For a second, nothing happened, but then the ring began to feel warm on Kelly’s hand -- and then hot, almost painfully so. Her first thought was to yank it off with her other hand, but she had to pull her fingers back right away, afraid of getting them burned. She took the tail of her baggy T-shirt out of her jeans and wrapped it around her other hand, but was unsuccessful at budging the still-hot ring.
Finally, she had a brainstorm and ran to her apartment’s bathroom sink, turning the water on, and sticking the ring under the cold stream.
She got immediate relief, but suddenly noticed that the ring was faintly glowing yellow, and tiny cracks seemed to be appearing. She pulled it out from under the faucet, and it seemed to be steaming. Now the cracks were glowing with more intensity than the rest of the ring, and she felt an odd tingling in her hand centered on the ring, which quickly expanded to her entire body.
She continued to watch the ring, but then noticed that her fingernails were growing longer. She raised her other hand and saw it was the same -- they’d become over an inch long and appeared perfectly manicured, with white tips.
In disbelief, she ran one hand through her hair as she looked up into the mirror, and realized she had more hair than she was expecting -- her short brown hair had grown considerably, adding volume, and seemed to still be lengthening down her back. Meanwhile, an invisible hand appeared to be painting her face with makeup, thick and colorful in what she would consider a slutty style. Even aside from the makeup, her face seemed slightly altered -- her eyes larger with irises a more vivid shade of green, her nose smaller, her lips plumper.
Her chest and her hips ballooned outward, momentarily straining against her clothes, but then her clothes themselves morphed. She could feel her bra expand to fit her new breasts, and over it, her T-shirt shrunk down to become a cleavage-revealing halter top. The legs of her jeans merged, and the hem moved drastically upward as the fabric type and color changed until she was wearing a ruffled pink microskirt, the pink waistband of a thong visible above it. She felt herself being forced up onto tiptoes as her athletic shoes became high-heeled sandals, pink to match her skirt.
The changes seemed to have finished. She stared into the mirror for a moment, almost unrecognizable to herself. Obviously, she looked nothing like she’d imagined -- she looked like the kind of woman she really couldn’t stand, almost an exaggerated caricature of femininity.
She put her hands to her breasts in disbelief -- they must have been at least DD cups, maybe bigger. It was only then, seeing it on her hand, that she remembered the ring.
It had cooled, she realized, although the cracks still glowed faintly -- but they were healing themselves before her eyes.
Something had gone horribly wrong, but what?