The Metamorphosis

That morning, Gregor woke up with an unusual freshness. The sun was already beaming through his blinds. Pleased, he stretched his arms and tried to turn around, but he couldn’t. He pushed his blanket aside, and a frantic cry came out of his mouth. What he saw was impossible to believe — he lay on his bed with a hideous black dome-shaped body.

Gregor, unable to comprehend the situation he was in, cried for help but there was no reply. Out of terror, he had forgotten that his son and daughter-in-law would have already left for work. He noticed he could neither sit nor stand up like a normal human. Seeing no luck in shouting for help, he tried to wiggle his body and, with a little struggle, managed to turn around and face the pillow. He felt a little better and started crawling around.

Everything looked different. He wanted to look around and go outside his room, but his hands and legs were feeble. He then noticed he wasn’t in nearly as much pain as he had been the night before. His back, which used to give him the most trouble, was not aching anymore. As usual, he decided to let some fresh air in. He crawled up to the window, but when he raised his hand to open it, he saw his palms and feet had vanished! His arms and legs were getting pitifully thinner compared to the rest of his body with fine hair sprouting from them. On the outside, the world around him was slowly getting larger while from the middle edges of his bizarre belly, four similar legs were popping out! He now had eight thin legs and could easily move around as the pain in his limbs had magically disappeared.

Before he could feel happy or worried about that, he heard a growling sound, one that his stomach often produced. But he was surprised to hear that coming from his new abdomen. Last night, while waiting for his son and daughter-in-law to return from a party, he had stayed awake till midnight and had fallen asleep with an empty stomach. As Gregor was recalling this, he heard a faint buzzing sound, a familiar one. On glancing sideways, he caught a glimpse of a tiny mosquito and inadvertently, pounced on it and swallowed his prized catch. Being a vegetarian all his life, he didn’t quite like it, but at least his hunger was gone. By now, Gregor realized that he was stirred and curious all this time. After all, he was finally getting to feel some changes in his mundane existence, especially after his retirement and the death of his wife a year after that. But at this moment, he was just wandering around his room with enthusiasm like that of a toddler.

As his body was shrinking, it was getting easier for him to move around. Experimenting with his new limbs, he moved to the other side of the bed and climbed up to his bedside table. Under the mellow table lamp, he spotted a photo of his wife, clicked some 20 years ago, and imagined how crazy she would have gone had she seen him in this state. At the very least, she would have swooned in revulsion. Like mother, like son, he thought to himself, as he then recalled his son spraying cockroach repellent all over the house last week. He too couldn’t stand the very sight of those species. ‘Wait, how am I going to save myself now that my whole body is that of a bug?’ A sudden wave of terror washed over him, but he quickly shrugged it off. ‘After all, they’re always busy and seldom come looking for me. When they do come to my room, I shall just lie down and sleep, buried in the blanket,’ he reasoned. However, that thought ended right away when his gaze was drawn to the small mirror beside his bed. Eight brightly glowing eyes in a tiny black head were staring back at him. He was now as small as the painkiller tablet right beside him. By this point, he had entirely morphed into a little black bug, leaving no trace of his former self, but Gregor didn’t seem to mind.

“Hey!” called a voice from behind. Startled, Gregor turned around and saw a spider, brown and slightly bigger than him. “Are you Gregor Samsa? I am the instructor of the deceased and newly transformed ones.”

“You are WHAT?”

Before they could finish their talk, the door opened, and his son came in. “Sorry Dad, we got late last night,” Gregor heard his son say, which wasn’t new to him. His son moved to his bed and, after a moment, started wailing frantically — now that felt quite strange to him.

“Why are you crying?” Gregor yelled from there, completely forgetting his new identity.

“He is crying over the loss of his father,” said the brown spider. “Leave him now and come with me.”

“What are you saying? I’ve only been transformed, and besides, there is no one there.”

“You can’t see your own dead body,” said the brown spider.

“I don’t believe you!”

Unable to see his son cry, Gregor crawled up to the bed and tried to console him. He desperately longed to communicate, to let him know that he was still there, albeit in a different form. His eight tiny legs trembled with the weight of his emotions, but his son remained oblivious to his presence.

With great effort, Gregor managed to climb up to his son’s thigh, moving closer to his tear-streaked face. He made his way up through the bulky jacket, whose many creases seemed like tiny hills to him. After a strenuous climb, he finally reached the neck of his son.

Suddenly panicking, he saw his son raise his hand, and before he could say or do anything, a heavy thing fell upon his body and crushed him.

The brown spider shook his head in dismay and crept through the bed towards the window, careful enough not to come in sight of the man who continued crying, holding Gregor’s cold dead body close by his arms.

Reimagining ‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka.