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 50: It seemed like that list was never ending.
It seemed like that list was never ending. So many things he took for granted as just being there in his daily life now weren’t. James shook off the threatening melancholia knowing some of the things he took for granted were probably gone before he left.
James moved through the apartment settling what he could as quickly as he could. Bags and packaging were put into the trash can and he found that his bin was full enough to need emptying. He continued taking items out of their packaging, wanting to get it all out , even if he needed to make too trips to the dumpster. The books were lined up on the floor against a wall and seeing them, James had flashes of his dream from the night before. Oddly it was more the fountain that bothered him than anything else.
He shook it off and stacked the magazines on the kitchenette. They took up one place setting but as he didn’t plan to have guests, he left them to their space.
James moved both his and Carson’s coffee cups to the sink and made sure the coffee pot was turned off. The cars seat covers he took out of their wrappings and set them on the couch along with all of the other items that would need to go into the trunk and stay with the car.
‘After all an emergency tool kit and road flares don’t do any good in the apartment,’ He reminded himself.
When all the packaging was taken from items he compressed as much as he could into the bag inside the bin, tied it off and lifted it out. He gathered the excess in a second bag and took it all down to the dumpster. He pitched the bags in and noticed it had a significantly higher level of trash in it than the day before.
James turned away, jogged back up to his apartment and picked up all of the things he needed for the car. The kits went into the trunk and finally James turned to the lightning strike seat covers. He winced at their coloring. While the plain brown ones wouldn’t win any prizes, James would be happy to see the lightning gone.
Not knowing what was under the current covers, James decided to leave them in place. He stretched the new ones over the existing ones, hoping the material was thick enough not to have the image bleeding through. He was lucky. The eye searing image was soon gone from view.
“I’m just glad these are easier to put on than the couch cover.” To his intense relief, it was less of a struggle to get the covers installed. He finished the front seat and moved to the back seat. It in it’s own way was quite sofa like. In addition instead of just one striking bolt of lightning there was a veritable field of lightning bolts descending down the seat back and across the cushions. He was certain the design was attempting to imitate a lightning storm, but there were so many bolts that it looked more like a yellow zig zag pattern than a storm. Despite its couch like appearance James soon had it covered.
His eyes felt immediate relief and he was certain the Studebaker appreciated it. He could practically hear it sighing. James made a quick dash up to his apartment to retrieve his wallet and phone, locked everything up tight and returned to the car. As he worked he added things to his list. They weren’t anything special and he knew they could be found in the stores he found the day before. His plan was to knock that errand out quickly and then see if he could find a library, an actual book store or maybe even a museum. As it was not even lunch time on Friday and he wasn’t expected anywhere until Monday morning, he had a lot of time to fill.
Ten til Midnight 