When the spring comes, Nico looks forward to the flowers blooming and the spread of green on the landscape. He isn’t a fan of the allergies that turn his eyes bloodshot, itches the soft tissue of his face, and causes him to sneeze uncontrollably, but it’s worth it for the change from the cold death of winter.
He is out on the sidewalk when the inexplicable happens. He lives in a nice neighborhood, smallish but full of upper middle class families and there were people in golf carts navigating the streets lined with nice houses and businesses. As Nico walked, he felt a strange sensation in his average-sized body that carried a little extra weight at his belly. He wasn’t in the worst shape, he rarely fell sick and he played pick up games of basketball in the park with teenagers and people in their early twenties, and he could usually keep up with them as a man approaching forty. The sensation that locks his body like a full body cramp radiated from his core. There was heat as a small burst in his belly that radiated out, and when it reached his extremities, they began to change. His arms elongated and sprouted black and green feathers, and his legs began to shrink. The shirt on his back ripped to shreds as his body morphed into the body of a bird and his pants fell to the ground like a puddle underneath him. His eyes became balls of black and his mouth elongated into a thin beak that came to a sharp point like a cutlass. His head was covered in black feathers.
He was the same height, just under six feet, but he was now a hummingbird bird. The black feathers of his wings had green highlights, there were a bunch of red feathers at his neck, and his belly and underside was covered in white feathers. In his terror at the sudden change in his body, Nico flapped his wings in a panic and he hovered just above the ground as he turned his head frantically to take in his surroudings; nothing around him had changed.
His body emitted a buzzing sound and the onlookers on the sidewalk and in the streets stared at the giant bird with looks on their faces that showed their discomfort with the vibrations Nico created in the air. He tried to scream for help, but his beak could only produce a chirp that sounded frantically.
When people started taking pictures, and some threw things at him to confirm that he was a real thing and not an illusion that had suddenly appeared, Nico took off and flew up over the commercial buildings and tree tops. The view above everything took his breath away as he ascended higher, but the wonder of the scenery below only reminded him of the strangeness of his sudden predicament and the terror returned.
Why a hummingbird? he thought to himself as his wings buzzed and he darted around the sky. He hadn’t even seen one in real life, as far as he knew they didn’t even exist in the area where he lived.
But no matter how long he contemplated and looked for answers around him, no explanation came. He was a hummingbird.
Then he became a pest to soda producers in the area where he lived. He could smell the sugar and his body longed for the energy, and he attacked vats of syrup with his sharp beak.
By this time, Nico was so immersed in the new life that had been thrust upon him that he forgot his life as a human. He could only think of his own survival and he felt a constant hunger that was only satiated by the syrup he was able to find.
The neighborhood viewed him as a wonder and there were attempts to capture him, but he only lived for a month. He died before anyone could capture him and scientists studied his body. The artificial syrups of the soda manufacturers rotted his body and there was little the scientists could learn from his corpse.
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