A thud woke Jeremy—one that had no business happening at 3:23 a.m. on Monday the fourth of December—followed by another one, louder this time. Jeremy jerked up in bed. Burglars, he thought. Burglars in his living room.

Looking back on it, when he had a second to gather his scattered thoughts, everything changed right at that moment. Not that he remembered it at first, but this time turned out to be different to all the previous times—somehow more solid, more real. More terrifying.

Only the feeble glow of street lights eased the darkness of his fifth storey apartment, but he didn't dare turn on the light. He slipped out of bed, careful not to slam his knee into the bedside table—something he’d done more than once—and cursed himself for not having a phone in his bedroom. The cold tiles chilled the soles of his feet, so, not having any shoes handy, he donned his slippers. Then he picked up a baseball bat propped beside the bed for just such an occasion.

He swung it once or twice, trying it out, but the bat felt unfamiliar in his hands, and he almost sent the bedside lamp flying out of the ballpark. He'd never been sure why he had it since he'd never played baseball—being English, cricket was more his thing; not that Jeremy had ever excelled in any sport. But you couldn't find cricket bats in the city, nor anywhere else in the States for that matter. And he supposed the bat beat having a gun; at least he couldn't shoot himself in the foot.

Still cursing in silence—he had a baseball bat for goodness sake, but no phone—he padded to the door. He decided the muffled clop of his slippers wouldn't be noticeable given the din.

In fact, how could there be such a racket? It resembled those out-of-control parties he passed in the street. The implication made his heart beat faster—there must be more than one of them! Well, he'd just have to do his best. He'd put the fear of god into them, for sure—a nervous beanpole of an accountant wearing full-length pyjamas, who accosts them in fluffy slippers and tries not to whack his shin with a baseball bat. Maybe they'd die of laughter.

Through the hall he shuffled, back to the wall. Light spilled beneath the door to his living room. They'd turned the lights on. Thuds turned to crashes. Jeremy flinched. What in the name of hell were they doing? Not sure what to do—action like this only happened in movies—he considered the door. His bowels clenched, bile rose, the bat slippery in his hands.

"Pull yourself together, Sunson!" he said, shouting to himself in a whisper. He needed to be calm, in control. "Open the door, jump into the room and surprise them." That would do it. They'd run away, too startled to laugh.

Jeremy wiped his hands on his pyjamas then gripped the door handle with one hand and the bat in the other, ready to yank the sliding door open. He'd spin into the room and start shouting. He had to be calm. Be confident.

He pulled open the door, jumped through the doorway and yelled, "Get out of my house!"

Blinded, he couldn't see—he'd jumped into a lighted room. Jeremy halted in the doorway, held his free hand in front of his eyes and paused while the spots in his vision cleared. He waited to see what he should do next. For the brawl didn't stop; it sounded like they didn't even notice him blinking in the doorway.

A crash of glass told him the upright light smashed, and angry grunts gave him further clues. His vision cleared—but for all he knew it hadn't. Perhaps he'd hit himself in the head with the bat. Two men, dressed as extras from some science-fiction war movie, rolled around his living room, locked in mortal combat. They'd trashed his furniture, and left burn marks all over the walls. Each struggled to hold the other—to get the upper hand.

"What in the name of …" Jeremy let the bat fall to the floor. This couldn't be real.

The bat thumped the carpet and the man in the red helmet jerked up, noticing Jeremy for the first time. He batted away the bronze-skinned hand reaching for his neck and sighted his weapon on Jeremy.

Jeremy froze, powerless in the face of fear. Not just a weapon. A cannon. This couldn't be happening. Couldn't be real. Time splintered as the red-gauntleted figure pulled the trigger.

With a yell, Bronze punched Red's arm and knocked the weapon aside. The shot went wide, vaporising part of Jeremy's ceiling and the floor of Mrs. Abercrombie’s in the apartment above. The ceiling disappeared in a blinding roar and didn't reappear. Jeremy stared at the hole, stupefied. He had an insane urge to apologise ("Sorry 'bout the hole, Mrs. Abercrombie"). This just couldn't be possible.

The Red snarled and flung a dart at Jeremy's head. It missed Jeremy by a foot, and lodged in the wall—a large red countdown displaying thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight …

"Don't just stand there, you idiot!" Bronze launched himself at his opponent too late. Red became insubstantial and vanished, but it didn't stop Bronze yelling, "It's a bomb. Run!"

The command jolted Jeremy's legs into action without passing through the traffic jam of his mind. And Jeremy ran. A hallucination had ordered him to flee. He must be mad; his shrink would have a field day. Slippers flapping, Jeremy launched himself out of the apartment, away from the bomb—would he make it in time? Must be only fifteen seconds left. Two flights from the bottom, his foot smashed into the stairwell and he lost a slipper. He didn't even notice the impact.

Five seconds. There! Just ahead—the exit. Four. He'd make it. Three. He'd be safe. Two. Jeremy smashed through the fire door—one—and fled into the cold night air, just as the top two storeys of his building exploded, the shockwave throwing him to the ground.

Ω

The cacophony of Jeremy's alarm blasted into existence. 5:45 a.m. on Monday the fourth of December. Dazed, Jeremy slapped the evil buzzer onto the floor—teach it to reverberate through his head. It quietened, but his agitation lingered. A foggy painting of daisies on the wall greeted him—a gift from his niece. He lay in his bed then. Could that be possible? The vision in his head seemed so real. Was it a premonition?

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Jeremy sat up in bed, then held his hands to his aching head and groaned. He tried not to look towards the living room, but there was no help for it; he would have to check.

Too tired to bother with his slippers, he walked through the hallway. The tiles were cold; part of him noted he'd made the correct decision to put them on last night when he …

"Oh gods!" He didn't know what was worse—that the impossible did take place, or the conclusion that it couldn't have happened.

Hand on the sliding door, Jeremy let his breath out and gathered himself. He didn't want to open it. He leant his forehead against the door. Didn't want to know that everything remained untouched. Didn't want further proof he slid closer to the nuthouse. But he would have to. It had seemed so real. His shrink would have a perfect explanation. No doubt one involving a padded white room full of male nurses to help him get better, feeding him through a straw because the straightjacket prevented the movement of his hands.

With a rush, he slid open the door, then took in his living room. He found everything as it should be. The walls untarnished, the electronic gadgets that lined his shelves all in order. But he'd known it must be. Had known since he passed under the ceiling still intact, unable to see the horrible pink decorations from Mrs. Abercrombie's apartment above.

He dragged his feet to the phone. Didn't have to dial. He didn't make many calls, and the only one yesterday had been to … "Yes, message for Dr. Smith. This is Jeremy Sunson. I'm wondering if he can squeeze me in this morning?"

Ω

"And then I called in sick," Jeremy said in a rush. He glanced from one picture of pleasant landscape to another, all hung in an artful fashion on a wall of light beige and far too much for him. "I'm too jumpy to concentrate on tax returns this morning. I would make a mistake." Warm yellow downlights, the perfect level of brightness, glowed at him from the ceiling. "And then I'd be fired." The cheerfulness only made him feel more out of touch. "And then I'd lose my apartment and end up on the street, and be thrown in jail and …" Jeremy lapsed into an uncomfortable silence and tried not to squirm on the black leather recliner.

"I see." Dr. Smith made another sporadic note. His polished tones did nothing to comfort Jeremy. "I understood you were on extended leave, Mr Sunson?"

"Er, yes. I guess I forgot." The sentence stumbled to a halt. An excellent start to the session with his psychiatrist—now he'd proclaimed himself loony and an idiot.

"No matter." Dr. Smith waved aside Jeremy's latest blunder with an airy manicured hand. "You seem to be quite nervous, Mr Sunson. Are you often so anxious?"

Jeremy ran his hand through his short, curly black hair. Not just neat and trim, but severe, his colleagues had told him. A style that turned his hooked nose into a beak. But he never knew what suited him. "Er, think so." The couch unsettled Jeremy. He felt an uncomfortable urge to clarify. "Anxious. Not sure. Maybe not. I don't think about how I feel much."

"I see," Dr. Smith said without commitment. "Well, given you have taken stress leave, I suppose anxiety is normal. And would I be correct in suspecting that you do not remember your dreams?"

Naked without his suit, as though he had misplaced the accountant layer of his personality, Jeremy didn't know what remained. "Is that what this was—a dream?"

"Do you have another explanation?"

Jeremy didn't respond, but Dr. Smith let the silence linger until Jeremy gave in. "I never even knew I had dreams."

Dr. Smith smiled behind the turtle-shell glasses. A smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "And you are not taking any medication or other … substances … that might produce hallucinations?"

"Hallucinations?" Jeremy repeated the word in an apprehensive tone. "That sounds bad. I've read about LSD. And I tried sleeping pills at Christmas about ten years ago—they made me see Elfs delivering presents. Could that be doing it?"

"No." Dr. Smith's reply held infinite patience. "You cannot acquire the symptoms of drug misuse by reading about them. And anything you did ten years ago is irrelevant, unless trauma accompanied it. No medication of any sort?"

Jeremy remembered he still wore his leather shoes, so part of his identity remained. "Well, I take antihistamines and vitamins. And—"

The polished tones interrupted Jeremy's babble. "No alcohol or coffee recently?"

"I don't drink. I tried once, but I didn't like the taste." Jeremy's navy pants rubbed on the recliner, and without his light grey windcheater the air conditioning chilled him. "And coffee keeps me awake at nights."

"Then we can safely conclude it was just a bad dream," Dr. Smith said in his best soothing tones. "Now, as to this particular dream. This is our fourth session and yet this is the first time you've mentioned any dream. Why do so now?"

"It's the first time," Jeremy said, then stumbled. "No, wait. That's not right. I think I've had this dream before, but this time I remember. It's clearer. More vivid."

"And this vividness means something has changed in your life?"

Jeremy shrugged. He didn't know what to say. It all sounded crazy to him.

"Hmm." Dr. Smith made another note. "Well, while it would make a sensational addition to any science fiction magazine, I'm afraid it is quite telling on the personal turmoil you seem to be suffering. Persecution. Low self-esteem. Insignificance. All of these are telling signs of depression. You do not seem to think much of yourself, Mr Sunson. You need a positive mental attitude. Find the value in yourself."

Ω

The journey home passed like a mirage. Excellent, thought Jeremy, just what I need, another hallucination.

The train interrupted his lament by arriving at his station. In the queue to exit he lurched forward, bumped from behind. More of a shove. Jeremy wondered whether to make an issue out of it: the self-help books said you needed to stand up for your rights.

He turned and glared at the offender, a man dressed all in black who seemed familiar, wearing an overcoat and a knit-cap of all things—an object that Jeremy had never broken the habit of calling a beanie.

"Sorry," the man said. The tone lacked any trace of apology.

Even the voice made Jeremy suspect he must know this man, but he couldn't place the other. The confronting stare from behind the dark glasses took all the wind out of Jeremy.

"No problem," he replied with a mumble. The man brushed past, soon lost to the crowd.

Jeremy plodded homeward and his thoughts returned to their reeling. Find value, Dr. Smith had said. Find value? Jeremy found value all the time—that's what accountants did.

He'd just closed his front door when the phone rang, and in the short automatic sprint to catch the call, he couldn't shake the fancy it rang because he closed the door.

"Paranoid too," he said. "Just keeps on getting better and better." He raised the phone, trying not to imagine too much. "Hello?"

"Jeremy Sunson?" The voice sounded heavy, challenging. Perhaps an outstanding bill.

"Yes." Jeremy tried to be tough in return, but his feet still hurt from running in his leather shoes. "Who's this?"

"You took something of ours." The voice now became menacing. "We want it back."

"I'm sorry?" said Jeremy. "Who is this? You must be mistaken."

"We don't make mistakes, only accidents. And if you don't want one to happen to you, you'd better give it back."

"Give what back?" Jeremy said. "I've no idea what you're talking about."

"Then you'd better figure it out. Or …"

The syllable hung in the air, and the phone went dead. Jeremy gulped. It didn't sound like a debt collector. Should he call the police? No, they would get in touch with Dr. Smith and treat him as a crank. A prank? Yes, it must be a prank. Best he dealt with this by himself … somehow. One more thing wouldn't matter.