[ WP ] At age 18 everyone on earth gains the ability to morph into their spirit animal . Today is your 18th birthday and as your family watches you morph into an animal not of this earth

I misread the voice of this on the first pass and accidentally wrote this third-person. APOLOGIES. 
 
 
 
 
 “ An eagle I was not, my boy, not that there ’ s any shame in a blue jay, really. Flying all the same. Majestic with the rest of them, I assure you, majestic. And your mother here - your sweet darling mother - a tortoise. She ’ s always been the patient and determined kind, after all. You can see that. She ’ s very patient with you. Maybe more so than I am from time to time. I can lose my temper, yes, but not like a bear or a lion. I just lose my temper quietly and your mom doesn ’ t lose it at all. Tortoise. She ’ s really so lovely. And see, here she is getting your cake ready. Your favorite cake, my boy, Chocolate with walnuts all throughout. Always liked walnuts - tree nuts in general. Maybe you ’ ll be a squirrel, ha! But I ’ m joking of course, of course. Not the likes of you, a squirrel. Can you imagine that? A squirrel. Not my boy, no. I can see that in your eye. The way you smile like that - don ’ t be embarrassed! Even if you were a squirrel, boy, you ’ d be the best there was. Top-notch squirrel, no doubt about it. And here, here, I ’ ll light the candles! Don ’ t think about it too hard, you know. It ’ ll happen when it happens. Just kind of takes you over. Watch your nose, boy! Don ’ t get those close to the fire. You were always so interested in fire, here, back a little. ” 
 
 
 Jeremy let his father continue. He would in short time become an adult, the last in his family to do so. Three brothers and a sister ahead of him. All out an roving in the wild; all with very lucrative careers ( save his brother Cal, who had found his calling in the clergy - a shy shrew of course ). Jeremy let his father continue on as if he were a child again for he knew it gave him great comfort on this very trying day. The last of his children finally leaving the nest. Or the den or hole or whatever metaphor for their Animal. 
 
 
 Jeremy was very quiet, frighteningly lean, pallid, dry-lipped, with a queer-looking long nose, thick-browed, tangle-haired, dark-eyed, and was an all-around strange-looking child. He looked nothing like his parents and siblings, and though they themselves were no peacocks, tawny leopards, or variegated parrots, he was rather ugly and misshapen by comparison to his relatives. Perhaps he was undiagnosed with some affliction, a long-ignored case of Marfan ’ s Syndrome or something of the sort. His appearance had led to great speculation in school that he might be some sort of unfortunate-looking Animal. A mole, perhaps, or a maybe worse, an amphibian. He dreaded being an amphibian. Even many insects were more noble than a stumpy toad. 
 
 
 Jeremy blew out the candles of his favorite cake in silence and his parents applauded. An outsider might have viewed the scenario as one of mockery. But his parents were as genuine as two people could be. Well-intentioned people of the American Midwest. People that didn ’ t understand sarcasm and didn ’ t enjoy foreign films. 
 
 
 “ Good job, my boy! You know - and I ’ m only saying this because your mother ’ s gone to the other room for plates - here ’ s a nip of brandy in my glass. Go on. I insist. You ’ re a man now. And we all can ’ t wait to see what Animal you might be! Choke it down; it ’ s just a little brandy. My, the excitement. You feel anything? I mean, it can happen any time. For me it wasn ’ t until the night of. Oh come on, the brandy isn ’ t that bad. Not top-shelf, you know your old man. Not the top-shelf drinker, of course. But it ’ s still not bad and look, here ’ s you mother! Remember what I said about that. The baseball thing. Of course and thank you, dear, for the plates! Yes, dig in, dig in and - oh! Boy, you hand is shaking a little! Look look, Marla, it ’ s started already! His hand is shaking, yes. That ’ s how it started for me. Little tremors in the extremities. Not just ease into the feeling. Strange feeling, yes. You learn to snap it on and off at will like nothing. Now just ease into - oh, oh God! Marla, step back. Boy! Jeremey! Oh, God! What is - what is happening!? Don ’ t, boy! Try to stop it! Christ Almighty! Marla, call a doctor; get the neighbors! ” 
 
 
 But it was already too late. What had started as a momentary tremor in Jeremy ’ s right hand quickly manifested to a rather violent spasm of his arm. Excited about the prospect of transforming into an Animal more interesting than himself, he had let it really take hold of him. More so than one should. Far more. 
 
 
 His fingers went first. They split apart like if one was to take a sharp knife to a hotdog and so suddenly his hands were twenty-, thirty-, then forty-fingered messes. They turned blue and so it looked like his arms were masses of robin ’ s egg kelp or mildewed spaghetti. The blue shot up his arms, splitting them open where it touched. You could see the bone through Jeremy ’ s flayed forearms and his skeleton quickly sprouted almost like mushrooms. His fingers congealed around the shoots of bone, stretching outward and up to the ceiling in a mess of ligaments and membranes. His clavicles popped out from the skin, spraying his mother ’ s limited edition vintage Ford Motor Company ’ s “ Classics Remembered ” tablecloth with some kind of foul teal liquid. His head, then, with a lurch, became oval, then riddled with bulging veins, then almost translucent. He stretched out, with crackling and popping sounds, filling the height of the room with whipping tendrils and jagged appendages. Opalescent, saffron, pale sky blue, turquoise, and other brilliant colors decorated the skin which tightly wrapped his torso and legs ( which had undergone the same mitosis-like division as his fingers and were now pillars of wormy tissue ). And as suddenly as the whole lurid orchestration of Jeremy ’ s body into this grotesque new form had started, the musculature stopped twitching, the bones stopped growing, and the house loomed with a dark and unsettling presence. His parents emerged from the kitchen brandishing cooking knives and ladles, insisting repeatedly that help was on its way. Jeremy wanted to assure them, more than any urge or impulse he had ever had, that everything was indeed fine, that this would be alright, that he supposed they would find out in due time what animal he was ( for he couldn ’ t see himself that clearly with the absence of normal-wavelength eyes ), and that they ’ d be on their way to a park sometime soon where they would frolic with other creatures, and so he concentrated as hard as he could on this idea, this concept of unity and family and oneness, and his great domed, transparent head pulsed a bit. 
 
 
 “ Fath-or, moth-or, ” the voice rattled through their skulls, a violent echo of their son ’ s voice, devoid of cadence or inflection, almost manufactured-sounding, “ Don ’ t worry for me-ee. Will-soon se-ee the suns-shine onare heads-sez and the clouds-sez up above. ”
