Welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Each morning I spend fifteen minutes writing on a singular story line. Each morning starts with the last line of the previous day. The goal is to get a (very) rough draft out of the simple story idea and to avoid letting the story idea languish in limbo forever, actually writing it out. This is the third year I have done this writing experiment and each year I learn just a little bit about myself and the way I write as well as creating a framework for the story. But without further ado…
Day 3 Lisa was calling.
Lisa was calling. Her best friend since the age of five was calling her. ‘Seeing Lisa a while,’ Toby’s words continued to echo in her brain. She didn’t want to talk to Lisa. But a part of her had to know. She pressed the button and lifted the phone to her ear.
“Gwen?” Lisa said. Her voice sounded hesitant, concerned.
“How long,” Gwen asked.
“Look we didn’t mean..”
“How long,” Gwen repeated cutting her off.
“It isn’t important not really, I mean…”
“How. Long,” Gwen repeated making each word its own entity. The prickling sensation was back. It concentrated on her scalp for some reason and she felt as though the roots of her hair were on fire, each strand of hair like some sort of refuse fuse, the fire spreading out from her head and into the fuse instead of the other way around.
“We are in love and you can’t stop love. You can’t control…”
“How long,” Gwen repeated. She felt as though she bit each word from the air.
There was a heavy sigh. “Eighteen months,” Lisa said. “You have to let me explain…”
Gwen pulled the phone from her ear and pressed the button to end the call, hanging up on Lisa.
“A year and a half,” Gwen said. The phone rang. Gwen looked at the screen. It was Lisa calling back. Gwen tossed the phone onto the bed, the call going unanswered. She ignored the ring and looked back to the bulletin board. She lifted a hand to one of the pictures and pulled out the thumbtack holding it to the cork board. She dropped the pin into the glass jar she kept for them.
“Two months,” she said dating the photo. She dropped it into the trash and reached for another photo.
“Eight days,” she said recognizing the photo she printed out just that morning. It too came off of the board and floated down to the trashcan as she plinked the pin into the glass jar.
Once she started she couldn’t stop. Three Weeks, four months, eight months, a year. The smiling faces, the good times. The love, the friendship.
“Lies,” she said. “All lies.”
The phone stopped ringing. Gwen stepped away from the bulletin board. It was mostly empty now shorn of all of the photos pinned to its surface in the past year and a half. As she cleared off the board routinely leaving space for new memories, there was little left behind.
The hot prickling sensation faded and Gwen was certain she wasn’t going to burst into flames. The prickling heat was all gone. Inside she felt hollow, unsure what she should feel.
Gwen moved to the bed and sat cross legged in the center of it. The phone was on the bed.
Ten til Midnight 