Greg-a-morphosis

Gregory Sampson awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself
transformed into a giant beetle. He could feel the hard black dome of
his shell beneath him, and when he lifted his head he could see his
belly was divided into segments. It's called the thorax, thought Greg,
who did biology at school and was generally an all-round whiz at knowy
stuff. His Spiderman duvet cover had slid off onto the floor during the
night. Mum went mental if he left it in a mess. Greg decided he'd
better pick it up.

Then he found he couldn't turn over. He looked down at his six thin
black legs, and wiggled them helplessly in the air. Greg really hated
mornings. He tried to look at the clock on his stereo, to see what time
it was, but his head wouldn't turn far enough. It was Monday, so he had
to go to school, unless changing into a giant beetle overnight meant
you could have a day off. He started struggling and wiggling his legs
again in an effort to flip right side up. He managed to rock back and
forth a little, the bed creaking precariously under him, but it was no
good. Letting out a frustrated sigh, Greg decided the only chance a
beetle had of getting onto its front was being born that way.

He couldn't even control his legs properly. It was one thing to just
wiggle them like crazy, it was quite another to make all six bend and
straighten in unison. He tried concentrating on just one, but every
time he attempted to move it another one moved instead. Greg began to
get cross. With two legs you had a lot less to think about, it was just
left, right, left, right - but six? He would have probably started
sulking - and it is fortunate for you, dear reader, that he did not,
for a four-foot beetle in a sulk is a terrifying sight indeed - if his
stereo had not switched itself on.

The alarm was set for seven, the stereo tuned to a local radio station.
All at once the bedroom was filled with pounding drums and growling
guitars. The noise was so loud it made Greg's antennae vibrate. He
tried to block his ears but realised he didn't know where his ears were
or if he even had any ears, and anyway his legs were still waggling all
over the place, like six black batons being waved by six little
conductors. Over the cacophony he could hear someone thumping at his
bedroom door. There was only one person in the house who could knock
that loud.

"Greg!" his Mum yelled from behind the door. "What have told you about
turning your stereo down in the mornings?" Greg wanted to answer but
the noise blaring out the speakers would have drowned him out, and
besides, he wasn't sure how to speak. He'd certainly never heard of
beetles that could talk. "Right!" Mum squawked. "That's it!" She
sounded like a macaw when she got angry.

His bedroom door swung open and banged against the skirting board. Mum
had ignored the PRIVATE sign hanging round the door handle outside.
Greg decided that just this once, it might be best to let it slide.
"You and your ruddy music!" she bellowed, marching straight to the
stereo. She leaned in close and peered at the display, slapping one of
the speakers with her hand. In her other hand she carried a bread
knife, drizzling crumbs onto the carpet. "How d'you turn this thing
off?" She slapped it again. Slapping was her answer to everything. She
did it to Greg's Dad a lot - every time he did something she didn't
like, in fact. To be fair, it seemed to work.

Just as abruptly as it had started, the music stopped. From his
position on the bed, Greg couldn't quite see what Mum was up to - for a
moment, he thought she had opened her mouth and sucked in all the sound
in the room. Then he saw her stand up, triumphantly grasping the stereo
plug. "There!" she said, sounding pleased with herself. She let the
plug drop to the floor. "Now, get out of bed and get ready for school.
I've got an early meeting this morning so you'll have to take your PE
kit off the line yourself." She turned on her heel and started to stomp
out of the room. "Oh, and I need to put your bed sheet in the wash."
She reached down, and in one swift movement tugged the pale blue sheet
out from under him, whipping it off the mattress like a magician
pulling a tablecloth out from under a load of crockery. She tugged so
sharply that Greg became unbalanced. He teetered to the right, then
left, then right again and then, with a heavy thud, he landed
belly-down on the carpet. "Be careful!" his Mum chided without looking
back from the doorway. "You'll knock the plaster off the kitchen
ceiling." Then she slammed the door so hard the room shook.

* * *

For the next hour or so, Greg practised walking. It was less tricky
than he had feared. Unsurprisingly, it was easier to learn how to walk
when you were the right way up. That was why people didn't store babies
upside down, he reasoned. He started off by just using his front two
legs, and kind of dragging the rest of his body along behind him. After
a while, he found he could use his other legs to steady himself, and
before he knew it he was scuttling all around the room like a black,
armour-plated steam train.

Staying in his bedroom was getting boring though. Greg was hungry. He
rotated his shiny body to face the door. Turning, he had discovered, is
rather ponderous when you are a giant beetle, so ponderous in fact that
you have to be very sure of where you want to go before changing
direction, otherwise life rapidly becomes very tiring. As it was, Greg
had reached the foot of the door by the time he realised he had no idea
how to open it.

He stood there, the woolly brown carpet tickling his belly, and stared
up at the door handle. It was too high for him to reach, and even if he
could, what was he supposed to grasp it with? He clacked his mandibles
together distractedly. Perhaps if he took a run up, he could get enough
speed to barge the door open. He was fairly heavy for an insect. He
might be able to affect an escape using brute force. Bearing in mind
the effort it would take to turn himself around, walk back a metre or
two, turn around to face the door and then charge at it, Greg allowed
himself a few more minutes of thinking time before he finally decided
to give it a go.

It was during the long march back towards the foot of his bed that Greg
heard the backdoor open. He froze to the spot. Who would be coming back
at this time? There were two voices, one high, one low. From inside the
bedroom he couldn't make out any words, just muffled burbling, but he
could tell that one of the talkers was a woman, and the other was Dad.
Greg glanced around the room for somewhere to hide. If he was caught
skiving school he'd be in a whole heap of trouble, even more than the
time when he sneaked downstairs at two in the morning and ate an entire
chocolate cake that Mum had left in the fridge, and then when he went
back to bed he was sick all over his floor and the sick was all brown
with bits of chocolate in it, and when Mum came in the next morning and
saw all the mess and asked him if he knew what had happened to the cake
he'd said no.

Thump, thump, thump. There were footsteps coming up the stairs, and
probably a person too. "Do you want to open up the wine?" It was the
woman. She was calling down to the kitchen. The way she spoke made it
sound like she was forcing the words out through her nostrils. Greg
imagined her having a face like an angry rat. "I just need to go to the
toilet. Which one is it?" Thump, thump. There was a click and a
scraping noise that could have been the door handle being pushed down.
Greg couldn't see because he was facing the opposite way. As fast he
could manage, he began to turn round.

She did, as it happened, have a face like a rat, but one that was being
electrocuted rather than one who was merely angry. Greg got round just
in time to see her standing in the open doorway. She had bright pink
lipstick and a skirt that stopped just above her knees. "Eeeek!" she
squealed, so loudly Greg thought his brain would pop, and toppled
backwards onto the landing. Before he scuttled out over her unconscious
body, Greg noted that the door to his room opened inwards, and if he
had run at it he would have got nothing more than a sore head, and
maybe two squashed antennae. Worth remembering if he found himself in
the same situation again.

The staircase looked pretty treacherous and was, as it turned out. Greg
was struggling with the first step, easing himself forward, tentatively
reaching out with one of his front legs, when his Dad appeared at the
foot of the stairs, one hand gripping the banister. He looked at Greg,
then blinked and looked again. Greg had never seen an expression quite
like it. Dad went all pale, and his cheeks sucked in like his mouth was
full of lemon juice.

"Dad, I-" Greg began, trying to throw together an excuse in his head.
"I, umm, I forgot my sandwiches and Mrs Hancress said it was okay for
me to come back and get them because we're not doing anything important
this morning and I finished my work anyway so she said it was all
right." That was what he meant to say, anyway, but when he opened his
mouth all that came out was a shrieking, chittering noise, like a room
full of monkeys all knitting at once. The noise was so strange, so
unexpected, that Greg quite forgot to look where he was going, and lost
his balance.

He slid down the stairs like a boat on a launch ramp, except the stairs
were bumpy and he clattered more than slid, so maybe it was more like a
boat pushed down an escalator. Whatever it was like, it was fast and
noisy. Greg shut his eyes and just had time to chitter what was meant
to be "Dad! Look out!" before he went barrelling into his father's legs
and scraped to a halt on the hall carpet.

A groan came from the direction of Dad's head. Slowly, cautiously, Greg
allowed his eyes to open. He shook each of his legs in turn. They were
all still there. Just. He was about to start apologising when he
remembered how scary his voice sounded and thought better of it.
Instead, he swivelled through one hundred and eighty degrees and
scuttled up onto Dad's stomach. Dad was sprawled on his back the carpet
at the base of the stairs, his eyes closed, his head twitching a
little. Greg took a couple of steps forward onto Dad's thin chest, to
get a closer look. He could feel Dad's lungs rising and falling
underneath his feet.

"Meredith?" Dad mumbled. "Wha&;#8230; where are you?" Greg watched
as Dad's eyelids quivered, then started to open. Dad squinted, glanced
around him, looked Greg in the eyes and then fainted.

"Oh," said Greg to himself, and crawled off to get something to
eat.

* * *

Scurrying along the pavement on the way to school, Greg still had the
end of a leafy twig poking out the side of his mouth. Unable to get the
cereal down from the cupboard or even open the fridge, he had, for
reasons he was not quite sure of, wandered outside into the garden, and
started eating the hedge. Greg had never realised how delicious hedges
smell until that morning. They do, you know - if you don't believe me,
go out now and find one, and take a good long sniff. It's enough to
make your tummy rumble.

As he made his way down Saddleworth Lane, Greg was discovering that it
wasn't only his parents' prized topiary hedge that smelt good enough to
eat. The breeze rustling through the branches of trees wafted towards
him like the mellow aroma of freshly baked bread. Yellow, pink and
bright red flowers that Greg couldn't name with heads like explosions
blazed in the bright morning sunshine. They smelt sticky sweet and
called to him from neatly tended beds that bordered people's gardens.
Even the weeds that burst green and knotty from cracks in the pavement
seemed to call to him. It was all he could do to walk in a straight
line.

At the bottom of the hill Saddleworth Lane joined Winchcombe Road, and
Greg took a left. He wondered how cross Mrs Hancress would be when he
arrived at school. She could be very bad tempered sometimes. It had
only been Friday that she had made him stand in the corner for throwing
a rubber at Jon Henstoat, even though Jon Henstoat had thrown it first
and stuck his tongue out. Greg's antennae moved up and down in an
agitated little dance as he remembered how mad the incident had made
him. Jon Henstoat was his number one worst enemy, then Joel Stickley
was his number two, and then Colin Barns was number three, even though
Colin used to be Greg's friend until he moved across the room and
started sitting next to worst enemies numbers two and one.

The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to go to school at
all. He'd had a pretty rotten week there so far, and everyone would
laugh at him when he turned up late and Mrs Hancress made him stand
there while she told him off. He hadn't even got anything for lunch -
Mum had left his lunch-box up on the kitchen table, and he'd had no way
to reach it, let alone carry it all the way to school without any
hands.

Greg thought about the way that woman had reacted when she had opened
his bedroom door. He could just imagine Mrs Hancress screaming like
that, making a stupid face and then fainting. He could imagine Jon
Henstoat doing it as well, him and Joel Stickley and Colin Barns too,
all three of them squealing like little girls. If only he had some way
to scare them, Greg thought to himself, it would be so funny.

Now, you may at this point, my most patient reader, be thinking that
Greg was rather slow, or rather stupid, or perhaps both. In case you
are, I ought to remind you that he was a very bright young man indeed,
and knew for example that lemurs like to eat flowers, fruit, and birds'
eggs, and that gluten is something you find in bread. If, occasionally,
it took him a little longer than usual to think things through that
morning, then perhaps it was because he had already been given so much
to think about. Ask yourself if you would have done better before
mocking his performance.

And then suddenly it came to him. Greg stopped in his tracks. He was a
beetle. He was a big, scary bullet-proof giant beetle with a great
black shell and pincers coming out of his mouth. His voice was scarier
still, like the sound of bucketfuls of frightened rats being tipped out
onto somebody's roof. He didn't need to worry about whether he was
late, or whether people would sneer at him when he reached the
classroom. He was a terrifying monster. He would come crashing in and
give them all the shock of their lives, and Jon Henstoat would wet
himself and cry. All at once Greg was rushing to school as fast as his
half-dozen legs would carry him.

Getting into the school building was not a problem. It was a hot day,
and so they'd left the main doors open. He scuttled down the corridor
snapping his mandibles together and fairly shaking with excitement.
This would be the best thing ever - he'd remember the looks on all
their faces for the rest of his life. As he drew closer he could hear
Mrs Hancress reading to the class. It was a story about horses or
something. Greg hated animal stories. They were so stupid. You only
liked them if you were a girl and played with My Little Pony, all
skinny and bony.

He took a deep breath, or deep in beetle terms anyway. The classroom
door was ajar. Mrs Hancress paused for a moment. Greg saw his
opportunity, and crawled in through the gap. As he entered, he began
screeching and chattering at the top of his monstrous voice, shaking
his head about.

Mrs Hancress wheeled round in shock, nearly dropping her book. She
stared at him, her eyes wide. Greg looked around the room. He stopped
screeching. They were all watching him. More importantly, they were all
insects.

Greg could not believe his eyes. Alex Lewis was a huge bluebottle.
Jenny Catten, the fat girl who burst into tears about a million times a
day, seemed to be some kind of great round ladybird. Daryl Jones was a
writhing orange millipede.

"Gregory Sampson!" cried Mrs Hancress, slapping the book down against
the desk. She had big, compound eyes and a long, thin nose that fanned
out at the end. It's called the proboscis, thought Greg. Her face was
all hairy. "What on earth do you think you're doing? What time do you
call this?" Everyone in the class started to giggle, or buzz, or hum.
Jon Henstoat, who had turned into a giant red ant, waggled his feelers
at Greg, then with what looked like a mischievous grin, picked up a
rubber and threw it at him.