They would each draw a portrait of each other's mouths every day. Carlos del Puente Stories

They would each draw a portrait of each other's mouths every day.

In a peculiar town where the sun wore a bowler hat and the moon danced the tango with the stars, there lived a family that could only be described as a surrealist painting come to life. The patriarch, a man named Norman Bates, had a penchant for taxidermy and an unsettling collection of porcelain dolls that whispered secrets at night. His wife, a distant cousin of the infamous Hannibal Lecter, had a culinary talent that could only be rivaled by her ability to make guests disappear—both from the dinner table and from existence.

Their children, a trio of oddly matched siblings, were as different as the colors in a painter's palette. The eldest, a brooding figure named Edward Scissorhands, had a talent for sculpting hedges into the shapes of mythical creatures, though he often found himself at odds with the neighbors who preferred their lawns to remain unsculpted. The middle child, a sprightly girl named Wednesday Addams, had a fascination with the macabre and spent her days collecting the bones of small animals, which she arranged into intricate patterns that told stories of their tragic lives. The youngest, a boy named Charlie Bucket, was perpetually optimistic, believing that every day was a chance to find a golden ticket in a chocolate bar, despite the fact that the chocolate factory had long since closed down.

Their home was a labyrinth of oddities, filled with strange uncles and aunts who debated the merits of existentialism while knitting sweaters for their pet tarantulas. Uncle Fester, with his wild hair and penchant for electricity, often argued with Aunt Petunia, who believed that the world was a giant garden waiting to be tended. The family gatherings were a cacophony of conflicting opinions, where Rousseau's ideas of natural goodness clashed with the darker inclinations of their lineage.

Every day, the family engaged in a peculiar ritual: they would each draw a portrait of each other's mouths. This bizarre practice began as a way to express their love, but it quickly spiraled into a competition of sorts, where the most grotesque and exaggerated depictions were celebrated. The portraits adorned the walls like trophies, each one more disturbing than the last, with mouths that twisted and turned in ways that defied the laws of anatomy.

As the portraits piled up, the family began to notice something unsettling. The more they focused on each other's mouths, the more they began to resemble one another. Their features blurred, and their identities became a jumbled mess of lips and teeth. The neighbors, who had long been accustomed to the family's eccentricities, began to whisper about the strange phenomenon. They claimed that the family was cursed, that their obsession with each other's mouths had opened a portal to a dimension where doubles roamed freely, each one more bizarre than the last.

In the midst of this chaos, a new character emerged: a distant cousin named William James Sidis, a child prodigy who had once theorized about the fourth dimension. He arrived at the family home with a wild look in his eyes, convinced that the key to understanding their predicament lay in the elliptical geometry of their existence. He proposed that they could escape the cycle of mouth-drawing madness by transcending their physical forms and entering a realm where their true selves could be revealed.

But not everyone was on board with Sidis's radical ideas. Wednesday, with her dark humor and sharp wit, argued that the family had always been strange, and perhaps it was their strangeness that made them unique. She believed that embracing their oddities was the only way to navigate the absurdity of life. This led to heated debates at the dinner table, where Uncle Fester would spark the conversation with a jolt of electricity, and Aunt Petunia would counter with a flowery metaphor about the beauty of chaos.

As the days turned into weeks, the family found themselves trapped in a surreal loop, their bodies spinning like the wheel in a hamster's cage. The portraits became more grotesque, their mouths stretching into impossible shapes, and the doubles began to appear in the corners of their vision, whispering secrets that sent shivers down their spines. The once-vibrant colors of their lives faded into a monochrome existence, where laughter turned to madness and joy morphed into despair.

In a final act of desperation, the family gathered in the living room, surrounded by their twisted portraits. They decided to confront their doubles, to face the manifestations of their obsessions. As they stood before the mirror, they saw not just their reflections but the echoes of their choices, the consequences of their fixation on each other's mouths. The room filled with a cacophony of voices, each one pleading for recognition, for understanding, for release.

In that moment, they realized that the true horror lay not in their grotesque appearances but in their inability to accept themselves and each other. The portraits, once a source of pride, became a reminder of their fractured identities. 

By Carlos del Puente relatos