I peered over. Thank God, it's the Castle in the distance. Then my eye fell down from the majestic styrofoam parapets across the enormous parking lots and back toward the mound.

I found a field, a strawberry field, which picked up at the bottom of the mound and led almost all the way to the parking lots.

All I needed was to make a mad dash.

I tossed myself over the barrier and started across the field when I saw that there was someone at work over to my left. A group of people picking, a smaller group of people watching, a truck, baskets of strawberries, German shepards--big ol' dogs. Inching closer, the pickers were darker than those watching.

I somehow found myself watching a group of Chicanos, apparently being supervised by white men and their pack of killer attack creatures. Rather than ruminate on the unpleasant moral implications, I started thinking how these undoubtedly underfed dogs would react to a stray trespasser.

With that I lowered myself to the ground and crawled chest to earth between the rows of strawberries, trying not to emit the sound that would send the fanged canines to do me in. I was too scared to visualize the surreal implications of my plight. Each foot was emotionally exhausting, each moment a frame from a real-life thriller. And all I wanted was fantasy: the mundane reality waiting at Cinderella's Castle.