They built tall towers with false lighthouses along the coast. Carlos del Puente Stories
lunes, abril 21, 2025They built tall towers with false lighthouses along the coast.
The bodies of the people who appear in this novel spin like the wheel in a hamster’s cage—endlessly, without destination, without meaning, but with the furious conviction that if they run fast enough, the world might finally make sense.
At the center of this delirium stood the Vantablack family, a clan so tangled in contradictions that even their shadows refused to follow them properly. The patriarch, Hannibal Lecter—though not *the* Hannibal Lecter, he insisted on this distinction with a smile sharp enough to carve a Thanksgiving turkey, human or otherwise—was a man of the finest and most refined tastes. He preferred his wine aged, his meat ethically questionable, and his philosophical debates seasoned with a hint of menace. His wife, Norma Bates, a woman of silent intensity, had a habit of staring at the wallpaper as if it whispered secrets only she could hear. Their children, the twin brothers Tyler and Raskolnikov Durden, had communicated since childhood in a language composed of clicks, hums, and occasional bursts of maniacal laughter. No one understood it, though several linguists had tried, only to abandon the effort after one of them was found muttering in iambic pentameter while attempting to swallow his own tie.
The twins held two truths simultaneously: first, that the towers along the coast were necessary for illumination, and second, that the lighthouses were false, designed not to guide but to deceive. They announced this to anyone who asked, and many who didn’t, their voices harmonizing in unsettling synchronicity. Their sisters, Ophelia MacBeth and Lady Voldemort (who had legally changed her name at twelve after a particularly inspiring nightmare), found the whole affair tedious. Ophelia had taken to floating in the bathtub for hours, reciting soliloquies to a rubber duck she called Yorick, while Lady Voldemort practiced wandless magic in the basement, occasionally setting laundry on fire out of sheer spite.
Uncle Dracula, allergic to garlic but not sunlight (a fact that exasperated him endlessly), ran a failing blood bank and often complained about the decline in customer loyalty. Aunt Carrie, prone to telekinetic outbursts during family dinners, once flipped the table during an argument about property taxes, sending a roast duck straight through the window and into the stunned arms of a passing mailman. The neighbors, a group of nosy retirees and disgruntled wage-workers, had long since given up trying to understand the Vantablacks. They simply boarded up their windows and invested in sturdy umbrellas.
The central conflict arose when the twins, in a rare moment of clarity—or perhaps profound confusion—announced their intention to build a series of tall lighthouses along the coast. Not real lighthouses, of course. False ones. With lights that didn’t guide but disoriented, leading ships astray, toward the rocks, toward oblivion. It was, they explained, an artistic statement about the nature of truth. Or maybe a joke. They weren’t clear on that point.
Hannibal, ever pragmatic, saw potential in the project. A touch of controlled chaos, he mused, might be just what the coast needed. Norma, however, disagreed. The wallpaper had been particularly chatty that morning, whispering warnings about maritime fraud. She locked herself in the attic with a stack of old ship logs and a bottle of sherry.
Meanwhile, the local authorities had taken notice. Inspector Javert, a man whose rigidity bordered on performance art, had been investigating a series of strange coastal incidents—missing buoys, altered nautical charts, a flock of seagulls that now squawked in perfect Latin. He arrived at the Vantablack mansion with a search warrant and a migraine, only to be greeted by Uncle Dracula offering him a glass of what he claimed was Merlot. Javert declined, though he did pocket a coaster out of habit.
The investigation descended into absurdity. Witnesses gave contradictory statements. One fisherman swore he saw a lighthouse blink. Another insisted the towers weren’t lighthouses at all, but giant salt shakers. A third claimed to have been abducted by a sentient fog that quoted Nietzsche. The twins, when questioned, responded by singing the *Gilligan’s Island* theme backward.
As the towers multiplied, so did the disasters. Ships veered off course, captains mutinied over disputed maps, and a cruise ship full of amateur ornithologists crashed into a reef, leading to the mass resignation of the local birdwatching society. The coast guard, overwhelmed, began recruiting volunteers from a nearby asylum, reasoning that, at this point, the inmates’ grip on reality was no worse than anyone else’s.
In the end, the towers remained. The twins disappeared, leaving behind a note written in their private language that, when held up to a mirror, revealed only a crude stick-figure waving from a burning boat. Norma took up permanent residence in the attic, where she was often heard debating maritime law with the wallpaper. Hannibal, ever adaptable, opened a seaside restaurant specializing in “shipwreck surprise.” Inspector Javert, after a nervous breakdown involving a missing badge and an existential crisis about the nature of order, retired to raise exotic snails.
And the bodies kept spinning, spinning, spinning—like the wheel in a hamster’s cage, like the hands of a broken clock, like the last thoughts of a drowning man who swears, just before the water takes him, that he sees a light.
But of course, it was false.
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