Metamorphosis


		METAMORPHOSIS REDUX: Dearly Departed Everything suddenly became very strange. Distant objects unfocused as tears welled in his eyes. He wasn’t sure if the tears blurred everything, or if what was farther away from the immediate moment had simply faded from sight. Sound dove into a tunnel echoing murmurs hushing fear, as if music suddenly found life unbearable and hurried to hide in the nearest hole. Or was it that he found being in such a lonely place impossible to feel because all the things he loved the most – the music of words tripping off the tongue of eloquence, the bright shine of far-away possibilities and the thrill of being happy all the time – had abandoned him. He didn’t feel sad. It was much worse…so bad he couldn’t think about it. “What did you say?” He asked the tall square man in a flack jacket with the huge black letters, ‘Police’ on the back of it, who had burst into his house the moment Roger opened the front door. “Your parents are dead.” The rude flat-faced totally blunted man continued to speak, his voice barking the sounds of time ticking loudly overtaking everything alive, making life an echo of the words he spoke, which threatened to erase comfort from the calendar of experience. But Roger didn’t hear the sound that was disappearing. He only felt the thud of harsh drumbeats smashing the surrounding walls of containment pounding in his head, as if an earthquake had just flattened his house leaving him standing naked in the burning sun of realization. It was a long time before the man went away…and his shadow-partner, who would probably have insisted he was also a man. Both blurred into the oblivion that turned into a moment suspended in time, stopped as if it never intended to happen again, leaving Roger the only living thing in sight, cast upon a barren planet a billion miles away where every move he made estranged him, leaving only vague dead memories of what occupied him moments before, reducing life to a haunting of ghosts. Roger had asked the squared man to repeat what he’d already heard because he wanted the words to punish his ears for being able to hear. He was pinching himself disappointed that it hurt because it meant he was still alive, wanting very much to be nothing, to become one with the still soundless place that had engulfed him. “Your parents were killed in the tsunami in the South Pacific,” the officer said. WHAT READERS SAY... “This remarkable collection of stories about growing up gives an engaging insight to those critical moments of change…Don Fenn takes over where Kafka leaves off, and in Metamorphosis Redux delves into the minds of three exceptional children, revealing their fears, their joys, their successes and most important of all, how they overcome challenges. He brings a therapist’s eye and a writer’s imagination, providing adults with an intriguing glimpse into the dreams and fantasies of the young. Parents take note.” —Nina Carter, San Francisco Literary Society copyright© 2007, 2008 Don Fenn. All rights reserved.