Muffin and RK were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. They’d spent the past hour or so talking, but she’d already forgotten most of what they talked about.
Her head hurt. She still felt like she was Muffin, but she remembered being Troy. She remembered being able to think big thoughts. She remembered a life free from laying. She remembered a more complex life, a life that seemed so much better than the one that Muffin had lived, from the one that Muffin was destined to live.
Troy’s personality had taken over as soon as she had touched the book. But Troy’s human personality was stuck in a bird’s brain. Simple concepts seemed too complicated to grasp, memories disappeared before she could process their meaning. Even just following RK’s lecture about her current situation was too much for her. Her brain was just too smooth, too simple, too dumb to keep track of the kinds of thoughts that it needed for Troy to be Troy. Troy was stuck in Muffin’s body, and while he was still Troy, for the moment she trapped as Muffin the hen.
She knew that what RK had been explaining to her was important, but the only thing she could remember from the past hour was when she had asked him, “Why?”
“Because Muffin,” and RK had put a great deal of emphasis on the word Muffin, “you erased yourself from existence. You and Rusty lived in this house because you were boyfriends. When you made me Rusty’s boyfriend, you ceased to be anything to him. That meant you had no reason to be in this house, so the auditor gave you one.”
“Just be thankful that you ended up like that,” RK continued, “you could have very easily been turned into an egg. Or hell, just imagine what could have happened to you if you’d wanted a ham sandwich instead of an omelet.”
RK was right, she had been lucky.
Muffin’s attention was drawn back to the present by the feeling of the new egg forming in her stomach. When she sat down shortly after laying her last egg there had been at least a few inches of clearance between her stomach and the table, but her belly had become so distended by the newly forming egg that her stomach feathers were now beginning to brush up against the table’s edge. She knew it wasn’t going to be long until she was laying again.
Worse still was the egg itself. It was circular and soft when it first formed. But as it filled out, it applied pressure on her tough uterine wall. Her uterus didn’t want to stretch, and naturally applied downwards pressure on it – despite the fact that none of her muscles were actively applying force to the egg. That downward pressure caused the egg to press into her cervix, squishing it down and resulting in it molding into a traditional, chicken egg teardrop shape.
Worse still was that the pressure had caused the egg’s base to grow so wide that her cervix alone wasn’t enough to cradle it. That meant that her uterus was being stretch painfully around the widest part of the egg, with some of that tissue helping to supplement her cervix in holding it in place. The weight was so unevenly distributed that the egg had pressed down until it had painfully compressed all the tissue in her pelvic region against her spine and hip bones, and it was that tightly compressed flesh that the egg now rested on.
Muffin also remembered one of the more difficult aspects of laying. Because the egg was wider than her cervix, it wasn’t enough for that to fully dilate. She had to strain until it had stretched out, up and around the wide part of the egg. She had done it many, many times before and none of them were good memories.
Muffin rubbed her arms along the bottom of her stomach, feeling the egg’s shell slowly harden as she did so. At least it wasn’t kicking, she thought with a small amount of relief, mammals might have an easier shape, but they have to deal with having a full-blown baby squirming about on the inside.
Muffin’s thoughts about the egg were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. Glancing over, she saw Rusty, her former boyfriend, walk in the door.
From the damp spots in his armpits and the sweat matting his fur, it was clear that he’d had a long, hot day at work. And that wasn’t the only thing that was hot, Muffin realized, as she dreamt of Rusty taking her in his arms, his fur brushing up against her feathers, his muzzle pressing down against her face, his hot breath steaming up her beak…
“What’s Muffin doing inside?” Rusty asked in an annoyed tone, “you both know she’s supposed to stay in the backyard.”
“This isn’t Muffin,” came RK’s rather matter of fact reply, “this is Troy.”
“Troy?” Rusty said in quizzical voice as he walked over to the table, “whose Troy?”
“Here,” RK held out the Book of Divination, “touch this.”
Rusty stuck his hand out with an apprehensive look on his face – a look turned to pure shock the instant he came into contact with the book.
“Oh shit! Troy! Oh shit man, what happened?”
Muffin couldn’t bring herself to respond, instead she just hung her head and stared at her egg-filled stomach.
“Troy thought I was annoying so he made me your boyfriend,” RK interjected, “that erased Troy from existence, so the auditor turned her into Muffin here.”
“Oh, Troy…” Rusty stammered, “I mean Muffin… I mean, I don’t know I’m so sorry man.”
Muffin let out a low cluck and shrugged her shoulders.
“So, like, what are we going to do about this?” Rusty asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“That’s right Rusty, nothing.”
“Please…” mumbled Muffin, causing both Rusty and RK to look at her.
“I already told you this, we’re not turning you back,” RK started, “to be perfectly frank Muffin, we were already considering turning you into a puppy and temporarily homing you with Lenny while we dealt with the other book owners.”
“Troy was too reckless,” RK continued, “he used the book to satisfy his own urges without thinking about the consequences to anyone else. He didn’t even think about the consequences to himself, which, I’ll point out, is the very reason that you’re currently Muffin and not Troy.”
“Honestly Muffin, Troy was a problem that we were going to have to deal with, but he dealt with himself for us. There’s nothing we can do for you now. Maybe when we find all of the books, we’ll…”
“Buckgaw!” Muffin hadn’t wanted to interrupt RK, but a popping sensation, followed by the pain of strong muscles trying to press the egg down against her closed cervix had caused her to let out a loud involuntary cluck.
She closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths. She’d been through this before and knew how to control her breathing, knew how to time her voluntary pushing, knew that closing her eyes helped her to block out the pain. She knew how to lay.
The contraction began to subside, and Muffin shifted from slow breaths to panting. As she opened her eyes, she noticed that Rusty and RK were sitting across from her, both staring at her with a look that conveyed the fact that neither had any idea what to do in this situation.
“Do you want some privacy for that, Muffin?” RK asked, “you could go in the bathroom if you want.”
Muffin nodded and stood up, walking with a slight hunch towards the bathroom as she cradled her stomach in her arms. As she neared the door to Rusty’s bedroom, another contraction hit and she winced as she felt a gush of fluid flow out of her womb, followed by the sound of it splattering on the floor below her.
She looked down past her stomach and saw a puddle of amniotic fluid in between her talons, slowly growing as more continued to drip out of her vagina. Muffin briefly paused as her brain told her that she shouldn’t be making such a mess in Rusty’s house.
“Uh… don’t worry about that Troy. I’ll, uh, I’ll clean it up for you…” Rusty called down the hallway.