(F to Chicken)
Josie looked at the hypnotist, a wry grin spread across her bratty features. The blonde huffed, flicking her head back with just enough force to brush her bangs from her eyes without pushing them behind an ear.
“Does that mean ‘yes’? Sorry, I don’t speak teenager.” The man chuckled, and shook his head. He looked to his assistant, a rather buxom brunette who swayed her hips from side to side.
“Eighteen means I’m an adult. Not that my parents seem to know that,” Josie huffed. “I mean, if they had, they’d have hired a better-looking guy than a hypnotist. And they’d probably have a better name than Rigel. I mean, who names their kids that? It’s like the worst parts of Reggie and British wannabes put together.”
“Scathing,” Rigel laughed. His cheery Asian looks were at odds with the Brooklyn accent he’d sported, and he tended to drawl every syllable in a tone dripping with condescension. Josie marveled at how the man could get under her skin with a single word.
“Besides,” his assistant chimed in. “Eighteen’s got teen in it for a reason. That, you know, means that you’re not an adult. Right?” She asked the last bit like a question, and Josie gawped in shock.
“Oh my God, I’m impressed she was able to dress herself.” The brat couldn’t help but let out another glib comment, and she smirked sweetly at the venomous glare she received as a reward. Sometimes it was good to be queen.
“Ah-ah-ah, ladies, ladies.” The man interposed himself between the two of them, flicking his wrist. A small egg popped into his hand, and he tossed it over his shoulder to his assistant. “Di, be a good girl and catch that. I’ve got an egg of my own to fry.”
“But there’s no oven around!” Diana gasped.
“Sometimes I worry about you, sugar.”
Josie snickered, despite herself. Much as she hated the show, she didn’t mind the way the so-called hypnotist played with his assistant. She hoped to one day be that snide.
“As for this little fledgling hen, why don’t you be a good girl and drift off for me?” Rigel’s voice was perfectly toned, every syllable flowing into one another.
Josie thought that sounded like a good idea, and she slowly dipped her head down to her small chest. Her eyelids fluttered, and in seconds her mind was totally and utterly vacant. A small trickle of drool slipped from her lips, and she felt the world grow dark.
“Wake up.” Some time had passed, enough to the point where the drool had slightly crusted on Josie’s lower lip.
She wiped at herself with a whimper, glaring to the man angrily. “What the hell was that? Did you drug me or something?”
His response was a single word:
“Sleep.”
Josie’s eyes glazed, and she tucked her hands under her armpits. She bent over and wiggled her hips from side to side, waddling around her yard like an idiot. Perhaps most telling of all was the fact that she uttered a constant, low, “pock-pock-pock” under her breath.
“Wake up.”
Josie realized what she was doing and flushed, shaking out her hands and slowly backing away from him. “What the-pock did you do to-pock?” She blinked, her eyes widening. Even when she was quiet, her lips kept moving to make that quiet hen sound over and over again.
“It’s a new trick. You see, we’re going to go into a little loop. And each time you’ll lose a bit more of yourself. And, each time you lose a bit more of yourself…” Rigel motioned to Diana.
Diana perked up and waved at the egg with her hands, as though performing some voodoo ritual. “Like, hocus-pocus!”
It might have looked silly, but the results seemed real enough. Josie could feel little quills forcing themselves from her skin, and she scratched at them with shock. “N-no way! These are… Feathers?”
“Sleep.”
Josie hunched over as though she’d been kicked in the back of the head. Her arms curled once more, and she flapped her new feathers faintly, kicking her right leg behind herself, jiggling her pert butt. “Buck-AWK! BuGWAK!”
She sounded like a girl doing a chicken impression, which was exactly silly enough to get a belly laugh from the two performers.
Rigel wiped an imaginary tear from his eyes. “I think I like her like this. It’s almost a shame she has to
“Wake up.”
Josie’s head snapped back to attention. Her arms… She… She couldn’t move them properly. They were tucked beneath her like wings. More and more feathers them, not fast enough to conceal the fact that her fingers were merging with one another. “PlGUAWK! Please!”
“Oh, don’t lay an egg,” Diana smiled, “yet.”
“Sleep.”
Her head fell, thoughts and words becoming scrambled in her brain. Josie kicked her legs back again, lifting her butt towards the air and flapping her wings. Eggs? She had a nest somewhere, didn’t she? That meant she had to get back to it at some point…
“Wake up.”
Josie groaned, her thighs bulking up with feather and henflesh. Her tight pants began to tear around the forming quills, and she couldn’t rise from her stooped posture—not because her body was unable to, but because she couldn’t remember.
A loud tear came from behind the girl, and feathers curled up and away from her posterior. They swayed in the breeze, and she squawked back to them in terror.
“Sleep.”
She… Afraid? Josen looked from side to side, clucking. She couldn’t see her beak, wasn’t that bad? She pursed her soft lips in a duckface, but that wasn’t the same. Her toes spread to better hold her footing, and she began to run in a panic.
“Wake up.”
Josen fell onto her face with a cluck. Her feet burst from her shoes, gold and ugly chicken feet compressing what were once a slender girl’s legs. She didn’t notice them so much as she noticed the yellow beak stretching before her face, an ugly and coarse thing opening and closing with every
“Sleep.”
Hosen clucked clucked clucked struggled to get up. She her legs weren’t working thinking not important eggs? She had eggs around eggs around somewhere nearby close. She needed wanted had should go to towards to
“Wake up.”
Hosen gasped, panting, clucking. Her eyes blinked, lolling in her head in a panic. Was she asleep or awake right now? She didn’t know, she still felt like so much of a chicken. Her legs felt so natural in this stooped avian posture, and clucking was right.
“She’s taking to it rather well,” Diana hummed.
“I like to think it’s our doing, really. We are supposed to be professionals at this, aren’t we?” The hypnotist looked to his assistant with a grin.
A fleshy, red, ugly wattle grew beneath Hosen’s head. She flopped it from side to side, whimper-clucking, and wondering how
“Sleep.”
Hoeen hen hen? Hen. Hen flapped wings kicked legs felt fat bug not but egg needed egg wanted
“Wake up.”
Hen didn’t have a name anymore. Hen was terrified of that, she didn’t want to become a
“Sleep.”
Hen brnai Hen words Hen mixjmbule Hen thnki Hen “BUCKGAWK! Pock-pock-BUCKAW!”
“Wake up.”
Hen… Hen? Hen?! “BUCKAW!!! BUCKAW!!! BUCK BUCK BUCKAW!!” Hen!!! Hen!!!
“Sleep.”
“BUCKGAWK! BOCK!” henehneehne “BWAK!”
“Wake up.”
“BUCK-”
“Sleep.”
“-GAWKBU-”
“Wake up.”
“-CGAWW!!!”
“Aw, that’s cute, she’s all panicked. Do you think she’s forgotten how to talk?”
“I think so, Di. Probably isn’t even listening to us right now. I mean, she gets that we’re talking, but it’s all in one ear and out the other.”
“Like sand castles at the beach!”
“I gotta raise those brains of yours sometime.”
“Meanie.”
“Beats being a dumb animal, though. What say we leave her for her parents, call it a day?”
“Sounds marvelous, Rige.”
“Sleep.”