“It isn't my face! Where's my face? Where did you put my body and face?”

He was in a nightmare from which he could never awaken. The flat shadow men surrounded him, their voices buzzing like flies against a window, tending their cardboard machines, filled with vague menace, yet strangely indifferent, almost unaware of him. Marie Thorne bent low over him with her pretty, blank face, and from her small red mouth came gentle nightmare words.

“Your body is dead, Mr. Blaine, killed in an automobile accident. You can remember its dying. But we managed to save that part of you that really counts. We saved your mind, Mr. Blaine, and have given you a new body for it.”

Blaine opened his mouth to scream, and closed it again. “It's unbelievable,” he said quietly.

And the flies buzzed.

“Understatement.”

“Well, of course. One can't be frenetic forever.”

“I expected a little more scenery-chewing.”

“Wrongly. Understatement rather accentuates his dilemma.”

“Perhaps, in pure stage terms. But consider the thing realistically. This poor bastard has just discovered that he died in an automobile accident and is now reborn in a new body. So what does he say about it? He says, ‘It's unbelievable.’ Damn it, he's not really reacting to the shock!”

“He is! You’re projecting!”

“Please!” Marie Thorne said. “Go on, Mr. Blaine.”

Blaine, deep in his nightmare, was hardly aware of the soft, buzzing voices. He asked, “Did I really die?”

She nodded.

“And I am really born again in a different body?”

She nodded again, waiting. Blaine looked at her, and at the shadow men tending their cardboard machines. Why were they bothering him? Why couldn't they go pick on some other dead man? Corpses shouldn't be forced to answer questions. Death was man's ancient privilege, his immemorial pact with life, granted to the slave as well as the noble. Death was man's solace, and his right. But perhaps they had revoked that right; and now you couldn't evade your responsibilities simply by being dead.