Lisa twisted the key and walked into her apartment, mostly dark except for slivers of afternoon light coming from behind the shades in the living room. Relieved to be home, she sighed and hung up her business suit in her closet. She yawned, and dragged her briefcase along the narrow hallway. Before she reached the kitchen/dining room area, all the lights flicked on at once.
"SURPRISE!!" people shouted as they jumped from behind her couch, her bookshelf, the wall that covers part of the kitchen. Lisa gasped and balled her knuckles into fists, ready to attack.
Balloons went up, streamers flew threw the air, poppers went off. Lisa looked at the faces of her smiling family; her grandparents, almost eighty, with party hats on, with tight-lipped smiles; her mother, hair just beginning to gray a bit; her aunt, uncle, and their five children, the youngest a toddler, the oldest a high school sophomore, all with the classic O'Donahue white-blonde hair.
There was a cake in the middle of the room, with a "5" shaped candle already lit. A banner had been hung up from the ceiling, saying, "Happy 5th Birthday, Lisa's Son/Daughter!"
"Screw you guys!!" Lisa hammered through sharp breaths.
"We just want to celebrate your child's birthday, Lisa. Or at least... almost birth day," said her mother, slicing into the cake.
"You did this to yourself," chorted her uncle under his sharp mustache.
"He would have been five years old today," Lisa's mother said, her lips curling. "Still glad that you slapped God in the face?"
"Get out, all of you!"
They stood still.
"How did you find me?!"
"God hath shown us the way on yellow pages dot com," said her grandmother.
Lisa ran into the kitchen and slipped a knife out of her wooden knife set and ran into the living room, brandishing it in front of her. "I'm gonna abort you all just like I did the fetus!!"
The family screamed and darted towards the front hallway.
"God save us!"
"The eyes of the devil she's got!"
**
A few minutes later, Lisa had packed the essentials in two large suitcases. She looked back at the apartment. It seemed like she had just set it up to be home.
She got into her car and drove a few blocks away to the Albertson Elementary School. Luckily, the bell was just ringing. Lisa wiped mist from her eyelids. A little boy with white-blonde hair, a bit taller than the gaggle of children around him, flocked towards Lisa's car. He opened the door and got in. Lisa gave him a kiss on the cheek.
"What's wrong, Mom?"
"We have to move again, sweetie."
"What?! Why?!" The boy threw his backpack on the car floor.
"Because our family found us."
"They did?! Can't I meet them?"
Lisa bit her lip. "No, hon. You can't. They can't know you're alive or where we are. They're insane. Hey, I've got a birthday present for you."
"What?"
"You know how you said you wished we lived near Disney Land?"
