"Dreams are Sacred" is a science fiction short story by British writer Peter Phillips.
It is an early example of what later came to be called a "virtual reality" story, in which one person enters a dream or hallucination that is being experienced by another.
Early in his childhood, he was cured of frequent nightmares by being taught how to shoot a Colt 45 revolver on the farm where he lived.
Entering the dream, Parnell finds himself dressed in ordinary clothes, standing in a hot desert under two suns, facing Craswell who has imagined himself into the hero role, calling himself "Multan".
Craswell announces that they must make a long journey to the fortress of Garor, so Parnell conjures up a New York taxicab, along with the same driver who took him to Blakiston's lab.
After a short trip the driver tries to overcharge them, so Parnell tells him to "Go to Hell" and has the desert sand swallow up the taxi.
Finally they encounter the evil sorceress Garor, who is a beauty imagined in such detail that Parnell concludes she must be based on somebody real.
At this point Parnell begins to feel genuine fear, but he quickly remembers his childhood and produces the gun, with which he kills the beast.
[1] Out of the Unknown featured similar techniques, settings and costumes to other BBC sci-fi productions of the time.