Failure to Communicate

A few hours into her rem cycle, Norah tossed and turned in her dream. It started with she and her husband sitting across the dinner table.

“Carol told me we can get together sometime next week. Can you talk to Bob and make arrangements when you golf today?” Norah asked.

He responded in a mumble which seemed affirmative.

Then she’s whisked to an old vaudeville stage. The placard on the easel said “Mumble and Co.” and she and her husband are dressed in matching suits with bowler hats.

“Did you talk to Bob?” she said.

“About what?” he said.

“Going out?” she said.

“Where?” he said.

“You were supposed to make the arrangements?” she said.

“With who?” he said.

“With Bob,” she said.

“For What?” he said.

She released a heavy sigh as the audience responded with booming laughter and applause at the absurdity.

Then Norah is taken to a new scene, her living room, as she and her husband watch a TV crime drama.

“Who do you think did it?” Norah asked.

Silence.

“I’m betting on the husband. He seems guilty,” Norah responded to herself.

Silence.

“That actor seems familiar, doesn’t she?”

Silence.

“I’ll look her up on IMDB,” Norah said.

Silence.

Then the scene changed and she saw a operating room and noted herself in surgical garb with her husband on the table.

“What’s going on here?” she asked, concerned.

“We’re giving him a brain transplant,” the surgeon explained. “He’s lost his attention and memory.”

And as soon as she understood what was going on, she was shown another familiar scene, when she and her husband were driving in their car the day before.

“I need to go to that place,” he said.

“What place?” Norah asked.

“You know, the place with the things,” he strongly asserted.

“What things?” Norah asked shaking her head.

“You know,” he shouted.

Then before she knew it, she was in a prison yard. She was the guard and her husband was in shackles. The warden wacked him with a nightstick.

“Do you understand the words that are coming from my mouth,” the warden said in a sadistic southern drawl.

Her husband was silent.

“If you don’t respond to me, how do I know you heard or understood me,” the warden shouted and knocked him to his knees.

Her husband mumbled.

“I can’t understand what you said. Use words,” the warden screamed and knocked him on the head with the nightstick.

“What words?”

“Now, I don’t appreciate your tone, funny man. That’s gonna cost you.” He slapped his back with the nightstick pushing her husband’s body to the ground.

 “You see here. What we have here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach.”

Norah woke up abruptly sitting straight up. Wiping her eyes, she shook herself awake.

“That was a weird dream,” she said, answered by her husband’s indiscernible mumbles. 

“A likely response,” she smiled sarcastically.

“This is my life,” she sighed.

As she couldn’t get back to sleep, she picked up her book on the nightstand. “Men are from Venus and Women are from Mars,” Chapter 5, Translations.

(c) Suzanne Rudd Hamilton 2023