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 161: He turned the television off, double checked the locks, turned off the downstairs lights and went upstairs.
He turned the television off, double checked the locks, turned off the downstairs lights and went upstairs. In his bedroom, James found himself closing and locking the bedroom door. Satisfied that he was now secure for the night, James made certain his alarm was set, turned off the light and crawled into bed. The contours of the mattress were more familiar to him and made his body comfortable.
His mind was another matter. He wondered if all believed him dead. He wondered if the note in his memorial messages was a message aimed at a specific person. And if so who. And was the message telling others he was still alive or that even though he was supposedly safe he had still been killed. He didn’t know and not knowing made him twitchy. James tossed and turned despite the comfort of the mattress.
Sleep was a long time coming.
When it did arrive, it brought with it murky dreams. He sat in a classroom where Thomas Grant was teaching. The faux cable man was one of the students as was James and the old man who was shot after letting James use his phone. For some reason as James sat in his seat listening to the lesson, he was knitting. It was a long scarf made of red wool. The scarf grew longer and longer and as it pooled onto the floor, the scarf turned into a pool of blood. The pool grew to a lake and he struggled to stay afloat.
When his alarm went off, James sat up, gasping for breath and pushing the blankets aside as though surfacing from under the water. He turned off the alarm and felt a wave of relief that he didn’t have to go back to sleep. This was a day he was happy to go to the office and slog through reimbursement requests and payroll. It would be a welcome change from his own thoughts. James was panting from his dream, his heart racing. He managed to get it under control and ran a hand through his hair. Despite the thorough washing of the day before, his hair was now drenched in sweat.
‘Clearly another shower is in order.’ He decided. James slid out of bed, his breath and heartrate nearly back to normal. He took a quick shower to rinse the sweat from his body. He tried to imagine the suds washing the dream away with the sweat. Once again clean, James dressed for the office and went downstairs. As the coffee pot brewed, James fixed and ate a bowl of cereal. He then went back upstairs to brush his teeth, came down, filled his travel coffee mug and left for the office.
Before getting in the car, he double checked the door locks. He suspected that in a few weeks he would be less paranoid about the locks, but for now he wanted concrete knowledge that he did all he could to keep himself safe.
As he drove to work, James realized that the thought that kept him up most of the night and indeed had been the subject of the lesson taught by the hit man, was that the old man’s death was somehow his fault. He knew all of the stuff a psychiatrist would say. He understood that someone else killed the man and he happened to be there. But he thought about the attack on the office here and couldn’t help but compare it to the attack on the old man.
It was possible that the gunman there was just planning to use the back exit to avoid notice. It was also possible, he was going into the office to kill James. If someone was willing to kill him here for looking at the company files and possibly spotting something. There was the possibility that they were trying to kill him then, when he had much freer access to the files. Was he the reason the old man was dead?
Ten til Midnight 