The Fifteen Minute Novel is a novel written fifteen minutes at a time with each week day’s section starting with the sentence from the previous day. At least it is attempting to be a novel. For now I am just aiming at one continuous story, worked on for fifteen minutes each day. Started Friday January 1st, 2021 (in case you want to search for the beginning. I can’t wait to see where it ends up. It could be good, or it could be a mess. We’ll have to see. For now, here is today’s fifteen minutes.
Day 7: “I’m still James?” he asked.
“I’m still James?” he asked.
The agent nodded. “James is innocuous enough. James, Jim, Jimmy. They can be found all over the place and will excite no interest. If your name had been more original we would have had to change it as well.”
James nodded and found an irrational desire to defend the creativity of his family. As he knew his parent’s didn’t really possess any form of creativity, or if they did it had been squashed out of them long before he was born, it was pointless to argue the decision to call him James.
‘And I’ve never been a Jimmy in my life,’ he thought. Even as a child he had been James. His father never saw the point of nicknames.
“One of our field agents, Carson, will be by in the morning to bring you groceries and begin familiarizing you with the city. I believe he has a file of potential employment opportunities. Suited to your skills.”
“My skills,” James repeated.
“Well the legal ones anyway.”
“I don’t really have any illegal ones,” James replied.
The agent frowned. He opened the file and flipped through the pages. “Ah,” he said after a moment of silent reading. “My mistake. We don’t often get innocent witnesses in here.”
“You usually get guilty witnesses?” James couldn’t help asking.
The agent snorted a laugh. “Mostly yes,” he admitted. “People mostly trying to save their own skins by throwing others under the bus.”
“I can imagine that would become…disheartening.” James said.
The agent gave another snort of amusement. “Disheartening. That’s one word for it.” James noticed the agent seemed a bit more relaxed. Not much, but it was a slight unbending. A lessoning of suspicion.
A knock sounded at the door and then opened without waiting for a response.
“And this is Carson,” the agent said. “He’ll be taking you to your apartment. Do you have any immediate questions?”
James shook his head. He was a new person now and found himself strangely eager to see the starting point of his new life.
“Well then let’s get you settled,” Carson said. James stood, taking both his meager bag of immediate belongings and his new identity with him. The older agent walked them to the door and even offered James his hand to shake. James shook it, ignoring all of the previous insults and then followed Carlson out of the office, into the elevator and back down to the parking garage. This time it was to a cray Chevy that Carson took him.
“I’ll take a while to get used to,” Carson said as they both settled themselves into the vehicle. When the engine turned the radio came on. It was a classic rock station and while Carlson turned the music down, he didn’t turn it off as the agent who accompanied him from the airport had.
‘I suspect this one is supposed to be my friend and confidant,’ James thought. ‘I guess he is supposed to show some signs of humanity to make me feel comfortable.’
Ten til Midnight 