Every Curve Is a Fetish or a Pearl 

The city hung like a wet watercolor abandoned in the rain, its edges bleeding neon into the gutters where Inspector Hannibal Lecter suffered his polished Oxfords clicking against the pavement in a rhythm mimicking the distant Morse code of a malfunctioning traffic light. In his pocket, he carried a single pearl, stolen from a mollusk that once whispered prophecies to Captain Ahab, and now it vibrated against his thigh—a resonance attuned to the curvature of the universe. Every streetlamp bent like Quasimodo's spine, every alley coiled like the intestines of Norman Bates' mother, and every passerby swayed in a way that fogged the inspector's monocle with something between desire and indigestion.  

At home, the Lecter family dinner table was a tribunal of the absurd. His father, Don Vito Corleone, presided, methodically dissecting a pomegranate with a stiletto, its seeds bursting like tiny screams. His mother, Nurse Ratched, buttered her toast with the precision of a lobotomy—as in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where Randle McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, is punished for rebelling against authority and subjected to a lobotomy, becoming a submissive shell at the mercy of the asylum staff. Each stroke was calculated to inflict maximum silence upon the room of court-ordered inmates. The twins, Fred and Rosemary West, played footsie beneath the table, their toes intertwining like the roots of a poisonous plant. Aunt Annie Wilkes clucked over the gravy, muttering about filthy beasts who didn’t appreciate proper narration, while Uncle Patrick Bateman admired his reflection in the salad bowl, adjusting his tie as if it were the noose from the Hanged Man card of the tarot deck, known for heralding fate.  

The central disagreement had begun, as all great catastrophes do, with a simple observation. Every curve is a fetish, Hannibal—the one from the TV series—had declared, swirling his wine glass so the Burgundy climbed the crystal like a desperate lover. The room froze. The grandfather clock, which once belonged to Count Dracula and still occasionally dripped blood onto the Persian rug, let out a groan of approval.  

Nonsense, snapped Grandfather Medea, knitting what appeared to be a noose from yarn the color of dried viscera. A fetish is a straight line, something rigid, a spine snapped over a knee. He should know—he’d broken enough of them. But the curve, Hannibal insisted, is where madness lives. The curve is the grin of the Cheshire Cat, the arc of the hangman’s rope, the contour of a hip disappearing around a corner. To worship the curve is to worship the inevitable collapse of order.  

This was too much for Cousin Alex DeLarge, who promptly smashed a gravy boat over his own head, howling about the tyranny of geometry. Meanwhile, Uncle Anton Chigurh flipped a coin—heads, they all agreed with Hannibal; tails, they murdered him on the spot. The coin never landed. It spun in the air like a planet refusing to choose its orbit. It spun like the top from Inception, and the family descended into chaos.  

Outside, the city continued its slow melt. The streets sagged like the jowls of an old bloodhound, and the police station—a Gothic ruin staffed by Officer Buffalo Bill, who filed his nails with the edge of one of his flamboyant bone collection’s ribs, and Nurse Ratched, who prescribed lithium like candy—was flooded with reports of rogue curves. A spiral staircase in an old hotel—possibly from The Shining with Jack Nicholson, or maybe The Grand Budapest Hotel (I always mix up my mental archives)—had begun unscrewing itself, Escher-like, sending guests tumbling randomly into the lobby in a tangle of limbs and spatial lawsuits. Meanwhile, in the suspicious night, a furious baker who had once lived comfortably off his trust fund was arrested for kneading his baguettes françaises into provocatively suggestive shapes inspired by the tax-free free-love movement. Worst of all, at the moment of his arrest, the local rivers had begun unspooling sinuously from their beds, slithering through town like liquid serpents hunting prey.  

Hannibal, ever the detective, traced the epidemic to its source: the old funhouse on the edge of town, where the mirrors, tired of reflecting, had begun refracting souls. Inside, the walls pulsed like a ribcage, and the floor undulated beneath his feet like the tongue of some great beast. At the center stood Tyler Durden, shirtless and grinning, his body a roadmap of bruises and soap burns from a venomous chelating acid, spinning a carousel of hula hoops.  

You get it, don’t you, Inspector? Tyler laughed, his voice echoing as if spoken through a drainpipe. The world’s too straight. Too orderly. Too full of right angles. I’m just giving the meaning a little twist. 

Hannibal’s monocle cracked. By the time he stumbled back into daylight, the city had become a funhouse mirror of itself—buildings leaned like drunks, lampposts twisted into obscene gestures, and the citizens had all developed a strange, swaying gait, as if their skeletons had been replaced with overcooked spaghetti. Even police reports now arrived in italics.  

Back at the family manor, the debate raged on. Don Corleone insisted this was a family matter, best resolved with cement shoes and a midnight boat ride. Nurse Ratched proposed straitjackets and a strict regimen of right angles forged from cold steel. The twins just giggled and sharpened their imaginary knives, gripping the blades between their perfect, identical teeth.  

Hannibal, for his part, sat on the porch with his pearl and watched as the horizon itself began to warp, the sun melting into the sky like butter in a hot skillet. Every curve is a fetish. Or a pearl. What does it matter? --he murmured. And the city moaned in agreement.  

Then the moon winked at him—a slow, lascivious curve of an eye—and he knew it was far, far too late. 

By Carlos del Puente relatos