1.
    There was a burst of light, radiating from an unseen centre in a painfully blazing disc, and then there was nothing. It drew Bernard from his bed, cold with fright and evaporating perspiration. All of his windows were open, his clothes strewn all over, covering the floor like a lumpy mantle. He was cold and shivering, and his apartment was ravaged. As he emerged from beneath the blankets and clambered over the foot of the bed to place his shaking toes in unsteady contact with the floor, he surveyed the wreckage with red rimmed eyes. His whole body trembled, his nervousness intensified beyond all measure. His greasy black hair was plastered to the back of his neck and his arms hugged themselves, as though his very body were trying to shut out the faint whispers that emerged, seemingly, from the walls.
    No. Not the walls. But there were whispers. A million syllables per second and growing, exponentially like a colony of microbes. There were windows in two different walls of this room, his apartment being at the corner of the building, two open windows, and the whispers poured in through both of them and filled the room and filled him. He thrust himself into the centre of the room, burrowing in among the scattered laundry, and began to rock back and forth on his knees.

2.
    "What's happened to you, Bernard?" he said. "You look so upset. Let me fix you a drink, Bernard."
    "That would be very nice, yes, thank you, I'd like to have a drink," said Bernard gratefully.
    "What's the matter?" he asked, his voice smooth, like new paper.
    "There was..." Bernard put his face in his hands. "Oh, there was a woman, and she... I found her, someone killed her. Oh, I can't say it. Her face--"
    "Yes?" he asked, expectantly, his voice lowering to a gentle hiss.
    Bernard's trembling increased fiercely. "Her face was half gone. And all her flesh--it was like a pack of wolves had feasted on her. Oh, God. She was in a dumpster, her legs were sticking out, but they weren't legs. Oh, God. Just bones. Slick and shiny bones. Oh, God!"
    Bernard fell to the ground and vomited uncontrollably. With no one to help him, he curled his legs up when he was through, and passed into a troubled unconsciousness.

3.
    Bernard was in a tower, with a beautiful woman. Her face was gaunt and wan, her belly sick with fear, and her dress was pale yellow and sewn of stars. Bernard could not take his eyes from her dress.
    "Your hands," she whispered. Her voice was music. He almost wept at the sound. "Oh, please."
    He looked down and saw shining talons protruding from his knuckles. His being twitched, the torment of his tenseness snapping through him. The fragile sensuality of this woman's fear was too much for him. He swarmed at her, descended upon her to rip, mouth and tear every part of her, to eat her and assimilate every last drop of her blood and thought. Her screams were only temporary. Soon only the whispers remained, and grew less with each mouthful of blood he sucked from the floor, his fingers, the sponge of her dress. His face was cut all over on his claws, so unused to them was he. The wreckage of her body was horrific and even the bestial thing inside of him convulsed with disgust; the only way to calm it was to eat it all, to eat everything.
    But he couldn't make himself swallow the bone. The shards pricked his throat and after the left arm he stopped trying, and fell ten thousand feet, back into his bed in his neat, obsessively kept room, where the windows all were shut tightly and the doors were all locked. Not one speck of dust looked out of place, and yet, for some reason, Bernard could not stop shaking.

4.
    "Bernard," he said. "Bernard, I hope you know what you are doing."
    Bernard did not answer. He knew nothing if he did not know what he was doing. He resolved that he would do what he needed to do to keep himself safe.
    "They're going to find her, Bernard."
    He started, the prospects hitting him like missiles. Well, it was just another reason for him to stay where he was, with his sandwiches and his blankets and no one else to spoil him. No one. He didn't know anyone anymore. Didn't and didn't want to. They'd just blame him for things that weren't real, things that he hadn't done. He didn't know what he was being accused of, but he knew he had to hide.
    "You're clumsy, clumsy. You left the bones, Clumsy."
    His face reddened and he broke. "What're you talking about!"
    "You know. You know. You left the bones. Clumsy."

5.
    Newspapers, the radio, the television--all forms of media brought death to the people every day. Deaths were reported in dull, uninterested voices. They were commonplace. These things were not vehicles of mere information, they were modern churchbells, they were death knells.
    Every toll of those modern bells haunted Bernard.
    Every word of mortality, or even injury, caused him physical pain and sickness. The sight of blood was one of the long list of things that made him get down on his knees and violently retch. After his vivid dreams began, his fears grew more profound, until he stopped reading, stopped listening, stopped watching altogether. Of course he could not blot out everything, and he had been fired from his job for his efforts. He had argued to a psychiatrist once that he was simply a very sensitive man, that any woman ought to beg to have him. But of course no woman would have him. His extreme excitability terrified them, terrified children, and cats. He did not like women. Beauty made him angry, kindness triggered weeping, and softness was foreign to him, and unnerved him.
    Once the dreams began, Bernard would eat nothing but lettuce sandwiches on whole wheat bread; he could not bear the thought of animals dying to provide him with sustenance so that he might continue his (he thought) wretched life. (Killing lettuce, however, was okay. This was something he didn't allow himself to think about too deeply.) Perhaps malnourishment contributed to his disorders, but he would not be advised, and eventually departed all company but his own.

6.
    "Bernard." Metallic, firm, and demanding. "Did you kill that woman?"
    "No!" was the instant and vehement answer.
    "I don't believe you," he said, still firm, but a bit less stern now. "Bernard, you've been so jumpy. You look so terrible. If you could see yourself as I do every day, you'd shocked, just shocked and amazed."
    "I look fine," insisted Bernard, wretchedly.
    "No, Bernard, you don't. You don't look fine. You aren't fine. You must admit that much. Nothing will ever be alright again if you can't at least admit that things aren't alright now." He was so reasonable, so logical. He made such perfect sense all the time. It ought to have been comforting. Bernard tried to feel comforted.
    "I wish you'd believe me, when I say things are fine! I haven't done anything, nothing's going to happen to me because I haven't done anything!" Bernard was desperate and perspiring, his fists clenching and opening with a rhythm of heartbeats.
    "Did you kill that woman?" There it came again, the question. He asked it so slowly and deliberately, as though taking great care not to be misunderstood.
    "No," sobbed Bernard, tears of frustration and fear springing from his eyes. "Please, I can't remember, I--"
    "That's not good enough, Bernard. Please try harder." He waited. Bernard cried like a child. "What would it be like, to kill a woman?"
    "I wouldn't know. I don't know." Bernard drew several deep breaths. "Like opening the world. Like emerging from your own mind for a time. Holy. Better than holy, more. More." Shaking his head, he scattered the images of carnage and cream and whispered, "I don't know, I wouldn't know."
    "Bernard." The voice was the same. There was not a hint of gloating, nor any of sarcasm. There was only intelligence and evenness. "Did you kill that woman?"
    There was a pause and Bernard licked his lips. "I don't know," he said.
    "How would you feel if you had?"
    Another pause. When Bernard spoke, his voice was fleshy, sticky, soft, his lips barely parting. He said: "Complete."
    "That's all I needed to know, Bernard. You may go."
    The colour blanched slowly from the irises of Bernard's eyes. He went.