I’m not the type of person to make impulse buys. But I’m also not the type of person who passes up a good deal. So when I saw someone on Twitter mention a little model gryphon skeleton on sale for half off, it didn’t take long to weigh my options and pull the trigger.
$7 for a unique Halloween decoration — who cares that it’s more than a month away? I spent more than that grabbing food after an appointment earlier in the day. I placed the order without much thought and without reading too much of the fine print. It’s not like you’d sell some sort of magical, transformative item for just $7. That would be ridiculous.
The next day, after I wrapped up what must’ve been work from home day seven thousand, I checked my email for the status of the order. Incredibly, I already had a message telling me it had been delivered. How’d I miss that?
I poked my head out my apartment’s door and, yep, there it was, a little box about a foot long and maybe half a foot tall. That craft store worked fast.
I took it out of the packaging — gently at first, but it actually seemed pretty sturdy — and put it on a shelf in my living room where I kept a few other models.
It looked like it would fit the spooky season well. I can’t say I have much experience judging gryphon skeletons, but despite the playful vibe that you always get from anything gryphon-related, this one seemed to have a bit of menace to it, too. Rather than a hollow skull, which I expected, the gryphon had this big obsidian eye that pushed it over the edge from “fun” to “creepy.”
That, and the whole, you know, skeleton thing.
I didn’t spend too much time dwelling on it. I had said I’d do a Zoom hangout with a group of friends that evening, so I mostly forgot about the gryphon until I was ready to go to bed, a little after midnight.
Lights already off, I browsed Twitter mindlessly in bed until I had to make myself to stop doomscrolling, just like every night. I turned my phone off and rolled over to plug it into the charger. But when I reached down for the charger, I grasped nothing but air. Whoops. Left it in the other room. I should really just buy another charger so I don’t have to keep carrying it back and forth.
I got out of bed and trudged into the living room. I squinted through the dark and, yep, there it was, still plugged into the power strip by the couch on the far side of the room. I bent down to pick it up, turned around and froze. The gryphon model was… glowing?
It was faint, but unmistakable, and it seemed to be getting brighter. A light blue glow was illuminating a small area around the model. The entire skeleton was shining, save for that pitch-black eye. For whatever reason, I felt like that eye was boring into me. I walked over, hesitantly, and by the time I got to the shelf, that entire corner of the room was lit up.
I felt compelled to reach out and touch the skeleton. It wasn’t hot — if anything, it was colder than when I’d placed it on the shelf earlier that day. But as soon as I touched it, the glowing turned up to 11. Like, blindingly bright. I dropped the phone charger and threw my arms up to cover my eyes.
Then I sneezed, four or five times in quick succession. You know sometimes you sneeze if you look up at the sun? It was like that, but these were powerful, full-body sneezes. After the last one, I opened my eyes, and the glowing had stopped. It was as if nothing had happened. Huh, that was weird, I thought. Maybe I dozed off and dreamt that?
I shook my head and slapped my face a couple of times. Definitely awake. My ears were buzzing like crazy, too, and my face had started to tingle with numbness. I reached up with a finger to try to adjust the pressure only to find my ear was way bigger and protruded farther out from my head than it used to, with the top half almost folded down over on itself. The hell?
Before I had time to think, I was caught off-guard by yet another sneeze. Instinctively, I shoved my face in the crook of my elbow. But I completely misjudged it, and slammed my nose into my arm. I rubbed my nose to quell the dull pain, only to realize it, too, was growing noticeably larger.
OK, something’s going on. I scrambled into the bathroom, flicked on the light and looked into the mirror.
I gasped. No wonder my nose felt weird. It wasn’t a nose at all — it was a huge yellow beak! But even more bizarre were the bright blue feathers — about the same shade as the glowing light — growing over the skin on my face. Now that I could see it happening, I realized it wasn’t numbness at all, but the ticklish sensation of feathers sprouting out of my skin.
And the ears, well, the ears looked about like those you’d find on a gryphon. Feathers. Beak. Ears. I started to put two and two together. But I still had a lot of questions, like “what the f—?”
What do you do when you’re turning into a gryphon? I briefly considered Googling to see if there was, like, a WikiHow article or something. But I figured I would’ve heard about it if turning into a big ol’ bird cat was a common experience.
I began to feel overheated as adrenaline pumped through my body. I ran back out to the living room, where my air conditioning unit was, turned on the light and just stood there, sweating buckets, trying to wrap my head around what was going on. I used my hand to wipe my brow, now covered in feathers. When I brought it back down again, I was startled to see it was beginning to turn black in the areas I’d just used to touch my face and forehead.
I felt the black splotches with my other hand. More accurately, I figured, I was growing black fur. Panther fur, probably. And it seemed to spread to any part of my body I touched — the other hand was quickly turning, too.
It actually felt… good. Nice and soft. Without thinking, I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, and then my legs, and the pleasurable feeling spread. The fur wrapped around my skin like vines. Each limb gradually started to feel heavier, and I couldn’t tell if it was just the added weight of the fur, or if parts of them had bulked up a bit more to fit a feline mold as the transformation accelerated.
My hands were undoubtedly getting more feline. The black fur was molding them into paws as it spread. As it reached the tips, I felt a sudden sharp pain as claws shot through my flesh. It only lasted a second, but I let out a decidedly inhuman squawk and stumbled backward into the wall, awkwardly clutching my paws.
The fur had now almost completely covered my torso, too. Blue feathers gave way to thick, dark fluff around my neck, extending down into a gleaming, jet black coat. My legs felt stiff and heavy, so I leaned against the wall to give them a good stretch.
As I extended them out, I accidentally kicked over a chair that I thought had been farther away. I looked again and realized my legs weren’t stretching so much as growing out to a suitable length for a gryphon. I rotated to stretch my lower back, and I could feel my torso, too, start to expand into a longer, panther-like shape.
My boxers — fortunately, the only clothes I had on — busted open as my thighs and upper leg muscles grew larger to accommodate my new feline anatomy. At the same time, I felt a protrusion begin to grow from the base of my spine. It quickly developed into a long, rope-like panther tail. I placed my paw on it and felt it twitch as I flexed brand-new tail muscles. Those poor boxers never stood a chance.
I stood back up and immediately started wobbling. I couldn’t stand like I used to — I had to stand on my toes. I took a few hesitant steps, then stumbled to the ground. Do I use the tail for balance? That’ll take some getting used to.
I flopped back down against the wall to catch my breath. It was good that I did, because after panting for a few moments I began to feel an intense pressure build up behind my shoulder blades. Oh, right, I thought. Gryphons have wi—
Two huge wings shot out of my back and extended across the room with enough force to knock my TV off its stand. The sheer, sudden growth knocked the wind out of me. I slid all the way down to the ground and tried to catch my breath.
I rolled over onto my side and took a look at the new wings. They were jet black, just like my fur, but the feathers had a luxurious shimmer to them. I guessed which muscle to use to move them and was delighted to see the wing wiggle a little bit. Hey, they actually work!
Part of me wanted to jump out of the window and try to fly right now. But I was still recovering from the whole turning into a gryphon thing, and common sense won out as the transformative haze that had clouded my mind began to break up.
I sat back up against the wall, basking in a sort of afterglow. Without thinking, I let out a contended purr as I caressed the thick fur on my chest. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my tail twitch a little bit. I smiled and rested my head on the soft feathers of my new wings.
All this on an impulse buy, I thought. Pretty good value for $7.
