Morphosis Meta

         When K woke up today, he found a couple unusual things.

         For one, that noisy roommate of his somehow did not wake him up this morning like always: the first thing Bill usually did after getting out of bed, was to fumble around half-asleep in the shared bathroom of their suite.  That generally resulted in him knocking something down to the ground, most time causing sounds loud enough to rouse any living man from sleep.

         Today, for perhaps the first time K could remember in the last two years, that did not happen.

         Another unusual thing that K gradually picked up was the exceptional quietness of his surroundings.  Living in a cheap apartment building with mostly working men and women, it was to be expected that during any time of the day, there would be people stirring about, either getting in or out of their homes. 

         Thus it was quite unusual that even though the bed-stand clock clearly showed time at eight o’clock in the morning, the whole building was silent as a midnight graveyard.

         K decided to first check up on Bill before dwelling any further on today’s peculiarities.

         He got up, got dressed and went on to open the door of his room.

         The first thing he saw after that nearly knocked him off-balance.

         The now opened door revealed a sight too wild and unexpected for senses as limited in experiences as was K’s own.  Lying flat and wriggling on the floor was a gigantic, almost human-sized round object.  From one barely stolen glimpse, K thought he saw something closely resembling a cross between a caterpillar and a cockroach.

         Steadying himself, K slammed the door shut, locked it from inside, and laid his back against it.  His not-so-very-resourceful mind was a jumble of whirling thoughts: What is that thing?  Why is it right outside of my room?  Is it dangerous?  What should I do about it?

         Hearing no apparent sounds coming from other side of the door, K relaxed a little.  He looked around in his room for something to be used as a weapon or shield.  Finding none that looked even half useful, he nonetheless resolved to take the stapler off his desk.  Holding the little metallic object high as if it was a mighty sword, K braced himself and slowly opened the door once again.

         The thing he saw was still lying on the floor and wriggling, never making even the smallest noise. Upon closer inspection, K decided it must be a living thing; for its weird movement was almost rhythmic in a fluid manner, which cannot be mistaken as anything mechanical.  The outer surface of the thing looked to be some kind of reddish-brown shell made of unknown material, while the whole of it was visibly divided into ring segments: each separate segment was marked at the edges with circling lines of purple color that distinguished one from the others. 

        It was that particular wriggling which at first reminded K of a caterpillar.  This thing was no doubt moving, as each segment of its shell rose and fell, pushing or pulling at the adjacent segments.  Yet the wriggling seemed to contribute little to nothing toward any sort of actual mobile movement; the thing continued to stay at the same spot, without making even a half-inch progress from where K last saw it.

        At the farthest end away from him of the thing in question, which K later identified as the head, attached two outstretched antennas that eerily gave K the impression of a cockroach.  They were even quivering slightly when K watched them in disgust.

        Seeing the alien thing busy at wriggling and almost oblivious to everything else, K poked it with the stapler in hand; the thing seemed not to notice or respond to the poke in any way or form.  Gaining some courage, K kicked the thing; still it only continued to wriggle, paying no attention to what K just did.

        Deciding that this must be a prank played upon him by his infamous roommate, K decided to go straight to the root cause.  He circled around the thing to get to Bill’s room and loudly knocked on the door.

        He got no response.

        Feeling impatient, K knocked with stronger force: he only received back silence.  Frustrated, K tried the handle; to his surprise, the door immediately swung open: it was not locked.

        Venturing inside with a peek first, K saw a room much disorganized with clothing, books and various other objects thrown about here and there.  He saw a pair of socks hanging on the knob of a drawer; he saw a book of illegible title mounting precariously on a pile of pizza boxes; he also saw a bed with clear indications of someone having just slept and got up from it.

        But he saw no sign of Bill, none at all.

         Cursing under his breath, K randomly threw some punches to the air as if practicing on Bill’s face. He tried to reach a decision on how to deal with that thing: it probably was an oversized insect that Bill somehow obtained; he was known to have some strange associates.  K pondered over it, while trying to pick between calling 911 or the pest control board.  That was when he heard a thumping sound from behind him.

         Almost frozen in place, K was only able to move after no more sound came.  Slowly turning around, K was hit with another shock from this fateful day.

         What he saw was something he could scarcely conjure up from his most bizarre and horrible nightmares.  On the spot where he first saw the wriggling thing, it now lied facing him: K saw a multitude of small feelers attached in parallel rows to the two sides of a body, of which was covered up in slimy mucus membranes.  On top of this horrific sight, was no other than the face of Bill. 

         It was said that when human beings encountered successive shocks of exceptional magnitudes, their nerve system became numb to insulate the brains from a total dysfunction.  That must be what happened to K; for he neither shrieked nor fled, but instead bent down toward the creature with Bill’s face, and tried to speak.  What he managed to utter, after trying several times, was only a chocked and dry word: “Bill?” 

         K cannot be sure if the thing with Bill’s face really heard him, or if it did, it did not show any sign of recognizing human speech.  It continued with that strange wriggling.  All its feelers were struggling in the air, while its trunk of a body pulsed in nauseating motions as the layers of exposed skins converged and overlapped in masses.  That face, which was unmistakably Bill’s, betrayed no emotion or flicker of reason and intelligence; it was more like a blank sheet, with all the essential features of a man K had known and lived under the same roof for a little over two years portrayed upon it.

         Hardly able to suppress the urge to scream out loud and run with his hands waving in the air, K sprinted to the door of the suite and threw it open.  He went two steps out before tripping over something unseen on the ground.

        Lying on the floor and recovering from the sudden fall, K finally lifted his face, and his eyes were immediately filled up with something very familiar: the wriggling, soundlessly moving ring segments of a reddish-brown shell.

        Jumping up from where he fell, K looked back in search of what tripped him and almost regretted it right away: the lined feelers, coupled with a body tangled in organic messes, had its horror enhanced by the face attached on top.  The usually tired-looking expressions of George the electrician, who lived in the neighboring suite, were giving him an empty, meaningless stare.

        K swiftly turned away his gaze and was assaulted by more unnameable monstrosities.  Across the hallway lied several more silently wriggling things.  While looking at them, the sight of reddish-brown shells with their moving segments was almost a relief, compared to the familiar but vacant faces that now mounted on top of hideous, disgustingly terrifying trunks.

        Quickly retreating back to his own suite, the first thing K did was to kick at the thing with Bill’s face, so it rolled over and only showed its back.  Feeling a little less likely to puke right away, K proceeded to pick up the nearby phone and dialed 911.

        Three rings later, the line was connected, but no one picked up.  The phone continued to ring in futile repetition, until a recorded message informed K that all lines were busy and his call would be received soon.

        K hanged up the phone and turned on the TV.  He flipped to the local news channel and saw only an empty seat where the broadcaster should be sitting on.  He kept switching to other news channels, which were either playing pre-recorded programs or showing similar empty seats, until something finally made him threw the remote at the TV screen.

        It was the station of a nation-wide news network, the captioned title on the bottom of the screen said it was broadcasting live a gathering of thousands of people on Times Square, New York City.  The camera must have fallen sideway, for the image transmitted to K was shot horizontally. 

        That was still sufficient to convey to K what true despair felt like: on the TV screen was a sea of reddish-brown shells, and countless human faces attached on top of deformed insectoid bodies looked back at him with glassily still eyes.  They were all silently wriggling in that unspeakably strange manner, in all possibility from now on until the end of eternity. 

        Then K began to laugh, he laughed until he started to gasp for breath.  The sounds he made resonated within a deadly quiet room in a deadly quiet apartment building, which stood in a deadly quiet city, on a deadly quiet continent of a deadly quiet planet.