The Body Snatchers

by Jack Finney

There is no emotion – none – only the pretence of it. The words, the gestures, the tones of voice, everything else – but not the feeling.’

I think we’re refining all humanity out of our lives.

There on that shelf lay Becky Driscoll – uncompleted. There lay a … preliminary sketch for what was to become a perfect and flawless portrait, everything begun, all sketched in, nothing entirely finished.

The human mind searches for cause and effect, always; and we all prefer the weird and thrilling to the dull and commonplace as an answer.’

The human animal won’t take a straight diet of any emotion: fear, happiness, horror, grief, or even contentment.

We hate facing new facts or evidence, because we might have to revise our conceptions of what’s possible, and that’s always uncomfortable.’

But if I were an artist, painting the way Etta Street seemed to me, walking along now with Becky, I think I’d distort the windows of the houses we passed. I’d show them with half-drawn shades, the bottom edge of each shade curving downward, so that the windows looked like heavy-lidded, watchful eyes, quietly and terribly aware of us as we passed through that silent street.

I’d paint the houses themselves as huddled and crouching, alien and withdrawn, resentful, evil, and full of icy malice against the two figures walking along the street between them.

She stood motionless behind the big desk, her eyes fastened on us, and in the instant I swung to look at her, her face was wooden, devoid of any expression, and the eyes were bright, achingly intent, and as inhumanly cold as the eyes of a shark.

Then they all laughed – soundlessly – their lips pulled back from their teeth, their eyes amused, mocking, and utterly cold;

There’s a real fascination about monotony in motion: the steady flicker of a fire, an endless series of waves slowly crashing on a beach, the unvarying movement of a piece of machinery.

‘After all, what have you people done – with the forests that covered the continent? And the farm lands you’ve turned into dust? You, too, have used them up, and then … moved on.