Edwin Mortens is almost blind, but has good hearing; his wife Erna is hard of hearing, but has excellent eyes.
Paralysed from the waist down, Edwin sits locked in his bathroom all day, every day, trying to liberate his mind from his body. The experiment is going relatively well: nearly all his bodily functins have ceased, his limbs are in a state of decay and his digestive system is in the process of breaking down. 'This body,' he says, 'is a sewer.'