I didn’t even bother knocking.

Testing the door, I discovered it was unlocked and walked straight in.

Thank god for Canadians, I chuckled to myself, admiring the photos on the wall. Two girls - twins, by the look of them - and a son. And, of course, Mom and Dad, standing in the family portrait, with their arms proudly around each other.

A perfect nuclear family. There’s nothing I enjoy playing with more.

They were even having dinner together. I could’t believe it - the son must have been a high school senior, but he still sat at the table with everyone to eat. They turned to me in shock as I entered the dining room.

“Excuse me!” the father said, standing up angrily. A quick probe told me that the father’s name was Teddy - his wife was Marie, and their children were Jeremy, Jane and Teri.

“Yes,” I replied calmly. “I’m sorry I’m late - I had forgotten that we’d moved our appointment to your house this week.”

“Appointment?” Teddy replied, his anger replaced by confusion.

“Of course. Your whole family has been coming to me for several months now - I am, of course, the only psychiatrist in the city who specializes in treating whole families at once. Again, I apologize for being late.”

“Not at all,” Marie said, standing up and giving me a hug. “Thank you so much for meeting us here.”

A glare from his father was all it took for Jeremy to go and fetch me a chair, and Teri made sure that I had a plate. I couldn’t believe how well this family worked together - I was going to enjoy myself here, I knew it.

“Now,” I said as Jane served me some beans. “At the end of last session, Teddy had just confessed to how much he’d always dreamed of being a clown. Teddy, do you want to continue from there?”

“Well,” Teddy said, without even a moment of hesitation. “Ever since I was young, and I saw them at the circus...”

He spoke for a few minutes, a sincere confession of how much he admired the bold way they dressed, the way they made people laugh. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that I’d accidentally found a real desire. While he spoke, I checked out the rest of the family as they nodded respectfully in response to Terry’s heartfelt words.

“And that’s why you’ve started dressing like one, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” Teddy replied, and before the words were even out of his mouth, it had a thick coat of red lipstick. The rest of his face was suddenly white, his hair green, and a small red plastic nose appeared on the end of it. Where he’d been wearing a respectable dinner-suit, he was now covered in gaudy colors - yellow braces, a rainbow collar, and a checked red, blue and green shirt. In the corner of the room, where the family’s shoes had been neatly stacked, Teddy’s black business shoes were replaced with green squeakers, three times the size.

“Now Jane,” I said, picking one of the twins at random. “This explains a lot of the desires you’ve been having lately, hasn’t it?”

“What?” she said in response - the last word she’d ever say.

“I mean, it makes sense. This kind of thing is genetic - your father’s urges to be a clown certainly explain why you’ve always wanted to be a mime. How have people at school started treating you, since you’ve accepted your mime phase?”

Jane’s transition was subtler than her father’s - the teen girl wasn’t wearing many colors to begin with, and so her black dress being replaced by black-and-white stripes didn’t make as much of an impact. Her already-pale face went as white as her father’s had, and a small black love-heart appeared under her right eye.

The rest of Jane’s clothing was replaced as well - a beret appeared on her head, a white glove on each hand, and every touch of color disappeared from her personage except for her new, strongly red lips. In response to my question, she mimed a group of people pointing and laughing, but no sound came from her mouth.

Marie, Jeremy and Teri had just been staring at their food glumly as I spoke. The reason they had to go a psychiatrist was suddenly obvious - two members of their family were dressed like freaks, one of them never even saying anything aloud.

“Marie,” I said, and she turned to me, eager to hear what I could say. “You’ve really been struggling with your husband’s obsession, haven’t you?”

“Oh yes,” she said, nodding fervently. “It’s been such a hassle - I’m a laughing-stock at work.”

“Work? I thought you believed that a woman’s place was in the house.”

“Well, yes, of course I do. That’s what I meant by work - I work from home...”

“That’s still working though, isn’t it Marie? You would never do something like that - not with your strict Christian values.”

Marie had never so much as stepped into a church in her life, but suddenly a cross appeared around her neck, and she grasped it as we continued talking.

“Obviously not!” she said, sounding scandalized. “I meant housework, of course.”

“Of course. You believe that your place is obeying the man of the house, don’t you?”

“That’s right. He may dress like a clown, but my Teddy is still the head of our household.”

“Good. You’re doing the right thing, Marie.”

She beamed. There was nothing she loved more than receiving the approval of an authoritative man. I turned back to Teddy.

“Who would you say are your heroes, Ted?”

“Oh, that’s easy - Krusty, Ronald, uh ... Pennywise...”

He was obviously struggling, and so I helped him out a little.

“Bobo, Pogo, Lolo...”

“Yeah!” he said with a smile, grasping onto my suggestions. “They’re all great - some of my favorites.”

“But they all have something in common, don’t they Teddy?”

“Of course,” he replied, and again waited for me to give him a nudge.

“They’re all fat,” I said. “They’re all wider than they are tall. And that’s what makes a really great clown, isn’t it? Weight.”

“Uh-huh,” he said slowly. “Yeah, all the great clowns are ... fat.”

Teddy, like his son, was in great shape. I don’t know if they worked out together, or if it was just because (before my entrance) he was just the perfect role-model, but while I was planning on keeping Jeremy fit, I figured Teddy could afford to gain a few pounds.

Or more than a few.

Just two questions later, Teddy was confessing to his psychiatrist just how long he’d been trying to gain weight, how much he wanted to be fat like his heroes. And as he spoke, two changes occurred - firstly, the serving of mashed potato and roast on his plate had tripled in size: as he ignored everything green on the table, he began desperately stuffing as much unhealthy food into his mouth as he could, large chunks spraying out of his mouth as he tried to speak and eat at the same time.

Secondly, he’d started to grow wider and wider and wider, until the chair he was sitting on could barely hold the plump clown’s new weight. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Jeremy was looking at his father with an air of disgust, and so it was the strapping young lad who drew my attention next.

“Jeremy,” I said. “How do you feel about all this?”

“It’s all pretty gross, I think.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yeah ... Dad’s really let himself go, Mom never stands up for herself, and Jane...”

A roll of the eyes conveyed exactly how Jeremy felt about Jane. She responded with a perfect mimicry of his action, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

A mime making me laugh. That’s certainly something I never saw coming.

“How’s your personal life, Jeremy?”

Undeterred by the change in topic, Jeremy readily answered. “Good. I’ve got a few girls I see from time to time.”

His mother tutted, her Christian sensibilities shocked, but I held up a hand and she immediately went quiet.

“What sort of thing attracts you, Jeremy?”

“Any kind, really. I like a girl who takes care of herself...”

“Girls?’

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just - you’re so fit, I thought for sure you were gay.”

“Oh well yeah, I guess I’m bi. I don’t mind girls, but yeah - I prefer guys. There are some hot guys at my school, who I wouldn’t mind hooking up with.”

“At your school? You must mean the teachers - in our last session, you were talking about how you like guys who are older than you.”

“Yeah, some of the teachers. We’ve got a guy who just started teaching...”

“No, that can’t be right,” I interrupted. “The last guy you dated was almost old enough to be your father.”

“Well sure, he was old, but he kept himself in such good shape, you couldn’t tell.”

With just the tiniest hint of effort, I transformed one of the photos of the wall into a picture of a man with more chins than strands of hair. Inanimate objects are always harder, especially when they’re not being worn.

“Isn’t that him?”

Jeremy glanced at the photo I was pointing at.

“Yeah, that’s him. I guess he wasn’t really in shape at all. He was really ... yeah, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I have a bit of a thing for chubby men.”

With a smile, I leaned forward.

“All chubby men?”

“Yeah. It’s just a huge fetish of mine. The bigger they are, the sexier I find them...”

As if unable to stop himself, Jeremy turned around to glance at his father, who was shoveling fistfuls of potato mash into his mouth. Without even noticing, the teen lad licked his lips.

“Jeremy, as your psychiatrist, I have to tell you the truth - I think this obsession with chubby men comes from what we call a reverse Oedipus complex. It’s quite common for gay men to be attracted to their fathers.”

The rest of the family were looking around awkwardly as I spoke to Jeremy, and so I decided to bring them in on the conversation.

“Jane, how do you feel about this?”

She mimed putting one finger down her throat and throwing up, and I nodded.

“A perfectly natural response. Teri, how about you?”

“I don’t understand how I’m the only normal one in this family,” the teenage girl sighed, and I smiled in response. All in good time...

“Teddy, how does it make you feel?”

The fat clown at the end of the table chewed on the remainder of the roast as he thought about his answer.

“Honestly, it makes me feel pretty fucking uncomfortable, knowing that my son’s a fag.”