Franz Kafka awoke one morn­ing to find him­self unpub­lished. This wasn’t much news to his fam­ily, who enjoyed passive-aggressively broach­ing upon his lack of lit­er­ary pro­spects, with respect to his sis­ter Ottla, a not­able online writer. He had dif­fi­culty rolling off his back. What he thought was exo­skel­eton was just crust from a night of drool­ing. He was not look­ing for­ward to breakfast.

– Ma, pass the eggs?

– Your sis­ter just got four pieces into Czech Please, and people are already blog­ging about it.

Ottla was over­weight and had an oily com­plex­ion. She smirked over her omelette, its steam first fog­ging then glisten­ing her wide some­what cross-eyed face.

– Ma, the eggs?

– Did you hear, Franz? Four flash fic­tion pieces about a horse in its four respect­ive stages of death. It’s beau­ti­fully written.

– Eggs, Ma.

But by then mother and daugh­ter were con­ver­ging closer and closer towards the corner of the table with talk about a pos­sible Push­cart. Franz left the table egg­less to retire to his room. He bumped into his dad on the stairwell.

– No eggs.

– Fuck you son. You got some nerve, and some high cholesterol.

Franz closed his bed­room door behind him. He eyed the win­dow, ima­gin­ing his brief sil­hou­ette in the sky, wing­less and fall­ing. He fan­cied a little girl dis­cov­er­ing his body, how he might immor­tal­ize him­self in her memory. He went to his com­puter, min­im­ized the last frame of ‘cumslut_05.mpeg’ and tried to work on his manu­script. This was before spellcheck, and his draft was littered with errors. Five minutes later he was tend­ing to his Twit­ter account. Had he any fol­low­ers, they would have known this:

No eggs again. I hate break­fast. Ottla is a fat bitch.
10:28AM Mar 29th from hell

Prob­ably going to jump out win­dow. Should delete porn archive.
10:30AM Mar 29th from hell

Whatever. Going into town to get some break­fast.
10:36AM Mar 29th from hell

On his way out, Kafka bumped into his dad again, who had just had a three-egg omelet. His dad’s smile was dragged down­wards with the dis­gust only a father can feel for his son; they had a spe­cial under­stand­ing. Ottla and his mother were still at the table talk­ing pos­sible Push­cart. His eyes said a good­bye they would never understand.

Franz shut the front door behind him. His chest expan­ded into an air of relief. Liv­ing at home was like honey: swim­ming in insect barf. He entered the street with the stifled gait of eight legs. Had he any fol­low­ers, they would have known this:

He had eggs for brunch, waited long for the check, and went home.

Jimmy Chen main­tains a blog and archive of his writ­ing at the The Embassy of Mis­guided Zen. His chap­book, Type­writer, is pub­lished by Magic Heli­copter Press. He lives in San Francisco.