Plot

Night has just fallen. It's time to go to sleep, except for Sandier, whose hard work has only just begun. On his bicycle, a big canvas bag full of sand on the back, he crosses the city to put the children to sleep.

A man in simple, shabby, raglan clothes pushes his bicycle up a path from the beach, and comes to a warehouse where a line of people dressed similarly to him wait to enter. Inside, they are each sign in, told the rules of the job, and given the tool of their trade: a sack. Each sack is filled with sand, and each *sandier* is given a list of addresses. They are Sandmen and women, whose job is to put the children of Paris to sleep at night.

Sandier arrives at his first address. As parents put their son to sleep, he slips upstairs unseen. As the parents leave, the Sandier smiles, heaves his heavy sack of sand, and smacks the child in the head with a whomp. Unharmed, the child is now blissfully asleep. Job done, Sandier crosses the boy's address from his list. This is only the beginning of his night of work.

He heads to the next address on his list. A tween age girl being put to bed. Sandier comes to a door, but is confused, there are no children there. He rechecks his list -- it is next door. He goes to return to his bicycle and sack -- but the sack is gone. Panicked, Sandier grabs a shopping bag, and fills it with dirt from a decorative plant pot, figuring it is just as good as a burlap sack of sand. Relieved, Sandier enters the girl's room, and hefts his make-do sack, and brings it down on the girls' head, with a crash. Startled, Sandier is concerned. He lifts the bag and looks at it: it is spattered with blood. Horrified, Sandier scrambles out of the home, just before devastated parents find their daughter after Sandier's handiwork.

Knowing he cannot continue, but he must finish the job, Sandier notices a trail of sand running from the house. He follows the piles of sand through the city, through the parks and paths, until morning, when he finds the end of the trail by a riverbank, where a coarse man sits in a beach chair, with an umbrella, a radio, and the Sandier's sand at his feet, serving as a substitute for a beach. The Sandier confronts the man. He tells the story of what happened to the girl. He demands his sack and sand back. The man angrily relents -- but as Sandier refills his sack with the sand, the man decks him, and he passes out.

Sandier awakes, and the man is gone. But he has new guests -- enforcers from the Sandmen operation. They, likewise, bludgeon him to unconsciousness.

Again, Sandier awakes, this time in the warehouse. In front of him are a panel of stern magistrates in classical makeup and adornment. They read the charges: losing his sack, failing to finish his job, and killing a child. Sandier is gagged and cannot respond. The judges pass their sentence: execution. The executioner approaches Sandier with a shotgun to the back of the head, and fires. We see all that is left behind is a pile of sand. The angry man appears in workman's clothes, is waved over by the magistrates, and sweeps up the sand. Next.