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felt like I had slept through something, something important, something I was supposed to do or attend. If I had missed an important business event, missed it by oversleeping, for chrissake, I could have risked a hefty dent in my reputation.
    Sonofabitch .
    It would have occurred to me how crazy I sounded, how utterly witless it was to panic over something so uncertain and improbable. I realized, instead, that the nightmare I may have had was still going on .
    I realized this, because I suddenly could not believe where I was. Or how I got there. I could not remember anything , and in my mounting disarray I found I could not attain a sober reality to do so. Not even if my sanity depended upon it.
    Perhaps I was so accustomed to the upstairs office of my Malibu, California, home that I had failed until then to comprehend the profound absurdity of my very presence there. If I woke up to find myself in bed, it wouldn’t have been as much of a shock; if Melony, my wife, was there with me, I wouldn’t have been so disoriented, so overcome with dread. And if it were ever possible for me to sleep through an important event, she would have made damn sure I wouldn’t.
    I awoke in my upstairs office, not the bedroom. I had fallen asleep at my wife’s desk, slumped over her typewriter, and I somehow was not supposed to be there. All I could do was sit there mindlessly and hope reality would trigger my memory once I gave it the chance to sink in.
    And then I noticed the letter.
    The white page drooped lazily backwards and wound loosely within the typewriter before me, its freshly-typed contents exposed as though I myself had depressed the concluding letter keys in my slumber.
    Reaching, I held the page upright and in full view. If I had indeed typed this, my memory of doing so had gone the way of the forgotten nightmare and the unknown, slept-through business engagement. The word URGENT hung isolated in its top left-hand corner and it appeared both rushed and personal.
    As I scanned the opening salutation and then the date, it struck me as dizzying nonsense. The letter was written to me, and dated more than four months ahead from what I would have naturally acknowledged as that final August Sunday when I awoke:
     
    URGENT 1/2/95
     
    To Maxwell J. Polito, world
    renown investigator of
    UFO phenomena:
     
    This was as far as I read before I abruptly pulled the sheet from the machine and withdrew from the desk. The sense of dull reality which lingered with me still had cowered against my newfound conviction that I was the object of some ridiculous put-on.
    If this was proven to be true, that some psychotic wacko whom I somehow offended was wreaking his vengeance behind it all, I had much more to fear than the possibilities of having been knocked out and tossed before a typewriter with a funky message. Where was my wife? Was she home?
    I set the letter aside and fled from my office. I called for my wife, but Melony did not answer. Heading down the upstairs hall, I entered the bedroom, but all that lay before me was a vacant bed. Down the stairs, my living room and kitchen seemed dark and empty even as my fingers found the knobby protrusion of wall switch and announced my intrusion with an instant rupture of light. The revealing peacefulness mocked me in response, as though my own home wished to be left undisturbed and that nothing was wrong except what was only in my mind.
    I continued to call for Melony. For anyone. I spread wide the pleated doors of the pantry, doubled back and into the den, even probed the closets and behind the bathroom shower curtain. Hell, I would’ve checked the kitchen cabinets if it had occurred to me. I refused to believe I was alone. Alone like this .
    After rambling about the back yard and patio, I surveyed the quiet, evening street from the driveway. I opened the garage to inspect both our cars, both nestled safely within, and I re-entered the house through its inside door.
    At that point I remembered the