by Andy Gottschalk
In the Helmut family, there were nine children, each of whom Mother Helmut strove very hard to be proud of.
The youngest, named One, a blond-haired boy, was convinced that he had to step on every other floorboard and every other tiled checker square, or else rotten things would come to him.
Two was a pimpled teenager, and she picked at her legs until they were pulpy. Finding in-grown hairs and razor bumps, she plucked at her skin in macroscopic mirrors for hours.
Three had a green glass bottle collection lined all along his dark bedroom walls, and Four could not help but break the glass bottles for Mother Helmut’s attention.
Five made amateur bombs from soda cans and smoked skunky weed from apple pipes in the fenceless backyard, at least until a neighbor man called the cops. (The Helmuts ignored the bombs; stopped buying apples.)
Six was ten years older than Five, and he had a baby of his own who liked to gnaw and gnash on eyeglasses, especially Mother Helmut’s fragile drugstore readers.
Seven was a year older than Six, and everyone was afraid of him because Seven ate Nine.
Mother and Father Helmut were mild-mannered. They met in college; quickly had children named in reverse order. The father liked horror movies and hunting ermine in the black and puzzling woods behind their imposing gray house. He would leave for days at a time and come back red-eyed, neglectful, and with blood smeared on his jacket. The mother liked neither hunting nor horror, but she had a study where sewed heavy curtains and occasionally called her sisters long-distance to cry about the children.
Andy Gottschalk is a writer and artist from Kansas. His films have been exhibited at the Yale Student Film Festival and GIPHY Film Festival. He has fiction in Rougarou and an essay forthcoming in Post Road magazine. Follow him @andygottschalk on Twitter.
