- end_line
- 1771
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-28T17:34:53.098Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1731
- text
- He was hardly inside his room before the door was hurriedly shut,
bolted and locked. The sudden noise behind Gregor so startled him that
his little legs collapsed under him. It was his sister who had been in
so much of a rush. She had been standing there waiting and sprung
forward lightly, Gregor had not heard her coming at all, and as she
turned the key in the lock she said loudly to her parents “At last!”.
“What now, then?”, Gregor asked himself as he looked round in the
darkness. He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move at
all. This was no surprise to him, it seemed rather that being able to
actually move around on those spindly little legs until then was
unnatural. He also felt relatively comfortable. It is true that his
entire body was aching, but the pain seemed to be slowly getting weaker
and weaker and would finally disappear altogether. He could already
hardly feel the decayed apple in his back or the inflamed area around
it, which was entirely covered in white dust. He thought back of his
family with emotion and love. If it was possible, he felt that he must
go away even more strongly than his sister. He remained in this state
of empty and peaceful rumination until he heard the clock tower strike
three in the morning. He watched as it slowly began to get light
everywhere outside the window too. Then, without his willing it, his
head sank down completely, and his last breath flowed weakly from his
nostrils.
When the cleaner came in early in the morning—they’d often asked her
not to keep slamming the doors but with her strength and in her hurry
she still did, so that everyone in the flat knew when she’d arrived and
from then on it was impossible to sleep in peace—she made her usual
brief look in on Gregor and at first found nothing special. She thought
he was laying there so still on purpose, playing the martyr; she
attributed all possible understanding to him. She happened to be
holding the long broom in her hand, so she tried to tickle Gregor with
it from the doorway. When she had no success with that she tried to
make a nuisance of herself and poked at him a little, and only when she
found she could shove him across the floor with no resistance at all
did she start to pay attention. She soon realised what had really
happened, opened her eyes wide, whistled to herself, but did not waste
time to yank open the bedroom doors and shout loudly into the darkness
of the bedrooms: “Come and ’ave a look at this, it’s dead, just lying
there, stone dead!”
- title
- Chunk 12