I’ve always been terrified of water. Not like, a glass of it. I’m fine drinking it, using a toilet, washing my hands. Showering is tolerable, but unpleasant. Bathtubs are a no-go. Fuck pools, lakes and streams. And especially fuck the ocean.

Did I mention I live right on the beach. My therapist thought it might help me face my fears. I can’t say it’s done much yet.

My mother always said my dad was the same way. He didn’t stick around long after I was born. Just a couple of months. But the one memory that stayed with her is me crying my head off while she tried to bathe me in the sink, and my dad screaming his head off, “Not the ears! Not the ears!”

The word around town was that dad had little babies like me all over the state, all of them scared of water. When I went to the beach as a kid, I’d always walk up to the other kids who weren’t swimming and ask who their daddy was, but I never did meet any of my half-brothers or sisters.

Naturally, I always hated my dad. For a long time, I thought the best way to avoid becoming him was to skip having any children of my own. Then I married a great girl, Mira, who convinced me I was a worthy human being, and that the best way to fix the mistakes of the past was to settle down and become a loving father.

And she was right. When my son, Matthew was born, I almost physically felt myself become a better man–that something in me had changed at a biological level. When he wrapped his tiny fingers around my thumb and stared straight up into my face, suckling at the air, I knew I was done living for myself, that every day after would be for him.

Matthew was about three months old when I had a knock on the door and opened it to find an old, bearded man that looked like me on my worst day. I knew right away that he must be my father.

“I’m here to see the new grandbaby,” he said.

“Like hell you are.”

“Come on,” he said. “Be civil. It’s starting to rain.” He nodded to the threatening storm clouds overhead. A shiver ran through me. I’d been caught out in a storm once when I was young and ended up having a severe panic attack, screaming myself unconscious as I huddled under the relative dry of a maple tree.

My father entered, shaking a few drops of water from his coat and then setting it on a hanger by the door.

“I don’t suppose anyone’s stopped by to tell you the do and don’t of being a father,” he said, settling into a spot in the center of my loveseat.

“I’m doing fine on my own,” I said, picking a rocking chair in the corner. “Can I call you an Uber or something?”

He ignored me, and looked toward my baby monitor, where a black and white image of Matthew sleeping filled the screen.

“You’ll be having the headaches by now, I ‘spect,” he said. “Probably not enough to knock you on your ass yet, but believe me, in a month or two…”

My stomach dropped as he said these words. Because they were true. Over the last few months I’d been having headaches for the first time in my life. And they were getting worse and worse. It was like my skull felt too full.

“I’m fine,” I said. “You really should get going. My wife’ll be back soon, and I’d rather you two didn’t meet.”

“No she won’t,” he said quietly. “Won’t be back until 2:00am after her job at Rudy’s gets done. You and I, we’ll have plenty of time.”

My hands were shaking a little bit now.

“Time to do what?” I asked.

“What needs to be done,” he said, gesturing to the baby monitor. “It’s really better to get it done now. Less suffering for both of you.”

Outside, the storm was starting in earnest. Sideways rain pounded the front windows, and lighting struck the nearby ocean.

“Come on,” he said. “You must have sensed what you have to do. It’s in your blood. Your instinct. The Second Birth is just as natural as the first one.”

My head was throbbing. I rubbed at my temples, and they felt foreign to me. Where they’d once been spongy, I know felt new bristles of bone, like miniature spines beneath the flesh. Had they always been that way?

“They’re ready,” he said. “God, you’re practically bursting. Nothing like the first time. Come on, let me get a look at you.”

“You can look at me from there,” I said.

“Not this you,” he said. “I mean you. Come on. Whatever you think about me, I’m your father.”

He stood and walked over to me. I thought he wanted to look me in the eye. Instead, he leaned over and peered into my ear. His breath stank like birdshit and his beard tickled against my cheek, yet somehow I couldn’t tell him no.

“Come out,” he said. “I can’t see you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I said. I didn’t know whether to cry or scream. Of course, if I got too loud, I knew I’d wake up Matthew, and my night would get even worse than it already was.

Then, without another word, my father knelt on the ground before me. Then his eyes rolled back and his body went limp. For a second, I thought he’d had a seizure, maybe even a heart attack. Yet he was strangely still.

Then I saw movement: a sickly, subcutaneous shiver by his temple that progressed downward toward his ear. And then finally the thing came out: white and shimmery as a pearl. It might have been a worm, but it moved more like a snake, wet and glossy, clothed in shining scales.

“What are you?” I asked, pulling back into the chair, my heart beating uncontrollably.

“The same thing as you,” came a whisper from my father’s human lips. “You could call us passengers. Unkindly, parasites. But really, we’re symbiotes. We live amongst them, growing in their young at an early age. I’d like to think we live their lives better than they ever could.”

My stomach was in knots. I knew I was about to vomit any second.

“You’re saying I’m a… I’m not… I’m not human?”

My whole existence was shattering before me, because deep in my aching, pounding head, I knew it was true. I was just like him, a shimmering serpent, a predatory monster.

“You’re something far better than human.”

As my father’s body spoke, the snake withdrew back into his ear. Then, slowly, he rose from the floor stretching out his withered limbs.

“Now that your human body has sired an heir, the next stage of the life cycle has begun. Already, your eggs are hatching within you, ready for their host. All that remains is for you to sleep beside your boy, to let your real sons emerge and enter him.”

“Matthew would die?” I asked. And then I threw up everywhere, my stomach acid covering my legs and the chair beneath them. But my father just kept speaking, unperturbed.

“Of course not,” he said. “Everything about him would remain. But he would be… enhanced as part of the symbiote. Reborn as something better. As us. And once that’s done, your work here will be done. You can move on to another human woman, sire another heir. And then another and another. The survival of our species depends on it.”

I looked at the monitor. Matthew was still sleeping peacefully, even with the raised voices in the living room. He really was an awesome baby. He deserved better.

“No,” I said.

My father shook his head.

“I knew you were weak. I’ve been watching you all week, waiting for the right time to have this talk. In that time, you know what I’ve seen? A little man who jumps when his wife makes the littlest demand. You’re the one who rocks him at night, feeding him a bottle as she sleeps. You’re more a daughter to me than a son. Fine then. If you won’t do it, I will. I’ve always got an egg or two lying around.”

He got up and started walking toward the hallway, toward Matthew.

And that’s when I snapped. Without another word, I tackled him. We collided against a wall. As we did, I heard a sickening crunch and he crumpled to the floor.

“You broke its neck, you idiot,” my father’s body rasped. “No matter. Bodies are replaceable, and the solution lies right down the hall. Just drag me by your son. I’ll take him myself. Of course he’ll be a bit small for me at first, but in time–”

But I didn’t let him finish the thought. I dragged him outside into the storm. Rain pounded down and panic filled my body, but I didn’t scream. This fear was primal, but that didn’t mean it was real. As the raindrops circles around my ears, I felt myself–my reptile self–choking, but not in a way that would kill me, just like a little coffee that had gone down the wrong pipe.

I dragged my father’s body through the sand toward the ocean.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” my father rasped. “What the hell–”

I plunged him into the ocean as we reached it, the water crashing over his head, completely submerging him. He was trying to say something, looking up at me from underwater with terrified eyes, but I was no longer listening. For a second after that I saw the silvery snake–my real father–emerge from the body’s ear, but it was too late. The snake gave one last shiver and then went limp even as the life went out of his human form.

Back at home, I took the best shower of my life. For once, the hot water running down my neck didn’t bother me. I knew it wouldn’t be enough to choke me, now that I knew what I really was.

When Mira got home that night, I was rocking Matthew in the chair, which I’d cleaned thoroughly.

“You okay hon?” she asked. “Hope he wasn’t too rough on you.”

“Not at all,” I said. “He was perfect.”

“You know,” she said. “I was reading this article on co-sleeping on the bus ride home. Now that he’s a few months old, it sounds like it wouldn’t be too risky, and there might be some real health benefits. Plus, I just kind of like the thought of it: all three of us cuddled up together in one big bed.”

“He’s been doing so well,” I said. “I’d hate to change a thing.”

“Maybe one day?” she asked.

“Maybe one day.”