A Metamorphosis
One morning, as Gregor Samsonite was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a major four-lane interstate. Not an entire interstate; that would be ridiculous. Just a long stretch of freeway from what he soon deduced was Minnesota, given all the Minnesota license plates and the impeccable zipper formation with which cars were slowly merging between his feet and his knees.
He rolled over and stood up out of bed. A number of cars crunched beneath his immense concrete weight. He gasped, said “Oh my!” and began shedding onto the ground the compacted soil, steel rods, and natural aggregate that had been making his bottom itchy.
“MOM!” He yelled out his mouth, which had become a large green sign that read 35W 1½ MILES. “I THINK I’M AN INTERSTATE! OR AT LEAST A MAJOR ROADWAY OF SOME SORT!” Gregor looked at himself in the mirror with his eyes, which had become a collection of orange road cones. He wiggled his fingers in front of where his face had been, but the light posts they had become clanged loudly against each other, so he stopped.
“Gregor!” his mother hollered. Her voice grew louder as she approached his door. “Don’t be so dramatic! If you were an interstate you wouldn’t be able to fit in your…” His mother opened the door, stopped, stared, and fainted as suddenly the full realization of the relativity and unpredictability of the fabric of three-dimensional space hit her full square in the mind-face.
Gregor sighed and tried to sit, but he couldn’t, because he was an interstate.
