this had all happened before. i was able to skip some parts. and i knew the deal so it wasn't so scary.

someone, a friend of the family, who to all appearances was a middle aged woman, had done something a while back. stole some treasure. left town.

but we found it. 5 or 6 of us. we didn't know it was the treasure she had found, we just knew it was amazing, worth so much money - each gold coin was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we each took 6 or 7 plus a handful of smaller coins.

but it started to happen soon. i looked out into the backyard and saw my dad working on something, but there was a blurry shape in the bushes behind him. at first it looked like a lumpy grey dog-creature, but i couldn't quite focus my eyes on it. once i took a closer look it moved strangely,a shadow-shape jumping out from it's head and moving alternately, like some cheesy sci-fi effects from an early 90s movie. but it wasn't a movie.

this had all happened before. i knew what it meant. i called frantically to my dad and told him to come inside. i wanted to explain the danger he was in without drawing his attention to it - because that was the scary part.

i knew that this thing, whatever it was, was very dangerous. i also knew that the more you looked at it, the more you thought about it, the more dangerous it would become. imagine trying not to think of the thing that was in the corner of your eye, the thing that would grow to immense power and size and rip you to pieces if you thought about it too much.

so i knew what we had to do. we had to track down the woman and give her the treasure back. i also knew she wasn't really middle aged. she was old. older than anyone could guess. and she didn't want to be found.

i knew she was somewhere in the states, and i knew she was staying in a swanky retirement home type living situation. luckily this had all happened before so i found the list of research i had done. we knew which travel destinations were her favorites. and we found her.

as she was traveling up, we tried to deal with our problem. you had to relinquish the desire for this treasure. it was difficult. even without the money, these coins were beautiful, they were silvery, they were soft in your hand. but i would rather give them up than be eaten.

and the danger was very great now. the monster was absorbing all of our fear, it had nearly the full attention of some of us, and all we could do was keep it locked out, windows shored up. my dad had to go and close the door. he walked backward, trying not to look at the thing, give it any more power. but by this time it was as huge as a lion. all of our hearts stopped.

one of our party couldn't give up the coins. he told us he would take our portion of the treasure if we didn't want it. and we gave him our little piles of coins, one by one. i didn't want to think about what would happen to him.

dad picked these leaves, they looked like large clovers. they made you weightless when you held onto them. he said he got them at 3333 colonial street - that was where the band rancid lived, coincidentally. we went down to the other end of the pier, and we were sitting in this black computer chair and we'd float up into the air. it was amazing. so exciting and fun.

adam floated up and i was waiting and waiting for him to come down. while he was floating, i was thinking about how to get some more of these leaves, obviously. i was sure rancid would be guarding them. i thought about maybe sneaking over there at night.

anyway, adam still wasn't coming down. i saw something in the sky and it turned out to be the back of the chair, gently floating down. it looked a little weird, but i wasn't worried that adam had an accident or anything. i knew he'd be ok.

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there was a kennel full of owls. they were all squished together and it was quite sad. there was one i could take out and pet and snuggle and he seemed so sad but he liked to cuddle with me. another owl tried to escape every time i opened the door. i wanted to just let them out.

then there was someone on a bike, riding down a cement chute, really high up in the air. there was cement in the chute so it was slowing them down. they got to the end and jumped off. they may have been escaping. when we looked back up, we saw a scary sight - a baby was hanging down from the end of the chute.

we rushed over to the bar to get a giant sweater so we could catch the baby when it fell. there was a cheerful and charismatic bartender. he was like a character from a movie.

anyway, we went back to save the baby but the baby was already safe, someone else had got her down. everyone was sitting in a room and the baby was just chilling cheerfully on the couch with a bunch of strangers. she was probably 2, but she was really good at talking. i gave her some cereal in a little baggy. it was corn flakes but it just looked like lumps of powder. my dad was playing guitar with his friend donnie. donnie died a while back, so i was telling everyone it was good he could come back for a bit because my dad missed him.

then we were playing cribbage. michael scott was there but he looked like dwight shrute. the rules of the game were way more complicated than in real life. there were these weird pieces you had to move, some were paper clips and some were little statues of yourself. michael / dwight didn't understand how to play and kept thinking he could take the little statue, but he didn't have the right cards. we were exasperated.