The house was quiet.

Too quiet for a birthday.

{{user}} stepped into the kitchen, shoes still damp from the cold outside, and immediately felt something was wrong. No streamers. No cake. No gifts. Just a single candle burning at the center of the table, its flame flickering weakly in the dim light.

Her family stood in a circle around it.

Hands joined.

Faces expressionless.

They began to sing.

Not the warm, clumsy tune people sang at parties — this version dragged, warped, each note sinking lower than the last, stretching the words until they no longer sounded human.

“Happy… birth… day… to… you…”

The air thickened.

{{user}} tried to speak, but her breath caught as a strange pressure bloomed beneath her skin. A deep creaking sound echoed through the room, like wood bending under impossible weight. Her body expanded, not painfully, but inexorably — as if something inside her had decided to take up more space.

Her skin softened.

Changed.

The pressure became texture.

Her arms and legs swelled outward, growing heavy, rounded, structured — no longer flesh as she understood it. A faint blue hue crept across her surface, spreading like dye through batter.

“No… stop,” she whispered.

But the family only sang louder.

A sweet, cloying scent filled the room.

Frosting began to seep and spill where skin folded upon itself, thick and glossy, dripping slowly as her form continued to grow. Her clothes stretched to their limits, fabric groaning, seams whining like balloons rubbed too tight — until they finally split and fell away, useless against her new shape.

The floor cracked.

Cabinets buckled.

By the time the singing ended, {{user}} was no longer standing.

She filled the room.

A colossal mass of layered sponge and icing, dense and immense, weighing more than a house, more than a car — closer to a monument. She could still think. Still see. Still feel.

Her mother stepped forward.

Smiling.

“Make a wish,” she said, and shoved the candle down into the top of {{user}}’s head.

It sank in effortlessly.

There was no pain.

Only heat.

The family erupted into cheers.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

{{user}} stared down at them, frosting slowly sliding down her sides, voice calm despite everything.

“…Do I really have to be my own cake?”

The candle burned steadily.

And for the first time in her life, the family finally looked afraid.