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 217: In this too, he was surprised.
In this too, he was surprised. It seemed that in the past few months, the message board became more active. He scrolled down the list and found that there was at least one message per day posted. The person posting it varied.
‘Message drop,’ James realized looking at the screen. It was like passing a note in class. This one was easier as there was no teacher to see it. James doubted something this old was still monitored. It wouldn’t have factored into their current modes of communication. James looked at the screen and nodded. Before this recent spate of activity, the message board had been left to float through the either on its own for nearly seven years. The only activity was the once a year log in he did at the behest of the server when they asked if he wanted to keep the board active. Despite not using it, he always said yes.
Curious as to what they were talking about, James shifted to the conversations. With his administer log in, James could see and follow the conversational thread. It was a jolt to see the first message.
“James is dead,” one of his step brother’s wrote.
The following day Cassie answered, “They said they were only going to scare him.”
James frowned. His eyes scanned the messages and realized it wasn’t a particularly enlightening conversation stream. There was a lot of what are we going to do now type of questions mixed in with a lot of this is all your fault blame. It was essentially three people who had gotten into something they shouldn’t have, blamed each other and used the message board as a place to freak out while they maintained outside calm. It told him nothing that explained anything. It gave him no details.
James shook his head. As he looked at the screen, he was surprised to see Cassie pop on to the message board. As she should think that everyone else was dead, there was no reason for her to go there. He watched as the first line of the message appeared on the board.
“I really wish you were still around James. I really need someone to tell be what to do.”
A thought swam up and as Cassie once again started to type, James reached for his keyboard.
“But I suppose it is time to let…” Cassie began.
“158 Winsome Way, In Hank’s hometown.” James typed. He pulled his hands back from the keyboard. He saw that Cassie was typing again and quickly moved to log off. He logged out of the message board and for good measure turned off the computer. He closed the laptop and moved it to the top of his chest of drawers. It still wasn’t enough so he found himself heaping a t-shirt on top of the laptop.
He stared at the t-shirt limp. “What have I done?”
Ten til Midnight 