The WInd

Joseph K.’s plan for the day was to go to the courthouse and examine as many of the law books as possible. He felt that perhaps by doing so, he could learn why it was that he was interrogated. K. took the route he often had walked in order to get to the court-house. He made it a point not to look any passers-by in the eye. He didn’t want to be distracted by conversation, allowing him less time to research his case.

To his surprise, the streets were practically bare. K. paused for a moment to survey the area around him, confirming his initial thought that there were, in fact, no people in the streets. The wind seemed to whisper something in K.’s ear. He turned his head as if to catch the wind at a better angle. He noticed instead, a whirlwind whirring down the barren street.

K. slowly walked away from the whirlwind. He thought that it would be best to avoid it as much as possible. He turned the last corner without catching the whirlwind’s attention. The courthouse was in view. The wind whipped K.’s shoulder, nearly making him lose his footing. He turned around and saw that this gust of wind had become another whirlwind altogether. The wind was so strong. At first, K. thought a man had bumped his shoulder.

K. looked around and saw that there were a number of whirlwinds whirring in all directions. Before continuing on to the courthouse, K. paused for a moment to make sure there were no other whirlwinds nearby. The wind itself though, had increased in speed. The shrieking of the whirlwinds became so loud that K. was sure that the noise was piercing his eardrum. The wind seemed to be getting louder each time he turned his head in surveillance. Shrieks of wind whirled by. The strength of the wind made it difficult for K. to walk.

K. was forced to close his now watering eyes in an attempt to block the wind. The weather seemed to become hurricane like. K.’s face felt as though it would crack into pieces if he did not shield himself from the wind. He lifted his arm above his face and proceeded to the direction where he last remembered the courthouse door to be, peeking over his arm every now and then to see that he was headed in the right direction. He grabbed onto the railing of the huge staircase in order to balance himself against the wind.

“Please,” K. shivered. “You must let me in! I shall freeze.” K. banged repeatedly upon the locked door. “Let me in at once!” K. begged through chattering teeth. K. was sure that his fingers had bled by now through his gloves. His skin was so dry. He felt as though the skin on his knuckles would burst from his desperate banging on the large wooden door.

He began to speak to himself. “I am sure that my must be frozen by now. I am sure that someone must be in the courthouse. I was once there on a Sunday. Surely they are open now. The wind is so cold. I can hardly keep my eyes open enough to see that there is a door before me. It would be impossible to walk against this strong wind to return home, or my office for that matter.” Joseph K.’s frustrations were slowly being replaced by the need to crawl into the fetal position, so that the heat of his body could reach its full heating potential.

As K. crawled into this action, he heard a strange chirping. It was a sound similar to that of birds, but quite a bit distorted. As he looked above his head to see what was making this noise, he noticed a gaggle of birds, that looked much like geese, flying in an odd V formation. Suddenly, a bird fell dead upon K.’s head. K. fell unconscious into a position similar to that which he had been contemplating.

The Laughter

When he finally reached the door to his lodging, he noticed that the tomcat was meandering around his ankles. The cat was purring, looking up at K. admiringly. “What are you doing here?” K. said to the tomcat. K. thought of bringing the animal to Fraulein Burstner as a gift, but remembered what happened the last time a cat was brought into the lodging. Frau Grubach had terrible allergies, the most violent of all, allergies from cats.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in.” K. said to the tomcat. “If you stay here, I can bring you out some scraps of food.” K. put his hand down affectionately to pet the cat. The cat’s hair stood on end. It began to hiss and spit, screeching at K. The tomcat ran into the street before K. could react to pull back his hand.

K. fumbled for his key, and opened the door to find that the Captain was not on the couch where K. had expected to find him. K. thought this a good thing, whereas he didn’t know how much noise the cat had made in its fit. K’s relief was not entirely admirable, whereas he was partially relieved that the Captain had finally left. The Captain became such a distraction, that K. hardly spent any time with Fraulein Burstner. K. had enough on his mind. The interrogations and his work at the bank were consuming most of his time. He sat on the couch wondering if he should make himself some hot tea to ease his chill.

While sitting, K. heard soft voices coming from Fraulein Burstner’s room. Had the inspector come back to do a background check on him? K’s anger heightened as he approached Fraulein Burstner’s room. He was unsure of what it was that he would say to the inspector, but doubted he could remain calm in such a disrespectful situation. How could anyone be so inconsiderate as to come to the room of a woman at such an hour? Had they waited for her to return home? K. knew that Fraulein Burstner did not return until a late hour, though this hour was late even for her. K. clenched his fists in rage.

As K. approached Fraulein Burstner’s bedroom, he noticed that the voices were accompanied by laughter. It was the laughter of a woman and of a man, though K. could not figure out whose voices they were specifically. K. returned to the couch, forgetting completely about his wet clothes and cup of tea. Perhaps this would be good for his case. Perhaps Fraulein Burstner’s laughter was an inclination of how ridiculous she thought the entire interrogation had become. Still, K. wondered what the inspector could be saying to make her laugh so.

What could the two be doing? K. tried to force this thought out of his mind, he was sure that Fraulein Burstner was a respectable woman, and that he was being silly to expect otherwise. At that moment another thought struck him. Where was the Captain? He was not on the couch, and K. could not remember Frau Grubach saying anything about his leaving. The further K. began to contemplate the possibility of this idea, the louder the voices seemed to grow.

Where had the Captain gone? K. recalled seeing him only a day or two ago. He searched the living room for a trace of the Captain. K. could not find anything to distinguish whether or not the Captain was in fact still there. The room was poorly lit. Once again, the only light was coming through the window from a street lamp that flickered on and off and on again in an in-syncopated rhythm. The thought of the Captain with

Fraulein Burstner had begun to nauseate K. The more intently he listened, the more sure he became that the male voice coming from the bedroom was in fact that of the Captain. How could he be sure? The voice was familiar, but not recognizable through the door, besides, he had heard so many new voices recently.

K. pondered the idea that the voices were perhaps a result of his exhaustion. That thought was interrupted by more laughter. Perhaps the male voice belonged to a friend of Fraulein Burstner. With that thought to comfort him, K. went to bed. He changed into his bedclothes and turned down the sheets.

The Figure

In bed, K. lay wide-eyed. Sleep would not accompany him. The sheets were becoming more and more entangled as thoughts twisted and turned within his mind. The bed slowly became harder than a rock. K. decided to focus on silence. The more he concentrated on silence, the louder the voices and laughter had become. He gripped his hair until he couldn’t deal with what he understood to be flirtatious laughter any longer. He. jumped out of bed. He would knock politely on Fraulein Burstner’s door and ask them to kindly be quiet so that he could sleep. By doing this, he could be certain from the reply exactly who was in the room with Fraulein Burstner, as well as put an end to whatever was causing the laughter. As K. turned the handle of his door to exit his room, he realized that the voices had silenced.

K. opened the door in time to vaguely see a male figure slipping out of the entry way. The gentleman saw K. and tipped his hat. K. could not see the man’s face. With that, K. began to walk toward the front door. K. was infuriated and wanted to follow whomever this gentleman caller was. He took one step out the door and realized that it was now raining. His bedclothes became wet, and his feet felt as though they would surely freeze.

K. watched the man disappear into the rain. The male figure walked down the street. He appeared to be mocking K. with his confident strut. Just then, the figure was accompanied by what looked to be the old tom-cat K. had walked with earlier. As this figure put his hands to his ankles to attract the cat’s attention, K. noticed that the cat caressed the figure’s hands, jumping into his arms. Frustrated, K. returned to his bed. He knew he recognized the proportions of the body. The figure was somehow familiar to him. K. returned to his room, dried his feet, changed his bedclothes a final time, and went to bed. He pondered the familiarity of the figure until eight o-clock the next morning when he awoke for breakfast.

The Office

It was drizzling when Joseph K. awoke to a startling noise. Noticing the large pile of work on his desk, he slowly realized that he was, in fact, at the bank. K. could not immediately see what the cause of this noise was, since the only light in K.’s office was cast by a nearby streetlight. A dim beam illuminated the corner of his desk and most of the floor beside it.

As he drearily lifted his head from his desk, he noticed a shattered glass on the illuminated section of the floor. The water from the glass was still dripping from the remainder of the glass to the floor. K. was almost entranced by the formation the water was creating. It seemed as though the water was trying to spell something out to K. The water traveled along the cracks of the thickly waxed hard wood. The patterns were snake-like, and appeared to be more dramatically spread out than what could be expected from such a small glass of water. The glass particles seemed to have fallen into patterns. K. was sure that there was some kind of message left by the patterns of the water and haphazardly spread glass that split the snake-like pattern. K. immediately closed his eyes and shook his head in an attempt to shake off his hypnotic state, K. looked at his watch to find that it was already past the hour of two in the morning.

K. cleaned the shattered glass and wiped the spill in fear that one of his co-workers would realize his clumsiness; for he thought that it must have been he who accidentally dropped the glass of water from his desk. After what seemed to be forever, K. gathered his things and set off. By two-forty, K. was out of his office and a block away.

About two blocks away from his office, K. realized that he had forgotten his umbrella. He thought about going back to the bank to retrieve it, but realized that he was already damp and that by the time he got his umbrella, his travels would be in vain, he was already beginning to feel the wetness of the night against his skin.

K. walked down and up the streets, thinking about what the most efficient way of getting home would be. He walked up one street, only to realize he was heading in the wrong direction, so he turned around and walked back down it. In the long run, he ended up walking for longer than he had expected. His tired eyes almost convinced him that his shadow was doing something entirely different from his own definite movements. K. looked behind him, to see if he was hallucinating, or if in fact someone was following him.

K. heard noise coming from behind a garbage heap. “Who’s there? Hello, make yourself known.” K. felt quite silly as he discovered that the noise was the fault of an old tomcat whisking about in the melting snow-pile. K. snapped his fingers at his ankles to attract the cat’s attention. In return, the tomcat gave K.’s fingers a momentary stare, and continued its hunt in the snow.

A drop of water collected on the back of K.’s neck, causing a chill run down his spine. The wind picked up as the drizzle began to die out. K.’s already wet skin felt as though sharp instruments were hitting against it. He pulled his coat tighter to his chest and hid his nose beneath his damp scarf in an attempt to make him warmer. The closeness of his clothing did in fact help to prevent the wind from whipping it about. This helped keep the wind from biting at K.’s already chilled body. K. decided to return home in the manner he always had. The means by which he was trying only ended in a bitter cold pattern of dead ends and circles. K. needed as much sleep as he could get before returning to work only a few hours later.

The Trial: Foreward

Franz Kafka was in the process of writing his novella, “The Trial” when he died of tuberculosis. He requested that upon his death, all his transcripts be burned. To assure that this would occur, he began burning some transcripts while alive. Fortunately, he did not live long enough to burn all of his unedited work, and his living will was disregarded as something that he most likely meant to burn anyhow.

Many chapters of “The Trial” were salvaged and put together to form what is currently presented as the novella. The order of chapters was not definite, and an editorial agreement stated that the current publication was most likely conjoined in the intended order.

I have inherited some piecemeal remnants of these chapters and have contributed the best of my ability. My chapters are to reflect the physical appearance and structure of his translated work, while attempting to encompass the “Kafka-esque” quality of the story. There is no specific placing for these chapters, they are simply a personal supplementation of Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Six Sentence Challenge

If going to a bar meant that she was getting out of the house, it would also (technically) count as an excursion in discussion with her therapist.  Boggled in heart and by xenophobic exhaustion that battled intelligent knowledge that nothing truly held her back had forced her escape cabinets dry.  With no job, budget, income, or integrity, she decided to hide behind a black mop of red hair and an extra thirty pounds; nobody local noticed.  People introduced themselves to the new rag-doll she had become and even complimented her on the details that went unnoticed as a blonde vixen.  She became the nothing she felt herself to be, and was intent on avoiding camaraderie.  Rejected by the true love of her life's work, she withered into the alleyways of existence, and realized she was no longer alive.

Wunder

Staring into the obliteration of my mirror, wondering if the invasion was viral, chemical, neurological; not caring that it is exponential, dehydrating, consuming, and all.  Dr. Caligari!  Dr. Caligari!  Let me through the glass! I’m Pounding my wrists to get your damned attention!  Don't you see the raw-red gaping scream in my blank stare?  Don't you feel the firey pig-bath hatred used to pull at you as I give my best spider man/wonder woman, pulling/deflecting golem, the sharpness of reflection  my soul?  I hold it together with my web-sheild that holds neither description hostage, but gets me through my day.  The sharp bolt through my skull is momentary folding memory, overlapping melody, a backward record-gong.  Skin holds in screaming, no bugs -no reason.  So many reasons.  Damn you!  I hate you!  Cowardice!  Possibility! "Wonderland" is gone!

Auditor (incomplete)

Detlef the tax auditor startled awake, inhaling all the air from the room as he sat up from a dead sleep, He was soaking and soiled from a night he had trouble recollecting. 

He'd knocked on the artist's door to assess, his knuckles waking the termites; his rapping crushed their home and splintered their chance at winter survival (it was a damp March).  Reacting before acting, pulling from the eye-level sink-hole, he wiped miniscule white lives against his dark, official trouser lap.  The spores of mold caught him dead.  Mildly asphyxiated, he dropped to his knees, his smooth black-leather brief-case slapping the landing as he searched for his inhaler; it may as well have been pepper-spray for all the good it did.

"You've arrived." the door said.  He flushed in embarassment as he got off of the ground.  The artist was expecting him though his arrival was unannounced.  He breathed deep and steadily, his chest choking in an effort to speak. 

Rather than address Detlef, her voice (it was female, wasn't it?) directed him to a dim room that had clearly been layered in years of dampness.  He noticed squeaks, snags, snarles, but saw nothing save shadow and a light that would have formed a Jacob's Ladder anywhere other than there. 

The dimness revealed colors that would remain mysterious through the rods and cones of human optics. Shapes fell into shadow or cloth, and the concrete identification of any object was an inigma that could pull the mind's soul from embodiment. 

Before him was a table, a plank suspended, a fallen wall... he was meant to work on it, this make-shift auditing desk. Being abandoned there, he decided he should go straight to his work.  He opened his briefcase and

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