The Intervention

    “Sweetie?  Could you come down here?  Me and your father, well, we need to talk to you.“ Mom said.  I panicked, Thinking about the cigar box containing my porn dvds, my grass, and those Polaroids.  
    Here it comes, the moment of truth.  
    I whipped up explanations, and a doozy for the Polaroids.  If I made them laugh at my hilarious lie, they wouldn’t disown me with their upright Christian Conformist totalitarianism.  Dad was in his ‘chair and Mom sat next to him.  She did that side to side sway thing, signaling me she took too many painkillers from when they rebroke her arm.  I saw leverage.
    With a competent smile, I sighed confidently as I sat on the lone chair, “So! Mom? Dad?  What’s up?”
    “Well, we know that you’ve been going through some . . . Changes in your life. Every boy your age does. We try to help you when you need our help, And honey, We think you need help.”
    “By whatever do you mean, Mother?”
    “Well, since the car accident a month ago,  We know it’s taken a toll on you and once in awhile, we’ve noticed you’ve been out of control, monstrous, uncontrollable and growling at us unprovoked.   With all the therapy your father and I have been going through from the car accident’s traumatic experience, we’ve…remembered…things.”
    “What your mother is trying to say,” My father typed into the voice modulator, “Is that you were responsible for the accident.  We were not even in the care.”  He was a horrible typist.  
    “Uh, I’m sorry?  What?”  I said.
    “Well..  It seems…  I can’t!  I just can’t!” Mom said, bursting into tears.  Dad moved what he could of his good arm, limply flapping his hand on Mother’s shoulder.  The slapping sound discomforted me.  She cried and cried, filling the room with her solitary sobs.  
    “How am I responsible? What could I possibly have done?  I don’t remember a thing about it.” I said,.  Mother wailed harder.
    “It’s destroying  us!” She screeched.  Though Dad couldn’t move his face anymore, a slow trickle of tears crossed his flaccid, craggy cheeks.  
    “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”  I said, now feeling truly concerned.
    Mother took a deep breath of strength and stopped.  “Do you remember  that… animal we hit on the way back from Church Wednesday night?”  She shuddered.  “Well, your father and I thought that it strange that we were hurt so badly and you didn’t get injured at all.  And we’re so thankful.”
    Dad typed out, “I am in a lot of pain, son.  Sheer agony every waking moment.”
    “And when we found out about you, and about what you…are, we thought we could make it work…but it’s not working.  Oh, my poor son, This is not working at all.”  Her intense sobbing reddened her face, squealing like a deflating balloon.
    “What the is this?  Come on, tell me already!”
    Dad typed in, “I’m dead inside.  Dead.  Just put the plastic bag over my head now.  My arm doesn‘t have the strength to pull it off. ”
    Mother threw her hands in the air, “We thought it was a deer!  A deer!  The scratches on the hood and how your father was gored--”
    “I’m missing a loot of pancreas.”  Dad pounded in.
    “--Well, sweetie…Sometimes you turn… turn into something else.  The people we spoke to said that you wouldn’t remember.  At first we thought you were on drugs, crazy drugs we don’t know about.  We don’t always know what’s hip to the times,” Mom said with a wink, turning into a wince.  “But you remember the car?”
    “Well, yeah.”
    “We thought the deer bounced off the hood and flipped headfirst through the roof.  But we have… marks that deer don’t make.”
    Dad typed out, “My bite required three hundred stitches.”    
    Mother wiped her tears away and hesitantly approached me, placing her hand on my knee,  exposing a puss-crusted claw wound, “Son, you are a werewolf.”
    “Dad’s monotone speaker said, “We have to shoot you now.”
    Mother said, braying like a mule in gasping wails, “We just… We just wanted to tell you before we did it.”      
    Dad added, “We still love you, son.”  
    The old grandfather clock I used to read under as a child began the last chimes I would hear.  Mother walked to the gun cabinet, clumsily pulling out the shotgun.   She reached into her apron and pulled out the gleaming silver.
    “What the hell is this?!?” I said, springing from the chair.
    She raised the barrel at me, “It’s the only way!  It’s the only way!”
    I felt strange, nausea spreading through my whole body, fingers to toes.  My bones bent.  My teeth clenched until they broke.  Hair quivered from every follicle, every pore,  infinitely disturbing. Claws ripped from under pink, soft skin.  Mother screamed and dropped the silver bullet, now teetering on the radiator grill.
    “We are all going to die.” Father typed out.  I looked down on them from above.  I understood nothing about them, except a total urge to consume.
    Mother swiped her meaty hand and hooked the capsizing solitary bullet.  Her palsying hand jammed it in before I entered point blank range.
    “May God be testing my faith as he did Issac.  Jesus, forgive me.  Baby, I love you.” She said, tightening up and closing her eyes.
    She didn’t fire and I didn’t want to eat her.  She dropped the gun when she lost her opposable thumb.  I turned round, seeing father clawing air on his were-wheelchair, monster truck tires,  revving exhaust. And we, finally, all understood each other.
    “Now,”  My dear mother replied, “Tonight, let’s go out for dinner.”