"Speech Sounds" is a science fiction short story by American writer Octavia E. Butler.

[2] The world has been decimated by a mysterious pandemic: the survivors have reported intellectual deficits and can no longer speak, understand speech, or read.

People have also become prone to violence triggered by resentment of their own impairments and harbor jealousy toward the very few who are still able to speak and who, therefore, hide this ability.

Valerie Rye lives in Los Angeles; the disease has killed her parents, husband, sister, and children.

Rye initially refuses for fear of the weapon and baffled by the uniform, knowing full well that the police have long been disbanded.

With difficulty, having lost the ability to read and write and, therefore, to interpret the road map, Rye manages to make Obsidian understand that she wants to go towards Pasadena.

[4] The entire story is guided by gestures, from the mock throwing of punches between the men on the bus to Obsidian's gentle touch with Rye in the car.

The male passengers on the bus, with obvious lesser abilities, do mostly obscene gestures in the first half of the story, a lot of which now represent the new society's versions of curse words.

[5] Any sense of normalcy and protection has diminished; any sort of transportation can be used as weapons (hence the lack of cars and Rye's surprise when a bus turned up), and organizations such as the LAPD have ceased to exist.