‘DEAN COLA,’ meows The Great Catsby. I’m sure I locked him out. How did he get back in? Catsby, get out of here! Too late. He is the same colour as the smoke filling the room, and he is disappearing. A big hand punches through the stained-glass Jesus in the door, thousands of fragments shatter to the floor. The hand feels for the deadlock on the inside. The police? The fire brigade? Christos? Smoke eddies into my nose, my mouth, my lungs.

I woke up coughing. The dream had been so vivid — the old kitchen back home at Broken River Road, the stained-glass door that for a while I’d believed was Jesus. My beloved cat had died in the fire; I’d killed him instead of myself.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. The room spun, the bed swashed and buckled like a boat on rough sea, and I had to lie back down. Nausea gripped my stomach; I rolled over, drew my knees to my chest, and moaned into the pillow.

I was down to half-tablets every third day now. The serotonin party in my brain was winding down, the last stragglers staggering into their transporters and heading off, leaving massive wreckage for the dopamine to kick around.

The truck mows down pedestrians like a computer game, and then gobbles up the white lines on the highway that stretches ahead forever. The driver proffers a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. It’s shadowy in the cabin; I can’t see his face.

‘Where we heading, Dad?’ I light up and suck in smoke; it tastes like chocolate and swirls like cocoa mist deep into my lungs.

‘The river,’ he says.

‘What for?’

‘Tea.’ He flicks his cigarette butt out the window. In the rear-view mirror, I see it burn and take the form of a giant human figure that sets fire to everything in our wake.

‘Sid?’

I heard the fan start, smelled brown, and felt the threat of vomit. Christos was many shades of brown: from his tobacco and leathery aftershave to the residue of smoke in his hair.

‘Sid. Sid!’ He touched my shoulder.

‘Stop it, Chris. I don’t feel well.’

The bed dipped as he sat on it. ‘Bit depressed?’

‘Just a bug.’

‘Not going to work today?’

I shook my head, eyes closed, face against the pillow.

‘I’ll take a carer’s day off.’

‘No. Please, I just need quiet and sleep.’

‘It’s all right. Negative symptoms are to be expected sometimes. All normal.’

Normal!

He stroked my hair. ‘Want some toast?’

I groaned.

‘I’ll see if I can come home at lunchtime.’

I felt the bed spring back, heard him towel his hair and take clothes from the wardrobe. ‘Can you turn off the light and fan, please?’

A bird, holding a caterpillar in its beak, flies in through the window. It lands on my naked belly, looks at me with human eyes, tick-tocks its head, and drops the caterpillar. The caterpillar grows bigger as it digs a hole and burrows through my flesh. It finds my stomach and builds a cocoon that squeezes up against my heart. Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub. Dean Cola, Dean Cola, Dean Cola.

The fucking fan. Christos must have turned it down instead of off. The sound hurt my head. I stumbled across the room — the ground undulating beneath my feet, my legs threatening to collapse — and smacked the switch.

The short distance to the bathroom was a mirage. I curled my toes in the shifting sands of the carpet and steadied myself against the wall as I inched forward. I had to stop for a rest on the desert-floor, slipping in and out of lucid dreams again.

Sitting on the toilet, I bent forward and held my head in my hands. I’d been constipated since the hospital, but now it all exploded out.

I wanted to clean the toilet and have a shower but knew I couldn’t stand up for that long. I made the journey back to bed. The room smelled grey — of sweat and fear and nightmares. The white sheet was streaked with blood. Every part of me vibrated like the inside of a just-rung bell. Stifling a scream, I looked down and realised what had happened.

I found a sanitary pad in my handbag, stuck it to a pair of fresh underpants, and put on my Supergirl shortie-pyjamas. Attempting to change the bed linen was exhausting; I got as far as peeling off the bottom sheet and protector before collapsing on the bare mattress.

I watched myself from above, where I was levitating on the ceiling. It wasn’t I on the bed anymore. It was She.

Gareth Maher and some other boys from back home stand beside the bed, watching her bleed onto the white sheet. ‘He only said to scare her,’ one of them says.

She wormed her finger along the grooves of the mattress, lost it in the diamond pattern. She reached towards the bloodstained sheet. Reached over the side of the bed.

Reaches into the fire for Dean Cola.

Dean Cola, Dean Cola, said the fan. But the fan was off.