One morning, as … was waking up from
anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been
changed into a monstrous verminous bug.
He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little,
his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bowlike
sections. From this height the blanket, just about
ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place.
His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest
of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.
‘What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream. …
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka