Thaught would rarely ever see her family's living room in that state. Her mother removed beforehand all the vases and other fragile decorations and kept them safe inside a huge safe. It was full of familiar faces jumping around and dancing. There also were some less familiar faces, like her uncle Rodney. She had never seen him before and she knew he was her uncle because he had a big nametag on his shirt saying “My name is Rodney, I am Thaught's uncle.”

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, but no one as much as grandma Gloria Senior, the Tiebreaker. Her normal name was Augusta, but she decided to change it once she got sixty years old. She changed it back to Augusta when she was seventy, but at eighty years old, the name returned with a vengeance.

She was jumping around like a goat and dancing wildly, which was admittedly very impressive for her age, but someone needed to limit her access to margaritas.

It is impressive how she did not bump into anyone, since there were so many people so close to each other. And what made it even harder was the lighting. It was very dark, although it was seven in the evening. The curtains were closed, partly for atmosphere and partly so that the neighbors would not notice that there was a party going on, which was hard to do since the music was blasted to the max.

The room was dimly lit, only by a disco ball which was in the center of the room, hanging from the chandelier Thaught's parents got when they got married. Thaught's mother was standing underneath it, waiting for the moment the chandelier inevitably gives up and falls, so she can catch it.

This was all great, but Thaught could only see one thing, and it was sitting on top of the dinner table. Not her little cousin, Rebecca, who hurt her knee and was crying while her mom was trying to make her feel better — what was next to her. A big, white cake consisting of four distinct floors, with cyan frosting acting as a divider between each one. She wasn't sure, but she thought she heard her mother say that each floor had a different flavor, but it could have been a dream, she could not remember.

Having a cake staring at you from the start of the party until the end, when you could finally have it, felt like something between a torture and an elimination game of who can resist the longest without losing their sanity.

Thaught tried dancing with some of her cousins to keep her mind off the cake, which seemed to work initially, but after five minutes it suddenly stopped. She tried jumping up and down like people do at the club, except she was trying to get as high as possible, which made for some really dissatisfied guests as she landed right on their feet.

She even challenged grandma Gloria Senior, the Tiebreaker, to a fight, where she ended up being immobilized in less than two minutes. Maybe grandma should be the one sent to the army instead of grandpa.

Before she realized, Thaught was standing next to the cake, breathing heavily. She quickly grabbed a cutting board from the drawer and started chopping carrots to stop thinking about it.

As she kept chopping, she felt a weird presence behind her and she knew it was not her mother this time. She turned around to see her uncle, Rodney, just a couple of meters away, looking at her and holding a sharp, shiny kitchen knife.

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Thaught looked at his name tag for a second to remember his name. “Hey, uncle Rodney! What's up?”

Her uncle quickly hid the knife behind his back, then thought about it for a second and started holding it in front of him again.

“Hey, Thaught,” he said awkwardly. He raised his knife a bit to make Thaught notice it. “I noticed you were working very hard on chopping these carrots and I thought I would come give you a helping hand.”

“Thanks uncle, that's nice of you. Wait. You brought your own knife?”

“Yeah, you never know when you may have to help in the kitchen,” he shrugged his shoulders. “And I hate cutting with blunt knives, so I always bring my own.”

“Fair enough,” said Thaught and got another chopping board from the drawer. This one was Gloria's favorite. You could tell because there was a sticker that said “Gloria's favorite” on the top right corner.

She handed him an onion because she was getting low on carrots and kept chopping away in an awkward silence.

“Sooo... What are you making? A stew?” Uncle Rodney asked, attempting to make some sort of conversation with her.

“Yeah,” Thaught said. “Let's go with that.”

“Remember how I used to feed you stews all the time when you were a baby?” Uncle Rodney said.

“You did?”

“Ohohohoho! Of course I did! You used to love my stews. I remember trying to feed you as fast as possible because you would gulp it down and would not stop crying until the next spoonful came.”

Thaught was trying really hard to remember any of these things, but she could recall nothing. She was really young when this all happened, so it does makes sense to not have memories of everything.

“It was so funny,” Uncle Rodney continued. “Because after finishing the stew, you would always, without a doubt, start barfing — it was too much food too fast. So, after feeding you, I needed to find the victim that would receive your stew projectiles. This would be your mom, more often than not.”

“Poor mom,” Thaught said.

“Do you want me to go get her? She will laugh her butt off when we remind her. Ohohoho! Good times!”

“No, you don't have to,” Thaught replied. “Let her be.”

“Oh thank God!” said Uncle Rodney and swiped the sweat off his forehead, landing right on his chopped onions.

“What?” Asked Thaught.

“What?” Uncle Rodney replied.

They stopped talking after that as they could not find another topic of mutual interest. Instead, they stuck to chopping vegetables. In reality, Uncle Rodney did not know why they kept doing this. They had enough chopped veggies to fill a pool with stew. On the other hand, Thaught wanted to stop and do something else, preferably something with her friends, who were sitting on the other side of the room, but she did not know how to tell her uncle to stop and go do something else without being awkward or mean.

Until they finally ran out of vegetables. Thankfully, they had no choice now but to stop. They created such a huge pile of vegetables, it could make a grown man cry — mostly because there was an excessive amount of awkwardly chopped onion on that pile.

They started walking their separate ways, joining the party again, but uncle Rodney stopped for a second, turned around and shouted.

“Wait! Thaught! You are not going to eat the whole cake by yourself, are you?”

“What? No! Why would I do that?”

“Oh nothing, I am joking. I just know how much you love sweets. This cake looks great!”

Thaught paid little attention to what he said. From the little time they spent together, she understood her uncle was as normal as holding a slice of pizza with the toppings facing down.

She went back to her friends, and they danced for a few seconds, but she quickly stopped. She could hear an extremely disturbing, high-pitched sound inside her head, which made her suffer and wish it would stop. The source was her mother, who was holding a wine glass and scratching it with a fork to get everyone's attention.