The Layover

Travis was at the airport, waiting for his next flight. The first one had gone off without a hitch, but he now had to find a way to kill a few hours for a layover halfway into the trip. Admittedly, he was rather tired, and needed a pick me up so he didn’t fall asleep in his seat and miss the next flight. And so, he decided to try and find some kind of energy drink or something to give him the energy he needed to stay up.

There were a lot of expensive “common” energy drinks, upcharged solely for being in the airport, and were just a bit too expensive for Travis to be willing to buy them. Luckily, his search for a cheaper drink was successful, managing to find one called “Avian Ardor,” with this particular can having an image of a Macaw flying around a bustling forest.

It only cost a few dollars, and Travis picked it up and purchased it. He wasted no time in cracking it open and starting to take sips out of it. It had a sweet, tropical taste to the flavoring, something that Travis appreciated. He was always fond of the flavor. The drink went down smoothly too, it was quite refreshing! He hadn’t ever heard of this brand before, but perhaps when he made it back home, he’d try and find places that sold it so that he could buy some more!

The energy drink did its job as well, Travis was feeling much more awake now! In fact, he was feeling more alert than he had ever been. But he was starting to think perhaps the energy drink had a bit too much caffeine in it. He was starting to feel jittery, and a strange tingle started to form all over his body. Travis felt itchy as well to round out the wide array of uncomfortable sensations the man was feeling. Suddenly it all came together when he felt an explosion of feelings bursting out from him, not sure what was happening but feeling his body begin to twist and turn as it was beginning to alter, with nothing Travis could do to stop it.

His nose and mouth were becoming one, with the upper half extending over the bottom, the tip of it becoming sharp and pointed. The nostrils on his former nose left him, leaving it completely smooth. The coloration here turned a midnight black color, hardening in the process as it became a beak. The ears on the sides of Travis’ head receded back into his head, becoming simple holes on the side while his hair did the same for his scalp, losing it entirely as his cadet cap fell off. The size of Travis’ eyes became noticeably smaller, now barely the size of a penny as the white of them turned yellow and the pupils became purely black, losing their brown coloration. Just like his hair, both Travis’ eyebrows and eyelashes vanished from his face, leaving it much simpler.

Although Travis lost much of his hair, including his short goatee, something different would grow to replace it. Just above his beak, a ruffle of red feathers formed while around his eyes, white feathers did with streaks of black surrounding it going downward. As for the rest of Travis’ head, it was covered in lime green feathers instead, giving him the head of a bird.

Around his neck, more feathers grew that were black in color, though for the rest of his torso, the same green feathers that formed at his head grew there to keep the colors of them organized. The digits of Travis’ hands merged together until he didn’t have them at all. On the underside of his arms, more feathers formed outward, the structure of his arms altering so that by flapping them, he’d be able to fly. The feathers that grew on here were green closer to his body, with the latter half a light blue color, the underside of all of them a bright yellow color. With that, Travis’ arms were fully converted into wings.

Travis’ legs shrank drastically, now only a handful of inches long. He lost a digit of toes, while another digit went to his heel. The thickness of them became thinner, the shape of them becoming more jagged while the nails at the tip of them sharpened and turned a black color, Travis’ feet turned into avian talons. The size of them shrank, causing his shoes to fall off. In addition, the lack of human legs anymore caused his pants to do the same.

The lower half of Travis’ body had light blue feathers at the base, seamlessly transitioning from the green. Sticking out from his backside would be a long ruffle of tail feathers, all of a mixture of yellow, red, and blue colors, a combination of all the colors on his new form.

After all of his, Travis’ size was much smaller now, well less than half of his original size – so much so that he was buried inside of his shirt. By flapping his wings and tossing around, Travis managed to escape out from his shirt, revealing the macaw underneath it that he had become, the only remnant left of Travis’ old form was the nickel necklace still wrapped around his neck.

“Caww! Mcaww! Craaaaw!” Travis screeched out and flapped his wings. In the transition into the bird, the ability to speak proper English was taken away from Travis, able to do nothing more but make the cries of a bird, cawing and flapping his wings with no way to actually communicate anything properly.

There was a bit of a commotion, though it was less because Travis had transformed in front of them, but because there was a macaw in the airport! No one had actually seen the process happen, and to them, they just saw him as any other bird that managed to weasel its way into the airport.

Some were taking pictures of Travis, while others were avoiding it in fear of the bird trying to peck at them or something of the sort, not that Travis would actually do that, but they didn’t know that!

Travis continued to flap his wings, screaming out “CAW! CRAW! CRAAAAW!” flapping at anyone he could see, though this wasn’t doing much to help him. It was hard to cry for help when you couldn’t do much but flap your wings and make bird noises!

It didn’t help that Travis’ mind was feeling simpler. He wasn’t forgetting about his predicament or that he was supposed to be a human man, but his thoughts were more slowed, having to fight off animal instincts to peck at the crumbs on the floor for food or to even fly around into the sky and leave the airport behind. He wasn’t sure if the simplification would eventually erase him mentally, and he wasn’t intending to find out.

Travis was trying to think on his feet (or was it talons?), and noticed that the ticket to his flight had fallen to the ground. He flew over to it, grabbing it with his talons and taking off in flight around the airport. He tried to fly in front of people and show the ticket, hoping that someone would be able to put two and two together.

Unfortunately for Travis, this wasn’t met with help. Instead all he succeeded in was scaring people, after all, a bird flying right at you wasn’t a soothing sight! Travis didn’t quit, but it was getting harder and harder to stay motivated when he wasn’t breaking through any ground.

After a while, Travis resigned himself to perching on one of the rafters looking down at the airport itself. The new macaw was going to have to think of something else if he was ever going to get this transformation undone, if he even could!

Over time, Travis was noticing more and more birds inside the airport like him. There were a few other macaws, but there were also parrots, pigeons, and blue jays to name a few of the other species. No one seemed to know where all these birds were coming from, with the staff thinking there was a hole somewhere that they were getting in from. But the more likely story was the other birds were people in the exact same shoes as Travis! The upper part of the airport was looking more like a aviary than anything else!

Travis still held onto his plane ticket, it seemed like one of his few ways he could potentially communicate, but Travis was starting to think he’d have to fly out of the airport if he was ever going to change back. He wasn’t sure where the winds would take him, but the airport seemed like a dead end after so many days. Maybe if he found the factory they made the energy drink he drank they’d be able to undo the transformation! It was better than sitting around and resigning himself to the life of a simple bird, so with that, the macaw did what he was made to do – fly away and hope for the best!