Ok, apologies for the "Christmas Carol" – ish bit here. Kinda necessary. I think. Lol. Oh well, it might spook someone out...

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Hello, Mr Rainey.

Who are you?

John Shooter, Mr Rainey. Don't you remember me?

No.

No, that was a nasty accident we had.

We?

Us, Mr Rainey. You and me.

Who are you?

I'm your imagination, Mr Rainey. That little stunt you pulled with the car, you was trying to forget me.

What?

Oh yes, you really don't remember. Nothing about your wife and Ted?

Who? Who's Ted?

Well, now let me see...

...Mort was walking. He was heading for a motel door, through the snow. He rammed the key into the lock, opened the door.

Blinding red mist. Anger. All he could see through the hate-ridden filter of his mind was his wife, his bloody wife and another man. In bed.

Mort heard screaming, yelling. Hard, yelling-till-you-can't-breathe-anymore yelling. It was him screaming. He felt his hand drop to his trouser pocket and his fingers curl round something cold and made of metal...

A gun, Mr Rainey.

...

Mr Rainey?

You're making this up.

No, it's all here in your memory. I'm just replaying it. There's a lot more, Mr Rainey...

...He opened the front door of his cottage. A tired, worn out man with a black hat looked him square in the eye.

"You stole my story, Mr Rainey."...

That's me. You remember me?

...

I know you do.

Leave me alone, Shooter.

Ahhh, I knew you did. All coming back to you now I imagine? Do you know what comes next?

Don't...

...He was looking down at Amy. She was lying, transfixed with terror on the ground, outside the back porch.

"MORT!!!"

"Mort's dead."

Mort fought an urge to be sick as the memory of himself lifted the spade and...

You weren't very nice, Mr Rainey.

Why did you have to come back? WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE?

Ok, Mr Rainey. Goodbye.

Mort lay, awake and shivering in his 'cell'. The last few years of his life awoke from a previously dead part of his mind, reincarnating in crystal clear perfection in his mind's eye. He tried to stop it, to think of something else. There was nothing in this hole of a room. Four walls of second hand cement and a bulk buy carpet and bed. The light was something out of one of the less select prisons.

Rather like a motel room...

"Die!"

What? Like your wife?

Mort took a deep breath. He shut his eyes and his vision was filled with black. Involuntarily, it zoomed away from him, becoming a hat. John Shooter's face appeared beneath it. He stared at Mort out of the back of his own eyelids. Mort threw his eyes open.

For a second he swore he saw Shooter looking down at him.