In my dream I am a gravedigger in a mediaeval town. There is no sunlight, it is neither day nor night. Thousands of black coffins stand on a row of trestles that stretches as far as the eye can see. We work quickly in shifts. More and more corpses are brought in, in white shrouds. One comes in and I don't think it is quite dead. Though completely shrouded I know it is a woman.

"This is the worst part of our job," says my fellow gravedigger. I learn that there is a plague that is agonizing and people can never recover. "But believe me, what we do is better than letting them suffer."

"Bury them alive?" I say in the dream, thinking we will lower the quivering non-corpse into the ground and shut the lid.

"Use the mallet," he says. "Strike the top of the cranium and smash it, one swift blow."

The woman whimpers. I wonder if I dare.