National Novel Writing Month Contest Entry: The Sound of the Midnight Knocking

Dave Rampill threw a suitcase full of clothes, an Atlanta Braves canvas bag full of bulging manila envelopes and half-filled stencil notebooks-along with his laptop computer-into his car and prepared to say au reservoir forever to Atlanta, Georgia. A gleaming southern Emerald City that now seemed as beautiful and welcoming to him as that tornado that had carried Dorothy Gale out of Kansas in the first place. The tornado that was whisking him away was much rougher. It didn't sound anything like a freight train.

More like the freaking Space Shuttle.

He still had four months left on the lease and was kissing off a $150 cleaning deposit. Everything else that could be sold had been pawned: Furniture, 27 inch TV, VCR, DVD player and Bose stereo equipment, silverware and linens, books and records. Anything that would just weigh him down. Things that he could easily enough replace. Somewhere else. Whatever podunk inconspicuous town that crazy twister placed him down in.

All in all, he had to figure, he was getting away pretty cheap.

He looked at the digital clock glowing on the matte black face on his car stereo. 3:33 in the morning. All those threes. Heck, it also happened to be the third month of the year. Threes were supposed to signify change, weren't they? Or was it luck? He wasn't picky. After all, he could do with a busload of both.

Badly.

Feeling very much like Janet Leigh in Psycho-with the phenomenonally important exception that he was running away from one instead of toward one-Dave hopped onto I-85 and headed north. Seeing as how it was so late and there weren't many cars on the road he came speeding down the entrance lane doing 75, the '65 Mustang rattling around him, hoping he was noticed.

Hoping he stood out.

Because he had no intention of heading north for long.

Unless you're into extreme sports, it's never particularly fun to drive on the interstates leading to or from Atlanta. He could easily recall half a dozen times when he'd been nearly run over by maniacs on motorcycles, cars and 18 wheelers. You name the vehicle and there was somebody on I-85 who didn't know how to drive it. But this time he felt a rush going through his body. A weight being lifted off. The sky was almost eerily clear. He could see just about every star that was in the sky. A few planets, too, probably, though he'd be hard pressed to point out which of the tiny pinpricks which kept winking at him were stars and which were planets. No great believer-or disbeliever for that matter-in astrology, he hoped he was riding the wave of a favorable planet entering his age of Aquarius, or the cusp of his moon, or whatever the hell those freaks referred to as good tidings. He could use all the help that was forthcoming.

The song blaring from the radio-tuned, as always, to Album 88, the only radio station in town that mattered-could have been taken as the ultimate omen. It was a hip little rock and roller called "Audrey's Eyes" by a group he'd never heard of called Velocity Girl. He wondered if he was going to be forever haunted by these types of signposts as proof of his recent bloody history.

He sincerely hoped not.

Dave Rampill truly felt that he was leaving his long nightmare behind.