Franz Kafka: Grocery Boy

Franz looked up at the shelf stretching away into the upper reaches of the store, and sighed deeply. His only option was to use his pogo stick, and it had only three pogos left before it lost all power and had to be sent to Battery Land for fresh lessons. He scratched his thighs absent-mindedly and found it came clean off. He wept quietly to himself for several minutes, before climbing onto the lower shelf and curling up to weep quietly at others who passed by. A bucket walked past with purposeful gait, and Kafka quick-wittedly tripped it up and climbed inside.

He was instantly transported to a realm of pleasure seldom seen in everyday Budapest. The Bucket-Folk accepted him as an equal, and did not judge him for his views or the size of his bedroom, which was quite small and contained an entire Irish Elk.

But alas, like all good things, his visit to the Bucket-Folk came to an abrupt end, exemplified by the fierce scarring on his nose, and he found himself back in the grocery store, bouncing high into the air, hurling boxes onto the shelf, and sneezing violently on the manager's hair, an act that brought relatively few short-term reprisals, but would, unbeknownst to him, result in his being banished to the lowest circle of hell and poked with teflon spatulas for several millennia.

As the last box tottered in place, and then tumbled gracefully to the floor, killing the Queen who had popped in for a bag of pepper, Franz felt an unearthly tingling in his immoral regions. He sighed. He was turning into an insect again. And still twenty minutes till his break. That was all he bloody needed.