The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory by Corey White

Author:Corey White
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760142544
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

I had mostly stuck to philosophy during my expeditions in the school library, steering clear of fiction. I preferred the moral of stories over the stories themselves. I wanted to know the essence of things. And then I found a ninety-page novella called Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, about a man named Gregor Samsa who wakes up as a giant cockroach in his bed. His family, whom he supports financially by working as a travelling salesman, disowns him upon discovering his hideous transformation. He remains in the room for months. Only his sister feeds him. Eventually she stops and he begins to starve. Realising he must flee to survive, he attempts to escape only for his father to throw an apple at him, which lodges in his back, mortally wounding him. He retreats back into his by-now filthy room and prepares to die. In his final moments, Kafka writes, ‘Gregor Samsa looked back on his family with love and devotion.’

When I read that sentence, a volcano of tears erupted from me.

Here was a story that felt real. There was no happy ending: a good man died at the end, and that felt authentic. It seemed to strike at the heart of being alive.

Gregor Samsa was Christ-like, loving in the face of enmity and neglect. But he was more than Christ-like. Christians spoke of Jesus sacrificing his life for humanity’s sins, but he was a god. Gregor was no god. No divine blood flowed through his veins. He was a human. Well, a human mind inside a cockroach. When he thought of his family with love, he did it believing in nothing but an abyss after death, fulfilling no prophecy. He simply died loving those who had wronged him. The vastness of this filled me with awe and reverence. It was easy for Jesus to cop a crucifixion, but little old Gregor was a fucking fabric salesman.

The pity I felt for him spread osmotically to me. I felt sorrier for myself as time went on. I felt so up against everything. I’d think of foster care, of having to go to Clyde House, of my shattered family, how nobody cared if I lived or died. It was a pretty depressing thought. Even if I did graduate from Nudgee, even if I went to university, what then? Go to university where I’d face more challenges? Even if I graduated from university, what then? Go do a job where I’d face more challenges? Even if I did get a job, what then? I would still be alone. Because I knew deep down, with every fleck of my being, that I was rotten and doomed. I’d been born with an apple in my back. How long would I live with it festering there?

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