Weird, weird, weird, weird dream

I sat at a table outside a restaurant. A woman I knew hurried to the table when seeing me. She sat and opened a newspaper.

“I just found out the strangest thing,” she said.

I looked at the newspaper. Prominently displayed was a picture of a woman in a blue bikini. A blue bikini bottom, that is, the picture showing the woman from her navel to her upper thighs.

Before I could read the cutline, my friend said, “That’s mine!”

I remembered her telling me weeks before that she had been kidnapped, put under by a chemical. When she woke up, the part of her that was in the newspaper picture was missing.

“And now I’ve found it!” she said, rather proudly. She sat back in the chair. From her tone of voice (and the almost magical understanding that often occurs in dreams), I knew the picture was not with a story on her missing parts, but a contest of attractive stomachs in bikinis. In the contest was the woman who now had my friend’s parts.

My friend said, “I spoke with my plastic surgeon, and he said he can put everything back together as soon as I get my parts back.”

I woke up. I wondered: What did the kidnappers use for replacement of what they took? Stainless steel? Titanium? Sixty years ago, science fiction writers might have said chrome. I’ll never know.