The Fifteen Minute Novel is an attempt to take a single prompt and use the last sentence written each day as a start for the next day. This year I had several prompts circling around a similar story, so I have combined them. However, the story starts the same way each day, with the last line from the day before and a timer set for fifteen minutes. The hope is to end up with a complete, if very rough draft by the end of the year. Some stories are better than others, but I always learn a whole lot about my own writing when I do this so for me it is not only a nice way to work out a story, but it is a tool for helping my writing get better. And so, we continue this story for 2024 with…
Day 88: “When I was seeing Don she threatened to report me if I called her on some of her extra time off.”
“When I was seeing Don she threatened to report me if I called her on some of her extra time off.”
Sophie frowned at the comment. “I thought she covered for him when he was …,” she swallowed back the phrase ‘cheating on his wife’ and went with, “Out with someone.” Instead. If Petra noticed the pause, she ignored it.
“She does, which was what made it extra annoying,” Petra shook her head. “She asked me to take some of the leave time she took off of her sheet so she could use the time off again for something else. That’s when I realized that seeing Don wasn’t a good idea anyway. I stopped seeing him and refused to change the files.”
“How did she take it?” Sophie asked. The elevator reached the ground floor and they exited, clocking out of the building and heading towards the food truck court.
“Not well,” Petra said when they were on the sidewalk. “She threatened to still expose me but she didn’t really have any proof, and since I wasn’t seeing Don any more she wasn’t going to get any. Which meant that if she told anyone he would have to corroborate her story.”
“Which I’m guessing he wasn’t willing to do,” Sophie finished.
“Nope,” Petra said. “Turns out that there are a few people higher up who are actually friends with his wife and he didn’t want them to know. It was such a mistake to get involved with him anyway.” Petra shook her head. “You aren’t going to tell are you?”
Sophie smiled and shook her head. “I don’t plan to tell anyone, “She said. “Is that why you wanted to go t lunch with me?” She asked. “To ask me not to tell?”
“Oh no,” Petra said. “That just occurred to me as we were talking. I wanted to compare gossip.”
They reached the food trucks and slipped into the already rapidly growing line for the one they wanted. “Gossip?” Sophie asked.
“Office gossip actually. The non-personal kind. Word came down for coding that you were transitioning to a new department and it looked like you were the only one in your department doing any transitioning of any kind. I was wondering if you knew anything.”
Sophie shook her head. “I only know my own stuff,” she admitted. “Since I can’t work from others they stopped really talking to me. And then I was transferred to a different supervisor so I don’t even have to talk to Evers anymore.”
“I heard that he tried to put you on probation for not taking on more work,” Petra said. “Is that true?”
“It is,” Sophie admitted. “But if you could not spread it around. I’d kind of like a calm and steady work environment.”
Ten til Midnight 