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 178: She picked up her fork.
She picked up her fork. The meal was pleasant and they kept it light. They discussed heading out to the movies after but there was nothing either of them really wanted to see playing at present so they decided to just call it an early night. Sophie went back to her apartment. While it had been pleasant and they talked about things other than work, in the back of her head, she kept thinking about the office.
She got home and once inside, she changed into loose pajama pants and a t-shirt and opened her lap top. She navigated to the local news sites and was soon watching the coverage of her office fire. The news wasn’t releasing names but they did claim it was a disgruntled ex-employee who had been apprehended before any major damage could be done. As the few vehicles close to the far suffered what Sophie considered pretty major damage, she disagreed.
‘But I guess they mean that nothing actually exploded and the entire lot wasn’t torched.’
While she suspected that the side of the lot where she usually parked would be out of commission for a while, she also decided that varying her parking space might be in her best interest for a while. ‘Even if Kristen was apprehended.’
Sophie shook her head. She had been told that Kristen was from a wealthy family and had been coddled and felt entitled, but this seemed like a bit much. ‘It’s not like she was fired from a super elite job either,’ Sophie mused.
Out of curiosity she put Kristen’s surname into the search engine. She blinked in surprise as the search listed a long list of businesses and philanthropic donations. There were a large number of articles showing the family at ribbon cuttings for things like hospital wings and other large charitable donations. In some of the images Kristen was pictured, but only when she was about five or six. She always looked bored and sullen no matter what was going on and soon she was not featured in the photos at all.
Ass she scanned the list of businesses, Sophie noticed that one of the businesses listed was one of the companies that offered her a job. Sophie blinked and sighed. A host of horrors flitted across her mind.
‘Yeah I think it’s best not to tempt that,’ she decided. Mentally she marked the job off of her list. Her goal was to find a nice dram free environment in which to work. Signing on to work for Kristen’s family seemed like a really bad way to go about that.
‘So it is either stay at havers, take the other job or find another job elsewhere,’ Sophie shrugged. ‘At least it eliminates one option. And the job left has the higher pay so if asked I could just say I am leaving for a higher paying job not because of the drama.’
It made the job change seem a bit more plausible. She wasn’t leaving because she was angry about being implicated in whatever her department had gotten up to or because of Kristen. It was just a monetary thing.
Sophie sighed and decided she wasn’t going to bother getting anything productive done. ‘I’ll make up for it tomorrow,’ she told herself and the schedule she tacked to her fridge. She closed down the laptop and turned on the television.
Ten til Midnight 