I had been an ethnic prisoner in a prison camp in Russia. Dry crusts, bedbugs, etc. The dream took place as the regime was falling and the prison was being dismantled. One of the guards had been sympathetic, and sometimes kind, to prisoners. He had often brought news from the outside. Now he was destroying prison records and I was following him, engaging him, urging him to stop. But he still had a gun, and I didn't.

����I managed to steal a ring of keys, so I had a chance to save some files if I got to them first. The guard's family came to visit; they pulled up in a silver minivan, all wearing Polo sweaters. They walked up to the house. The teenage son asked me if his father and I were friends. "We don't really have friends in this place," I said. "Your father was close to being a friend; but then he always disappoints me." The family went to tour the man's cottage and I snuck off to the barn.

����Inside, a number of minor documents were locked under the hood of an old Corvette; they were the best I was going to manage. I unlocked the driver's door and pulled the latch; the hood popped open and I found papers inside, damp and scattered beneath a few forkfuls of hay. When I reached inside and some mice scurried to avoid me, a farm cat flew in over my shoulder and tore their heads off. As I collected the papers, the cat spoke to me:

����"Do you know what's really nice about killing a mouse? When you get to eat the fetus."


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