Meta-morphosis

Gregor awoke to find himself a character in a piece of short fiction posted to an Internet user's blog.  He looked about him, finding that his body was now rendered only in textual form and thus was subject to the collective imagination of anyone who might happen across the post.  Perhaps he had brown hair, or blue eyes, or a broken nose, perhaps all of these things; but the relentlessly vague nature of prose English constrained him from saying just how particularly brown or blue or broken these things might be.  The specific apprehension of the human senses was denied to him.

He considered his situation further.  If this was a fictional piece posted to a blog, he mused, there must naturally be some conclusion to it.  Would this mean his death, or merely his release back to the state he'd previously enjoyed?  He found himself wondering about that state.  Suppose, for example, that he had originated in the blog.  Would that mean that his memories of aspiring to study music were merely fictional devices created by the author.  Surely not.  He had specific, detailed, and expansive recollections of his efforts to master the art of composition, a half-dozen or so instruments, and all the other elements of the art which had fascinated him from boyhood.

Here there was no music, only words.  Gregor considered the possibilities.  He hummed experimentally, forming tunes from his own fancy, listening and considering them.  Perhaps, he reflected, this wasn't so bad.  As a reader of his own existence, he too was free to inject his imagination into the new reality into which he had been thrust; and consequently he could imagine that whatever he'd just hummed was in fact exquisitely beautiful and melodic.