Gerald Whitman had always feared death, which was odd for a man who sold life insurance for a living. He often wondered what came next. Heaven? Hell? Eternal sleep?
He hadn't expected this.
One moment, he was choking on a cold slice of leftover pizza in his dimly lit apartment, and the next—he was awake, alive… and very, very small.
At first, everything was a blur of smells, sensations, and incomprehensible urges. His mind was hazy, but something burned in his chest—an ache of memory, of identity. Then, like fog parting, the truth hit him.
He was a cockroach.
A roach.
Not metaphorically. Not in a Kafkaesque dream. A literal, brown-shelled, six-legged, antenna-waggling cockroach.
And somehow, Gerald Whitman—the man who once couldn't stomach stepping on bugs—was now one of them.