It Used To Be Like That

Aunt May answers after what feels like the 45th ring.

As soon as she clicks the videochat button, we all groan in exhaustion and roll our eyes in frustration.

“May, where on earth have you been?!” Mom mutters, gritting her teeth and grunting.

She looks like she's about to jump into the screen right now and smack Aunt May on the face in person. So does dad, and Uncle Gary, and Grandma Bern.

“Sorry y'all,” Aunt May immediately says, her voice groggy and loose, like she just drank the whole day.

Which she did, guessing from the wine she has in hand and the mess her hair is in.

“I forgot about this stuff,” She murmurs, forcing the words out of her mouth like spit. “It slipped from my mind. I had to go down the farm first and hunt somebody.”

“Hunt somebody for it or hunt somebody for the other it?” Aunt Jennica mutters, a deep scowl on her face. “For Christ's sake, May, you're almost 35. Get a life and stop having christmas sex spree. It's not a thing!”

“Oh, shut your divorced ass up, Jennica,” Aunt May answers, grunting in annoyance. “You only say that 'cause you're insecure and jealous of me. You can't ever have a man with your nasty kids and unpayable mortgage. It is a thing, and I read it on the magazine!”

“What magazine is that?” Grandma Bern suddenly asks, butting in. “Does that magazine contain some juicy sex stuff, May? Like how to make your husband with arthritis and a hip replacement still hit it with a bang?”

“Or does it have some juicy, hot girls on it?” Uncle Barry immediately asks too, a little bit too excited. Then, he notices Aunt Clary--his wife--giving him a nasty look from the screen and he flusters. “Sorry. I was just asking for a friend. Says he never gets satisfied with his wife lately. Always tired. Always underperforming.”

We all grunt at this, both in annoyance and disgust.

“Look, can we just get this over with?” Aunt Jennica suddenly says as she sighs in exasperation and moves her computer. “I'm tired and I have a lot of other things to do tomorrow. Stop the blabbering and let's begin!”

My cousin, Grace, grunts. “My meat's getting cold. Should I go out first and hunt some other?”

“I told you to hunt two at a time, Grace, why didn't you listen to me again?” Aunt May suddenly says, tipsy and about to fall off the floor.

Aunt Rose sarcastically scoffs. “What do you expect from the child of Karen, May?”

“Oh, you're lucky Karen's not here,” Dad can't help but say, trying to wear his glasses.

“Yeah, 'cause she's busy looking for the manager at Costco,” Aunt Rose mutters, her face pinching.

“Actually, Aunt Rose, she's busy managing the papers to buy your house,” Grace immediately tells Aunt Rose, sassy. “She figured you would look better on the streets without any money and food.”

“Amen.” Aunt Jennica utters, but then, when she realized how silent we all got, she clears her throat and looks down. “I'm praying.”

“Jennica, you're atheist,” Uncle Barry says.

“Shut your mouth, Barry, or my kids will hear you!” She hisses, looking back at us. “They're still under the delusion that I'm a nun. Says I look like the nun from their school church.”

“What a hot nun that was then,” Uncle Gary says, which makes us fall into an awkward silence again and stare at him with 'what-the-fuck' faces.

Aunt Teresa--his wife--grunts and grits her teeth. “Gary Stevenson . . .”

Uncle Gary sighs and looks far away. “I guess, I'm gonna have to sign divorce papers a couple of days from now, fam.”

I groaned and spoke. “Can we just start? Please?”

They all turn to look at me and sigh.

“Fine,” Mom immediately says, shifting in her seat. “We all know the rules, right? No cheating, no google searching, no book reading, no talking at all to anybody, and no snitching. No one ever lets themselves get snitched, so make sure you hide it perfectly.”

I roll my eyes at this and whisper. “Bold of you to assume people care so much about me that they'd snitch me.”

I could tell she hears this, but ignores it. She continues to ramble, instead.

“This is just how it's going to be done today because we can't travel to each other's places as of the moment,” Mom says, like a teacher explaining something to her students. “The pandemic is being a complete shit and I know it's taking a toll on all of us, but it's important that we have some fun, too. This is the fun. Do you have your ingridients with you?”

“Yeah!” We say in unison.

“Your recipe in mind?”

“Yeah!”

“Well then . . .”

We smack the table with our hands, imitating a drum roll.

“Let's get ready to ruuuuumbbbbleeee!!”

Everybody cheers and leaps out of their seats. Aunt May, the always drunk Aunt May, almost falls face first to the floor as she tries to stand up with her wine glass still in hand.

Uncle Barry starts to slice some carrots. Aunt Rose and Aunt Jennica starts to fry something. Grandma Bern and Grandpa Hugh argues about what will they cook first, the egg or the chicken. Aunt Gary and Aunt Teresa is just having a whole-ass wrestling match in their kitchen, with Aunt Teresa repeatedly asking why he's simping at Aunt Jennica, of all people.

“She looks like a seahorse! And she's a bitch!”

I don't know if they know their camera is on right now, or that we can hear them. Aunt Jennica hears them, and yells at them in the screen.

“You shut your lip fillers, Teresa, or I'm going to smack you with this pan!”

“Don't you mock these lip fillers, Jennica, you can never afford them!” Aunt Teresa answers.

I just roll my eyes and grunt under my breath in annoyance. Seriously, my family just can't shut up, can they?

I proceeded in slicing some onion and marinating some fish. When I finished doing those, I immediately fried garlic and cooked some rice. I baked mini cupcakes in the oven and fried my marinated fish a couple of minutes after.

Then, it's time for the main course.

The star of the dish. The cherry on top. The best part of the meal.

The meat.

As heavy as he is, I didn't let this bother me nor stop me from grabbing him out the table and into the center of the kitchen. Blood trailed all throughout the kitchen floor as I pull him and pull him and pull him with all my strength.

I'm profusely sweating and panting by the time I let go of him. I stare at him for quite some time--his auburn hair, his blood-soaked shirt, his cold, lifeless body . . . Then, I proceed on getting the kitchen knife and slicing through his stomach.

The sound it makes makes my heart clench with anticipation. Saliva starts to fill my mouth and I'm almost--almost--tempted to just claw my fingers to his insides but I breathed deep, and calmed down.

This is not the time for it. I need to win in the cook-off, like I always do every Christmas eve.

It's a tradition. It has always been, ever since the 1950's. At least, in my Mom's side of the family. We do cook-offs in Grandma and Grandpa's house, and whoever cooks the best dish, gets to have the grandest presents from every single one of his relatives. The grandest! Literally the grandest!

Today, with the current pandemic plaguing the country, the prize is still thr same but the mechanics of the game isn't. It changed a little bit, since we can't gather around together.

Sincs the 1950's, it was always just one person. It has always been just one person.

A member of the family will hunt one person, bring them to the house, and we'll cut him, feast on his organs to cook and eat.

Tonight, since we're all separated, we have to hunt by ourselves and bring one dead body inside our houses for the game.

This dead body I have is of a boy I met by the subway. He seemed nice, and we talked all the way home. Too bad he wasn't nice enough for me to not kill him.

We turned into a corner, and I stabbed him from the back. I watched as he falls face first to the floor and stare at nothing with wide, shocked eyes.

He almost looked funny, really. I'm telling myself not to laugh.

Aunt May had a little girl with her. Aunt Rose, an old man. Uncle Barry and Aunt Clary, a middle-aged woman. Aunt Jennica, a teenage boy. Some of my cousins, people just their age too.

We were all busy cutting them up, exploring their bodies and pulling out their organs that we didn't get to think about the time.

“Thirty minutes left!” Mom mutters, as giddily as she could muster.

We all groaned in irritation.

Time can't be that fast! I'm still boiling the liver and the kidneys. I'm not even done frying the fingers yet, since it took me a long time to remove the damn nails! It's always the damn fingernails that gets me stuck with these things. Always a big bugger to remove! And they don't even taste that good!

I speed up my cooking and try to do shortcuts in making everything. I gauged out the juice from the eyes, and sliced some meat on the legs. It tasted good the first time I tasted it, but I think it could use some more salt.

“Fifteen minutes!”

Damn it, my leg meat is burnt!

Desperate and hopeless, I butchered the guy's whole leg off and placed it on the pan. I could hear everybody's panic through the screen.

Mom keeps yelling something, Aunt Rose is cursing as loud as she could (seriously, she sounded like those girls in porn), and Aunt May just keeps on banging her head at everything. Uncle Gary and Aunt Teresa's throwing plates at each other now, saying things like “your coochie ain't even that good!” and “How the hell does your mother cook bad curry while she's indian?!”. Uncle Barry's trying his hardest to jam to his italian background song, and Aunt Jennica keeps on muttering “This is worse than my kids!!!”. My cousins were being the usual weirdos that they are, laughing at each other's jokes without a care in the world. It certainly doesn't look like I'm the only youngster here who actually cares about the event. Tsk.

Time continues ticking, and it's almost five minutes before the times up that Uncle Barry screams.

It was a loud scream, louder than his italian background song. It was loud enough to make us stop and look at him.

We see him falling to the floor, trembling in fear. Then, we hear Aunt Clary's defeaning screech.

What the heck?

“For Pete's sake, Clary, tone it down! You're ruining my speakers! And this laptop is NOT cheap!” Aunt Teresa suddenly says, annoyed.

“Yeah, what on earth is going on, Clary?” Grandpa Hugh immediately asks, frowning. “I just lost my hip, I don't think loosing my hearing would do me any good at this time. What's happening?”

But Clary just continues screeching and screeching until somebody else comes walking towards the screen, his arm severely smitten and his whole body soaked in blood.

He stands still for a few seconds, before he suddenly turns his head towards us and we all gasp in shock.

Holy shi--!!

It's the corpse. The corpse they killed! The main part of the meal, the corpse!

He's standing in front of us right now with no eyes and no no nose, his brain exposed and his mouth widely stretched. Aunt Clary continues screaming, and so did Uncle Barry. Mom starts to panic too and Aunt Jennica begins to cry.

“Clary? Barry? Hang in there!” They try to say as we watch the corpse with not even a stomach inside him walk towards them.

My cousins, who was so mischievous and giddy the other minute, just looks stunned and speechless right now. Their jaws are dropped, their eyes are wide open and they're frozen in their position.

Just like me. I'm frozen in my position. I don't know what to do!

Apparently, so did Aunt Clary and Uncle Barry.

“What do we do?!” They ask as the corpse continues towards them and they continue to run away from it.

I couldn't help it. I spoke. “Grab a knife! Stab it!”

Everybody gasps as Aunt Clary tries to stab the corpse on the chest. The corpse does not budge and continues to walk closer to them.

They scream in terror.

“Help, guys! Please! Help!” Uncle Barry mutters as we watch them play chase on their tiny kitchen.

Mom brings out her phone and calls the police.

“Hello?” She says. “I'd like to report an incident--”

But then, she suddenly drops her phone and gets frozen in fear as she sees something in front of her.

I stick my face close to the camera, worried.

“Mom? Mom?!” I say.

Her breathing progressively hitches, until she screams and screams and screams.

My jaw dropped in surprise as soon as I saw a corpse walking towards her.

I clench my hands into fists. “Mom! MOM!”

A bloody hand plasters itself all througout my laptop screen. Gasping, I immediately stand up and look straight at the man in front of me.

The young guy. The corpse.

“Why did you kill me, Phoebe?”

Oh, hell no.