Metamorphosis

 She was clutching the book in her hands so close to her face that she almost looked cross-eyed. Her knuckles were whitened by her tight grip on the edges of the book cover. Her expression was a mixture of disgust and shock. Sweat was dripping down her forehead into her brows.

 With a sudden jolt she leapt off the sofa and threw herself into the bathroom and vomited violently into the basin. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stared at her reflection in the mirror. It was gaunt and pale, she looked sick. Her eyes were fading up into their sockets, her lips were white as chalk, and her skin looked crumbled up. “What’s happening to me?” she thought. Why did her imagination have to be so strong? Why did she have to imagine every thing she read with every tiny detail so vividly? Now she thought she was turning into a giant hateful cockroach just like “Gregor”. Why did she even read that stupid book? What was she thinking? She had more important things to do. And yet she couldn’t put down the damn book.

 She wrapped herself into a blanket, bundled up on her bed and shivering all over, resumed reading. With every line she went further, she became paler and paler. With every paragraph, she became more disgusted, and with every page, more paranoid. She couldn’t help but feel pity and hatred at the same time for the main character. A stinging sensation was growing at the pit of her stomach, combined with nausea and pain.

 After what seemed like ages she finished the book. She put it down with a trembling hand, and laid down slowly, panting, her face covered with sweat. She closed her eyes, God they were burning! Her thoughts were storming at her, attacking her, none-stop. What would happen to her? What if she did turn into a giant hideous cockroach? Would she be ignored and hated like “Gregor”? Or would her friends and family accept her as who she was and care for her? But who would care for them? What would happen to them if she wasn’t there anymore? They couldn’t manage without her. They needed her. But what if it did happen though? Could she depend on them to be there for her? But still the thought of it was silly. “They depended on me”, she thought, “I can’t afford to depend on them”. She that had tried so hard all her life, to be somebody, to impress everyone, to be noticed, to be important. She, that had clawed her way through all the hardships and poverty, so that she could make life easier. All her life, she had thought of nothing else. Friends told her she was a people pleaser. The exact phrase they used was: “You’re obsessed with pleasing everybody”.  “Why the hell do you care what people think?” they told her “live your life for yourself.” “But I do live for myself”, she thought. I’ve done well, I’ve reached high places, and I’ve done better than “well” in fact. I’ve done great. But they just mocked her. “Why the hell should every single person on this planet like you? Some people like you, some people don’t. Deal with it! Some might even hate you, let it go.”

 Why couldn’t she though? And why did she suddenly remember these conversations she had with her friends? Not that she ever forgot, they would hardly ever let her! But she never took them seriously. As she went through them over and over in her head, she tied the blanket tighter around herself, and curled up on her bed, shivering. “Am I really that annoying as I sound? But I’m a good person, I help people. Nobody hates me…. Do they?” As she was struggling with her doubts, she fell asleep. She had dreamt that she had turned into a huge cockroach, and was drooling disgusting goo all over the place. Six disgusting legs had sprouted out of her body. Everyone was trying to kill her, to stomp on her, throwing things at her. She was pathetic and pitiful she couldn’t even run to save her own life. She tried to yell at them, to tell them “It’s me… don’t kill me. I’m still the same person inside” but how could anyone love her any more looking like this? She was absolutely hateful. For one crazy second she even thought that they did recognise her, that they were trying to kill her on purpose! She tried to escape, but no one would let her. Everyone was beating her with sticks, throwing obstacles in a way. It was obscured! It was as though they actually wanted her finished!

 She was swearing and cursing in her sleep, thrashing wildly all over. Beads of sweat covered her face, and she was burning up with fever, her teeth were chattering together, and she was shaking uncontrollably. Finally she woke up screaming. Her blanket was twisted around her body like a cocoon, and she was panting as if she had run a thousand miles. Her heart was beating so fast, it was exploding in her chest. The room was dark as a graveyard. How long had she been sleeping? She automatically looked at her watch out of habit, but it was pitch black and she couldn’t see a thing. She took a lighter from her bedside table, lit it, then looked at her watch again. She couldn’t believe it; almost twenty-four hours had passed. She hadn’t eaten for two whole days, yet why wasn’t she hungry? She felt if she ate something she would throw up again. She was still disgusted by the vivid images of the book. She touched her forehead; it was still hot with fever. She tried to move, but the pain, oh, the pain! It was as though a long stalk, covered with gigantic thorns was twisted around her entire body, scraping her skin, torturing her, poking her every limb. Except it was one of those pains that you felt the throbbing more clearly in all the individual spots of your body, rather than feeling it in one place. It was like her body was covered in them inch by inch, and each thorn was piercing their way separately into her flesh, making her bleed from every single puncture they made. She groaned. She tried to move again, but the agonising pain! She couldn’t even tell weather it was from the inside or out. It was cutting her in half. No, it was cutting her into tiny bits, slowly…oh so slowly….

 She shut her eyes tight and tried to think of nothing. It didn’t work. Her fever was getting worse. She was getting sicker and sicker by the minute. She drifted off to sleep again. And again the most unpleasant dreams filled up her head. “It’s only a dream” she told herself again and again in her sleep. “I’m just dreaming this, I just need to wake up, that’s all. If I wake up everything will be fine, everything will be back to normal again, all I need to do is wake up”. But she couldn’t. No matter how hard she tried, she tried to shout in her sleep maybe that would wake her up. If only she could just get a sound out of her throat, maybe someone would come and see what was wrong with her. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. She tried running, but her legs were made out of lead. Finally she was moving. Oh thank God. She was walking. But, no….Darn it! She was still dreaming. She could tell by her slow movement and by the way her body felt, heavy and sore, like it didn’t belong to her, like it was someone else’s corps she was dragging around with her. She was dreaming that she was walking towards the bathroom door. She walked around slowly, feeling her way blindly across the room, for she didn’t dare turn on the lights. She went inside to brush her teeth, but when she looked up in the mirror she saw a terrifying cockroach instead of her own face. She was horror struck. She couldn’t even open her mouth to scream. She kept thinking: “I’m only dreaming, I’m only dreaming. It must be a dream! Thing’s don’t happen like that in real life! It’s only that stupid book I read. Go on, try to wake up, you can do it”. She woke up again, went towards the bathroom mirror, but this time she already knew what was waiting for he. The moment she reached there she knew there would be a repulsive, horrible, cockroach staring right back at her with foul back eyes. Tiny dark empty eyes that were staring at her with pity and disgust. Which one was it?  Was it anger?  Or hatred? Or was it grief? She really couldn’t tell.

 Why couldn’t she wake up? What was wrong with her? She kept dreaming the same dream over and over again. Her body was so numb and heavy, she couldn’t feel herself. In one of her dreams she even smashed the mirror so she wouldn’t see her disgusting image again, but somehow that did not make her feel any better. A voice kept nagging in her head: “You’re still a cockroach, a dirty, slimy, disgusting, ugly cockroach. Even if you can’t see your own face, other people still can. The fact that your reflection is gone doesn’t change anything”.

 After probably the thousandth nightmare, eventually she woke up. It was morning; she could feel the weak rays of sunlight that were coming through the half closed blinds on her face. It seemed to her that she was sleeping for years, even decades. She knew this time that she was awake but she daren’t open her eyes. She was horrified of what she might face. But she had to face it in the end any way. Better sooner than later. Slowly she opened her eyes, they were on fire, she felt they were bleeding. She squeezed her eyelids tightly together a couple of times to cool down the burning flames in her eyes. First she just looked around the room, taking in every little detail. This was where she was going to be imprisoned, where she had to spend the rest of her humiliating life as a useless bug! Then she raised her hands slowly towards her eyes. Surprisingly they were human hands. Maybe she hadn’t turned into a cockroach after all. But she didn’t get her hopes high because in her dreams she had always been able to walk to the mirror in the bathroom, hadn’t she? So maybe only her face had transformed, and then slowly the rest of her body would. She managed to heave herself off the bed, and looked towards the bathroom, trembling, supporting herself by walking alongside the walls. There was where her fate lay, where she would find out how pathetic she was going to be for the rest of her miserable life! She opened the door with a trembling hand. It made a loud creak. She walked in, step by step, slowly, gently, carefully putting one foot in front of the other. This might be the last time she would ever be able to walk. She was carefully avoiding the mirror. She didn’t want to see herself before she reached it. If she had indeed turned into a cockroach, she didn’t want to take a glimpse at herself from a distance. She wanted to face it as bravely as possible, to “deal with it”. She stepped in front of the mirror and raised her head slowly. This was one of her nightmares, she knew it, this was one of her worst nightmares, the same terrifying nightmare again. There was no sign of the cockroach. She blinked. It was her face, her very own face that was staring right back at her in awe. Though it was much paler and gaunter than usual, and her eyes were red and swollen. Apart from that, everything looked normal. She lifted her hand and gently touched her cheek, and then very slowly she turned in front of the mirror, touching her body. Everything else felt normal too. Amazed, she even pinched herself. She was herself. It was her very own body, skinny and skeleton-like, but still it was hers. Unbelievingly she had not turned into a cockroach.

 She checked the time, more than two days had gone by. Where was everybody? She hadn’t seen her anyone at all during this time that she was sick and stuck in her room. She stepped outside of her room, looking for everybody else. Nothing had changed much. Everything was pretty much the same. She moved around the house unnoticed. Everyone was going about their business. Doing their own thing. Then she walked as quickly as she could back in her own room, locked the door and collapsed against the wall. She took a deep shuddering breath and sighed. She put her arms around her torso. Something was burning at the pit of her stomach. She was herself. At home. Then she rested her head against her knees and sobbed harder than ever. Everything was exactly the same. She hadn’t turned into a cockroach.