Metamorphoses, Again

A Short Story in Tribute to Franz Kafka

Gregor, the cockroach, after his gruesome death,

found himself in the body of a beetle.

Miraculously,

he had retained his self-awareness

and self-reflection,

and he even remembered his former life.

He reflected,

as he went about his life as a beetle,

on the meaninglessness

of his latter existence.

The constant going to the office,

the petty criticism from his supervisor,

the petty resentment he felt at being criticized and at the meaninglessness of his tasks at work,

the same routine repeated

day after day,

get up, pack lunch, catch the trolley, enter the office, sit at the desk, eat the cold lunch he had packed, read the pointless news of the day, grind through the afternoon waiting for the dismissal bell to sound, take his place on the crowded trolley back to his home, always the same seat six rows to the left by the window, trudge up the stairway to his family’s flat – good evening mama, good evening papa – take his bread and cheese exhausted up to his room, a little time to read and listen to the victrola before bed to wake up in the morning to do the same thing as the day before and the day before that and the day before that. On the weekends or on holiday, Gregor would go to the park and watch the people enjoying their life. That was his life.

Until he became a cockroach.

Now he was a beetle.

Life was still a constant repetition

with no meaning to be found.

Gregor reflected on that.

He wondered why he should be a beetle.

What difference to the universe was a beetle? His constant search for food. His constant hunger. What was it all for? He saw no point in it but

after considering the matter

he decided that it didn’t matter whether his life as a beetle had any meaning,

as his life going to the office had no meaning,

and what meaning could there be in his waking up as a cockroach?

Now he was a beetle,

and he must just accept this for what it was

and be in his beetleness,

always hungry, always searching, nothing more.

What could there be more?

Gregor would have instances when he thought

there must be something more,

more than just mere existence;

but then again, no.

Existence was enough.

Existence was all there was.

Whether as a beetle or a cockroach or a man going to the office day after day, it all seemed the same to Gregor.

Except when he occasionally thought

there must be more,

more meaning to life than this.

So passed Gregor’s life as a beetle, crawling here and there, constantly searching for food, some bit of decayed bark or leaf or the body of another insect, always hungry, always always hungry – and with no other meaning.

But that was his life now.

Except when he wondered about there being more.

……………

One day, as Gregor the beetle was foraging among the tall ferns,

something strange happened.

Gregor liked it under the tall ferns,

where it was warm and moist,

and where leaves and twigs would get trapped

and eventually fall down to the ground

where they would rot in the warm, moist darkness.

As much as he liked to visit this place,

Gregor could not stay very long.

There were snakes.

He could be eaten.

He had already had some close calls

from which he had escaped by lying perfectly still

and blending into the rotting matter

on which he was feeding.

This day,

as Gregor tugged on a piece of decaying bark,

hoping to pry the delectable morsel off the trunk of twig,

keeping a wary eye out for snakes,

out of the corner of his eye,

he noticed a light

shining through the green ferns.

As the light grew closer and brighter,

Gregor stopped what he was doing.

The light grew more luminous.

He began to move to the edge of the patch of ferns

to get a better view.

He knew that where the ferns stopped

there was a wide expanse of empty dirt.

Humans would sometimes come through this land where nothing grew.

Gregor remembered humans.

He remembered that he himself

had once been a human.

He remembered how they smelled.

That was how he knew they were humans.

Those creatures were much too large for Gregor to see,

except their huge feet.

Now the light was coming closer.

To Gregor, it appeared to be a huge column of light

rising up to the sky

as far as he could see.

The closer the light came,

the more luminous and wondrous did it appear.

Gregor stood frozen in awe.

Then came the sound

like rushing wind,

or a terrible scratching sound,

methodical,

scrish-scrish, scrish-scrish.

It was somehow familiar.

Then the thought popped into his mind:

broom.

When he was Gregor who would go to the office,

his sister would use the broom to sweep the courtyard,

always sweeping,

obsessively sweeping,

so that there would be no dirt or dust

remaining in the courtyard of the family’s little flat.

It was his sister

who was the most disgusted

when Gregor awoke

as a cockroach.

Who could blame her?

She with her obsessive cleanliness.

Now the sound of the broom was a roar

and with it

a great wind,

a dust storm,

blowing Gregor back;

but Gregor planted his six feet firmly

and did not go back from the edge of the ferns.

When the wind subsided

and there was no more dust

except the dust that now covered Gregor,

Gregor again became aware of the light,

brilliant, piercing.

It was pouring, radiating in blinding rays from what Gregor saw as bright, glowing feet.

At that moment,

a realization swept over Gregor.

It came to him suddenly and convincingly,

more convincingly than he had ever felt.

He knew with all his being:

the meaninglessness which he had felt all his life

was the meaning,

and the meaning was this Light.

All at once,

he saw his opportunity.

He mustered all of his erstwhile cockroach nature

and he scurried

as fast as he could

into the Light.

…………..

The Saint felt Gregor’s beetle body

collapse under the weight of his foot.

With his inner vision,

he saw Gregor’s soul leave its beetle body.

With his inner power,

he gathered up Gregor’s soul,

and he thought to himself:

I will have to give this one a human birth

and I will have to give him moksha.

He will find liberation from all this tedious coming and going.

The End (ha, ha)

If you liked this little story, you may like my book of poems, The Trembling Tear - Songs of the Inner Voice. It is available in ebook format at Smashwords.

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