The sickly lad held his slick coat closed and his head pulled in to help himself through the constant sleet towards the place-name scrawled upon the papered parcel.


He handed the bundle of soup-bones as coins were counted into his other palm by a man whose beard joined his scraggly white hair at the sides of his scrawny neck.
Returning with the payment grasped tightly in his pocketed fist, noticing every slippery stone and perpendicular periphery as he trode, ideas for a new story rushed about in that boy's head; and some of the ideas were intriguingly linear. He'd decided that the main character should be a simple man, perhaps a traveling salesman, and one morning that man awakes to find himself transformed into a very large cockroach; no, not a roach, a beetle. For beetles have no intrinsic ugliness!
The idea thoroughly amused our boy, Atlan. “How would that feel? And what would happen when the time came to confront his family?” he thought to himself. "There are many possibilities for this idea".

 “I know", he continued to imagine, “the parents and sister try to adjust to the strange new situation but the confusion is so intense that the beetle soon knows it’s only a matter of time before they overcome their residual attachment and feelings of family, and rid themselves of him!”


Atlan liked the storyline because it asked the reader to consider how a beetle would feel if it suddenly awoke in a human scenario so as soon as he arrived home he rushed in through the open front door of their little house and ran upstairs to get his notebook to start writing down the story.


“Where is it?” he asked himself as he entered the untidy bedroom he shared with two younger brothers.
And there it was beneath the pile of things on his oaken clothes-chest.


“My pencil? Where did I put that pencil?”
Then he found his blunt pencil. So Atlan went downstairs to borrow a knife from the kitchen and with six clean strokes the pencil suddenly held a uniquely geometric sharpness with the glimmer from the too-black core reflecting the excitement of a skater on paper.
“Atlan, are you up there?”, his sister called.

 “What is it Valli?”, Atlin replied.

 “You’re needed, right now. Quickly. Wear a cap and your thick coat. You’ll be gone a good few hours”.

  Atlin came out to the top step to be able to hear her properly,

"What is it Valli, I am doing something."

  “We have real work for you, Atlan. Now. At Mr Blumstein’s stables.”
“But I need to write something first.”
“No way! We haven’t time to waste! He wants you now and he is paying two haleru cash! The show is on tomorrow so it must be spotless. Go right away. Stop wasting time.”
“Oh darn. I’ll have to do it later.” Atlan conceded irritably.
-
“Finally here!” the oafly Mr Blumstein grumbled as Atlan hurried in through the stone archway. “Now grab that shovel, join those other lads, and get to work right away! And hurry up! The entire stables must be finished before you leave.”


Atlan was shoveling horse shit again, just like last week and for a few weeks before. He’d had worse jobs though, and far dirtier jobs. "If you’ve got to work with shit a horse looks really good from behind”, he thought to himself.  So there were the horses, some other able-bodied youths, plenty of manure in hundreds of stalls, and there were barrows and plenty of shovels. It made a lot of sense and as he functioned there was time to extrapolate the consequences of his story.
The stables were well built and provided adequate shelter from the weather. He soon warmed to the slides and swingings of the broad flat shovel. It was hardly shit at all except in the darker corners where the manure was really moist and heavy because it should have been cleaned out much before but much of elsewhere was quite dry in good shapes and even some places fluffy so the repetitive nature of the shoveling action was quietly contemplative and a pleasant steamy warmth wafted from the dumped manure even though it had begun to lightly snow outside. 
After filling each barrow Atlan pushed it toward the far corner and down a path that led out of double-doorway to the biggest piles of horseshit Atlan had ever seen. The golden grain shapes of undigested wheat and barley set off the overall gleam of the huge tanned mounds flecked with snowflakes. There were huge warm piles of it, horizons beyond horizons teasing the mind like domes of higher learning as the sun sank low those golden shapes they shimmered and shone as a mirage from manure rose between the setting sun and the sparkling dust around their heads.
Whilst the lamps were being lit the bossy overseer made a brief ceremony of serving coffee but the boys were still trying to sip the hot liquid while already back at emptying barrows and then he kept them working well after dark when it became very cold. Atlan was leaning back against a head-high mound of slightly steaming horse manure, not wanting to move despite the wetness of the snow. 
Finally the stables were completely cleaned out and Atlan was allowed to go. “First thing tomorrow” Mr Blumstein demanded as Atlan set off on his uninterrupted trek home through the dark and windy streets, thinking again about the way his story would unfold. He was so tired and hungry that he had actual difficulty getting up the stairs but he immediately retrieved his notebook. His mother was aghast. ’”You must wash, what are you thinking. You stink!” his mother insisted from the bottom of the stairs.
Washing with water barely warmer than himself Atlan was thinking the story through. "Within days only the beloved sister can stand him, and protects him, but she makes the mistake of playing her violin to entertain the new boarders who have been brought into the house to make up for the beetle not going to work. No-one else has a job. For years they had all been relying on his salesman’s wage."
"So the beetle who’s been fed broken bread in slender soup and sent to bed hears the music and almost involuntarily creeps out into the lounge where the boarders see him and flee for their lives. The father’s rage explodes, his son has become an insect and robbed them of their livelihood so he lashes out with the walking stick that prevents him from working and after several lunges some beetle blood begins to flow."  
After a cold early morning the house began moving. First the mother moved the grateful dog  from the hearth before stirring the heart of coals to begin another day. The sister came in from the courtyard, bleary eyed. “Where is Atlan? “Why has he not yet risen? He must be at work for Blumstein very soon!”


She rapped twice as she pushed open the door, warm air spreading out, seeing Atlan lying with his limbs spread six ways beneath the blanket. Still in his clothes, sound asleep with his pencil and notebook spread open on his chest.
The sister stepped closer to read the meaningless words he’d written, “As Gregor Samsa awoke…” it began.
 “Même dans une ocean de merde vous devez maintenir nager.” His sister muttered as she shook his shoulder.