For years, Sheila kept a book of dreams. She’d read somewhere it could help with emotional well-being. She dreamt she was attaching wires to a dead rabbit in a crowded room where nobody seemed to notice she was naked. And though in the dream she knew it wasn’t normal, she didn’t seem too bothered by it. What was the significance? Maybe that people didn’t care what she wore?
That was weeks ago. Lately, she’d wake up and forget what she’d been dreaming. Normally, it wasn’t a big deal. What was different now was that her friend Tom, who also kept a dream journal, had recently died—just six weeks after noticing he couldn’t remember his dreams. Other symptoms followed in rapid succession. He had trouble pronouncing words, then couldn’t remember what he wanted to say. He thought he was having a stroke. The doctors said he had Creutzfeldt-Jakob, bovine spongiform, mad cow disease. His brain was disintegrating. He was unconscious the last time she saw him. Two days later, his friends were holding his hands when he died.
But people were always forgetting dreams. Some never remembered them. There were always other things to think about. Her job, for example. She wasn’t too thrilled about it anymore. She’d done it long enough to get good at it, but there was nowhere to go. It was getting old—she was getting old.
Last week, her supervisor, Jan, called her out in front of the whole department for doing something she always did whenever customers asked: “What do you mean, you cancelled the backorder? You could’ve promised they’d get it tomorrow. Do you know what that does to end-of-month?” Sheila sat there and said, a little too loudly, “I’m giving my notice.” Then, under her breath—but not so far under that it couldn’t be heard—she added, “So fuck end-of-month.” Jan gave her a tired look, as if to say, “Really?” And that was it. She hadn’t realised she could talk like that and get away with it.
“I’ve changed my mind. Maybe I’ll stick around and make a pain in the arse of myself,” she said at lunch. They hadn’t hired her replacement, and she still hadn’t put in for her pension. It occurred to her that she wasn’t remembering her dreams because waking life, for the first time in forever, was better than a dream.
Bardo swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and said they wouldn’t let her out of her notice. “They’ll make you quit. Besides, I’m the pain in the arse in this department.” He was right about that. Only, rather than ruffle the boss’s feathers, he liked to stick it to his friends.
“Jeez, Bardo, I’m just trying to have a bit of fun. Anyway, I haven’t put anything in writing yet.”
“Right. Don’t leave without saying goodbye.”
He gave her his patented frowny smile and went off to the gents’. She looked around at the lunchtime regulars. What losers we are, she thought. She checked her phone. This new app was supposed to make it self-charging, but it was still only at ten percent.
After work, she went to the shop and excused her way into the back to check out the vat where frogs were supposed to do something that was supposed to go out to a mobile tower and supercharge everybody’s phones. No one had explained it to her; she’d just assumed that’s how it worked. She couldn’t see any frogs. Maybe they’d dissolved in the brine. It made her think of what had happened to Tom. It made her want to go back to charging her phone the old way.
She bought a loaf of rye bread and a half-litre of milk so she wouldn’t feel awkward leaving empty-handed. On the way out, she ran into her brother-in-law Jim, as effusive as ever, waving his arms and greeting her a little too loudly. It occurred to her that his extroversion masked insecurity the same way her self-deprecation covered up a superior attitude. She pondered this as she walked home. She also had the odd sensation that during their hug, he’d slipped something into her coat pocket. Her hands were full, or she’d have checked.
It was a tightly rolled spliff. “Why?” she said. “He knows I don’t smoke.” She left it in her pocket and took off her coat. She didn’t bother checking her phone. She had a headache—she had one every week. The doctor said it was stress. She knew it was, but she hated headaches. They were another reason she wanted to quit. She’d hoped they’d stop when she stopped giving a shit. Maybe she’d go through with it after all.
DoubleSpeak 