THE RED BLOOD GENE

I live in a double-storied mansion as of now. But our ancestral family's finance hasn't always been this good, in fact, my great-grandfather worked 60 hours a week and get paid wages barely enough to put a roof on their head, he had 3 kids and the oldest of them was my grandfather.

One day my (then very young) great-grandfather decided to sail abroad in search of wealth and landed on Brazilian soil... he spent 7 years of his life there and later returned to India being a rich wealthy man! Perhaps rich enough to buy huge mansions for all 3 of his kids. When asked about how he made soo much fortune, his answers were always blunt, once he would say "via business ventures" and other times he'd say "via real estate", he had also mentioned "lucky gambling" on multiple occasions. After a point, his relatives stopped bothering him with these questions assuming he made his wealth by some illegal means, and nobody really seemed to care as they were busy enjoying every luxury their hearts ever desired.

Anyways, over the generations, the money my great-grandfather had accumulated was added to thru a well-planned investment and because of that, to this day, we still remain well off of it.

But the problem is... wealth and money weren't the only things my ambitious great-grandfather brought back from Brazil. you see... not long after buying the mansions, then still young, at the age of 29, he suddenly became insane overnight! He started complaining about a tall red bony figure following him where ever he went.

According to his diary, that red figure didn't have any eyeballs but rather empty eye sockets which stared right into his soul and it also had an ear-to-ear grin, had paper-thin lips which couldn't cover its teeth, and its lower jaw was mutilated to the extent that you'd suspect it ever existed and it was completely naked all whilst being covered in blood from skull to toe, he said he could see it watching him from the roof of neighbor to right below his own bed, and the last page of the diary speaks about how it kept whispering to him all-night, every-night, which made it impossible for him to sleep.

The next day, he took his hunting rifle and shot himself in the head leaving his wife and young son (my grandfather) alone, time goes by and my grandfather grows up to be a successful businessman himself, just like his father before him, he found a wife and had some children of his own at a relatively young age... And the oldest of his children was a son, my father.

Unfortunately, just like his father, my grandfather lost his sanity too, exactly 10 years later in life than his father, at the age of 39, he started screaming because he was being stalked by the same red creature that had made his father perish, he further said "that thing... the red thing... it comes out of seemingly nowhere! right when I least expect it to! I am having a hard time." although he was able to handle these better than my great-grandfather was able to for 10months... he was on one fine morning found in a family-owned estate pond. According to the forensic report 'he had sleep-walked his way to the pond and drowned' and for some reason he didn't wake up when the cold water touched his feet or even face perhaps.

Now, I've never met either of those men because I wasn't born by the time my grandfather died, I have only examined my great-grandfather's diary and have only heard stories of my grandfather. My own father, however, I of course knew very well... But his story is what haunts me the most, like his father and his father before him, even my father found a girl and married her at a young age, I was the eldest of his children, and I am grateful that I got to know my father while growing up, he was a kind ethical man, funny too! and very smart he always took great responsibility for his fatherhood and also took great care of my mother, me, and my siblings. Our youths were amazing!

But when my father turned 49, I noticed that something was off, even though he and my mother had kept his mental condition a secrete from us youngsters, eventually the truth slipped out... While alone with my dad, he broke out into sweats and started telling me that he was seeing the thin red figure right behind me as we spoke, that chilled my spine to the core and when I turned behind, I could see nothing, when I looked back at him, he said it was just like it was described in my great-grandfather's diary, the creature of nightmares, he often saw it late at night crawling across the ceiling of his bedroom while twisting its head backward to keep staring at him, my father held out for little over a year and matters only got worse and worse every day, no amount of medical assistance could help him, eventually... He took his own life.

I don't want to go into detail about how he did it, but it was definitely deliberate. I miss him greatly, we all do.

As of now, I am 26 years old... I too met a girl whilst I was studying at a medical university and the two of us are currently planning on getting married, she wants to start a family... and to be honest, so do I.

I've come to the conclusion that all these deaths in our family are results of a genetic mental illness, one which I hope I won't develop, I'll definitely keep an eye out for it, I'll tell you that much.

But we cannot change something we don't know, to be precise "our future". All I can do now is hope that I stay clear of anything that causes me or my family any misery...