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 124: “What was it they wanted then?” he asked himself.
“What was it they wanted then?” he asked himself. He couldn’t remember, and in truth hadn’t been paying much attention. He remembered being tired, annoyed and in no mood to think about his family.
‘But if the request came in, it should be recorded.’
James wondered if that might be part of what set this whole thing off and if he should ask Morris. Surely Carson wasn’t the only one who knew of the call. There had to be some sort of chain of command relay system for the message to have reached his agent.
‘Although it would have come in before I was here as he brought it up when we first came to the apartment.’
James closed his eyes and tried to think, to recall. The memory slipped away. He remembered that Carson mentioned something about his family and then something else about not contacting anyone on his own. Beyond that he could recall nothing except the need to wash the stale safe house remnants off of his body.
It just hadn’t been important.
James stopped flipping and let the television play. It was an old cartoon and he listened to it with his eyes closed. Part of his mind tried to dig further to bring the comment back to life, the rest of his brain knew it was a lost cause. He thought about getting up and asking Morris, but at the moment it seemed like too much of an effort. He could feel sleep trying to suck him in. Only the fact that the chair was uncomfortable was keeping him awake. Even the cartoon zaniness was beginning to fade into mere background noise.
With a heavy sigh, James opened his eyes, turned off the television and decided it was time to go to sleep. He stood, stretched and left the lounge for the bedroom he was temporarily assigned. He yawned as he made his way down the corridor. When he passed the door, he noticed the lights were off in Morris room and remembered files or not, the man was still recovering from an injury.
James left him to sleep and continued on to his own room. It felt a little like moving about an abandoned building. He saw no one, heard no sounds. The building was either insulated enough or the world outside was quiet enough that no sounds drifted in from outside. He was in a bubble of near silence.
He tried to shrug off the odd discomfort the lack of sound brought and entered his room. He wasn’t certain if it was the same room he slept in the week before, but it looked identical. The white hospital bed with crisp sheets, the attached bathroom, also done up in blinding white. The metal of the bed’s railings and the bathroom fixtures were the only things approaching color in the space.
James closed and locked the door and because he was feeling slightly paranoid, he searched behind doors, checking even the shower for anyone lurking and then satisfied he was indeed alone, he moved towards the bed. James undressed, folding his clothes into a neat pile on the floor beside his bed as there was nowhere else to put them.
‘At least if I have to get dressed in a hurry, they are right there,’ he thought. Wearing only his shorts, he turned out the light, walked to the bed in the dark and slipped between the sheets. He closed his eyes.
Ten til Midnight 