The Metamorphosis of Bird

Bird first noticed it in the mirror on Tuesday morning—a small dark spot on her left palm, like a beauty mark she'd never had before. She picked at it with her fingernail, but it wouldn't budge. It felt hard beneath her skin, like a seed waiting to sprout.

She showed it to her best friend Mira at lunch, holding her palm up to the cafeteria's fluorescent lights.

"It's probably just a wart," Mira said, biting into her sandwich. "My brother gets them all the time."

But Bird knew it wasn't a wart. Warts didn't pulse. Warts didn't feel warm to the touch, like something alive was growing underneath.

By Wednesday, there were eight spots. One on each fingertip, one on each palm. They'd grown larger overnight, raised and glossy black, and when she pressed them, they didn't hurt. They felt nothing at all, as if that part of her had already died.

Bird wore gloves to school. Long sleeves despite the heat. She couldn't concentrate in class. Her skin itched everywhere now, a crawling sensation that made her want to claw herself open. During third period, she excused herself to the bathroom and locked herself in a stall, peeling off her gloves with shaking hands.

The spots had spread. Up her wrists. Along her forearms. Each one perfectly circular, perfectly black, arranged in patterns that reminded her of something she couldn't quite name.

She took a photo with her phone, then immediately deleted it. Some things shouldn't be documented.

Thursday, she stopped going to school. The spots had reached her shoulders, her collarbone, the base of her throat. And her fingers—her fingers had begun to ache with a deep, splitting sensation, as though her bones were dividing themselves from the inside out. She wrapped her hands in gauze and told her mother she had the flu.

Her mother, distracted by work emails, barely looked up. "There's soup in the pantry. Get some rest."

Bird spent the day in her room with the curtains drawn, watching her hands in the dim light. The gauze grew tighter as the swelling increased. By evening, she could see the fabric stretching, distorting, as if something was trying to push its way out.

That night, she woke to the sound of tearing. Not fabric. Skin.

In the bathroom, under the flickering fluorescent light, Bird unwound the gauze with trembling hands. Where there had been five fingers on her right hand, there were now seven. Thin. Segmented. Each one ending in a sharp, chitinous point that gleamed like polished obsidian. She tried to scream, but her throat produced only a soft clicking sound, like branches tapping against a window.

She ran water in the sink to cover the sound of her sobbing. The clicking sound.

Her left hand was worse. Nine fingers now, some of them sprouting from her wrist, and when she tried to move them, they responded with an alien precision that made her stomach turn. They knew what to do. They wanted to weave.

Friday, her mother knocked on the door. "Sarah? Sweetie, are you okay? You haven't come out all day."

"I'm fine," Bird managed, though her voice sounded strange even to her own ears—thinner, higher, vibrating oddly. "Just need to sleep."

"I'm calling the doctor."

"No!" The word came out too sharp, too desperate. "I mean... I'm already feeling better. I'll be fine by Monday."

Her mother's footsteps retreated, uncertain.

Bird looked at herself in her bedroom mirror. Her face was still recognizably hers, but her eyes had darkened, the pupils expanding until they swallowed the color entirely. And were those shadows beneath her skin, or were more spots forming there too?

The transformation accelerated after that. Her spine curved and hardened, vertebrae fusing and multiplying, creating new segments she'd never possessed. Her ribs cracked—a sound like ice breaking—and when she lifted her shirt, she could see them moving beneath her skin, reorganizing themselves into something more efficient. Something built for a different kind of life.

She stopped eating food and started craving the flies that gathered at her bedroom window. At first, the urge disgusted her. Then she caught one, felt it struggling between her many fingers, and without thinking, she brought it to her mouth.

It tasted like everything she'd ever needed.

By Saturday, she'd grown too many legs to count. They emerged from her torso in the night, splitting through her skin like flowers through concrete. Each one unfurled with a wet, organic sound that she felt more than heard. She tried to walk to the bathroom and collapsed, her human legs unable to support the weight of what she was becoming. But her new legs—they knew exactly what to do. They lifted her up, carried her to the corner of her ceiling, and held her there as if gravity itself had become optional.

From her new vantage point, she watched the room spin and stabilize, watched it through eight eyes that saw in fractured, kaleidoscopic detail. Every angle. Every shadow. Every potential place to hide.

She began to weave.

The silk came from glands in her abdomen, flowing out in silvery threads that caught the moonlight. Her many legs worked in perfect synchronization, creating patterns she'd never learned but somehow understood. Geometric. Mathematical. Beautiful.

By Sunday morning, half the room was draped in web.

Her mother found the empty skin around noon, draped across Bird's bed like shed clothing. It looked almost peaceful, that hollow girl-shaped shell, still wearing Bird's favorite nightgown. The face was intact, eyes closed, mouth slightly parted. It looked like Bird was sleeping.

"Bird?" her mother whispered, reaching out to touch the thing on the bed.

It crumbled at her touch, collapsing into fragments of dried skin and dust.

Her mother's scream brought the neighbors, brought the police, brought questions that no one could answer. They searched the room, the house, the neighborhood. They found nothing. Just the skin, and the webs, and a window that had been left open.

But in the corner of the ceiling, hidden in shadow behind a tapestry of silk, something large and patient waited. When it shifted, the light caught on a small birthmark—shaped like a bird—on what might have once been called a shoulder.

It remembered being called Bird. It remembered its mother's voice, Maya's laugh, the taste of birthday cake and summer rain. It remembered what it meant to have a name, to be human, to be loved.

But names were for creatures with mouths that could speak them, and Bird had better things to do with her mouth now. Better things than speaking. Better things than explaining.

She had learned to be hungry in ways that girls could never understand. She had learned that transformation isn't always a tragedy—sometimes it's simply an awakening.

And when the house finally emptied, when the police gave up and her mother moved away to escape the memories, Bird remained.

Waiting.

Weaving.

Watching the flies gather at the window, fat and slow and perfect.

She'd never been so patient when she was human. She'd never understood the virtue of waiting for your prey to come to you.

But she understood now.

Oh, how she understood.