¹The death throes done, he lay now alone—alone and broken and rejected—and then he sank into sleep. ²When he awoke, there awaited him his commonplace habits and the places of his everyday existence. ³He told himself that he shouldn’t think too much about the night before, and, cheered by that resolve, he unhurriedly dressed for work. ⁴At the office, he got through his duties passably well, though with that uneasy sense (caused by weariness) of repeating things he’d already done. ⁵He seemed to notice that the others turned their eyes away; perhaps they already knew that he was dead. ⁶That night the nightmares began; he was left without the slightest memory of them—just the fear that they’d return. ⁷In time, that fear prevailed; it came between him and the page he was supposed to write, the books he tried to read. ⁸Letters would crawl about on the page like ants; faces, familiar faces, gradually blurred and faded, objects and people slowly abandoned him. ⁹His mind seized upon those changing shapes in a frenzy of tenacity.

¹⁰However odd it may seem, he never suspected the truth; it burst upon him suddenly. ¹¹He realized that he was unable to remember the shapes, sounds, and colors of his dreams; there were no shapes, colors, or sounds, nor were the dreams dreams. ¹²They were his reality, a reality beyond silence and sight, and therefore beyond memory. ¹³[This realization threw him into even greater consternation than the fact that from the hour of his death he had been struggling in a whirlwind of senseless images.] ¹⁴The voices he’d heard had been echoes; the faces he’d seen had been masks; the fingers of his hands had been shadows—vague and insubstantial, true, yet also dear to him, and familiar.

¹⁵Somehow he sensed that it was his duty to leave all these things behind; now he belonged to this new world, removed from past, present, and future. ¹⁶Little by little this new world surrounded him. ¹⁷He suffered many agonies, journeyed through realms of desperation and loneliness appalling peregrinations, for they transcended all his previous perceptions, memories, and hopes. ¹⁸All horror lay in their newness and their splendor. ¹⁹He had deserved grace—he had earned it; every second since the moment of his death, he had been in heaven.

¹⁹He had deserved grace—he had earned it; every second since the moment of his death, he had been in heaven. ¹⁸All horror lay in their newness and their splendor. ¹⁷He suffered many agonies, journeyed through realms of desperation and loneliness‐appalling peregrinations, for they transcended all his previous perceptions, memories, and hopes. ¹⁶Little by little this new world surrounded him. ¹⁵Somehow he sensed that it was his duty to leave all these things behind; now he belonged to this new world, removed from past, present, and future.

¹⁴The voices he’d heard had been echoes; the faces he’d seen had been masks; the fingers of his hands had been shadows—vague and insubstantial, true, yet also dear to him, and familiar. ¹³[This realization threw him into even greater consternation than the fact that from the hour of his death he had been struggling in a whirlwind of senseless images.] ¹²They were his reality, a reality beyond silence and sight, and therefore beyond memory. ¹¹He realized that he was unable to remember the shapes, sounds, and colors of his dreams; there were no shapes, colors, or sounds, nor were the dreams dreams. ¹⁰However odd it may seem, he never suspected the truth; it burst upon him suddenly.

⁹His mind seized upon those changing shapes in a frenzy of tenacity. ⁸Letters would crawl about on the page like ants; faces, familiar faces, gradually blurred and faded, objects and people slowly abandoned him. ⁷In time, that fear prevailed; it came between him and the page he was supposed to write, the books he tried to read. ⁶That night the nightmares began; he was left without the slightest memory of them—just the fear that they’d return. ⁵He seemed to notice that the others turned their eyes away; perhaps they already knew that he was dead. ⁴At the office, he got through his duties passably well, though with that uneasy sense (caused by weariness) of repeating things he’d already done. ³He told himself that he shouldn’t think too much about the night before, and, cheered by that resolve, he unhurriedly dressed for work. ²When he awoke, there awaited him his commonplace habits and the places of his everyday existence. ¹The death throes done, he lay now alone—alone and broken and rejected—and then he sank into sleep.