By John Biscello.
1.
As I awoke one morning, from a blue-dark night of drinking and uneasy dreams, I found myself transformed into a cockroach.
Figures it’d be a cockroach, skidded a deadpan between swollen thoughts. With newfound prehistoric maturity, I resigned myself to this evolutionary switcheroo, but I must confess to feeling a little disappointed that I hadn’t awakened transformed into a praying mantis, endowed with ninja-like coolness, or a scarab, with exotic ties to Egyptian mythology. Yet, in my insect heart of hearts, I knew that a cockroach was exactly what I was meant to be. God, that idiot savant, had instinctively banged down on the right combination of keys, when he outlined thus: man goes to sleep drunk as a skunk and wakes up a hungover cockroach craving the hair of a dog.
Mandibles twitching, I scuttled through the darkened apartment, en route to the kitchen, to fix myself a drink.
2.
As I awoke one morning from a night of uneasy tubercular dreams, I found myself transformed into a cartoon character. A cartoon wolf, to be specific. My entire body, coated in bristly brown fur, gave off a radioactive luminescence, and my oblong snout, the centerpiece of my narrow face, had a dark lacquered marble of a nose perched on its tip. I rose from my bed, and stood on comically disproportionate legs: ankles and shins like sinewy toothpicks, thighs obscenely bulging as if each were stuffed with a soccer ball. The lantern-yellow slits staring back at me in the mirror, underscored by razor-sharp teeth, gave me a menacing quality, and I strutted out of the house, humming—‘Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’
I immediately tested out my cartoonishness by stepping in front of a speeding bus. I was flattened, yet, as expected, I didn’t die and didn’t feel an ounce of pain. I inflated myself back to three dimensions by blowing into my thumb. All those years of education, sitting in front of a TV, watching cartoons, were finally paying off.
God, that psychotic five-year-old with too much time on his hands, had done right by taking away my humanity. From here on out, my life would become a savage jest, furiously bright and full of nothing.
3.
As I awoke one morning, from a night of discarded syringes and cough syrup, I found myself transformed into a woman dreaming she had been transformed into a scream. She, meaning I, awoke, the taste of mercury teasing my tongue, nerve-endings tuned to the residue of the scream I had been: the dead with polyphonous voices.
When the trembling in my legs quieted down, I swung them over the side of the bed, planted my bare feet onto the carpet, and stared at toenails painted faded calico. In staring, with my head bowed down, my hair, a sleep-warmed autumn, fell to either side of my jawline. I knew that in order to return to my pre-dream-state—I was a man of some sort, I think—I would have to pass through another scream, to release something primordial, a catch of hard existential candy lodged in my larynx. I would have to feel myself woman.
God, a plastic surgeon wearing a false mustache and dark glasses, raised her scalpel, and told me: Not all screams are created equal. Then she laughed, the blade moving swiftly.
4.
Act I.
Lights up.
A bedroom.
Male, white, blue-black hair, early thirties, awakens in the dark, wondering where the morning has gone. And the world. And God.
Blackout.
End of Act I.
Act II.
Lights up. A bar.
Man passed out on the counter, dreaming he is a butterfly humping a dewdrop dreaming of God.
Blackout.
End of play.
5.
I awoke one morning, inside another man’s wife, and found that he, the husband, playing God, had shot me through the head three times. My body was no longer warm, but the wife’s was, so I stayed inside her, a squatter with hopes for, at best, reincarnation, at worst, an uneasy merger. I waited, in darkness, trying to recall the woman’s name, and whether I had worn a condom.
6.
I awoke one morning, after an uneasy night of crunching numbers, and found myself transformed into Franz Kafka. Thin, bauble-throated, and standing barefoot on the precipice of a panic attack, I could feel the numbers crowding my mouth, a harem of vultures scavenging dead pink flakes from my tongue. Unable to scream, I knew there was only one way out. I picked up my pencil and wrote: Gregor Samsa awoke one morning, after a night of uneasy dreams, to find he had been transformed into an insect.
And I saw that it was right, and I saw that it was good, and I told God his services were no longer needed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Originally from Brooklyn, NY, award-winning author, poet, performer, and playwright John Biscello has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of four novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, and No Man’s Brooklyn; a collection of stories, Freeze Tag; two poetry collections, Arclight and Moonglow on Mercy Street; and a fable, The Jackdaw and the Doll, illustrated by Izumi Yokoyama. The Bride, a short film he wrote and directed, debuted in May 2024 and was an official selection of the Berlin Indie Film Festival. His novel, No One Dreams in Color, is scheduled for publication by Unsolicited Press in spring 2026.
