The room had lost its carpet to a new one of torn wrapping paper, cast off gift box tops and twine. BB sat in the middle of it all as her siblings went bananas. No one knew what she did so everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Dad, playing Santa as always, handed her the next (and seemingly final) package. She accepted the gift, feeling a swirl and mix of feelings inside her. It didn’t look just as it had in her dream; but the look wasn’t the important part. A sensation of sickening Deja vu burrowed through her gut. It was the same feeling that had proceeded her death in the dream.

She smiled politely and set it aside. Just a delay for sure. The rest of her family went about their unwrapping. They truly were going all out. Brook, ever the nosy one, eventually noticed BBs reluctance and pointed.

“What’re you waiting for Beeper? You’re not getting another one.” She sneered through fake smiling teeth. Dad was too busy to intervene.

“I don’t want to rush.” BB attempted.

“Don’t worry, no one would say you are.”

BB thought for a long few seconds about how to proceed. Just when she thought eh, what the hell, I’ll open it, she caught a whiff of something nutty on the air. She shook the box and the scent intensified. Peanuts.

She was deathly allergic.

She set it back down calmly and walked away from Christmas.