Making Sense of Scents (Saturday Writing Essentials)

Challenge:

Write the last (few) paragraphs or stanzas of a story or poem that ends with the protagonist waking from a dream. Then, add dialogue or exposition (or a combination) that explains something in the plot that required the whole thing to be a dream.

Making Sense of Scents
©Ruth Cox

The sink sat half-cocked ready to laugh at me as I fumbled for good ole Maxwell, then closed the door, which promptly fell off its own hinges. Oh, hell. Another job for the Fixer-Upper Man.

I turned the hot water on, rinsed the pot for pleasure, gave the grounds a good measure, switched to cold, and filled 'er up to the line as told before stumbling back to the bed.

No gurgling? No spitter-sputtering? I found myself headed for the kitchen. Empty. Nothing. Not a scent of Maxwell to be had.

"Holy crap! The sink's intact and the coffee's made!" Had I gone mad? Or had the house gone bad?

"What's that you say, Desa?" There he stood in the doorway -- bare of his attire, eyes afire. Had he done just as she had bade?

"Oh, Sire," whispered the maid. As she clicked the ole timer to Off, she distinctly remembered Master telling her to prepare the pot the evening before her dream of a tryst.

She wistfully wanders the house in search of the scent she remembers. Forevermore.