5 December

The roof opened to the night sky. The moon appeared where it ought not to be. Mrs. Abercrombie fell shrieking between Jeremy and a grenade when the floor she'd thumped on ceased to exist. She disappeared in a cloud of vapour. Red screamed in frustration and faded from view as Jeremy …

Jeremy jolted up, and smashed his shoulder on the bedside table. His arm throbbed in pain and he groaned to himself. "The pain in your shoulder means you just missed your head."

The angry buzzing—on the table, not his shoulder—told him it was 5:45 a.m. on the fifth of December. He didn't want to open his eyes. The dreams, visions, hallucinations—whatever you want to call them—became more vivid every day. Truth be told, the fear that one day he would wake up and find them real terrified him.

He opened his eyes and glanced around. Saw his room as it should be. No missing roof, no futuristic weapons in evidence. And he knew now that when he checked, the living room would also be perfect.

Fantastic. Dr. Smith would make a feast of this later in the day—no doubt give him the full nine yards of medicine. Or a straightjacket. Perhaps he was cracking up.

***

"And nothing was broken or moved?" Dr. Smith tapped the notebook with an embossed pen. "Nothing stolen?"

"No," Jeremy said, uncomfortable at just being in the shrink's office, let alone answering difficult questions from the proverbial leather couch. "Though I couldn't find my wallet this morning."

Dr. Smith waved the objection away, as if housebreakers wouldn't settle for a wallet. Jeremy agreed: the sole contents of his wallet were twenty dollars in change and a bank card—useless to any petty crook. He didn't even have a credit card because of all the fraud reported in the newspapers. But it wasn't as though he didn't have money—ten years of savings languished in his bank account, courtesy of a single life—which must be useful for something. And all kinds of gadgets littered his apartment.

Maybe that's what they were after. "Do you think that's what happened? Someone drugged me and broke into my apartment, but were interrupted before they stole anything?"

Dr. Smith rested his elbow on his notepad and smiled with a patient air. "That's quite a leap for a simple question about whether anything is misplaced, don't you think?"

"So you think I'm crazy?" Jeremy said in a small voice.

"Of course not," replied Dr. Smith with a paternal smile. "You've experienced a very distressing episode. One you do not understand. Many explanations exist for such an episode—most simple—and my role is to help you work out the truth for yourself."

"So I'm not crazy?" Jeremy asked with renewed hope.

"Mr Sunson," Dr. Smith replied, with even more patience if possible, "that's a pejorative term, and in the end meaningless. Rarely can an individual be considered with a sufficient and all-encompassing disorder that general improvement cannot be achieved within the near term."

"So … I'm not cracking up?"

Dr. Smith looked as if he wanted to say or do something but restrained himself. "No," he said.

"That's a relief." A weight dropped from Jeremy's shoulders. "So I can forget all about it and go home?"

Dr. Smith's manicured finger pushed the violet turtle-shell glasses further up the bridge of his thin nose. "You could," he said in a practiced cadence, "but given your anxiety of late, this could be connected. There may even be a relationship to a disturbing event from your childhood. One buried deep within your psyche and crying for release. We need to explore further."

***

6 December

The blank white ceiling of his bedroom greeted Jeremy. Thuds told him the ghosts rolled around his living room again. Dr. Smith had said they couldn't be real—that he must be hallucinating or dreaming. He didn't like the sound of hallucinating—but dreaming? Yes—this must be a dream.

Jeremy let his breath out in a rush. "Dreaming," he said, now convinced. "Not cracking up. That's a relief."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Curious, he scanned his room, wondering what a dream looked like. But he didn't find any vibrant colours or strange distortions of reality. Just his bedroom. The dim yellow glow through his bedroom window told him he at least dreamed in colour—and not just in black and white; though that would at least lend atmosphere.

He wondered if his dreams were always so normal and … boring. Perhaps that's why he never remembered them.

The crashes increased in volume. He decided, with nothing better to do, he might watch the two combatants.

Jeremy stepped into the hallway in his fluffy slippers and made a startling discovery. He'd decided to come here. Decided—in a dream. Perhaps he could control his environment like one of those lucid dreams?

He stared at his less than salubrious slippers. He smiled, imagined himself in a suit and waited for it to appear.

Several moments later he still waited.

Perhaps it needed voice activation—like in the movies? "Suit," he said. "Please?"

The magic word didn't work either.

He shrugged. Either the dream did not hold lucid qualities, or he hadn't worked out how to control it yet. No matter. He still decided his actions, and he wanted to see the combat. With every step he became more excited.

He hesitated at the sliding door, unable to believe how keyed up he'd become. A futuristic melee! Forget boring—this would be amazing. He remembered being scared before, having his palms sweat as he grasped the baseball bat and walked into danger. What a fool he'd been! It was all his imagination—all a dream—and now he would experience an action movie from any perspective he wanted.

The door handle seemed so solid in his hand. He flicked the door open and closed a few times, marvelling at the interplay of sensation and sound. With the door closed, he caught the occasional roar of a car on the street below him, the creak of the water pipes above as Mrs. Abercrombie went to the toilet and then banged on the floor because of the noise.

Jeremy agreed with her. The thuds and bangs from the other side of the door now overcame any soundproofing. Much too loud. This was incredible, his imagination amazing: talk about surround sound!

Jeremy emptied his lungs and braced himself for the sight he would behold. He didn't want to get over-excited in case that interrupted the dream. He slid the door open and stared through the crack. There they danced again—the Bronze and the Red. Their armour glinted in the light as they leapt over the couch, metal fists punching through the wall. Where did he get the inspiration for two such combatants? He'd melded the struggle of Roman gladiators in the Colosseum with technologically advanced assassins. Even The End of Hope, where the hero dies after battling an assault force bent on killing his children, had nothing on this.

"I should write a book," Jeremy said in awe of himself. "To think I've been spending all my days looking at tax returns, when at night I've been creating this!"

He strode into the room, confident now that the dream wouldn't end. Red and Bronze remained locked in combat—punching and kicking and head-butting for all their worth, using moves Jeremy couldn't remember even seeing, let alone knew the name for.

They didn't seem to be aware of his presence—well, they were obviously aware of his presence, as Bronze rolled in front of Jeremy and blocked a bullet with a wave of his arm—but it didn't interrupt the flow of the battle.

Then again, maybe it did. For Red appeared to change tactics. He stepped back and strode round the furniture in a semi-circle—pacing backwards and forwards with Jeremy at the apex. Bronze moved little in response, balancing on the balls of his feet, but always standing between Jeremy and Red.

The Red addressed the Bronze with a sneer, as he paced up and back. "You must be Ultimo."

Ultimo didn't respond. Jeremy considered it a funny name for Bronze, but did it matter? The pressure between the two built to a crisis, the interlude certain to be soon broken with explosive action. Unable to see Red's eyes through the helmet, Jeremy knew they darted all around, seeking an advantage. His imagination stunned him; he wouldn't have even invented such a detail with conscious thought.

The Red tried to distract Ultimo again. "You can't win—the fool is there behind you, gaping at us like a snivelling schoolboy."

Too tensed to react to Red's taunts, inside Jeremy cringed: why would his own imagination insult him like that? But Ultimo said nothing, though his bronze hand snaked behind his back—out of Red's sight—and removed a small cylinder from the belt. Jeremy tried not to focus on Ultimo's movements—he didn't want to give the game away.

"Look at him, sitting there like a bug waiting to be squashed!" Red pointed at Jeremy, but Ultimo didn't respond to the ploy, though it would have been natural to do so. "And you have to protect his worthless life. I don't even have to kill you. Why not stand aside, and let this end as it must? You can't hope to defeat me."

"As may be." Ultimo replied in a calm, unhurried tone, letting his free hand rest on his hip, beside a blaster. "But if I stand aside, I'll die anyway."

Red nodded. "I'd forgotten that. But dying's better than failing."

Jeremy didn't know what that meant, but he stiffened as he noticed Ultimo's hand tighten around the cylinder.

"Not for me, it isn't," replied Ultimo, clenched fist betraying the calm voice. "And I wouldn't expect you to—"

Ultimo didn't finish the sentence. The way Jeremy saw it, Ultimo just exploded into action. Ultimo dived forward, lobbing the cylinder into the air—but aimed at Jeremy's feet! The blaster moved of its own accord into Ultimo's hand, spitting multiple times at the space Red occupied but a moment ago.

The Red brought a shimmering fist in front of his torso, which stopped Ultimo's shots cold—and with calm menace followed Ultimo's diving form. Projectiles tore up the carpet, missing Ultimo by a hair's breadth.

Ultimo shoulder-rolled, taking strategic shots at Red. Jeremy cheered in silence as one broke through the shield and dented the armour of Red's boot. Red grunted in pain, but never stopped firing as Ultimo rolled once more towards the wall—or rather, the three-quarter solid glass window.

Then, defying explanation, Ultimo smashed through the window—glass exploding onto the street below—and disappeared from sight.