The Kurulas

I've always been blessed to have good neighbors. All the horror stories I've read online about yelling Karen's and creepy Carl's were never true for me. The Mendoza's right next door always shared their cooking, and with my nonexistent self control, I never said no to the huge carbs in their neighborhood famous enchiladas de pollo. The Hoang's the next street over on Elman's didn't mind everyone mispronouncing their last name. Every time I messed up, Miss Lorena Hoang would just say, "You're at least trying". But if you forced me to say, I would say that the only neighbors I didn't think fondly of was the Kurula's that lived in the mansion in the woods. Adam and Priya Kurula were social only when needed, it felt like. Which is fine, I should say, not everyone needs to be at the door ready to socialize twenty four hours a day.

Let me explain that when I said that I don't think of them fondly, I didn't mean that I hated them. Again, I've been blessed with good neighbors, and by the definition the Kurula's were good neighbors. They participated in the town meetings, they brought good home cooked food to the potlucks, and whenever the two months of night came out, they were the ones doing the most work benefitting the public. It's just that it's no secret that their relationship was a very rocky one. They were night owls, very productive ones. I believe Adam makes art and has money in some stocks or some such, and Priya was a tattoo artist, bringing in good tourist money who come from all over the state to get one of her designs on their body. The issue is, they were night owls. Even though the mansion was a distance away, slightly buried by the Alaskan woods, you could still hear the loud hullabaloo that went on during both their fights and their social gatherings. It was even worse if you lived on my street, Benjamin Harrison Avenue. I could clearly hear it when either Adam or Priya yelled. It's hard to hear those horrible fights and then look at them with kindness at the next town event.

I think what disturbed me most was that it felt like they would start fights over the tiniest things. Priya once cussed out Adam for not buying enough sun screen, shrieking that she's going to "dry up and die"! Adam once yelled at her for including garlic in her cooking, and just like his counterpart, he melodramatically yelled, "Are you trying to kill me"?! I could go on and on but it's just more of the same. I've gossiped with the others about the Kurula's and their weird behaviors. We all shared similar stories, and it felt nice to have common ground about the only black sheep in town. Mrs. Cook said that Priya stopped going to her store once she put up her cross, with a little Jesus Christ up above the door after she was born again. Mr. Gutierrez said that once Adam gave him money to buy some cattle, the next month he asked Adam what he did with them. Adam wouldn't answer him properly, and just said that he "used every part of the cow, no waste". At first, Mr. Gutierrez thought he meant that he quite literally used every part, the beef for food, the bones for art and tools, the fat for candles, etc. But while patrolling his land, looking for a goat that had wandered off, Mr. Gutierrez found the two cows Adam had bought looking like shrunken mummies. Their flesh was dry, dusty and he could break off the legs with ease, as if the bodies had been there for years. I asked him if he was sure, and he told me that like every other cattle farmer, he had their ears tagged. He was sure that the tags on their ears belonged to the cattle he sold to Adam. All these strange stories led to me joking that maybe the Kurula's are vampires. We had a good laugh, and I admitted that what I just said was ridiculous. "They're just well meaning weirdos. A regular family, obsessed with sun screen sure, but regular." I told them all that little clarification. That would be silly to accuse the Kurula's on nothing but a bunch of coincidences. The townspeople looked at me for a second, and then began to laugh again as we all slowly parted ways with small talk and see-you-soons.

I walked home smiling, because now I planted the seed of doubt. Some of them would agree that yes it would be ridiculous to think that vampires exist, let alone that the Kurula's were bonafide Bram Stoker's creations. But people like Mr. Gutierrez, Mrs. Cook, and everyone else on Benjamin Harrison Avenue know that it's possible. And if one day, Adam or Priya overstep their woods and gain the anger of the town, my little joke will surface to mind and the town will think, "Maybe Ullises was right". They'll hunt the Kurula's and everyone will forget the half naked drunk dog man that they saw on New Year's Eve. It doesn't matter that the top half was a wolf, and the only human they saw was my crown jewels. I know they're still thinking of it. But the next time one of Priya's customers is loud in the night, or whenever they have another violent spat, they won't be thinking of the dog man anymore.