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 10: It somehow seemed fitting that it chose that night to break down.
It somehow seemed fitting that it chose that night to break down. It was the last tie to who he was before the company engulfed him. The cars were gone. A few months earlier, he realized that the beach house and the cabin in the mountains that he fought Faith for during the divorce were also meaningless to him. He sold them both as well.
He had been divesting himself of possessions pretty much since the divorce. His mother told people he was making a fresh start. Getting rid of old memories. The truth is, many of the places held no real memories.
He remembered trips to the beach with friends that were arranged and that he never made because a meeting cropped up, a client had to be dealt with. The others went on without him, taking his assurance that he would be following as soon as this last thing was done. He almost never did. He could count on one hand the number of times he slept in his bed at the beach house.
“There was sand in the sheets,” he recalled. That was his greatest memory of the place and it seemed little reason to keep it. James sighed opened his eyes and decided he might as well take the full apartment tour.
“See if this bed has sand in it I suppose.” He stood and picked up his duffle bag from the floor where he dropped it. He crossed the small living room and stepped into the short hallway. There were three doors. One to his left one to his right and one at the end of the hall. The walls were only slightly wider than the doors so he thought hallway might be a bit grander than the space deserved. If he stood in the center of the hallway he could stretch ot his arms and touch each of the doors without moving his feet.
He thought about doing just that, and decided it would be too depressing an exercise to complete. He decided to start off the the door to his immediate left. This proved not to be a room but a closet of some sort that had been fitted with a stackable washer and dryer. There was a small bottle of laundry detergent sitting ontop of the washing machine.
“Well at least I won’t need a laundromat,” he thought.
While James had never masterd anything cookery related, he had down his own laundry before. It had been a while though.
“College,” he recalled.
Deciding there was no time like the present, James lifted the bottle of detergent from the top of the machine and opened the lid. There was just enough space between the washer below and the dryer above to open the lid. James set the bottle of detergent onto the floor and pulled his clothing from the bag. With the exception of the white dress shirt he was waering with his suit, all for the clothes in his bag were varying shades of gray and black. He decided separating them would be pointless.
“The gray might get a little grayer,” he decided. He had not been in a brightly colored frame of mind when choosing his clothing.
“Although I don’t actually own many bright colors. His selection was informed buy it’s wardrobe. It was not a colorful place and there was a severe lack to non work clothes in the mix. James set the mostly empty duffle containing the few non clothing items he had with him down on the floor and picked up the soap. He read the directions, measured the product and added it to the machine on top of his clothes. He closed the lid, and turned on the machine. As it began to chug away, removing the stale safe house air smell from his clothes, James screwed the cap back on the bottle and placed it on top of the machine. He then picked up his duffle bag, closed the door and turned towards the door at the end of the hall.
It proved to be a bathroom.
Ten til Midnight 