It Skips a Generation
Joe Rotondo
The coat hung on its corner stand, and I sat across from it on my grandfather’s bed, contemplating the varying shades of matted brown, grey, and black fur which were dappled across its surface. It was weathered, moth-eaten, its sleeves tattered at the edges, and it was possessed by an indefinable, creeping scent: a sickly-sweet aroma that caused the stomach to churn, yet drew one irrevocably towards it nonetheless. It smelled like my grandfather. I do not know for how long I sat there, waiting, weighing, contemplating. Outside the window, day turned to night, and night to day, and once more- yet still I sat, the coat consuming my field of vision.
Like everything else in the room, the fur had once belonged to my grandfather, who had received it from his own grandfather, carrying on a tradition which had persisted since our family first touched soil in America, centuries prior. Through some means lost to time, our family had become the dark half, the night-folk, the subject of stories and tales made to frighten children into remaining close at home, clutching at the skirts of their mothers. My fate was no different than those of my ancestors; all had been forced to don the coat, and had become the inevitable, the indescribable. It had eventually become a source of pride, a way to hide the necessity of the horror. There was no choice in the matter for me, and the longer I sat and stared at the coat, the more this simple fact gnawed away at my consciousness. I had no children of my own, let alone grandchildren- I lacked any siblings, or indeed any family that still drew breath. There remained none who might carry the burden in my stead, and yet carry it I must- for the benefit of the light, there must always be shadow.
I stood and crossed the small room, approaching the coat warily and allowing its scent to envelop me. Standing directly in front of it, I found it suddenly difficult to look upon- I tore my eyes away from the fur, shuddering involuntarily as I did so, my gaze flashing frantically around the room for some source of comfort, some escape. My eyes lighted upon a photo of my grandfather and grandmother, younger than I had ever known them to be, taken while they sat on the back porch of the very log cabin that I now stood in. My grandfather had possessed slicked back hair, dark as sin, with a streak of grey in it that had eventually spread and consumed its entirety. His yellowish eyes looked out from the frame, boring into my own. He was wearing the fur, and his stern, predatory gaze rooted me to my spot, freezing me as though I were a deer in headlights. In a way, I supposed I was.
***
My grandfather had been a cruel man, taking more delight than was strictly necessary in the brutalizing of small animals, our main source of sustenance aside from the half-dead river which trickled by our cabin. It was a pastime I had been cajoled into in my youth, living alongside him in our lonely neck of the woods. It was just the two of us- my grandmother had died long before I was born, and I had never known my father or mother. This was (I had always suspected) due to the generational gap which plagued my family. The fur, being passed down from grandfather to grandson, skipped a person- a source of perpetual shame for the inbetween, though I could never fathom why. My grandfather had never spoken my father’s name, indeed, had never brought him up in conversation, and it was only through the inquisitiveness of my youth that I had discovered my grandfather was not the one responsible for my birth. Rooting through a back closet as a child, I had come across a book containing words- such horrid words they were, that I shook to read them. I brought this book to my grandfather with tears in my eyes, asking the perpetual question of youth: Why?
The man had taken one look at the cover, and slapped me, hard, across the face. He yanked it from my hands and threw it into the fireplace, where it was quickly consumed by flame. I stood there, weeping silently, afraid to move. Those yellow eyes burned into me, stung my soul worse than his calloused hand across my cheek. He had said a sparse few sentences, and that was the end of it- he had never brought the issue up again, and I had been too frightened to ask.
It was your bitch of a father’s. Count yourself lucky that you were his kid, not mine. You don’t want to know what I did with him.
He had smiled at that, and I ran to my room in terror.
***
Shuddering, I now attempted to steady myself against the wall, my hand feeling backwards for its unwavering wooden support. Instead of finding it, I found myself grasping warm, damp, living fur. I gasped and turned, and realized I had taken the coat off its stand and was now holding it in my shaking hands. I stared at the fur, felt it writhing underneath my fingertips. I tried to let it go, to drop it to the floor, but I found that I could not move.
From there, I was not myself. I watched from afar as I slipped the coat around my shoulders, rubbing my face with its rotten, matted sleeves and breathing deeply. Looking up, staring into a hanging mirror by the coat stand, I saw myself smile, and realized with horror that my teeth had grown longer.
Quickly, I followed myself as I sprang toward the door, pushing it open with a resounding crash that threatened to tear it off its hinges. I saw myself stumble through the little cabin, knocking aside the dilapidated kitchen table and its worn, bite-marked chairs, and out the front door. Standing in the wooded clearing and bathed in moonlight, I heard myself begin to laugh, a strange, half-growling sound. I cackled and moaned, howled and screeched, as the fur did its work, and I fulfilled tradition.
I heard cracking noises as my body began to change: my legs snapped backwards, the bones briefly protruding from my calves before they were consumed by thickly corded muscles and black hair. My feet splayed outwards, my toes dislocating and relocating of their own accord as I spasmed. I fell to the ground, writhing in rapturous, glorious agony. My arms began to snap and lengthen; I saw myself digging trenches into the earth with fingernails grown long and sharp as steak knives. I felt my heart beating a tattoo against my chest, its newfound power cracking my ribs and forcing them outward, expanding them to the size of a barrel. My shoulders broke apart, and my back arched as I contorted on the ground, spine splintering with the sudden expansion and shift to quadrupedal form. My ears stretched, elongating, and I began to hear a cacophony of wails, maddened and maddening cries- I realized with horrified glee that they were my own. The last to change was my face, as I felt my forehead and jaws burst outward and my nose break free of its mooring, then reattach itself, gaining unfathomable sensitivity. My eyes popped, dribbling fluids down my hairy face, and I was blind for a moment- until they grew back, yellow and slitted and large as the moon that hung overhead, watching coldly.
And all the while, the coat pulsed, writhed, bonded with me and carried its influence across my body, the damned fur spreading, twisting and changing me.
My transformation complete, I bounded off into the night, howling my anguished joy to the ever-staring, lunatic sky.
There must always be a dark half. God save the light.