I'm at a party at a big lonely house on a dry grassy hill somewhere north. The host is writer Peter S. Beagle! He's very old now; still energetic, but wobbly in a strange way. Really weird body language. Not drunk like the rest of us--something else. The side effect of some drug?

Does he hit me, do I push him away? I'm not clear, but somehow he falls backwards and hits his head and I feel to blame. He's out cold. Doesn't come to. Unconscious or dead?

But by now we're all so drunk we just soddenly debate what to do, and DO nothing. Sit him on a sofa. Hours later, he hasn't stirred. Coma? Dead? Feels cold. I assume he's dead and we murdered him! Feel guilty and scared.

Someone puts him in a huge brown coarse-woven hairy bag. I stuff the bag in the fireplace, prepare to light a fire and burn him! Still not thinking clearly. Convinced he's dead, sure we killed him somehow, and just want the evidence to vanish...

Then I wake--convinced I killed Peter Beagle. Strangely, for half an hour I STILL feel guilty--emotionally convinced it was real. Keep reminding myself I wouldn't and didn't hurt him, haven't even seen him for years. Why such guilt?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Wobbly: Me. Today I had a Lyme attack--mild headache, clumsy, slight vertigo. I could pass for mildly drunk. It recurs, it's annoying, but no longer too serious.
• Beagle:
  1. Symbolic: writing? Literary mentoring? When I first started writing dream-tales I got flak from some of my writing teachers, but Beagle encouraged me--found my stuff powerful.
  2. Literal? He's 80-something now; did he actually die last night? [I checked in the morning. No!]
• Woozy old guy with canine name: I just read Kelly McCullough's School for Sidekicks. Foxman, an ex-superhero drunk for years and just 6 months sober, drafts young Evan as sidekick. Hmm. Mentors again...
• Put him in a bag: In School for Sidekicks, Evan gets bagged by, well, Bagger. A supervillain whose power is... bagging.
• ACTION: Do not bag Beagle. Beyond that, I'm stumped.

I read Passing Strange by Ellen Klages, set in the lesbian underworld of San Francisco in 1940. A painter and singer fall in love, but Haskel's drunken ex-husband suddenly reappears after four years and attacks her in the street! Her girlfriend defends her, hits him back. The drunk falls, a cab runs him over, he dies. The lovers, in a guilty panic, flee...

Now wait a minute. I dreamed this--

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