Terror and relief both flooded Frank’s body. He was a chicken. But he was a male chicken. Short thoughts, strange thoughts, thoughts he never expected to have before, and thoughts that he didn’t know how to handle now. But then Dusty continued.
“Chickens have a cloaca.”
A cloaca?
“I told you that when I added the gender spell to the book I got another spell,” Dusty said in a dispassionate, factual tone as he held the book in his hand, “its called ‘Gestate’.”
“It lets me start a pregnancy in the person I use it on,” Dusty looked down at Frank, “that would be you.”
That would be me?
“I’m new to this, so I don’t really know the rules for the spells. You’re going to help me experiment. When I came a few minutes ago, the picture I had in my head was a chicken. A chicken that was trying to lay a huge egg. An egg that was far too big for it. An egg that had stretched its cloaca as far as it could go, but it still wasn’t enough.”
Frank’s heart began to rise up into her throat, but she wasn’t sure if it was due to the terror of Dusty’s monologue seeping into her mind, or the feeling of the massive weight growing inside of her, pushing out on her tender flesh. Forcing the contents of her stomach to move aside and make room for the impossibly large egg that her body continued to grow.
“You’re going to teach me two things, friend,” Dusty said as he bent down, gently rubbing a finger along Frank’s beak, “the first is whether the book will make you grow an egg like that. The second is whether it will make it so you survive.”
LAY
Frank tried to wrap her mind around that last sentence, that whatever this magic was could kill her, but she felt a new switch flip in her brain.
LAY
Her own thoughts were pushed out of her mind.
LAY
She tried to think about what was going on, what was happening to her, but her brain kept forcing a singular thought, a singular purpose to the forefront.
LAY
It downed out everything else. All she could picture was the image of a small white egg.
LAY
All she could think of was the feeling of the thing inside of her. Of muscles pressing down, of her cloaca spreading wide.
LAY
She could feel it descending. It hurt so badly.
LAY
Electricity ran down her spine, muscles tensed. She pushed. The egg pressed out against her thighs.
LAY
There wasn’t anymore room inside of her. She was pushing as hard as she could, but it wasn’t enough.
LAY
The thought kept forcing its way to the center of her mind. She needed to lay the egg. It was too big. It kept growing.
LAY
A voice screamed in her mind, it took over her thoughts, she needed to lay the egg. Her stomach began to press up into the back of her throat. Her stomach bulged out, feathers thinning until the tight pale skin underneath was visible.
LAY
She couldn’t stop it. It kept growing, expanding down towards her bottom, towards her… cloaca…
LAY
She wanted to think about that, how strange this new anatomy was. But that primitive part of her mind just kept screaming at her, as though there was an entire sector of her brain dedicated to egg laying that was now stuck in overdrive.
LAY
The egg continued to grow. She briefly felt cold air on her insides as the growing egg pressed her apart, only for her cloaca to painfully stretch as a hard eggshell pressed out into it.
LAY
She tried to squeeze, but her muscles were stretched so thin. She didn’t have a choice. She pushed and strained as muscles throughout her stomach bore down.
LAY
She could feel a tremendous weight on her legs as they began to give out. She felt a claw slip out from underneath her and her body fell to floor. A loud clacking noise heralded the sound of the bottom of the egg, which was now partially exposed in her overstretched cloaca, smacked against the floor. Pain shot through her body as her organs were squeezed between her egg and her spine.
LAY
She flopped onto her side, still straining and pushing as Dusty looked down at the beginning of the white dome that was protruding ever so slightly out of her body.
LAY
She squinted her eyes, brought her legs up against her stomach, flapped her wings, strained every muscle in her body and pushed. To Dusty, it wouldn’t have looked like the egg had moved at all. But to Frank, whose new anatomy was stretched beyond its limit, the passage of even a nanometer of egg was an exercise in agony.
LAY
“Bucaw!” she cried as a small amount of spittle splattered on the ground below her.
LAY
“Bucaw!” she looked up at Dusty. She hadn’t done anything wrong to him. She did everything he wanted. She didn’t even want her money anymore. She just wanted to get away, to…
LAY
She just wanted to lay this egg. Her entire body tensed as Dusty looked down at her with a smile on his face.
LAY