Courtesy Michael Summa

Novel, Interrupted

Bill Burkett
7 min readNov 21, 2021

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CHAPTER ONE (copyright WRBJr Living Trust)

She didn’t know how long she had been driving. She didn’t even know what time it was. She’d lost her wristwatch somehow. The sun was too bright on the dashboard clock to read its electronic numerals. She seemed to be coming out of a trance. She supposed it was a form of highway hypnosis. How long had her attention wandered? She thought she usually spaced out like this on familiar roads, a boring repetitive drive. But the rutted expressway that rattled the car’s suspension was unfamiliar. She was somehow sure she’d never driven this expressway before.

Treeless rolling plains stretched off on either side, wide and empty. Her head hurt; worse than hurt, it throbbed abominably. What was wrong with her?

The car’s interior was cool, but the bright sun through the unfamiliar windshield seared her brain. Where were her sunglasses? Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. Pain at the base of her skull caught fire and spread through her right shoulder and back. The fingers of her left hand were numb on the steering wheel. That was normal at least: carpal tunnel syndrome. She muttered the phrase aloud. It seemed nonsensical as a nursery rhyme.

Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. Mouse. Computer. She was left–handed! Well of course she was. Why did she experience a small surge of triumph when she remembered that simple fact of life?

As if in answer, a shadowy something flickered through the back of her mind, sinister and frightening. She jerked her right hand from the steering wheel as if to ward off a blow. Pain screamed from the base of her skull to her wrist. Red blobs danced in her eyes.

The car’s tires took the grooves in the rutted paving and drifted left. Her left hand corrected — clumsily, because of her numb fingers. She registered the car had not slowed: cruise control. She didn’t remember setting cruise control. She didn’t remember starting out on this drive at all. She didn’t remember where she was going. It was as if she was just a passenger in an unfamiliar vehicle with a mind of its own.

The car sped on unrelentingly. She took the wheel carefully with her right hand and shook her left to restore feeling; she remembered how to do that. It gave her a small measure of control. She must be going somewhere.

As if on cue, a big red–white–and–blue Interstate sign flashed by. The numeral didn’t register but the direction did: east. She was driving east.

I’ll figure this out if I just don’t try to force it.

She had learned this trick the hard way, by always misplacing things. She didn’t actually remember that she always misplaced things but for now she was ready to take it on faith. Why was her head hurting so badly? What was wrong with her neck and shoulder?

She was sitting against something lumpy and uncomfortable, her left hip going numb. She braced her feet on the floor beneath the pedals and pushed up. The pain in her neck and shoulder bloomed again. This was silly. She’d just pull over, and —

That shadowy something flickered again.

The nape of her neck lifted in primal terror.

No. She wouldn’t pull over. Not out here, exposed and vulnerable under all this sky. So much sky. So much emptiness. She’d drive until she came to someplace safe, with people; someplace normal. She promised herself she’d know what someplace normal looked like.

She forced herself to examine the passing countryside. Scattered herds of cattle wandered in and out of shadows cast by high white puffball clouds. Occasional remote houses drifted by, well off the interstate, each surrounded by tall sentinel trees. Far ahead, a vivid flicker caught her eye. Despite tranquil blue sky here, a vast bank of thunderheads reared above the horizon. Tiny lightning bolts slashed the earth from its black underbelly. It was like looking at another continent, a dark and dangerous one. One she seemed in a hurry to reach.

She balled her left fist on the wheel. She was tired of waiting for her mislaid memory to magically appear. She wanted to know what the hell she was doing on this highway. She wanted to know now. But no matter how she tried to tease the answer free of her aching head, she still didn’t know. That was when she began to consider the unthinkable: she didn’t even know who she was.

She glanced at the passenger seat, seeking the reassurance of her purse. If she really had slipped a cog, the identification in her purse would remind her. She was self–reliant — she knew she was, damn it — and she would be able to sort out this weirdness with information in the purse.

There was no purse. It made her suddenly furious.

“Of course I know who I am! That’s silly!”

When she spoke, a molar scraped across a fresh cut inside her mouth. Another small sting to add to her misery. But when had she cut the inside of her mouth?

“Okay, there’s a perfectly logical reason for all this.”

She was pretty sure she mislaid her purse more often than her memory. But sheer horror stole through her. Wasn’t there some kind of disease that made you lose your memory? Named after a German? She was pretty sure there was. But could it come on this fast, between starting out on a journey and arriving? Was it inherited? Didn’t they always say her grandma “lost her mind,” in that blunt way unlettered people had of speaking the plain truth?

Now where had that memory come from?

At least she remembered having a grandmother; a small mercy. The fragment of memory led nowhere, but she was encouraged. It would all come back to her any minute now. Including why she had pointed this strange vehicle east and set the cruise control on an interstate whose number meant nothing to her.

Simple logic said if she reversed course she would find her starting point, which surely would clear up this temporary amnesia. Amnesia! But that didn’t sound German. (Assuming you would recognize German, some inner doubt whispered furiously.)

Temporary amnesia. She bet hundreds of drivers alone in strange country got it, with all that vast sky pressing down. But never admitted it for fear of sounding like a nutcase. It would be a funny story to tell: a case of highway hypnosis that wandered into amnesia.

“Might as well enjoy the ride,” she told herself. “I can’t turn around until I find an overpass. I don’t have jurisdiction here to use the emergency turnarounds…”

A fresh memory fragment popped into her thoughts: a self–righteous Dulles Airport Authority motorcycle cop smirking that she didn’t have jurisdiction to U–turn on the airport highway. A U–turn was the only way to reach the last gas station on the limited-access road and avoid the rental company’s top–up charges, which the agency she worked for wouldn’t pay. They hadn’t paid for the traffic ticket, either.

She was an official for a state agency! Not this state, or that resentful memory would not have sparked. Elementary, my dear Walton. Walton? That wasn’t right; that was TV reruns. But at least she was getting somewhere. She was in another rental car, in some state other than her own. Since she was alone, she was on official business. If this was a vacation, he would have been with her…

He, who?

Her mind shifted out of focus again. In her frustration, she wanted to scream right out loud. “Well…a man,” she told herself hesitantly. And began to giggle uncontrollably.

The car’s tires juttered again in the pavement grooves. A huge highway sign came and went, warning large trucks to use the inside lane due to ruts in the right lane. She allowed the car to drift to the resurfaced inside lane and suddenly the ride was smooth. She continued to giggle.

“Well, of course a man, you silly! You thought he, didn’t you? But which one?”

She laughed harder then, because that made it sound as if there had been dozens. She was pretty sure there hadn’t been dozens. But she had the sudden image of dozens of men across the land, pining away, wondering where old what’s–her–name got off to. What’s–her–name? Well, each man would say solemnly, if she can’t remember, do you expect us to? Her laughter got shriller. Beneath the almost-hysteria her self–reliant self, which had tried to surface once before, made a diagnosis: shock, you’re in shock.

“Well, no shit, Sherlock. Watson! Elementary, my dear Watson! I remembered!”

As if to reward her, the highway offered up another sign: “Next rest area: 10 miles.”

  • NOTE: Begun in the 1990s. First interrupted by loss of employment, clinical depression, discovery of ugly family secrets with conviction of an in-law for incest with children, divorce, and penury lasting a decade. Interrupted again by eviction from old-folks low-income apartments when my dishwasher flooded while I was in the bedroom, unaware. Didn’t matter; they blamed me. Landlords rule; even my poor-people’s volunteer attorney could not prevent six months in motels during a futile search for housing. Then my younger brother stepped in and bought me a house long-distance from Florida. He said this makes him a patron of my art, so I got back to interrupted stories. I was well along in this one when kung flu struck. My writing tailed off and stopped under the pressure of being housebound, followed by hospitalization for a dangerous cellulitis infection. Then came weeks and months of physical therapy after being bedridden. Still have trouble getting around due to sciatica and crunched disks in my back. Maybe I will finish this now, maybe not. Either way, the chapter copyright reposes in my living trust.

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Bill Burkett

Professional writer, Pacific Northwest. 20 Books: “Sleeping Planet” 1964 to “Venus Mons Iliad” 2018–19. Most on Amazon for sale. Il faut d’abord durer.