A man is tucked snuggly in bed at night, comfortable and warm, rushing along the soft currents of sleep. He dreams he's being watched, a cloudy vision of some giant something looking in on him, a large eye peering in to cover the entire window.

Suddenly a fantastic ripping cuts the serene silence of morning. A jagged roar crushes the soft air for just a moment. The sudden, rough tearing jostles the man awake. He snaps up in bed screaming "Ahhh aahhhggghhh."

His wife is sleeping next to him. She rolls over and grabs him, trying to calm him, trying to pull him back down, back down into sleep. Finally she has to sit up and squeeze his arm. "What is it? What is it? What is it honey?" They are both breathing hard by this time in the quiet darkness. Their eyes adjust to the unexpected morning light, and they feel an invading coolness all around, smell the fresh new morning air, a peach light forming to illuminate their world, their bedroom.

They feel a slight breeze. A sharp chirp from a bird cracks the fresh air. They look around and see the sky, the hazy green distance, the leaves and branches of the trees close to the house. He grabs her and pulls her close. The roof is missing. It is gone, completely gone. Shards of tar paper, shingles, and bits of plank flap in the breeze about three feet from the floor all around their bedroom. Everything is illuminated in an odd, misty morning peach kind of tone.

They continue to examine their surroundings--random shingles on the floor, shingles on their bed, jagged, bent, twisted wood hanging just above the floor. They turn to notice a hulking beast loping away. They sit up and turn around for the thing is behind them now. They stand up on their knees, holding onto the back of the headboard, leaning over the ragged edge of their upstairs to catch the giant, gleaming metallic robot who has been watching them. The silver robot is lumbering away, hulking twenty feet above the tree line, stepping carefully through each yard, respectfully avoiding a clothesline, a dog house, a car in the driveway--careful not to disturb a garden, a bicycle, a tool shed. In its metal clutch they spot a grip of twisted rafters and wood framing, as if holding crunched toothpicks. Random scraps of wood and shingles form a line in the yards to where the giant is standing. "Aw," the woman sighs, "I think he's lonely."

Then they see, as the beast sinks over the tree line, a strange black Cadillac sitting down the block. The long gleaming car slowly starts up the street to pass their house. One of its windows is cracked, with an antennae sticking out of it as if from one of those radio remote control devices. The woman looks at her husband and shrugs and sighs, "I wonder if that's little Freddie? ... she gasps, "Could it be?"

"I always wondered where he ran off to," the man shakes his head. "After all these years, I still wonder if we'll ever see him again, if he'll ever come back to us, if he'll ever return."

They sit there on their bed, in the crisp morning air, and watch the long black limousine disappear around the corner to follow the great gleaming silver robot out of sight.

"He never did like us much, did he?" the man exhales wistfully.

"Maybe. Maybe not back then," the woman shrugs, the corner of her mouth moving, almost forming into a slight little hopeful smile, "But maybe now he misses us."