I sat at the table in my empty office. The only light in the room was the small desk lamp that my dad gave me before he died. It didn’t deserve to be in my office; it was meant to be at the desk of a detective’s decades ago. I wish I had made him proud.

I scratched words onto the paper in front of me. Nothing good enough for me though, so I crumpled the page up and threw it into the pile of papers where a garbage can should have been.

I looked at the lamp on my desk and began writing a cop thriller. I was about to crumple the page when I looked up from the paper and was suddenly in the passenger seat of a squad car. I was wearing a police uniform and could hear an alarm going off. A guy wearing the same uniform tapped the window to the squad car, he looked familiar.

“Mike, what are you waiting for?” he said.

I got out of the car and drew my pistol. I looked up the steps to a grandiose bank with marble pillars.

“Let’s go in,” I said.

We ran in and saw three thugs with masks. They opened fire and we didn’t hesitate to return. They dropped.

“Good job, bud,” my partner said. Only my dad ever called me bud.

I stopped myself from crumpling the paper. I knew what I was going to write.