yuan0_0

This is an abridged version of an experimental short story I wrote in 2020 titled Metatheriamorphosis! as a playful response to Franz Kafka’s original novella, The Metamorphosis. At the time, I was a high schooler cooped up in the bedroom I shared with my sister during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The full version of this piece was first published in Kudeta Magazine on May 19, 2020.

The air still brimmed with dust and disease after the dry season ended, and our tiny district was still pretending at hustle and bustle—a metropolitan mimic. The households whisper neighborhood gossip through each other’s walls: the newlyweds, the runaway housemaid, the twenty-something eloper, the Buddhist neighbor with terminal lung cancer. We were busy, though some of us were busy faking business. There was something comforting about the harmlessness of our homes, and the way the peachy skies swallowed the suburban wilderness. 

Last night, I dreamt that I was a milk-faced marsupial, and had only realized the absurdity of it all after I woke up. I like to think of myself as a natural absurdist, or even an optimist, in a world gone berserk. I drink my liquids, wash my hands, rest and sleep enough to perform day-to-day activities. I think I can afford to be optimistic.

The thought of having to think about what lies ahead makes me feel disoriented, but giddy at the same time. Does that make me selfish? Maybe. I think so, too. Besides, I have had a lot of time to be selfish. It’s a new strain of selfishness, though, like creating a new language between your siblings for smack-talking your parents or writing a gassy op-ed—like some kind of down payment for something greater and even more selfish. 

One day—like any other blur of a day during the pandemic—I woke up and discovered that two months of social deprivation was all it took for my schoolgirl hair and toothpaste breath to subside. I had grown fuzzier, more irritable. 

I licked my lips and felt a strange softness on the skin on top of my upper lip. Did I grow a stache overnight? Well, nothing wrong with body hair, I thought to myself.

“Come down, Mina!” my mother yelled from outside my bedroom. “We’re going grocery shopping!”

“Coming!” I wanted to yell, but what came out was something along the lines of a wheeze. My throat began to constrict. I pressed two fingers to my chest and breathed out, my throat gurgling in response. I sighed in relief. It was just my morning chest congestion! 

I fished a fistful of throat lozenges out of my drawer and unwrapped two. Seconds after they plopped softly on my tongue, sweet, prickly menthol coated my taste buds, and a frozen numbness took over my body. The scratching at the back of my throat stilled, and a familiar chill flowered across my chest. However, as I rose from the bed, my head felt a little lighter and my shoulder a little less taut, and I felt as if I was being shrunk and deflated. Did I consume expired lozenges? I shrugged. What’s the worst that could happen?

I made sure to soak up all the details of our journey to the grocery store. I listened to the low hum of a passing truck, took note of my mother’s three-day-old, durable updo, and savored the balmy, disinfectant-laced air. 

I could’ve sworn I saw a lady with a wombat head at the grocery store. Was that a lady with the face of a wombat? I thought. I shook my head. The sudden spike in screen time was clearly taking a toll on my vision. Just as I was about to take a second look at the wombat woman, my mother spurred me onward—to the vegetable section. 

“Mina?” a familiar voice called out.

“Miss Sunny?” My eyes widened when I saw her swollen belly. “You’re pregnant?” 

She nodded, smiling amiably.

“How old is your baby?” 

She picked up a whole bitter gourd and observed it under the searing light. “Five weeks.” I gulped. “I’m sorry, what?” 

She laughed. “I know. I look like I’m six months pregnant. But haven’t you heard the news?” 

“What news?” 

“The news about shorter pregnancies! Hospitals around the world are reporting pregnancies as short as 26 days, you know.” She raised her eyebrows. “Haven’t you heard about this?” 

“That’s convenient, I guess?” 

“Yes, for now. They’re still looking into the science behind the recent trends of human gestation periods becoming shorter and shorter, though, so we’ll see if this is as convenient as we think.” 

“Are we evolving, Miss Sunny?” 

“Well, Mina, that’s a question I can’t answer.” 

That night, I dreamt of millions of women walking across the grassy horizon with children in their turn-of-the-century pouches, tendrils of hair fluttering in the breeze like gentle rays of the sun. I dreamt of wombat women and evolutionists. I dreamt of Miss Sunny and her five-week-old baby. I dreamt, and prayed that I would wake up the next day being okay with the irregularity—and permanence—of it all. 

Weeks later, I visited Miss Sunny at the hospital after she had given birth to a baby boy. I had the sudden instinct to close my eyes and gather him up, to breathe in his nectarine-sweetness, to feel the down of his head against my cheek. I hope to become a good mother someday, I thought to myself. I opened my eyes and screamed. The baby boy looked up at me, rat-nosed, his eyes big, black and bottomless. The blanket that swathed his tiny body slid off the top of his head, unveiling two thin, pointy ears. 

Miss Sunny lifted him from my arms. “Don’t scream at him! He was born like this!” 

I wanted to scream again. She gave birth to something else.

“He’s my baby, Mina,” she says, her eyes glued to him. “He’s not a mistake!”

I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head as I fell on the ground, and all was devoid. 

The following morning, as I was waking up from uneasy dreams, I discovered that in bed I had been changed into a monstrous verminous marsupial. I lay on my furry back and saw, as I lifted my head up a little, my wide, reddish-brown belly folded in to form a velvety-soft pouch. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. My hindlegs, painfully rigid in comparison to the rest of my circumference, teetered helplessly before my eyes.