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 92: Whatever was happening, it was happening in a well-insulated room far away.
Whatever was happening, it was happening in a well-insulated room far away. James felt a twinge of panic. Morris was his connection to this new life. He was a life line of sorts and at the moment he didn’t know what was happening. He thought of Morris gray face and tried to chastise himself for his selfishness, after all it was Morris who was injured. The icy lump of fear remained in his belly and he knew it was more for his uncertainty rather than Morris.
James didn’t like that about himself, but he accepted it. At the moment, he had enough of self-introspection and decided to just let the emotion lie. He would deal with it later if need be. For now he paced the waiting room, wishing there was some noise beyond the sound of his own feet on the floor tiles. He wanted to hear something other than his own heartbeat. As he paced, the corner of the book in his work satchel jabbed him in the back. When leaving the car he automatically grabbed the bag and slung it over his shoulder.
He thought about sitting down to read more of Cassie’s book. ‘It would at least give me something to do,’ he thought. The silence of the space was unnerving. It was like standing in an abandoned hospital.
James thought about Morris, his thoughts shying away from his injuries and towards his assertions in the car. Had someone killed Carson thinking it was him? Until recently James never thought anyone would want to kill him. Even after the shooting, it felt like a dim possibility. But this was different. If someone wanted James dead then the reason wasn’t some event he happened to witness because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If someone was trying to kill him then they were trying to do so because of something he knew.
‘Something about the family company,’ James thought. He reached the end of his pacing path and turned, ready to start back in the other direction. The book hit him in the back again, a soft thump, from the spine this time instead of the jabbing corner. He knew that the book was in motion well before the shooting and that the book was, as far as the bits including his family went, designed to make his step brothers look better and more in charge than reality. He concluded that it was part of the beginnings of a power move. When reading he mostly skimmed and looked at the claims with amusement.
‘But what it there is more there?’
The book was more about Cassie’s family than his own, but the two had been intertwined in various ways for generations. James stopped in his pacing and pulled the bat around from where it rested. He opened the flap and extracted the book. A brightly smiling Cassie grinned at him from the cover. Looking at her, his thoughts turning slowly, James moved to one of the chairs in the waiting room, He sat down and opened the book.
He turned to the beginning. This time he wasn’t reading for entertainment. This time he was reading the book as he would a file on a prospective client. He would look through the lines to see the reality beneath the propaganda and self-aggrandizement. Perhaps, with luck, he might find something of value in the text.
Ten til Midnight 