OSTERGARD SHUDDERED AND opened his eyes. Quickly he was able to confirm the coldness that he had felt throughout his sleeping night. All around him the bed sheets felt like ice. He didn't want to move. But the necessity to go about life's little chores soon had him trying to rise. It was then that he realised just how cold the night had really been.

He was frozen from the waist down and as he tried to get up a sharp grating sound seemed to fill the room. It was his legs, they had snapped off. Seeing his legs lying there on the bed gave him such a fright that using his arms he scrambled away from them. There was no blood as he looked and this further gave him the feeling that they couldn't possibly be his legs. They surely belonged to another.

However, Ostergard couldn't escape the undeniable fact that from the hips down he had nothing, knees neither, knobbly or otherwise could be seen. He panicked and didn't quite know what to do. He didn't want to call an ambulance or worry his family. So in a state of disorientation he came up with the idea of thawing the legs out in the bath and somehow re-attaching them. Convinced that this was the solution he dragged himself by his arms into the bathroom where he inserted the plug and ran a hot bath.

He had to go back and fourth from bathroom to bedroom in this manner several times as he could only fetch one leg at a time. Finally, exhausted, he climbed into the bath with his legs. Still they didn't look like his legs. Now that he was seeing them as items not of himself, they were complete strangers to him. Not wanting to look at them any longer, but still aware that he needed his legs to go about life in a normal manner, he rested his head back on the bath and closed his eyes. He didn't open them again for some twenty-five minutes.

When he finally opened his mind to the fact that he now had to try to re-attach his legs, he sat up and opened his eyes. Again he was greeted with a greater shock than he could fathom, for there in front of him now, were four legs. His old legs were there still detached and bobbing on the surface like a pair of unwanted stool samples. But there was also another pair of legs, new, fresh and more importantly connected in all the places legs should be. They were the finest legs he had ever seen and they appeared to be his to keep. He gave them a little prod in the thigh and they felt good, he wiggled his toes and they too felt good. He grabbed his old legs and threw them out of the bath and with his new legs he began to kick and stomp until there was hardly any water left in the bath. He leapt from the bath with the ease of an athlete, and stood still dripping in front of the full-length bathroom mirror.


'Damn fine legs!'� he said to himself as he examined his new legs from all possible angles.

Ostergard spent the entire day enjoying his new legs, he walked for miles, he played soccer in the park and leapt great bounds. Then as he was going to bed that evening he picked up his old legs and stood them in the corner of the spare bedroom. He closed the door behind him. He was just about to turn the heating on when he was struck with a wisdom normally only attributed to geniuses.

He left the heating turned off. He went to his wardrobe and put on two pairs of Jeans and three pairs of socks. He removed two heavy knit jumpers and cut the sleeves off them before slipping them on. Next he wrapped a towel around his head and went to sleep without any covers.

When he woke up in the morning he lay still for about ten minutes, refusing to move a muscle. And then, with the swiftest motion a man that cold could muster, he sat bolt upright. There, lying on the bed behind him'� were his arms. He was laughing with joy as he tried to stand up from the mattress without his arms to guide him. He ran to the bathroom and turned the taps on with his toes. He ran back and fourth several times, kicking his arms into the bathroom. Once he had managed to get his frozen arms into the hot bath he climbed in carefully and took a seat. He laid back, closed his eyes and didn't open them again for over twenty-five minutes.

'Damn fine arms!'� he said to himself as he looked in the mirror. He picked up his old arms and took them to the spare bedroom. He placed them on the floor either side of his old legs.

Ostergard continued his limb freezing every night, renewing a new part of his body up until all that was left to be frozen, was his head. When he awoke the next morning he knew that the process had gone OK because he couldn't see a thing. He jumped up and ran to the bathroom to run the bath, but only got as far as the closet in his bedroom, which he ran into at quite a pace. It took a few seconds for him to gather himself from the floor. This time he groped his way slowly to the bathroom and felt for the taps. Next, he took one of his new legs and kicked himself, for in his excitement he had forgotten to bring his head with him. He groped his way back to collect it. He didn't actually know whether having the old body parts in the bath with him made any difference to the metamorphosis, but it seemed silly to start experimenting now.

He had to be more careful about growing his head back, couldn't afford to take any risks. He stayed under water for just thirty seconds at a time so that he wouldn't drown. He continued this procedure for a very long time, maybe too long, but he didn't want to open his eyes to find an incomplete head and he was wise to do so.

'Damn fine head!'� he said to himself finally as he looked in the mirror and then he picked up his old head and placed it in the spare room with the other discarded body parts.

A completely new Ostergard sat at the table in the kitchen enjoying a fruit breakfast while reading the morning paper. He was about to rise and put on his shoes when he heard the door to the spare bedroom open. He sat frozen in his seat, fearing the ridiculous and not quite knowing what to do. His thoughts were interrupted when the old Ostergard walked into the kitchen.

"Morning," said the old Ostergard as he slid the morning paper over to a vacant chair.

'Who'� who are you?'� stammered the new Ostergard.

'I'm Ostergard,'� said the old one.

'But'� no'�. No you're not,'� said the new one 'I am!'�

'You're mistaken,'� said the old one simply, turning the pages of the newspaper.

'I know who I am,'� the new Ostergard persisted with a hint of fear and doubt in his voice.

'You may THINK that you know who you are,'� continued the old Ostergard 'but I KNOW who you are not.'�

The new Ostergard, now wearing a sheen of sweat and fearing the very answer to his question, asked, 'And who aren't I?'�

'Ostergard'�'� said the old Ostergard, now eating a piece of fruit.'�you're simply not Ostergard,'�

'How do you know I'm not Ostergard?'�

The old Ostergard smiled 'Because I am. You on the other hand'�are'�well, nobody really.'�

The argument went back and forth for nearly two hours until they came up with a plan to prove once and for all, which one of them was the real Ostergard. They went to the hospital and both demanded X-RAYS so that they could have them checked against the hospital files. These files included several breakages that Ostergard had acquired while playing soccer. However, things didn't get as far as having the X-RAYS verified. The old Ostergard received his X-RAYS first and quickly removed them from the envelope. There he was, skeletal, as he remembered himself.

The new Ostergard received his X-RAYS and he too removed them from the envelope with much pomp. But the celluloid was completely blank. Not a bone to be seen. He ran into the X-RAY room, banging the doors open as he went and demanded the technician explain himself.

'You're just simply not there,'� said the technician 'You don't exist, now if you don't mind'�'�

The new Ostergard left the X-RAY room.

'What did he say?'� asked the old Ostergard out in the corridor.

'He said that I'm not there, I don't exist.'�

The new Ostergard shuffled out the exit and headed for the park. He found a bench and sat down. Being homeless now, he spent the night on the bench, in the cold. By the morning he was frozen solid from head to toe. He was buried a week later with no name.

The old Ostergard returned home from the hospital and opened a bottle of red wine to celebrate who he was. He smiled to himself as he brushed his teeth in the bathroom mirror. When he went to bed that night he didn't want the problems of the week before. He had learnt his lesson and so turned the heating on full. Just as he was heading into his bedroom to go to sleep the telephone rang.

'Who are you?'� came the stranger's voice from the receiver.

'I am Ostergard,'� he said simply and hung up the phone.

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