If this is a dream, he assured himself, I should be able to fly.

No sooner had he reached this conclusion than his panic stopped, the air rushing past him became velvety smooth, and he found himself suspended, weightless.

I should be able to fly, he repeated. In answer to his wish, his body began to move upward, and he assumed the flying posture of his earliest comic book hero, Captain Marvel.

It was dark and smoky, but he rose above it, moving effortlessly towards the horizon where the sun was about to rise. He lay without movement, flying over a Turner landscape. He had no way of knowing how long the condition lasted, and it was only when the mattress moved—his wife getting out of bed—that the dream canvas faded and the sounds of Victoria Road reached his ears.

The experience left him fragile. Analysing the sensation, he found it similar to one of his first memories. His breathing was soft and finer than usual, and he had less sense of the perimeters of his body. He lay motionless, afraid of rupturing the sensation, the passage of time monitored only by the sedate chimes of the long case clock in the ground-floor hall. His sense of smell was heightened: he could recognise the flavours of the teas being brewed in the kitchen and, when the refrigerator door was opened, the aroma of celery was strong, as though freshly pulled from earth alongside him.

He heard his family leave, felt the early rays of the sun come through the east-facing window without stirring, and even the pneumatic drill in a road nearby did not breach his silence.

When Zeno was young he saw things that weren’t there; at least, others couldn’t see them. But they were real to him, and he would chat to them in the same way he chatted to other kids. This became an embarrassment to his parents, mainly his mother, who would take young Zeno everywhere with her. When she stopped for a chat with a neighbour, he would carry on a conversation with one of his ‘chums’. Finally, she had to ask him to talk to these friends in the privacy of their own home.

The problem solved itself by the time he reached puberty, when the companions faded from his life. He did not pay much attention to the going of them, being preoccupied with more pressing matters. It was only when he matured that he realised the extent of the gift he had lost—yet his outlook remained different. For while he could no longer see into the unseen world, he knew it was there—rather in the way a person suddenly forced to wear spectacles knows that it is his vision that is impaired, not what he is looking at.

This particular morning, getting out of bed, he remembered an image from his dream, and wished he still had one of his ‘chums’ to discuss it with. It was to return to him more than once that day—a procession of figures carrying circular trays. He recalled one figure in particular, a ginger-haired youngster whose tray radiated light. In this moment he felt lonely, a loneliness no amount of company could fill. It was as if something or someone he had known and cared for had been taken during sleep, and some form of psychic surgery administered to leach the memory-bearing atoms from his mind. Sometimes an iota was revived and he experienced this hollowness of absence.