Last night was a back-to-Colby dream, the first in a long while, probably occasioned by Anthony's appearance on Facebook. It began on a fall Saturday on the Miller lawn with hundreds of people at a barbecue picnic. A young boy raced toward me, pursued by another who was screaming for me to catch him. "My watch" he was yelling. I chased the kid down and grabbed the watch. He ran off. I tossed the watch to its owner as he approached, but he dropped it and it broke. I felt stupid for having thrown it, but I hadn't wanted to get near the boy. I'd noticed that everyone around me was ten years old. But he came up to me, held out the watch and ordered me to fix it.

����I went back to my room, carrying an antique floral curtain that I'd apparently picked up for the shower. I tossed it in the tub, and just then my roommate Steve Jalbert came home. Steve Jalbert was a kid I had saxophone lessons with when I was ten. He was still ten in the dream, and I found he still made me nervous. I prayed he wouldn't come in the bathroom and see Grandma's puffy reams of velvet and silk.

����Under a dim light on my scratched up wooden desktop I opened the watch. It looked like a VCR inside. I somehow guessed it wouldn't be hard to find the replacement parts. Steve's girlfriend showed up and asked if I wanted to swim in the pond with them. I said sure, but was vaguely aware that at some point I was going to have to address the problem of being surrounded by kids.

����It was dusk by that time; Johnson Pond was a fiery orange under the purpled sky, and a sign was posted warning that a corpse was present. From the dock, the two kids pointed into the water. "Isn't that your watch?" they asked, and it was, so they pushed me in to get it. Surfacing, I found a dead girl beside me. I swam her over to the dock and Steve's girlfriend helped me pull her out. I held her upright against me so she could drain. After a moment, her eyes popped open, a blue tv light streaming out of them. Steve Jalbert started to run. I saw the same light in the windows of the pond-side shed. Though her feet were supportive now, the dead girl was still cold and heavy in my arms. I was soaking wet with corpse water. The sun had departed. Only kids were everywhere. I felt nothing but dismay. Not letting go, I said to her, "If you're going to do anything scary--"

����But I don't remember anything after that.

����On the way to work this morning, I saw four people walking with limps.


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