“Uhg, I’ll humor you, creep, transform, I guess,” Jennifer said, internally trying to reassure herself that the curse was just a rumor.
“Aw, I’d been hoping for a dare,” Kyle’s high-pitched voice whined from the other end of the phone. “But transform it is! And you calling me a creep gives me a perfect idea. There’s so many ways I could totally ruin your life with this forever, but I’m feeling generous, so I'll include an escape. When you start cheerleading at the big game today, you'll change into a big, four-armed, four-legged spider lady, with a human-ish but still unmistakably spider-like upper body growing where the spider’s head would normally be, in front of everyone in school, and absolutely freaking everyone out. You’ll instinctively know how to control this new body, And-”
“Yeah, whatever! I don’t have time for your gross revenge fantasies!” Jennifer moved to hang up the phone. “Later loser.”
“Wait,” Kyle called, “I didn’t tell you how to rev-!”
Jennifer shook her head, and rushed to find her other sock. She knew she shouldn’t have entertained the idea even that long, but she’d gotten an eerie feeling the second he’d said “Transform or Dare. ” Some part of her still couldn’t shake it.
Even as she finished dressing and rushed to catch the bus, in the back of her mind, she wondered if she should skip cheering for today's game. After all, Kyle did say that she'd transform when she cheered "today."
But no, that was stupid, worrying about the exact words of a 'curse' that wasn't real. She had more important things to think about, like her last minute cramming for the history quiz that morning.
___
By the start of the big game, Jennifer had almost entirely put the curse out of her mind. She lined up beside her fellow cheerleaders, pompoms in hand, as the players took their positions on the field on a sunny fall day. She tried to ignore the Glendale Goose mascot, which always had a creepy, uncanny look to her, and mentally reviewed her moves.
As the event finally began, Jennifer and the other cheerleaders jumped up and chanted. "G-L-E, N-D-A, L-E! Winners we are gonna be! Glendale! Glendale! We are never gonna fail!"
As Jennifer hopped around, she suddenly felt an intense itch on the back of her neck, and couldn’t help but wince. But she took her cheerleading seriously, and she wasn’t about to let a little crick in the neck bother her. She didn’t notice countless little brown hairs slowly started growing from her skin, spreading down her back, up her head, and all around.
Most people were either too busy watching the players, or were too far back from the cheerleaders to notice, but there were still a few that turned their heads, wondering if their eyes might be playing tricks on them.
Jennifer winced, her timing getting thrown off even more as she felt a swelling sensation under her arms. But that was nothing next to the feeling of her legs suddenly twisting mid-leap, causing her to drop on her face.
Some of the folks on the bleachers could be heard letting out a sympathetic “oof,” while Jennifer tried to get back on her feet, but she couldn’t get her legs to bend properly. Not only that, but she felt an intense heat and pressure in her lower body.
“Ugh, nice going Jennifer,” she heard her friend Abby whisper down at her. “Get up! We don’t have time to… goof…”
Her words slowed as she saw what Jennifer herself turned around to see a large, bulbous growth quickly rising out from under Jennifer’s skirt, the firm, chitinous skin covered in a coating of brown hair, becoming a little larger than her original torso, ending in a spinnerette at the tip. Not only that, but her legs, growing the same brown hair and chitin as the rapidly swelling abdomen, were becoming longer, thinner, her toes becoming a set of small claws while her feet elongated to look like just another part of her legs.
Jennifer burst into a terrified scream, the memory of Kyle’s words coming back. Her scream was joined by the screams of the rest of the squad, who all quickly backed away from her. The crowd and the players began to freak out as well, the crowd in a rush of confusion, some trying to get away, others trying to get closer to gawk at her. Jennifer, in a haze of panic and disbelief, desperately tried to get away, but her two foot-claws simply couldn’t balance on their own, leading her to try to crawl away.
“Lucky,” for her, she was soon no longer relying on just two legs. Much the way she’d felt a strange pressure below her arms, two spots on her lower body began to bulge, then stretch out into a second pair of long, thin, spider legs, the “knees” rising above her abdomen as Jennifer unsteadily rose up, and fled with surprising speed.
“It’s not fair! This can’t be real,” she shouted, barely even paying attention to where she was going as she cut across the lawn toward a wooded area just outside the school grounds. She panted, and took in the foreign sensation below her arms, before suddenly realizing that she was controlling them. Looking down, she could clearly see the outline of two more clawed arms under her shirt, which she lifted up, releasing the new appendages.
“What… the… He-”
She winced again as more brown hair began to cover up her face, marking the start of its change. On either side of her mouth, a small nub formed, pressing out into a pair of tiny, simple limbs, while within her mouth, her teeth sharpened. Her ears seemed to shrink back, before she had a sudden, sickly feeling.
Jennifer shut her eyes, feeling a strange sensation in six spots in a ring around her head. When she opened them, she could suddenly see all around her. Every direction, without turning her head. While her normal field of vision was still as vivid and clear as ever, the objects to the back and sides of her were fuzzy, less detailed, their colors duller, but she could still see them. Hesitantly reaching up her hand to her head, and waved her claws around, before gently rubbing through her hair, feeling the location of each of her six new eyes; two in the back, two on the rear sides, and two on the sides of her forehead, all of them smaller than her original pair. Tears were dripping out of each.
“Why… Why me? I don’t deserve this!”
She heard a rustling behind her, and faintly saw something moving. Awkwardly, she turned around to look at the source with her , her new legs almost tripping over a root.
“Who’s there?”