Excerpts from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, or from My Life as a Remote Worker?
1. This getting up early, he thought, makes one quite stupid.
2. It took him long, long minutes to creep across his room like an old invalid.
3. During the daytime he did not want to show himself at the window, out of consideration for his parents.
4. As he sat there motionless staring into the darkness he felt great pride in the fact that he has been able to provide such a life for his parents and sister in such a fine flat. But what if all the quiet, the comfort, the contentment were now to end in horror?
5. “The boy thinks about nothing but his work,” said his mother. “It makes me almost cross the way he never goes out in the evenings.”
6. “This creature…” said his father, “obviously wants the apartment to himself, and would have us all sleep in the gutter.”
7. Owing to the amount of dust that lay thick in his room and rose into the air at the slightest movement, he too was covered with dust.
8. His only regret was that his body was too broad to get the whole of it under the sofa.
9. People now believed that something was wrong with him.
10. He nerved himself to the great effort of pushing an armchair to the window, then crawled up over the window sill and, braced against the chair, leaned against the window panes, obviously in some recollection of the sense of freedom that looking out of a window always used to give him.
11. He realized now that he was reduced to nothing more than an animal, although he was still capable of human feelings.
12. Fluff and hair and remnants of food trailed with him, caught on his back and along his sides; his indifference to everything was much too great for him to turn on his back and scrape himself clean on the carpet, as once he had done several times a day.
13. He wondered, was this some cruel punishment for having lived a life of meager obedience, for not having sacrificed enough in pursuit of his dreams, or had he always been destined to a life of repulsive loneliness and despair? When, if ever, would it end? Is there any hope for him to start life afresh? Is this all that God had in store for him? He wondered, would he ever be a normal person again?
Both: 1-12
My remote life: 13
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Luke Strom is a writer, podcaster and linguist based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Slackjaw, The Offing, Defenestration, The Haven, and on his mom’s fridge door.
