The Kolbs

The Kolbs

My parents couldn’t decide how I had been born. My mother said, “We found him in a towel, shivering between two curtains of rain.” “No, we unearthed him from a dune of sand, locked in a wooden chest, fast asleep,” my father replied. While they argued, I climbed out of my crib and slipped into a dark crack in the earth. I landed on my back and my head split open. The few gifts my parents had slipped in there tumbled out.    

By the time I returned, my brother had joined us. He came into this world with his eyes melted shut and a wet slug for a tongue. He spent his time skittering up onto high corners of the room howling, refusing to learn to speak. At the doctor’s suggestion, they encased him in an amber brick, drilling holes into the resin through which they spooned him broth and warm drinks. Understandably, they never noticed my injury.

More entered through the crevice between my ears. A swarm of thin, black insects crawled in. Birds overhead dropped in little seeds. Plants took root. Rainwater spilled from my mouth. All the while, my brain grew until stalks of cerebellum grew from my head and hardened into latticed antlers.

Only when my horns had formed deep grooves into the ceiling did my parents fight again. They would sit at midnight in hushed sessions, trying to determine how I came to be.