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 42: He soon faded away to nothing.
He soon faded away to nothing. James was left standing at the end of the aisle staring blankly down it. He turned to the shelf to see if he could tell what book his grandfather had taken, but there was no longer a gap in the shelf. The shelf was simply an unbroken line of books.
James couldn’t resist tapping on the invisible divide one more time before turning away. He saw the stairs leading to another level of the library but wasn’t sure he was going to be allowed. There might be more spaces in the library that he was banned from entering.
Deciding he might as well try it out, James moved to the stairwell. He climbed the stairs with ease, but kept one hand slightly in front of himself as he walked. If there was another invisible barrier, James wanted to hit it with his hand rather than his face first.
Nothing stopped him from rising to the second floor but as he stepped out onto the floor, he frowned at what he saw. The set up was the same as the floor below. The tables with their single chairs were placed in the same spots. The rows of books looked like the rows of books below and the signs were hanging from the chains overhead. However there were no markings on the signs over the aisles of books. They were blank.
James took a step forward, moving toward the nearest aisle. He thought that the sign might be faded, but when he was as close as he could get he saw that there really was nothing written on the sign at all. If there ever had been then it had faded so that not even a shadow remained. Curious, James turned to the books and reached for one of the shelves. Nothing stopped him and he pulled one of the books from the shelf. There was nothing written on the cover and when he flipped through the pages, he found they were all blank.
James set the book back on the shelf and pulled a different one down. Again it was blank. He repeated the investigation with several other books from this aisle with the same result. He tried different aisle and again all of the books were blank.
“Why would there be an entire floor of blank books?” James wondered. He moved to the stairs to see if the third story held equally blank books but found he could not climb the stairs. The third floor, as well as whatever was above it were blocked from him just as the business books were. He turned away and crossed the floor back to the stairwell that would let him descend.
“I guess that’s why there aren’t any other patrons,” He joked. “Why come to a library filled with empty books?”
James descended the stairs and gave the business section another look, hoping to catch another glimpse of his grandfather. There was no one there. He kept going and found himself once again standing in the lobby. It was still abandoned and empty. He moved over to the fountain and circled the central figure, looking for details. Any details there were hid under the rippling water. All he could see was the tip of a nose sticking out through the liquid veil.
‘I still think it is a stupid way to set up a fountain,’ he thought.
Turning away, James walked to the front doors. He pushed them open and stepped into the bright sunlight.
In his bed James blinked away. Early morning sunlight was slanting through his window. He slept later than he was used to, but as he had no where he needed to be, he stretched and luxuriated in the late rising. As he moved from sleep to wakefulness the library dream faded. He rubbed his eyes and from the night stand he heard an electronic song begin. James looked over and realized the sound came from his cell phone. The ringer was different than he was accustomed to hearing. “I wonder who is calling,” James said.
Ten til Midnight 