Caillou sat on the edge of the couch. Daddy entered the room and sat down quietly beside him. Caillou didn't look at him, staring at the floor instead. He continued to process what he'd seen the night previous. After regaining consciousness, his parents had (more or less) normalized. Caillou ran to them, crying, despite them both still being naked and the minor details of their physical beings still reforming.

"I had a nightmare!" Caillou sobbed.

"It's okay, Champ," Daddy said, ruffling his hair. "Let me get some pants on and then I'll tuck you back into bed, huh?"

Caillou nodded in agreement. "But why are you and Mommy naked?" he asked curiously.

Mommy and Daddy chuckled. "We'll talk about that in the morning, Champ."

It took a while for Caillou to finally get to sleep and no small amount of convincing from Daddy that everything was okay now.

Now, the next morning, the images of last night's horror show were still fresh in Caillou's mind, despite his brain having little room for more thoughts than: "play cars," "eat lasagna," and "throw tantrum." He was convinced that it wasn't a nightmare. He'd witnessed something truly disturbing and now his Daddy was here to confront it, just like the time Daddy had the "bad drinks" and threw old Mommy through their second-story bedroom window.

"Caillou?" Daddy asked cautiously. Caillou didn't respond.

"Caillou?"

Caillou looked up at his Daddy with suspicious eyes. Daddy tried to grin but the expression looked unnatural.

"I think it's time we had 'the talk.'"

Caillou glared at Daddy. "Is this about my nightmare?"

Daddy looked at the ground and sighed. "This really isn't how we planned for you to find out." He looked back at Caillou.

"It really isn't, sweetie," Mommy said from the kitchen. She was doing the dishes like a good woman should.

Daddy tired to grin again. It creeped Caillou out. "You see..." Daddy struggled to find the right words. "There are two things you need to understand, Champ. One is that you're not like the other kids; you're special."

Caillou nodded. "Yes, I know I'm special. Mommy tells me all the time."

"Yes, son, but Mommy is special too. And so is Daddy. We're all special in the same kind of way."

Caillou wasn't following (he was slow to the ball, if you know what I mean ;)). "I don't understand, Daddy."

Daddy cleared his throat. "You and me and Mommy, we're all one...we're all one. Just, er, look, do you know where babies come from?"

Caillou nodded his head vigorously. "The storks bring them down from Heaven!"

If there was any attempt at a grin on Daddy's face, it was gone now. His face we long and stressed. The mere mention of the divine drove him to the absolute brink of his sanity, where he parked and sat now at the edge of the couch.

"No, they don't," Daddy said flatly.

"Then where do they come from?"

After a fifteen minute discussion about penises and vaginas, Caillou was now more scarred and confused than he was before.

"But-- but-- Daddy, I don't understand!" Caillou whined.

Daddy slapped Caillou in the back of his enormous head. Caillou cried out.

"Stop bitchin', you spoiled little brat and listen!" Caillou was sobbing now, cowering away from Daddy's angry and contorting face. "Lissssten-thoo-meee!" His face screamed without moving, his jaw unhinging and dropping to the floor.

Caillou's eyes widened in terror and he screamed, running behind the couch and ducking his head as much into the corner of it and the floor as its girth would allow. He sobbed bitterly. "Please! No Daddy! No!"

A gentle hand touched Caillou's back, and he shuddered, shrinking away from it.

"Caillou, please, " Daddy said. Daddy picked him up and embraced him tightly, setting him back down on the couch.

"Look, I don't remember what it was like first to realize that I too was a Thing. I just was."

Caillou sniffled and looked longingly up at his Daddy with his big, dumb eyes. "What's a 'Thing', Daddy?"

"It's what I am," Daddy said with a forced smile. "It's what you are. It's what we are."

Caillou looked confused still (though this was a look he almost permanently wore).

"You see son," Daddy began, "we're both part of the same Thing. We're a multicellular life form that mimics the DNA of life forms we come into contact with."

Suddenly, Caillou seemed to realize what Daddy was saying.

"Look, I know you're too dumb to comprehend what I'm saying but the simplest way I can dumb it down for you stupid, little, underdeveloped brain is like this: Daddy reproduces primarily asexually, which means that Daddy can make more Daddy's through sheer will. Now, instead of doing that, Mommy and I became one 'Thing.' I bonded with her on a cellular level and replicated her DNA."

"So Mommy is one of us?"

Daddy was in shock. "My God, I was afraid I had made a mistake..." he trailed off.

"I was a mistake?" Caillou asked, hurt.

"Yes, son, you were."

Caillou started to cry again.

"When Mommy and Daddy decided to have a baby, we realized that the traditional human way wouldn't work for us because we aren't human. So, we began experimenting."

"Experimenting? I was an experiment?"

"Well, yes, but that's not exactly what I meant. We began experimenting sexually, seeing if two asexual creatures could reproduce sexually by being sexually deviant."

Caillou looked dumb and confused as always.

"Anyway, you popped out of my ass, completely by accident I assure you."

"Why are you telling me this Daddy?" Caillou sobbed.

"Because, what you saw Mommy and Daddy doing last night was trying to rectify the mistake that was you. We were trying to make a superior life form than you, though--honestly--most of my shits are superior."

Caillou ran off to his room, crying the whole way. Daddy sighed. Mommy came up behind him and touched his shoulder gently.

"Why do they grow up so fast?" Daddy asked.

Caillou looked down at the gory polyp that lay in its crib in the spare bedroom. The polyp looked like a large raisin or a pruny turd with shards of bone jutting out at random angles and half-formed eyeballs blinking or staring off into oblivion.

"That's your new baby sister, Rosie," Daddy said softly from behind him.

Caillou's angry expression softened.

"She's part of us, isn't she?" Caillou asked.

"Yes, yes she is." Daddy put his hand on Caillou's shoulder.

"I love her," Caillou said, leaning down to kiss the molten bone turd. As soon as his lips made contact, they briefly became a part of the pruny bone turd and then he pulled away. Rosie, the bone turd, began to grow patches of beige skin.

"She's perfect," Daddy said with tears in his eyes.

The End.