ian painted all the nativity statues brown. Uncle Ahmed loved it because it pissed off the neighbors, who wrote countless letters reporting us for being 'disruptive.'

By now, the whole family would have flown in from India, and I'd be trapped in the kitchen helping the Aunties cook. I'm the oldest of the girl cousins in the family, so I couldn't escape the tradition. I remember how much I hated it because all the boys got to sit and play video games all day and night. And I was stuck helping the aunties and enduring hours of remarks about my appearance for being too Westernized; it was that or listening to the gossip. Aunty Aminah did her best to hide me, but even she was overpowered.

A funny memory from last year of Arik meeting them for the first time came into my head, I snorted.

"What's funny?" Arik asked.

I opened my eyes and wiped away the tears. "Remember when we just started dating, and you dropped off the Christmas present at my house?" I recalled.

He laughed. "Yeah, your aunts fed me so much food, and I was sweating- I could barely breathe."

"I think my aunt knew that we were together, and that was why she made us sit next to each other at dinner, just to torture my uncle." I almost forgot how mischievous she was.

Arik laughed. "That makes a lot of sense." He turned up the heater. "I was freaking scared; all of your uncles kept staring at me. Especially the one with the beard."

"Yeah, Uncle Mohit, that's his resting face. He later told me he liked your hair."

We shared a laugh looking back on the memory. But our smiles faded the moment we left the suburbs, and the road ahead got dark. "...Why did you bring it up?" Arik asked.

"I don't know... I saw all the lights. It just feels like a lifetime ago. Things are so different now," I answered. "...Do you think they knew that all this was going to happen?" I asked, trying to start that conversation.

Arik sighed. "I think they thought it was behind them; nobody saw this coming," he answered.

We sat silently for a few more minutes, and the snow started falling heavily. "What did your dad tell you?" I asked, looking ahead.

Arik was thinking about what to say. "Everything and nothing at the same time," he answered.

"What do you mean?" I shifted to face him.

"I saw something in the woods," he glanced at me.

"What did you see?"

"A monster? Something straight out of a horror movie," Arik answered. "Kim, my dad... he knew what it was. He's tried to kill it before... he's been hunting it. That's what all those dumb trips to the lake house were about. My grandpa always told me stories about it, my dad said he was losing his mind. But my grandpa was right. It was real. My dad lied, he put my grandpa in a fucking home, he told us he had dementia, but he lied!" Arik vented with so much anger and betrayal in his voice.