Morning of October 4, 1982. Monday.

I am seemingly traveling on my own, heading south to an uncertain destination. There are a lot of isolated areas with a lot of shrubs, mostly. There are some back roads I follow here and there. Vaguely, I am trying to remember if I should be getting to work and what day it is.

I discover an unusual farmhouse behind a cluster of higher shrubs. It looks abandoned. Just south of that are a few more houses, but more modern-looking. They still seem a bit unmaintained in some ways or perhaps not yet completed. A man of about forty is on a smaller tractor mower in the backyard of one larger property. I ignore him at first.

I investigate the farmhouse, going inside through a door hanging from one hinge at an angle. There are also piles of wood blocking some other areas. There is sort of a damp smell and a desolate mood at first. Not much happens. I look around and notice that the decor is fairly unusual, but I am not sure why.

Finally, I go into a room that has a book on a desk but the paper is unusual, somewhat felt-like, and the ink is a bit fuzzy. There is an old photograph of a beautiful girl that lived in the house (late 1940s?) before it was abandoned due to a “natural disaster”. Looking around, it is possible that the disaster was a flood, as some features seem to relate to water somehow, as perhaps reminiscent of something you would see on an old ship. There is some sort of lantern or old-fashioned kerosene lamp but it has a different design somehow.

Looking at the book, which seems to be a diary, I discover, through images and seemingly discerning some of the writing, that the girl had a pet otter that she really cared for. I do not think that she had it in a cage. I sense a strange sadness at the idea of someone leaving their home after a seeming longer history in the region and wonder what had happened to them.

Later, a couple other people are in their yard. One may be the man I saw on the lawn mower. He tells me that the whole area had been under water until fairly recently. He mentions that the farmhouse was there long before the new houses were built south of it.

It dawns on me that the girl and her parents were some sort of aquatic human-like creatures (but mostly human in appearance) and that the “natural disaster” was not a flood, but the waters receding so that they had to leave their home to go to a river or lake somewhere to get away from land-dwelling humans, especially. Thus it turns out that this was one of those intriguing endings (and a very similar mood and awareness) that seemed to have intense sarcasm for “every man” along similar lines as “I’m Eager Beaver” and "The Four-Fanged Snake of Swamp Garden", two of which I have already posted.