Talk to Me (prompt: character having a gut feeling they cannot explain)

Talk to Me

She wakes, and dread seeps back into her like a tide, cold and inevitable.

Please talk to me, she thinks. Let it be today.

Across the bedroom, the window sill glows morning-grey beneath the shudder, and the room is dark and cool and smells vaguely of disinfectant. She must have cleaned for him; he loves a clean place, or rather he loves watching her clean: naked cleaning they call it. There’s also naked dinner, naked TV (though never during his gameshows), and on one notable occasion in the driveway of an Airbnb in Lake Tahoe, naked car washing.

They almost always lead to love-making, these events. Had she rinsed dinner plates, or tossed his stained coveralls into the washing machine with nothing on – save an apron – and he’d enveloped her and they’d been together?

She can’t remember. All has become a blur since he stopped talking to her.

She turns towards him under the thin blanket. She’s cold, freezing in fact. She will get them the best blanket money can buy, she thinks, one they will never want to come out from under, and then nestles timidly into his back.

It’s a broad back, a rugby player’s (former), one she never hesitated to hop onto during the one hundred and eighty seconds between classes in high school, during college where he’d received an athletic scholarship and she’d unhesitatingly followed, or when they closed on their home and he was literally being handed the key to the front door and she was out-of-her-mind happy.

He stirs but does not move away. A good sign. What’s wrong? She whispers into the nape of his neck. And this time he does react: “Maa … ehhh,” he stammers. It’s hollow and pained and seems to come from a million miles away.  

Nightmares, so many lately. 

It’s ok. It’s ok.  

She can’t remember the last time he spoke to her. And he’s such a talker, especially after a drink or two. A small memory unfolds, bright and vivid: the two of them driving the Hana Highway in some ridiculously expensive rental, top down, sun and wind and hair everywhere; she with an un-corked bottle of red from the winery atop the mountain secreted in a brown paper bag; him grinning, hand high on her tanned thigh, saying: oh, yeah, that’ll throw the cops WAY off.

She recalls the fullness of his voice, its tenor, his monologues, his contagious laugh, his pausing of CNN or FOX and contesting what is being posited and then turning and providing unsolicited counterpoints, elucidations, extrapolations, and her complete acceptance because in those moments she is awash in his true – if not closeted – intellectual shine.   

She’s sure her husband of two joyous years is the only automobile mechanic alive who reads two books a week, watches Jeopardy, America Says, Chain Reaction, and Idiot Test (his newest favorite) with near fanatic intensity … and who actually incorporated the word anti-establishmentarianism into the first ever conversation with her asshole parents and made it not awkward. 

God, how she loves him.

She think-shouts: So talk to me now, damn it!

Tears come. They burn like ice water in her eyes and on her cheeks. She sits up gingerly, careful not to wake him (always a concern, this), and wipes her face. Well, maybe that’s part of this mess: my constant deference to him.

And on the heels of that: Christ, I’m becoming my mother.

But that wasn't entirely true, or fair, she admits to herself in the dark. Barbara Montgomery feared Donald Montgomery, and with cause. And so did she all the way up to his thunderclap heart attack in a CVS parking lot that put an abrupt, vacuous end to the black-happy bullshit. No, her mother couldn’t help herself, not then, not without the lurking reprisals that keep one wide awake at night.

So, No, she doesn’t fear this man next to her, not that way; he’d no sooner hurt her than he would his own mother, or over-achieving younger sister, for that matter. But this hasty shutting off to her, as if she no longer existed, was somehow worse, wasn’t it?

Hadn’t she read an article recently in one of those women’s interest mags – Elle or Marie Claire – that a man who stops communicating is a man who, at the bottom of things, wants out? 

Oh, Dear God. Please no. No one deserves this. No one. We love each other. Of course we do.

Then STOP this black-happy-you-know-what!

She gets out of bed then, and not like some ninny, either: she tosses the feeble coverlet aside, hops out, stands at the foot of the bed, and crosses her arms.

Robert Dovin, she says to the huddled figure, I just pressed the pause button, and you’d better start explaining yourself. Talk to me. Tell me what the matter is – Tell me what’s happened!  

Her voice is strident and anomalous in the quiet, dim room.

I won’t put up with this any longer, Robert. Robert? ROBERT!

There is a tinny popping sound, and she is suddenly back-lit from what she intuits are the shudders somehow unhinging themselves from across the room. Her shadow is abrupt and wraith-like over his bound figure, causing her to start.

Something hisses behind her.

She spins. Two things: the big window is still very much shuddered (when did they replace shudders with drapes?), and a small, flat-screen TV glows brightly high on the opposite wall. Snow, just TV snow. Black lines flicker and disappear, flicker and disappear.

THIS IS KBAT! The television suddenly blurts out, and she yips in fright. NEWS THAT’S NEW TO YOU! An up-tempo, no-nonsense melody fills the room, and she’s sure she will hear the leathery voice of Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather break in.

The snow fades. A newswoman in a sleeveless, powder-blue top and modeled hair materializes behind a sleek, glass desk. She is also no-nonsense, this reporter (anchor?), but there’s more to her, something solemn and, what, impending?

WE COME TO YOU TONIGHT WITH TRAGIC NEWS FROM THE BEAUTIFUL ISLAND OF MAUI IN THE HAWAIIAN ARCHIPELAGO --

“Maa … geee.”

For the third time in as many minutes, breath catches in her throat. She turns and sees her husband staring up at her. Under the sallow shelf of his brow, his eyes are bloodshot marbles in the quicksilver light. 

Bobby! Yes, it’s me, sweetie, Maggie. I love you so much – so, so much. Talk to me, sweetie. I lov –

A HORRENDOUS SINGLE-CAR ACCIDENT ON THE OTHERWISE TRANQUIL AND HISTORIC ROAD TO HANA --

“Noo … Maaggg … I-I-sorrryyy …”

Bobby, Luv, no, please don’t be. I thought you were mad at me, that I’d done something –

THE RENTED FERRARI 308 GTS, POPULARIZED BY THE 80’s ERA TV CRIME SERIES, MAGNUM P.I., CAREENED SIXTY FEET DOWN AN EMBANKMENT INTO ONE OF THE PICTURESQUE POOLS THAT ARE A TOURIST --

“Noo … ahh-gawd … MAGGGG – “

Without warning, her body heaves involuntarily and a squelching, gargling sound comes from deep within her. She coughs, wretches, and vomits up something long and mossy and cold. It hangs from her mouth like an impossible black tongue. Gagging, she pulls and pulls and pulls, but it is slimy and neverending, and she is working hand over hand now like a minstrel clown in a nightmare story, a Bradbury story, something wicked, something wicked, something …

AT THIS TIME AUTHORITIES BELIEVE ALCOHOL MAY HAVE PLAYED A ROLE IN THE ILL-FATED ROADTRIP --

She staggers back against the wall. A dripping swamp reed hangs from her hand like a dead snake. She looks at it unbelievingly, then to her husband, who she realizes with horrifying suddenness is not looking at her at all, but at the TV screen above her.

Oh, dear God, was he ever looking at me?

Weakly, wincing in bright, clear pain, and never taking his eyes off the screen, Robert Dovin props himself shakily on one elbow. And now she can see a neck brace under his chin, one twisted leg enclosed in a cage with rods penetrating purple skin … and bandages, bandages everywhere the color of rust.

Feebly, his swollen lips part. Wires crisscross fragmented teeth: “Ohhh … Maageee … peeez-no … donn-be-gon … I-luff … alllmyfall … done-be-dea –.”

Before he can finish, her mouth snaps open, and a torrent of gritty, ice-cold water jets forth, gallons upon gallons, spanning the room, splashing up against the large door there with its industrial hinges and square-framed window and settling into shimmery pools on the pea-green linoleum floor.

OFFICIALS REPORT TWO OCCUPANTS WERE IN THE VEHICLE AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT, BUT, TRAGICALLY, ONLY ONE SURVIVED –

Of course it’s linoleum, she thinks detachedly, and we never replaced the shutters, either. And that blanket’s an ineffectual piece of crap because …

AN AUTOMOBILE MECHANIC FROM CALIFORNIA ON VACATION WITH –

… we’re not at home at all. We’re in a hospital room on an island in the Central Pacific. Or at least half of us are.

THE PASSENGER, WHO REMAINS UNIDENTIFIED AT THIS TIME, BUT IS BELIEVED TO BE THE SPOUSE OF THE DRIVER, DID NOT SURVIVE.

BACK TO YOU, BOB.

The last thing that occurs to her as that ethereal part begins its mystical undoing, and Robert Dovin – son to Linda and Peter, brother to Dr. Cassandra McFadden, DO, and father to no one – cries his wife’s name through his ruined mouth, is that her husband is, finally, talking to her again. 

END

(Hi Reedsy! I was a winner in 2018, if memory serves, with my story, Return December. I've been busy but so glad to be posting again. Thanks for the opportunity! -- Scott)