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 118: “You’re hoping to flush someone out.”
“You’re hoping to flush someone out.”
“Yes,” Morris told him. “We let them think you are dead and that whatever you could have told us is gone with you. Then we see what they do.”
“And you think that because I am dead no one will try to kill me again?”
“That is the hope.”
“Oh good,” James replied. “We have hope.”
Inside, he felt conflicted. He wasn’t certain what was going on with the company and if they were willing to send someone to kill him, then he felt they no longer deserved his loyalty or his guilt. On the other hand, he wasn’t terribly enthused with the agents and their decisions either. They were cold and using him as a tool which left a bad feeling in his gut. At the moment, he didn’t really like any of them.
‘I wonder if I could just get a completely new third name and just leave them all behind.’
Somehow he doubted that was a current option. The thought was almost as depressing as spending years working in the office where they placed him.
James was beginning to feel a bit bleak when the door opened. Tucker stepped in. He looked at James. “Ready?” he asked.
“For what,” James replied. ‘At least if I’m dead I can’t be bait,’ he thought.
“I found you a whiteboard and a room to work,” Tucker replied.
“Oh,” James said. “Right.”
He got out of his chair and looked to Morris.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Morris said.
James nodded and walked towards the door. Tucker walked down the hall and James followed him to a small room. It was exactly like the hospital looking room where he slept last time. Except that the bed had been rolled against the wall and a white board the size of a school chalk board had been rolled in. Laid out on the bed were dry erase pens in various colors and an eraser should he need to clear his thoughts from the board.
‘If only all thoughts were as easy to erase.’ He thought.
“Thanks,” he told Tucker.
Tucker nodded and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. James sighed, lifted the strap of his bag over his shoulder and set the bag onto the bed. He pulled out his notebook and flipped to the front page.
“Let’s start with the time line as Cassie wrote it,” James decided. He chose a blue marker for Cassie’s timeline, deciding he could fill in the dates he knew were accurate with red and then chose other colors as appropriate.
James uncapped the blue marker and turned to the whiteboard. His handwriting was not the best in the world so he printed everything in small block letters. The information James had filled the board with only a little space left over. Once all of it had been set in place he stepped back to have a look.
James boosted himself up onto the hospital bed and sat there studying the whiteboard. Looking at it all laid out in front of him made him even more certain there was a pattern. As he studied it, something clicked into place.
Ten til Midnight 