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 101: He made note of some of the specialty shops they passed and the streets where they were located.
He made note of some of the specialty shops they passed and the streets where they were located. At the moment he didn’t know if he was staying or if he was how long he would be here. However knowing where there were places where he might occasionally indulge himself in a few luxuries wasn’t a bad thing.
‘Of course people could watch for that,’ he supposed. He wondered if anyone who knew him remembered the wines he favored or if when looking for him would just stake out the sorts of stores that would carry more expensive wines and such.
‘It would be a shame to be caught by my own good taste,’ he thought. He supposed that until everyone believed him to be dead, he should avoid things like that as part of his blending in process. As Tucker drove, James wondered about that. Morris said his testimony was no longer strictly necessary in the case and teased him with the possibility of returning to his old life. He didn’t particularly want to return.
‘And it was a trick anyway,’ James decided. Morris may have told him the truth about Frankie’s testimony replacing his, but he suspected everything else was a lie. He was being used to flush out someone else.
‘And now I’m bait if someone comes back.’
James tried to figure out how he felt about it. It was hard to be mad at Morris as he was still laid up in a hospital bed. He didn’t know Tucker and had no reason to think of him in friendly terms so there was little personal hurt attached to that either. When he thought about it, he found himself annoyed. He was annoyed with the others for using him and he was annoyed at his family for putting him in a position to be used. At the moment chucking the few things he managed to pick up into the Studebaker and taking the fastest road out of town sounded like the best idea he had ever had.
‘But it wouldn’t help,’ James added, trying to calm his own annoyance. ‘My ID may be fake but the government created it.’ As Tucker turned onto more familiar streets James wondered if a fake ID created by the government was actually fake. ‘If only government identifications are legit and the fake one was created by the government, wouldn’t that make it legit instead of fake?’
The oddity of that dulled some of his own annoyance. It was something he would debate with one of his friends after a few drinks. ‘Although it isn’t much of a debate since all the agents called them new identification rather than fake identification. I suppose that’s the government difference.’ He sighed. There was also no one around he could have a few drinks with and debate such things.
James thought about the Friday night gathering. At the moment it seemed like a life time ago. He realized this was his Friday night drinks with friends group. ‘And if all goes well and no one kills me in my sleep tonight, I’ll see them, or at least Mike, tomorrow at work. And then again Next Friday.’
An endless rotation rolled through his mind. He suddenly found the possibility of an attack more interesting to contemplate. He knew if one appeared he’d be terrified out of his mind, but at the moment it was a less depressing prospect. ‘That can’t be a good thing.’
As they approached the apartment building, Tucker finally broke his silence.
Ten til Midnight 