Free The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories by Rod Serling Page A

was to tell Ethel all this that the insurance adjuster had phoned, and to inform her that he was on his way to their apartment.
    That afternoon Walter signed a waiver of further claim and collected a check for five thousand dollars.
    This happened on a Wednesday and the following Saturday afternoon Walter was alone in the self-service elevator when for some strange reason the main cable broke, and the elevator car shot down the two-thousand-foot shaft to be smashed to smithereens at the bottom. The building superintendent heard his shrieking voice echoing up through the shaft and went down to the basement to pry open the wrecked door. Bedeker lay in the rubble with nothing injured, not even his aplomb. (This affair was settled for thirty eight hundred dollars and forty two cents.)
    A week later Bedeker was standing in front of a fireworks factory when the building went up in smoke. The newspapers called it the worst fire disaster to occur in the city in twenty-five years. Luckily, it happened after the five o’clock whistle, and only three bodies were found, burnt beyond recognition, in the debris. Bedeker had been buried under a collapsing, burning wall, but had crawled out on his hands and knees right to the foot of a fireman who had fainted dead away upon seeing him. His clothes had been burnt entirely off his body and this accounted for the figure of thirty-nine dollars and fifty cents added to the ten thousand for which the fireworks company settled with him.
    In the next five weeks Bedeker was in eight major accidents—a subway collision, a bus overturning, five automobile accidents (in each case the driver swore that Bedeker had stepped out in front of the speeding car), and a decidedly freakish circumstance in a restaurant where Bedeker complained there was glass in his beef stew. It wasn’t until after the manager had paid Bedeker two hundred dollars in cash that the waiter showed the manager a half-chewed glass on the table. By this time Bedeker had walked out in a huff, pocketing his two hundred dollars, and was no more to be seen.
    It was now New Year’s Eve and Ethel had timidly asked Bedeker if they could go out to dinner or to a show or perhaps to a nightclub. Bedeker stood at the window, his back to her, not answering.
    “Eleven accidents,” he said, “that’s what I’ve been in. Eleven accidents.”
    Ethel, who had just mentioned that it was a long time since they’d been dancing together, tried another tack.
    “That’s the point, dear,” she said hopefully. “You need recreation. You need to get your mind off things.”
    Bedeker continued to stare out the window. “Wouldn’t you think, Ethel,” he asked rhetorically, “that there’d be an element of thrill in eleven accidents. Eleven accidents in which you know nothing can happen to you?”
    “I guess so, Walter,” Ethel answered irresolutely, not understanding a thing he was talking about.
    “Well, it’s a fact,” Bedeker continued. “There should be an excitement in this sort of thing.” He walked away from the window. “ Well, there isn’t . It’s dull. It’s absolutely without the remotest bit of excitement. In short, I’m bored with it.”
    “Walter, dear,” Ethel said softly, “I guess we should count our blessings.’’
    “You, Ethel,” Bedeker snapped, “should shut your mouth. You look for all the world like a small gray mouse searching for a piece of cheese.”
    She let the cold, hurt feeling subside before she answered him.
    “Walter, you can be terribly cruel, do you know that?”
    Bedeker rolled his eyes upward and said, “Ethel, please shut your mouth!” He paced the room back and forth. “I swear he cheated me! Mortal-shmortal! What’s the good of it when there aren’t any kicks? Any excitement at all!”
    Ethel found herself looking at him in helpless confusion He was Walter Bedeker all right. He was her husband. But he was totally and distinctly different from the man she married, the hypochondriac