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 104: James couldn’t imagine Tucker following him through a grocery store.
James couldn’t imagine Tucker following him through a grocery store. He imagined that with more people around the store would be more of a challenge.
‘And a challenge for him makes me more of a target,’ James thought. He left the microwave to work and opened the fridge door. He counted bread slices, sandwich meat and pre wrapped cheese slices. If he thinned down his sandwiches, he could probably make it through the week, only needing to shop on Saturday. The sandwiches would be thin, but it was do-able.
He closed the fridge and opened the freezer. He counted. Only enough meals to last until Wednesday greeted him. He shut the freezer door.
He thought about stopping at the soup and sandwich place, but the fact that it was a place where he had to go in to the counter made him want to avoid it for the moment. Somehow he felt that if he didn’t get out of his car he was less of a target.
“So a fast food drive through it is,” James said. The microwave dinged and he transferred his meal to the plate, trying not to burn his hands on the hot plastic. He took his plate to the table and wondered if by Friday Tucker would have been satisfied that everything was all right or not.
Deciding there was nothing he could do about it, James shifted the matter to the side and mentally composed his list of what needed to be done to ready himself for another week of work.
By the time he made it through his dinner and disposed of the empty container, the washer had gone through it’s cycles. He transferred the towels to the dryer, filler the washer with his work clothes and set everything in motion.
While the machines chugged into motion, James made his lunch for the following day and placed the lunch bag inside the fridge. He set up the filter, grounds and water in his coffee pot and double checked to see that the automatic brew timer was on. He set it so that the tantalizing scent of freshly brewed coffee would reach him a few seconds before his alarm went off to signal the start of the day.
Figuring the system out was something that James felt an odd sort of pride in. He always left many of his personal details to someone else to run and managing this felt like an accomplishment. During the week prior he had to fiddle with the amount of grounds put in the pot to find out the strength of coffee he preferred. He also had to play around with the timer settings. It was Thursday when he finally judged it just right and James was looking forward to an entire week of mornings with coffee, made just the way he liked it.
When the towels were dry and the work clothes rolling around in the dryer, James took the pile of towels to the bedroom. While normally not concerned with how the towels were folded, tonight he took extra care. With the notebook and book currently stashed in the linen closet, he wanted the closet to look orderly and unrumpled. If he folded the towels haphazardly then it could look rumpled and rumpled might make someone think that something was stashed there.
‘If they are orderly then they just look like towels.’
James doubted that anyone would search his apartment. He also doubted that Cassie’s book was important in the grand scheme of things. As there were thousands printed, he knew his copy wasn’t special. It was the fact that he was looking at this one that he thought might cause issues.
“Maybe,” he conceded. He honestly didn’t know it there was anything in Cassie’s book, but the more he read the odder it seemed. “And reading it feels like doing something.”
Ten til Midnight 