The house stood crooked—not from age or poor construction, but as if the architect had been a drunken god who scribbled the blueprints on a napkin between sips of absinthe in a New York pub. Its walls breathed, exhaling a scent of burnt vanilla and the faint metallic whisper of forgotten knives. Inside, the air was thick with the perfume of moth-eaten velvet and something far more unsettling: the ghostly residue of skin that had brushed against skin in the dark, leaving behind only the memory of touch.  

At the heart of this architectural delirium was the Blackwood family, a clan so peculiar that even their reflections sometimes hesitated before mimicking them. There was the father, a man who insisted on being called Patrick Bateman, though his most violent act was overcooking salmon while reciting stock market figures in a monotone that made the wallpaper peel. The mother, a woman who only wore white and referred to herself as Catherine Tramell, spent her days writing obscene limericks on the bathroom tiles with a lipstick that might have contained traces of strychnine.  

Then there were the twins, Norman and Norman—yes, both named Norman, a decision made during a particularly chaotic Scrabble game that ended with the board in flames.  

It all began when the twins parents were trying to decide what to name them. The mother, a fan of wordplay, suggested that instead of choosing something conventional, they could let a game of Scrabble decide. The father, though skeptical, agreed, hoping to make it fun. But that night turned out to be anything but ordinary.  

The family gathered around the table after a dinner filled with laughter and jokes. Mid-game, things quickly spiraled out of control—accusations flew over whether certain words were valid. (Does "quesadilla" count in this context?) Tiles were dropped multiple times, and someone accidentally spilled soda near the board.  

That was when the mother, frustrated but laughing hysterically, said: "This is impossible! Let’s keep it simple—pick a word already on the board." By chance, "Norman" was spelled diagonally from an odd combination of previously placed tiles. Before they could debate further, the entire board literally caught fire due to a nearby candle (a romantic decoration that should never have been there).  

From that day on, both boys were baptized Norman and Norman, and their story became a family legend retold at every holiday gathering. They grew up knowing their name wasn’t just unique—it was living proof of their parents’ chaotic creativity.  

Nowadays, the twins wear their condition with humor. They often play with the confusion of sharing a name: competing to see who responds first when someone yells "Norman!", or swapping roles deliberately to mess with teachers, friends, and even potential partners.  

In this specific scene, the twins are at a family party in honor of their grandmother. As everyone enjoys food and lively conversation, the topic of their names inevitably comes up. At first, some guests listen skeptically to the story of the burning Scrabble game, but soon everyone bursts into laughter as the twins add exaggerated details—like claiming fireworks were involved or that a neighbor called the fire department.  

Meanwhile, the two Normans take advantage of the distraction to hold a secret competition: without anyone noticing, they subtly switch the name tags on the gift table, leaving everyone wondering which is which* by the end of the night.  

Since they could speak, the twins had communicated in a language of sighs, tongue clicks, and the occasional perfectly articulated line. No one understood them, though Uncle Hannibal—who was neither a doctor nor actually related to their fantasy world—claimed to have deciphered a passage that roughly translated to "the damp yearning of midnight unbuttoning." 

Grandma Lecter, a woman who wore pearls embedded in her surgical scars, could usually be found in the garden humming The Tales of Hoffmann while pruning roses with lead-stained teeth. Grandpa Dracula, a retired watchmaker with a weakness for rare steaks and soliloquies about the moon’s influence on the lymphatic system, had a habit of disappearing into the basement for days, emerging only to complain about the lack of good Hungarian wine in the house.  

And then there were the aunts and uncles—creatures so unsettling that the family dachshund, a three-legged dog named Buffalo Bill, hid under the couch when they visited. Aunt Annie Wilkes ran a bed-and-breakfast where no guest ever left a condolence note, and Uncle Leatherface, a quiet man with a passion for interior design, had once reupholstered the entire living room in what he swore was very convincing synthetic leather.  

But the real trouble began when the shadows started flirting.  

It was Norman who noticed first—or maybe it was the other Norman, it was hard to tell. They were sitting in the parlor, whispering in their private language, when the shadow of Catherine’s outstretched arm slithered away from her body and coiled around Norman’s wrist like a ribbon of smoke. It lingered there, stroking his pulse point with a tenderness that made the air vibrate. Norman—or possibly the other one—let out a sound between a gasp and a laugh, and the shadow shivered in response.  

"The eroticism of the body’s small shadows," murmured Uncle Hannibal from the doorway, his voice smooth as a scalpel sliding between ribs. "How charming!"  

Catherine dropped her lipstick. Patrick froze mid-sentence about bond yields from the makeshift casino the neighbors set up in their yard every Saturday night. Even the grandfather clock, dead for years, let out a creaky, shuddering tick-tock.  

Under the flickering light of the chandelier (which, incidentally, was made of repurposed surgical tools), the shadows were no longer mere absences of light—they had texture, weight, intent. They pooled in the hollow of a collarbone, traced the curve of a hip, lingered on the bow of a lower lip—not just mimicking movement, but initiating it. They were, in a word, flirtatious.  

"This is highly irregular," said Detective Clarice Starling, who had been called after Norman (or maybe the other one) filed a police report for "laugh-inducing shadow groping." She stood in the foyer, her badge glinting under the jaundiced light, her expression caught between professionalism and the horror of someone who’d just realized she was in a house where the walls sometimes whispered sweet nothings in Latin.  

Patrick adjusted his tie. "Shadows can’t commit virtual crimes, Clarice. That’s absurd."  

"And yet," said Catherine, her own shadow now winding around her ankles like a cat, "here we are." 

The investigation that followed was less a procedure and more a descent into surreal mania. Forensic experts arrived to dust for fingerprints, only to find the shadows had left smudges of something that smelled suspiciously like Chanel No. 5. A profiler from Quantico spent three hours interviewing the twins before giving up and writing in his report:  

"The subjects communicate exclusively in what appears to be the linguistic equivalent of a Rorschach test. Also, one of them winked at me in a way that felt illegal in seventeen states."  

Attached : The Interrogation Transcript. 

[Interior of an interrogation room at Quantico—cold, fluorescent-lit. The walls are lined with one-way mirrors. At the table, two identical twins, dressed in matching clothes, sit in perfect sync. Their movements are near-reflections of each other.] 

Agent Rachel Voss (FBI profiler, behavioral expert) watches from behind the glass, adjusting her notepad. Her eyes miss nothing. 

[Cut to inside the room.]

Twin 1: (in an unintelligible whisper, directed at his brother)  

Twin 2: (responds in the same private language, a rhythmic cadence of guttural sounds and murmurs)  

Rachel Voss: (calm but firm)  

"We’ve been at this for three hours. You’ve spoken more to each other than to me. What is it you don’t want me to understand?"  

[The twins glance at each other, as if calculating their next move. Then, in perfect unison, they turn to face her.]  

Twin 1: (in English, for the first time, voice serene)

"Language isn’t just words, Agent. It’s codes. Layers." 

Twin 2: (smirks, as if sharing a private joke) 

"What if we told you we already answered... you just didn’t know it?" 

[Rachel feels a chill. Her notes are full of patterns, repetitions, but nothing concrete. The twins return to whispering, and this time, she notices something: their hands move slightly, as if... signing?] 

[Cut to black. Only their whispering voices remain, growing faster until they dissolve into an unsettling hum.]  

On-screen text: "Silence is never just silence." 

What are the twins hiding? And why does Rachel feel she’s just made a fatal mistake?  

(Tone: psychological, eerie, with a twist in the details suggesting there’s more beneath the surface.)  

Meanwhile, the shadows grew bolder. They slipped under doors, pressed against the small of backs, traced the outline of teeth during dinner. Norman (definitely Norman this time) claimed his shadow had whispered something about "the damp poetry of ribcages in the pile of corpses" before nibbling his earlobe. The other Norman—or maybe the same one, it was impossible to be sure—just stared at the ceiling and murmured *redrum* over and over, which everyone agreed was probably fine.  

The breaking point came when Aunt Annie, in a fit of jealousy (her own shadow had developed a worrying obsession with the toaster), tried to exorcise the house with a rolling pin and a Turkish-lyric version of Tomorrow Belongs to Me. The shadows retaliated by tying her shoelaces—the ones holding up her high heels—making her trip into the grandfather clock, which finally gave up and collapsed into splinters and whispered apologies.  

"This has gone too far," declared Clarice, stepping over the wreckage. "Shadows shouldn’t have travel agencies, libidos, or—God help me—good taste in perfume." 

But the shadows, it seemed, disagreed. That night, they staged an interior coup with the help of revolutionary introspection. The family woke to find their silhouettes gone—not just independent, but absent. The walls were bare. The floors held no trace. Even Buffalo Bill’s shadow, normally a loyal companion, had vanished, leaving only a chewed squeaky toy and a sense of canine betrayal.  

It was Norman who found the note—or maybe the other twin. Written in what looked like eyeliner on the bathroom mirror, it said:  

"We left to find better bodies—ones that appreciate us."  

And so, overnight, the Blackwoods were shadowless.  

At first, it was liberating. Patrick no longer worried about his shadow sneaking off during meetings to make out with his office plant’s silhouette. Catherine could write her limericks in peace without her dark double critiquing her meter. But soon, the consequences became clear.  

Without shadows, the family began to fade. Not physically—their bodies remained—but the way memories do when left too long in the light. Grandpa Dracula’s monologues lost their bite. Aunt Annie’s pies tasted like sawdust and regret. Even the twins’ secret language dwindled to half-hearted clicks, as if they’d forgotten why they invented it in the first place.  

"The eroticism of the body’s small shadows,"murmured Uncle Hannibal one night, sipping wine that may or may not have been Merlot, "was the only thing keeping this family from dissolving into utter banality. And now look at us. We’re as interesting as an Excel spreadsheet." 

Clarice, who had started dropping by uninvited (partly out of professional curiosity, partly because her own shadow had begun sending mixed signals), sighed. "You brought this on yourselves. Shadows aren’t pets, or lovers—they’re projections." 

And yet," whispered Norman, "what’s more erotic than something that exists only to follow, to cling, to desire without reason?" 

The house, as if in agreement, creaked. Somewhere, a shadow laughed.  

And the next morning, they were back.  

Not the same, of course. No, these shadows were different—bolder, hungrier. They didn’t just cling; they consumed. Patrick’s shadow now wore his tie better than he did. Catherine’s had taken up smoking, blowing ghostly rings that spelled je t’aime in the air. The twins’ shadows had merged into a single twisting mass that whispered in unison.  

The eroticism of the body’s small shadows, it turned, wasn’t just in their seduction—it was in their vengeance.  

By Carlos del Puente relatos