The DREAM WORLD Series
DAYDREAM REALITY

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----- Chapter 4 ------
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"An'.. an' then he just fainted dead away." Jeff finished off his story and promptly took the last bite of his waffle.

"Definitely scary." LB tossed his plate into the sink.

It was the next morning, but none of the guys had managed to sleep very well the previous night. You try getting a good night's rest after having a guy faint dead away at your feet. They had all helped him back inside and Eric had taken his friend back home, but everyone was left quite unnerved. Especially Jeff who had gotten the strangest feeling when Kez had locked eyes with him just before going under. Like the guy saw straight through his outward appearance and knew who he really was. That would have
accounted for the fainting at any rate.

"Eric said Kez had been hanging around with some 'friends' earlier today. Might have been the effects of an OD, you never know." Aaron tried to be the voice of reason, but was failing rather miserably.

Just then, the phone rang and without even thinking twice, George reached over and picked up the receiver. "'Ello? Oh, 'ey Eric. How is 'e?" The other three sat straight up when they heard who it was on the other end of the line. "Sure. We'll be ovah in a little bit." George replaced the receiver in it's cradle and turned to the others. "'E's in the hospital. Wanted to know if we could stop by." George turned to Jeff. "'E wanted tah talk tah you 'specially. Not sure why, exactly."

"We'll go, then." Jeff said simply to cover the shock of this request. "Sure he just wants ta explain himself, or somethin'."

The four headed out the door and climbed into the Monkeemobile. It was oddly, almost becoming routine by this point. Wake up, clean a little (make that a very little), listen to Mr. Babbit rant and rave, and go off to save the world in some way. Yep, they were definitely living the life of the TV Monkees.

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Kez came to slowly. Had he been dreaming everything from the night before? Maybe he had passed out from that new stuff Randy had sold him and everything from early in the afternoon onward was some kind of acid-induced vision.

He couldn't even hold onto that delusion for a second, however. He knew it had all been way too clear to be an acid trip. And after one of those he would inadvertently wake up with his head firmly planted in the ceramic seat... not on a pillow in the city hospital.

"Morning sleepy head. Glad you finally came to. I was starting to think we could let the pidgeons in to use you as a new roost." Eric's face slowly came into focus.

"You been here all night?" Kez asked blearily.

"Never left the room for one minute. Okay, so there was that point where the nurses stripped you down and changed you into that hospital gown but---"

"You're either the best friend I could ever hope for, or amazingly stupid." He sat up slowly in bed. "And did you say nurses?"

"Don't get too excited. Male version. Not female."

"Oh." Kez's shoulders slumped. Another thought crossed his mind suddenly and he felt his skin crawl. "Oooooh!"

"Are we interrupting something here? Cuz we could always come back later." Micky was leaning in the doorway with the other guys just barely visible behind him.

"Complete professionals." Eric said reassuringly before eagerly waving the Monkees in. "He just got up. Slacker's sleeping in until all hours now. Thinks he's some kind of royalty."

The four musicians filed in and took up various positions around the room. He noted with amusement Micky's immediate fascination with a metal pan that lay on the bedside table. Inverting it into his lap he started tapping out a beat to what was most likely the band's newest musical effort.

"You DO know what that thing is, doncha?" Eric was watching with just as much fascination as the bed bound Kez.

"You mean besides a metal bowl?" Micky gave him an innocent look.

"Bed pan." Kez tried hard not to laugh.

The pan clattered to the floor with a bang.

"Oh, don't worry. I don't use it. Not that bad off you know. Guess there's one in every room." Kez glanced from the pan on the floor to Micky's face.

"It's one of those standard issue bedpans." Peter quipped from his perch on a chair across the room.

Mike cleared his throat a little in expectation. Kez caught his eye and knew the Texan wanted to know why he'd asked for him in particular. The other four in the room seemed to catch the look and suddenly started to think up excuses for leaving the room.

"Well, Peter and Davy and I were gonna go---" Micky began.

"-- get something tah eat." Davy tried.

"-- buy something in the gift shop." Micky said at the same time.

"-- get lost in the corridors." Peter added, again at the exact same time.

"I'll go with 'em... wherever it is they said they're heading." Eric threw all three an amused look. Embarrassed, they shuffled out of the room after Eric.

"Well, Kez? What's up, pal?" Mike looked a bit on edge, but that could have just been Kez's imagination.

"Well, Mike. There's no easy way to say this but last night I...." He was avoiding the issue. No good. Might as well come right out with it. "Who are you?"

The man in front of him drew in a sharp breath. Had he taken him off guard? This was quite interesting.

Oh man. Jeff's head was spinning. Do I tell him the truth or keep this act up?

"Whoa. You must've hit yer head harder than ya thought." Jeff selected the later option. No need to lay all his cards on the table until he absolutely had to. "I'm Michael Nesmith, born and bred in the great state of Texas---"

"Who did I see in the mirror then?" Kez hung onto his belief obstinately.

Mirror? Wait. Those candles last night. And... oh man. Time to be straight up with this guy. Jeff just hoped he could handle it. "Alright, man. I'll be straight with you." He sighed and paused to collect his thoughts for a moment. "My name is Jeff Geddis. I'm an actor. An' the rest is, let's just say, complicated."

Kez was just about to ask him for the truth again, but something about the way Mike had just spoken killed any skepticism he felt. "Does it look like I'm going anywhere any time soon?"

"Touché." He sighed. "The gist of the thing is, where I come from the Monkees weren't just some two-bit group of strugglin' musicians, but real honest ta goodness superstars. So my friends an' I were hired to portray these guys in a TV movie. Only somehow or other we woke up an' we actually WERE the Monkees."

"Sounds like fiction." Kez glared suspiciously.

"Fanfiction, actually." Aaron was standing in the doorway. Jeff spun around. "I came back to get some change for the machine. Little did I know I'd walk in hearing our cover being completely blown." Irritation bristled in his voice.

"He knew, Aaron. I couldn't keep tryin' to fake it." Jeff rubbed his temples. And he thought the night before had been intense.

"And how exactly did he find out----" Aaron began, but was cut off by Kez.

"Aaron?" Eric stared at Micky. He could only imagine what this guy really looked like.

"Oh gee. Sorry, where are my manners? Must have forgotten them in all the secret identity dropping." He extended a hand, sarcasm still cracking in his voice. "I'm Aaron Lohr. Just to lay all the cards on the table, yes, I in fact double as Superman on the
weekends."

Kez took his hand, his eyes glazed over in shock. Well, I wanted the truth, didn't I? What was rather interesting was that this Aaron guy seemed to be pretty funny anyway, Micky or no. He smiled and was about to say something else when he was aware of yet another person walking into the room. Peter. Or whatever this guy's real name was.

"Hey LB." Jeff waved. LB looked at him as if he had lost his mind. "S'alright. He knows. He did some kind of psycho-jello thing an' found out."

"Psychedelic." Kez muttered. "And no it's not. It's a completely valid form of seeing beyond the limits of the mere human spectrum."

"Man, sounds like you've practiced that speech." LB's jaw was hanging open in surprise.

"Just once or twice." Kez was starting to feel just the slightest bit easier with this arrangement.. but only slightly. "So you're---"

"LB Fisher." He smiled in a very Peter-like fashion. "Man. Feels weird being able to say that again."

"No kidding." Aaron ran a hand through his curly locks.

"But you guys sound and act like the real deal." Kez was still in the process of completely wrapping his mind around the concept.

"When we came here everything that we had been simply putting on before became reality. The clothes, the accents, the hair." LB emphasized his point by once again brushing the long, annoying blonde bangs out of his eyes.

"So you guys are the Monkees... and aren't." The bed bound hippie felt like his brain was about to explode. This was far out. This was more than far out. "And you have no idea how you got here?"

"None." The last of the four jumped into the conversation as he walked in the doorway. Davy made his way over to Kez's bedside. "George Stanchev." He too looked relieved to be able to use his real name again.

Kez was about to ask yet another slew of questions when he became aware of Eric standing in the doorway. Everyone else in the room stopped dead in their tracks as they realized the same thing.

"Hey guys."

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"Eric.. We've got something to tell you---" Kez began and was shocked to promptly find Micky- no, Aaron's hand- clamped over his mouth, blocking the remainder of his sentence.

Jeff jumped into action. All four had thought the same thing. No need to spread the word around about their true identities any farther than it had already gone. If they kept blabbing the truth to every person who happened to walk through the door, they would find themselves locked up in a mental institution, not on their way home. And home was still foremost in their minds. "We... uhm, we wanted ta tell ya that.... Kez here's all set to be checked out now, then, yeah."

Eric shrugged. "Cool, Mike. So I'll met you downstairs?"

"YES!" Aaron, LB, George and Jeff all said in unison.

Once Eric had walked out of the room again and closed the door behind him, Kez turned to the four musicians in front of him. "Care to explain to me why we suddenly can't tell my best friend what's going on here?"

"We couldn't risk spreading the truth any farther than it's already gone." Aaron tried his best to explain.

"Probably wouldn't 'ave told you eithah, 'cept you found out on yah own." George flopped down in the chair next to Kez's bed. Physically he might have looked fine, but mentally he was in a state of near collapse. As the days wore on, it was taking a terribly high toll on all of them to keep the act up. Sometimes he didn't know where Davy Jones ended and George Stanchev began.

"He IS gonna find out that I'm not leaving today, you know." Kez readjusted one of the pillows behind his head.

"Oh. Actually, I wasn't lyin' 'bout that part." Jeff managed a weak smile. "Ran into a nurse on the way back from the lobby. You're all set to be discharged."

"Thank God." Kez tossed the hospital blanket off and jumped to his feet. The floor immediately rocked beneath him, and he very nearly collapsed again. In fact, the only thing that saved him from a spill on the floor and a longer hospital stay as a result of a broken hip or whatever else, was the sudden support from four separate pairs of arms.

"Monkees to the rescue." Aaron said and grinning, pushed Kez back onto his feet.

"Thanks, Micky." Kez breathed a sigh of relief and waited a beat before he realized what he said. "I, I meant--"

If Aaron was embarrassed, he gave no indication of it. Heck, that's who he looked like and for all intents and purposes was for the time being, right? "It's alright, no harm done."

"This is gonna take a little more getting used to than I thought." Kez eased himself into a sitting position and began searching for his shoes.

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The VH1 movie "Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story" is copywrite Pebblehut Productions. I am in no way affiliated with the guys who played the Monkees (Aaron Lohr, LB Fisher, George Stanchev, and Jeff Geddis) in this movie. I just wrote this out of admiration for the guys and the incredible job done on the movie. If you don't agree with my interpretation of one of the actors or one of them happens to actually READ this... I'm simply guessing about what they're (you're) really like. No offense is intended! This fanfic is copywrite Random Fandom. If you would like to link Random Fandom on your own website, be my guest!