Gwen was hurrying across a crowded street when she noticed a woman accidentally drop her phone near a bench. Acting on instinct, Gwen rushed over, bent down, and scooped up the device. "Hey, you dropped this!" she called out, reaching to return it.

But before she could place it back in the woman’s hands, an odd tingling sensation crawled up her arms, spreading like wildfire through her body. Her vision blurred, her ears rang, and a sudden wave of dizziness knocked the breath from her lungs. She barely registered the woman’s frantic shouts—“No! Don’t touch it!”—before the real horror set in.

Gwen gasped as her fingers twitched uncontrollably, fusing together into thick, scaly appendages. Her nails hardened into sharp, curved claws, and a rough, bristly texture erupted across her arms and chest. Feathers. Feathers were sprouting from her skin! She stumbled backward, her legs trembling as they thinned and contorted, shifting into scaly, spindly bird legs. Her feet burned as her toes fused, toenails extending into sharp talons. She tried to scream, but the sound that came from her throat was a warbling, garbled mix of human words and frantic clucking.

Her transformation halted—midway.

Gwen wasn’t fully a chicken, but she was far from human. Her arms remained awkwardly stuck between wings and hands, covered in ruffled feathers but still vaguely human-shaped. Her torso was warped, her spine hunched at an unnatural angle, and her face… oh God, her face. She could feel the sharp, rigid curve of a partially formed beak protruding from her lips, her mouth twisted and malformed. Her teeth were gone, her tongue thick and clumsy. She tried to speak, but the words barely formed before dissolving into frantic clucks and squawks.

The street around her erupted into gasps and screams. People gawked, some pulling out their phones, others backing away in horror. Gwen tried to plead for help, but her fragmented mind struggled to hold onto human thought. Her head twitched, darting around like a bird’s, her instincts overriding logic. What was she doing here? Why were these creatures staring at her? Her mind wavered, slipping between human confusion and animalistic instincts.

Then it happened. The panic overwhelmed her, and with a shuddering spasm, Gwen felt something heavy shift inside her. A tight pressure built up in her lower body, an alien sensation that she barely had time to comprehend before—plop!—a smooth, oval egg dropped onto the pavement beneath her.

She froze, staring at the egg in shock. Her warped brain scrambled to make sense of it, but her panic only grew. Another wave of tension gripped her, and—plop!—another egg rolled onto the ground.

Gwen wanted to scream. She wanted to run. But her legs, now too bird-like, only twitched in response. The crowd murmured in disbelief, their expressions shifting from horror to something more grotesque—amusement. Laughter rippled through the onlookers as someone snapped a picture.

The woman—the one who had dropped the phone—sighed and shook her head. “I tried to warn you,” she muttered before turning and walking away.

Gwen barely noticed. She was too busy trying to make sense of the nightmare unfolding around her… or was it inside her? Because, with each passing second, human thoughts felt more distant. The world was louder, scarier, and her first instinct wasn’t to escape—but to find a safe place to nest.