It started sometime after college. The lake is never there when the dream begins. I’ll be sitting in a classroom in my old high school, or at the mall, or walking down the street in the middle of town. The dream will start up and it might be a bunch of random nonsense or there might be something like a plot… or maybe it’s always random nonsense but sometimes I’m able to see a plot.

Whatever.

The point is that when my dreams start off they’re like anybody else’s, like mine used to be. But sooner or later the water starts to rise. It comes up through the ground or floor or whatever I’m standing on. The other surroundings are submerged, or carried away, or just seem to recede on their own. Ceilings disappear. Buildings open up. Eventually everything goes away and it’s just me and the lake, clear and calm as can be.

The lake is the same every time. It’s round, but not perfectly round. It’s maybe a few hundred yards across and maybe eight feet deep in the middle. The shores are dirt, not sand. Sometimes the ground is dry and cracked just a few feet away from the water. Sometimes it’s muddy and wet. Sometimes it’s powder. If I walk away from the lake in any direction I’ve picked, I can walk across unchanging ground until I wake up.

I’m never surprised by the arrival of the water, but I don’t expect it. If I’m dreaming that I’m in an auditorium and there are zombies trying to break in, I never think, “Gosh, I have to get out of here before it floods.” or “Maybe the water will take care of the zombies.” I accept the zombie scenario as real and deal with it like it’s the only reality that matters, until the water comes and carries it all away.

There’s nothing disturbing about the lake. The whole thing bothers me only in that I can’t explain it. I don’t know why it happens. I don’t know what it means. I’ve asked psychiatrists and psychologists about it. I’ve seen sleep experts. The first thing anyone wants to know is if I wet the bed. There’s always an“aha!” moment, a triumphant look on their face when they ask me that and a bit of disappointment or confusion when I tell them no. The worst of them tell me that they can’t help me as long as I insist on lying to them.

It doesn’t matter. None of them can help me anyway. The best I’ve ever gotten is advice: if it doesn’t cause you problems, don’t worry about it.

Good advice, but I never did worry, precisely. I just wanted to know if it meant something.

I don’t have any childhood traumas relating to water. We never lived by a lake. My parents took me swimming sometimes when I was a kid. Sometimes I liked it and sometimes I didn’t. Lakes never meant much to me before. They still don’t, really. I have no strong association for water in general or even my lake in particular.

It’s just, “Oh, here it is again.”

My girlfriend says I should try to find the lake in real life, but I don’t think it exists. It’s too perfect. Too regular. And there’s something unfinished about it that’s hard to put my finger on. She won’t let go of the idea that it existed somewhere and that there is some meaning, something I’m meant to go and see. She thinks there’s something important about the dream, something supernatural.

I don’t blame her. The first time it happened, I thought it was weird. The second time it was like, heh, that’s kind of funny. I thought that thinking about it had given me the same dream two nights in a row. The third time it was weird again. Then when it didn’t stop, I thought what she thinks: this is important. This means something.

After more than ten years of the same lake taking over my dreams every night, I’m not ruling out anything as far as a cause goes. It could be supernatural. It could mean something. But after ten years of the same dream and no sense of urgency and no change, I don’t think that supernatural necessarily means important.

Every night, I dream of the lake.

That’s all.

He calls out a signal and waves. A line of soldiers in heavy gray uniforms streams down the beach, pointing their rifles down at the water and shouting out stern warnings. The man keeps his eyes on the watch and the water. After a minute, he nods and signals for the soldiers to withdraw, just as the water is withdrawing.

A short distance away, two old men sit on a bench feeding bits of stale bread to the shore birds.

“You can say what you want about this new regime,” one of the men says to the other, “but at least they make the tides run on time.”

On the day it ran out and he spotted the tall silhouettes of the palm trees in the distance, he simply silently adjusted his course towards them but he did not alter his pace. He did not think “Ah, there is water there.” It was simply as good a direction as any.

It was only when he got closer, close enough to see the green of the leaves that he allowed himself to feel a flicker of hope, a flicker that was kindled into a flame by the sight of sunlight glinting off a silvery surface as he came over a high hill.

He didn’t have it within him to break into a run by that point, but the glorious sight gave him a jolt of energy and determination that kept him on his feet, kept him moving forward. It was there, it was real. He had not fooled himself.

A refreshing breeze sprang up as he approached the oasis, and he smiled a smile that froze and then faded. The fronds of the trees did not stir. There was no scent of wet earth or vegetation or anything alive, just the dust of the desert carried on the wind. He looked up at the greenery and saw that it was blocky, solid. The trunks looked waxy or plasticine. He stepped forward, cautious now… an artificial oasis was unexpected, but it might still save him. If someone had taken the time to decorate this patch of desolation, they might still be in residence. If not, they’d probably have built their tiny paradise around actual water.

That hope was dashed when he passed under the resin boughs of the artificial trees and found a “lake” of hard plastic with a rippled surface. A wooden post stood near the edge of it. It bore a placard. He stepped up to it and read it, his parched lips moving silently as he drank in the words:

La Mirage (R. Pescatero, 2017) – This outdoor installation piece, created during the artist’s prolific “asshole phase”, is intended to call to mind images of a lush desert oasis, an island of life in the midst of the most inhospitable terrain. The piece calls to mind the fleeting and transient nature of hope by luring travelers in with an illusory promise of sustenance and succor. Like the artist’s related works, Rotating Signpost (2015) and his ambitious Retreating Rescue Lights (2022), La Mirage has been known to invoke feelings of frustration, desperation, and even despair in viewers.

“Perhaps to a layperson,” his companion said. “I’m not convinced that ‘tool use’ is as simple as all that. The rock is something in their environment that they make use of… but then, so are the shellfish. We may as well label eating as ‘tool use’ since it involves making use of an object. If otters could be observed shaping the rocks, fashioning something from them…”

“So, then, when a bird strips the bark off a twig before using it to dig insects out of…”

“Well, now you’re just being ridiculous.”

“How am I being ridiculous?” the first man asked. “It fits the definition you just gave.”

“Birds and twigs… instinctive behavior!”

“Who says tool use can’t be instinctive?”

“If we’re talking about tool use as a meaningful signifier of intelligence…”

“That’s such a slippery term.”

The floating otters watched the boat drifting slowly out of sight, listening to the babel of increasingly agitated sound coming from the cute, clownish creatures who stood on the floating hulk. They almost sounded intelligent.

“I’m not that kind of magic fish,” the fish said, wriggling in the net. “But I can dance… I can dance right across the surface of the water. If you let me go, I’ll give you a performance that you’ll never see the like of again.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” the man said.

“Why not?” the fish asked. “I’m talking, aren’t I? That’s pretty clearly magical.”

“I don’t see the connection between being a ‘magical talking animal’ and a ‘magical dancing’ one,” the man said. “Plus, if I dump you out of the net then you’re already free whether you dance or not. You know? I think I’ll take you home and let you show me what you can do there.”

“And then you’ll let me go?” the fish asked.

“No, I’m pretty sure I’ll still be hungry then,” the man said, and he dumped the net out into his bucket.