{"id":1363,"date":"2022-09-24T11:21:43","date_gmt":"2022-09-24T11:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2022-09-24T11:21:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-24T11:21:47","slug":"and-he-didnt-live-happily-ever-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/and-he-didnt-live-happily-ever-after\/1363\/","title":{"rendered":"And he didn\u2019t live happily ever after"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s,\u201d Mrs Lupin said in her soothing tone, \u201cthe end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five faces of varying comprehension looked up from their slender copies of Franz Kafka\u2019s The Metamorphosis, rewritten for the under fifteens. One kid was interested, two were indifferent, another was confused, and the last was\u2026 well\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This classroom was nick-named the Retard Ward, or Spaz Town by the normal kids, and to be sure, some pupils were hopeless. Jake Mears, for instance. Fourteen years old but already in trouble with the police for hot-wiring a motorbike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other kids were struggling with Asperger\u2019s or dyslexia, and a few were\u2026 not that bright. They\u2019d probably slide through the school system to start work at the local firestone factory because who else would take them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was horrible!\u201d came the familiar scream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we go, <\/em>thought Mrs Lupin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blonde, freckled and nasally voiced, Matthew May had been in therapy most of his short life, possessing two emotions: silent sulking which had him sitting moodily in the corner, and rage, which meant he\u2019d scream his disdain at the top of his lungs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt makes no sense,\u201d he spat. \u201cWhy did he magically transform into a giant beetle? Was it a witch\u2019s hex, voodoo magic, a gypsy\u2019s curse? We\u2019ll never know, it\u2019s never explained!\u201d

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He held up the copy of his book, which displayed a photo of Kafka on the back of its laminated cover. Matthew glared at this picture, as if the writer had taken a shit on his bedroom floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey moron,\u201d he yelled \u201cdon\u2019t you know that it\u2019s literally impossible for insects to grow that big! Gregor would have suffocated immediately because he had no lungs, and oh yeah, guess what?! He wouldn\u2019t have been able to move his exoskeleton either!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here Matthew began slamming his fists down on the table, causing the others to flinch. People in the next room could probably hear him, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow can anyone like this story?\u201d he frothed. \u201cThe family is stupid! They don\u2019t ask why their son transformed into a big beetle. They don\u2019t call in the scientists! Hell, they don\u2019t put him in a freak circus and make some money out of him! Plus, they\u2019re jerks! The father\u2019s a lazy sod, the mother\u2019s hysterical, the daughter\u2019s rotten too. Why did Kafka waste his time writing about such an unpleasant family?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs Lupin wanted to take her big black marker and write across Matthew\u2019s chest: \u201cJust because you can\u2019t understand something, doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s bad.\u201d She could have asked him to look up metaphor or analogy in the dictionary, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t do that however, she forced her sweet smile, usually reserved for toddlers and the rather dim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s very interesting, Matthew,\u201d she replied soothingly. \u201cNow, Jake, what did you think of it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jake, bored and unable to say much, merely muttered, \u201cIt was alright, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThat\u2019s,\u201d Mrs Lupin said in her soothing tone, \u201cthe end.\u201d Five faces of varying comprehension looked up from their slender copies of Franz Kafka\u2019s The Metamorphosis, rewritten for the under fifteens. One kid was interested, two were indifferent, another was confused, and the last was\u2026 well\u2026 This classroom was nick-named the Retard Ward, or Spaz […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[597,667],"tags":[8,20,11],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-597","category-sept-2022-the-end","tag-he","tag-his","tag-was"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-lZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1365,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}