The Metamorphosis by Kafka was almost lonely, in the last bookshelf, in the left corner. Feeling old and cold, it yearned to be used by those fingers that had once felt her, who had run through its incisive verbs, the suffocating adjectives and the virtuous periods. Fingers who had hold her, lift her and thrown her. She wished to go all over again with Gregory’s change, always the same, but provoking different reactions.

A cold day of November, The Metamorphosis shouted with longing, not with true intention of being heard, she just wanted to let it out in the world. And in that same moment she heard a silent and low voice.

“Who is there?” was said with a hoarse echo in all the dark room. In that moment the Metamorphosis was left in shock- who could it be? - She asked herself, along with a thousand other questions, and she formed dozens of conjectures before answering in a soft tone.

“I, I am here” She answered, trying to make out any figure in the shadows of the library.

“What’s your name?” Asked the rough voice

“I am The Metamorphosis by Kafka” said the worried book, expecting some kind of answer

“Well, I am The old man and the sea, by Hemingway” said the tired book, then an uncomfortable silence reigned in the room. The Metamorphosis didn’t know what to say, and The old man had nothing left to tell.

“Don’t you feel alone in this cold darkness?” asked The Metamorphosis, a little desperate, trying to find in common the only thing she had, solitude.

“I have been here years, waiting, it’s all I have left, but I don’t complain” said the book in a somehow arrogant manner.

“You fool no-one, you know well you don’t like it here, none of use life it here” said One hundred years of solitude of García Márquez. “By the way, I am One hundred years of solitude, by Gabo” said the lively and downhearted book.

“Nice to meet you” said the Metamorphosis, still a little anxious “But, don’t you think it is disconcerting to be here? Without anyone to touch us, to read us, or even to smell us!” filled with contained euphorias and bitter memories.

“It’s not really the time, but the story that we have that matters” said One hundred Years “Plus, what else can we do?” he said carefree

“We could try to change, Gregory does it all the time, but trying not to end up disgusting” she said, with a worn out hope.

“If change is what you want, then why don’t you include a personal search instead of just a change and it’s emotional charge?” suggested the whispering voice of The old man.

“You could also include the family tree of the Samsa, making all the story turn around that bug of yours” contributed the piece of Gabo

“It all sounds fantastic; I’ll start adding the necessary words and commas” exclaimed the book while she did some serious movements grew in pages and splattered some ink sideways.

“For it to be marvelous, you can include too lost children” an echo was heard from the Charles Dickens shelf.

“Include some more existentialist philosophy” said the Unbearable Lightness of the being by Kundera.

“Put some vampires, you sure attract lots of readers with that” choired Anne Rice’s books

And so, all the books started suggesting how to be, what to say, where to put the hyphens and which parts to omit, how to enclose fantasy, and how to let the reader guess who had died. It ended being a chimera, completely metamorphic.

Unsure of how she had ended up, she waited a while for someone to look the dark shelves, hoping that now the fingers would concentrate on her. Said day took a while, it could have been days or years, but the Metamorphosis felt as if it had been eternity.

Then, for the first time in a long time she felt it again, the soft fingers holding her cover, going through her recently changed pages and her fresh prologue. Back to being held against the dim light, again read. That until it was heard from the fingers:

“What the hell is this?” the voice shouted “This is not The Metamorphosis by Kafka, this is crap!!” said the voice, angrier. “What have you done to my favorite book?!” continued yelling the voice as it threw the Metamorphosis back to her dusty shelf.

There it remained, lonely again, without any further explanations. She was simply rejected, again, after waiting for so long, even after yearning for such an event and having faith for the first time. Even after having such a metamorphosis.

By I’m the penguin