A Transformation

It was five or six years ago when I first noticed the antennae growing out of my dad’s head. He assured me that they had always been there, but I was skeptical. Seems like something I would have remembered. My mom didn’t seem to think much of it, but then again, she was busy trying to cover up the thick trail of slime secreting from her pores. And my brother Allen was scurrying headfirst down his own strange hole. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

This all happened back when I was living just outside of Washington, working as a data analyst for a small analytics firm. We were researching the rise of political extremism on social media and trying to package it all together in some tidy narrative. We had been working non-stop for the last year but were becoming overwhelmed. It turns out there was a lot more data available than we had initially thought, even back circa 2015. My boss recommended I take a few weeks off to recharge my brain to see if some downtime would inspire any fresh avenues of study. I hadn’t been back home in over a year, so I decided to drive down and spend a few weeks at my parents’ house in Smarr, a small town in middle Georgia. Both my parents had recently retired and had been bugging me to come back home and visit, so they were overjoyed when I gave them the surprise news on my drive down. 

I arrived home late in the afternoon, and everything looked exactly like it had when I was growing up. The freshly cut yard where Allen and I played football with my dad, his powerful arms throwing perfect spirals further than we thought possible. The colorful garden - my mother’s pride and joy - where we would spend hours digging our little hands through the dirt, planting and picking vegetables. I immediately felt a warm rush of nostalgia. 

This was quickly shattered, of course, when my parents stepped out onto the front patio to greet me. I’ve already mentioned the antennae sprouting out of my dad’s head - that was the most obvious difference. But then my mother wrapped me up in a big hug, and she seemed squishier than usual like she had put on weight. This probably wasn’t uncommon for recent retirees, but she certainly didn’t look any bigger. Skinnier, if anything. And she was sticky like she had a thin layer of slime covering her entire body. It was mid-June, and the temperatures were topping out in the low 90’s so I assumed it was just sweat. My dad gave me a firm handshake, but his arm was much thinner than I remembered, and in place of his dark hair, it almost looked like small spikes were dotting his forearm. I figured he would lose some muscle mass as he aged, but the spikes were beyond my comprehension.

We retreated into the house and sat down in the living room - old family pictures and memorabilia lining the walls - and began talking about my job, about retired life, about who from my high school had recently gotten married or divorced. Parents always seemed plugged into the hometown gossip like that. For a brief moment, it seemed like everything was normal. Except I noticed that the TV was on in the background playing some kind of nature program about the predatory habits of amphibians. My parents had never been big on TV, they certainly never just left it on in the background, but we did occasionally watch Animal Planet growing up, so this wasn’t totally out of the ordinary. But this particular program seemed to be just a montage of reptiles devouring insects, shot in the most gruesome way possible, almost like a circle-of-life snuff film. The lizards are everywhere, hiding in plain sight, ready to strike when you least expect it, the captions read. These definitely weren’t the kind of nature programs we watched when we were little.

Eventually, my dad retired to the basement - that’s where he spends most of his time these days, my mother whispered to me as he left - and my mom moved to the kitchen to start dinner. I say ‘moved’ because she seemed to slide more so than walk, her body compressing and extending, her legs almost moving as one. I got up to ask if I could help out and nearly tripped on the trail of slime smeared behind her across the tiled floor. She had always kept an immaculately clean home, and she quickly apologized in embarrassment while doing her best to wipe up the mess with a wad of paper towels. 

“Go tell your father that dinner is almost ready,” she said while shooing me out of the kitchen.

As I passed back through the living room, I noticed that the TV had moved on from amphibians to the dangers of birds. The common Cardinal migrates up from South America and can eat a million insects a week, decimating the local ecosystem, the voice-over narration said in a deep ominous tone. I was no bird expert, but that definitely didn’t sound right. I descended down to the basement to find it pitch black. I flipped on the light, and as my eyes adjusted, I caught a quick glimpse of my dad scurrying away into the far corner beneath the old ping pong table. I would say scurrying on all fours, but I just then noticed that he seemed to have sprouted two additional legs in the middle of his body.  

“Mom says that dinner’s ready,” I told him.

“Thanks, son. I’ll be up in a second,” he replied from his corner. 

As I turned and headed back up the stairs, I saw him venturing out into the light but sticking close to the edge of the walls. His antennae flitted about in front of him and reminded me of a blind man with a cane, scouting his way forward.

Dinner, if you could call it that, turned out to be a random assortment of raw vegetables from my mom’s garden. Some of them were noticeably rotten, my parent’s both inhaling the putrid smell as if it was fine cuisine. 

“Do you have any salt?” I asked, hoping to liven up the meal. 

My parents looked at each other and frowned. “Your mother can’t eat salt,” my dad said.

“It dries me out. The doctor said it could kill me.” My mom’s skin was looking exceptionally moist. And in contrast to my dad's extra appendages, my mom’s arms and legs seemed to be shrinking, like they were receding back into her body. I had so many questions, but I figured there’d be plenty of time to talk more tomorrow. Allen was coming down to visit for the day, so he might be able to help me make sense of all the recent changes.

I woke up the next morning expecting to find an empty house. It was a Sunday, so I assumed my parents would both be at church. I had long stopped going, and it had been a massive point of contention between us several years back. Eventually, we all decided to be mature and just never talk about it again. My mom was curled up on the couch in front of the TV. It may have been my angle of view or the way she was sitting, but she seemed to be missing her arms and legs, like she was becoming one large squishy globule. Her eyes were bulging out of her head and glued to the TV. This time, it showed clips of chipmunks frolicking in some bushes, but with a heavy filter that made it all appear shadowy and hellish. They live illegally in the cracks of your home, stealing the food from your family that you worked so hard to provide. My mom had one of her house plants sitting on her lap, and I swear she was nibbling on the leaves as I entered. She quickly set it down and smiled at me.

“Why aren’t you at church,” I asked, wiping the sleep from my eyes. 

“Oh, we don’t go anymore,” my mom said. 

“It’s not safe out there,” my dad chimed in, scurrying out of the darkened bedroom. His legs - all six of them - had grown longer and thinner, and his skin - if you could still call it that - took on a dark papery complexion. 

My mom leaned over and whispered to me, “It’s those birds. Your father is terrified of them.”

“It’s not just birds. It’s frogs, lizards, mice. There’s a lot of dangers out there, especially for your mother.” My mom rolled her protruding eyes.

“What exactly is going on with your skin?” I asked my dad. 

“Oh, you mean my thorax?” My dad lifted up his shirt to show his dark segmented underside - it almost looked like pieces of overlapping cardboard. “I’ve really been building up my exoskeleton lately.”

“He thinks he’s very tough,” my mom whispered to me. My dad thumped his chest cartoonishly, and it sounded hollow. I imagined if I were to accidentally step on him, his whole body just might cave in.

“Back in my day, men looked like men,” he said.

“When’s Allen getting here?” I asked, trying to ignore my dad’s preening.

“Oh, he’s already here. He’s out back,” my mom replied.

“Be careful out there,” my dad yelled as I quickly walked outside. I didn't see Allen anywhere, but that didn’t necessarily surprise me. He had never been the outdoorsy type, at least not after high school when he began spending all day in front of his computer trolling internet forums. As I was about to go back in, I noticed a large hole in the house's foundation, like something had been eating into the wood. I looked in and saw a giant insect staring back out at me. It looked almost like an ant but yellowish in color with a large bulbous head and long sharp pincers projecting forward.

“Hey bro,” the insect said, its pincers vibrating together.

“Allen? Is that you?” I asked.

“Of course it’s me. I’m a termite now. I’ve joined the termite army. We’re pretty much everywhere these days.”

“Termites like you?” I asked.

“Of course.” Allen scurried out of his hole and circled around me. 

“How exactly did this happen?” I asked.

“You mean the whole termite thing?” I nodded. “It was quite amazing, really. Let’s see, it was probably a year or two ago now. I was watching some online video - I don’t even remember what it was, probably just some random guy talking politics - when I happened to look outside and see a large hole in the ground. I figured I might as well check it out. What’s the harm, you know. So I looked in and saw a giant termite, much like myself, staring back out at me. He said his name was Dmitri, and he invited me down in the hole with him. He said something about life being oppressive above ground, and I can’t say I disagreed with him. So I followed him down to discover a vast network of underground termite tunnels. It was really impressive how deep you could go. Dmitri wasn’t even from around here. He had traveled in those tunnels from god knows where. Now that I had entered, I figured I might as well keep exploring the tunnels. Each one led to another tunnel and then another tunnel, and there was always another termite willing to lead the way. Before I realized it, I had pretty much become a termite myself. And that’s when Dmitri showed me the real prize. He brought me all the way back up to the surface and started eating a hole into the wood siding of my apartment building. It didn’t look too bad, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be getting my security deposit back anyway, so I started eating too, and let me tell you, the wood was delicious. Best thing I’ve ever eaten. And I guess since then, I’ve never really stopped.”

“You know Allen’s eating through the house,” I told my mom when I came back in.

“Oh, it’s harmless,” my mom said.

“It’ll be fine,” my dad said. “It’s a big house. The foundations are solid. I’d say a few holes will only make it stronger.” That hole was pretty big, so I wasn’t sure he was right, but I certainly wasn’t a structural engineer, so I didn’t argue. 

I was supposed to meet David, an old high school friend, for lunch in an hour anyway. He worked at the Southern Community Bank, and I had always half-jokingly mocked him for never making it out of our hometown. He didn't mind. He was doing some kind of financial forecasting and was apparently doing well for himself. As I pulled into the restaurant, I noticed that the changes affecting my own family were widespread. Everyone I saw seemed to have antennae popping out of their heads, or extra legs sprouting from their stomach, or wings sprouting from their backs. At least David looked normal.

“Have you noticed anything strange lately?” I asked.

“No, what do you mean?” 

“Everybody seems different.”

“Oh, you mean the whole insect thing?

“Yes, the insect thing. I’m trying to keep an open mind, but it’s getting... difficult.”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. People have been turning into insects for decades. You just haven’t noticed it. And they’re really not that different from us, despite their appearances. They still pay their mortgage, rack up credit card debt, eat fast food. They’re perfectly normal. They just see the world a little differently. I'm sure they think we’re the strange ones. I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it.” It was nice to see an old friend, but I can’t say David’s words provided any reassurance. 

When I got back home, the house was empty. I called out for my mom, but all I found was a giant slug slowly eating through the vegetable garden in the front yard. I went downstairs to look for my dad, but besides the giant cockroach crawling on the wall, the basement was abandoned. I looked out in the yard for my brother Allen only to find a horde of termites aggressively devouring the house.

I went back in and decided there was nothing left to do but head back home. I called my boss and told him I’d be ending my vacation early. He was excited about something at work and said they were investigating a new theory - the rise of political extremism was a reaction to liberal east-coast elitism. It sounded reasonable enough the way he described it, but I hadn’t yet seen the data, and I wasn't really interested in talking about work just yet. We hung up the phone, and I packed up my suitcase and took one last look around my childhood home. There was a picture on the mantel of the four of us together at Disney World. We looked like we were having the time of our lives. We were all smiling and laughing with our arms all intertwined. My mom was wearing a bright t-shirt that said ‘God is love’ inscribed in a large heart. My dad had on a giant Dumbo hat with floppy foam ears. Allen and I had matching Timon and Pumba stuffed animals. I took the picture down and slipped it into my suitcase. Before I left, I looked up a local pest termination service and set up an appointment for the following day.