They could always remember her reaction, they would always forget her reason.

X could remember telling Uncle (the) Don she hoped he would get cancer and the trouble she got into over the outburst but she couldn’t remember why she said it.

This wasn’t a typical thing for her to say. She was usually quite loving to everyone, not least of all, him. Something provoked her with this blind rage, but all that was left was how she responded. This was the case more often than she could recount.

X remembered around the same preteen age when his son, K1 was harassing her in her aunts pool like a demon. She warned him many times that she would snap, it just never occurred to her that he wanted her to, not even when he let her win the altercation, not even when he ran to the house in tears she’d never seen him shed before or after that day. That day would be held as proof that she was unhinged to cover for all the other unhinged things he would do to her.

“Whoever reacts, loses” was the rule to Uncle (the) Don’s game, a sociopath’s game.

……………………………………..

“What are these!? Crackhead Drapes!?” K1 proclaimed as he threw the new drapes she had sewn out the cabin door.

She was confused by the concept of crackhead drapes. X had considered the drapes to be like clothing for the house. One ought to always have winter and summer drapes to manage the temperature of the home. It seemed as though there was another reason why he was so offended by drapes that wouldn’t display a shadow play from an outside view, just like it seemed like there was another reason why B2 was so furious that she began cleaning beneath the family cabin. She had been labouring for several hours a day at the unattended work to be done at the family cabin, and they treated everything she’d done as some horrible burden. Seemed like they were threatened for some reason, but they framed that feeling as her being a threat.

X was homeless and injured with nowhere to turn but to family when Covid-19 broke out, she was released from hospital and between fear of the virus and her hacked phone, nobody would let her near.

“That makes it worse!”, B2 exclaimed as he demanded she leave so he could return to making full use of his clubhouse to do coke and cook shit up with his friends.

But Uncle (the) Don had said she could stay. Seemed reasonable odds that he’d told K1 & B2 something different.

K1 had arrived in the middle of the night at the remote cabin where there was no cell service. He began throwing things around, tearing family memories she had hung from the walls, screaming that she’d destroyed the place. He likely took photos after he had tossed the place, blaming her for what he’d done to make his case.

The next day he caught her on the dirt road in her tiny car, him in his big black truck. He proceeded to repeatedly rear end her, trying to veer her into the ditch. X got her things, left, and has never been allowed to see the place since.

K1 & B2 had effectively monopolized the family haven for themselves by terrorizing anyone else who went there, but she’d never heard of them taking it this far. Every time they spoke they sounded like they were reciting lines from a script, because they were.