Story: "What Could Be Worse?"

     The traveling salesman was alone in the train compartment, still shaken from what he had seen. Why had she done it?

     "May I join you?"

     Not waiting for a reply, the man in black sat down across from the salesman. Outside the train window, the bare trees filed by slowly, their thin, dark branches waving like spindly limbs, pincher claws reaching toward the winter-white sky.

     The train picked up speed.

     Crossing one long leg over the other, leaning back in the oxblood leather seat, the man in black looked out the window.

     "Excuse me." The salesman smiled his friendly, charming, disarming, toothy salesman smile. "Did I see you talking to that woman?"

     The man in black turned from the window and smiled without showing his teeth. "Yes."

     "Did she say anything?"

     "About?"

     "About why she was going to — "

     "Throw herself onto the track in front of the arriving train? Kill herself."

     "Yes."

     A long pause, then: "She had lost hope."

     "She said that?"

     "Not in so many words."

     "Oh." They were silent together for a few moments, then the salesman sighed. "Still, it makes no sense."

     "No?" The man in black leaned forward and stared with eyes the color of coal into the salesman's watery blue eyes. "What do you mean?"

     "I mean, no matter how hopeless, why do that? What could be worse?"

     "Worse than death?"

     "Yes, what could be worse than death?"

     "I take it you have hope?"

     "There is always hope."

     "Not for her." The man in black leaned back. The pale winter sun came out and lit red embers in his coal-black eyes. "She could see no other way out. She was alone. She had no one."

     "She told you this?"

     "Not in so many words."

     "It is not good to be alone," the salesman reasoned.

     "You are not, I take it, alone."

     "I live with my father, my mother, my sister."

     "You are blessed. But what if something were to happen to them?"

     "God forbid."

     "Or," the man in black said. "Let us make this more interesting. After all, if something happened to them, you would still have the warmth of their memories. No, let us instead imagine that you, yourself, become intolerable to them. So, much so that they wish you were gone from their lives, dead."

     "Never. They love me."

     "Would you bet on that? Are you a betting man?"

     "Well, certainly, I — "

     The man in black moved so quickly that the salesman did not have time to react before he found his right hand trapped. The man in black had long, thin fingers, delicate like a woman's, but very strong. The salesman's hand was painfully clamped in their grip.

     "As one betting man to another," the man in black said, their faces so close together now that the salesman could smell sweet rot on the man's breath, "I wager that within six months, and I think less than that, but let us say six months on the outside, your family, your father, your mother, even your adoring sister, Grete, will all wish that you were gone from their lives, and you will choose death, willingly, and when you are dead, they will not miss you, and their lives will be happier without you, and your death will be a relief to you, as it will be to them."

     "That is a horrible thing to say." The salesman tried to wrench loose his hand, to no avail. "You are a terrible man. Let go of me."

     He felt, then, something like numerous tiny legs scratching his palm, something like pinchers biting into the flesh, then something burrowing into his skin, then the feeling of tiny, scurrying legs moving inside his hand, up past his wrist, into his arm, now at his armpit, then into his chest, into the bulk of his body.

     The man in black suddenly let go of his grip, leaned back in the oxblood leather seat.

     The salesman expected to see a wound in his hand, but there was nothing, just the pink, whole, unblemished flesh of his palm.

     The man in black had a satisfied expression like that of a man who had just enjoyed a delicious meal.

     "How did you know my sister's name is Grete?" The salesman felt the scratching of tiny legs inside his heart. "I do not believe I told you her name."

     "Not in so many words." The man in black smiled, showing his teeth this time, and they were pointed like thin, white needles, and there were so many of them, hundreds.

     The salesman got up quickly, grabbed his battered leather suitcase from the rack above.

     As he left the compartment, he heard:

     "Sweet dreams, Gregor."

***

     As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. 

     “What has happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream.

— The End —

If you want to know more about how I developed this story, here is a link to a blog post that describes the writing process.