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 236: The scream of sirens woke her and she sat up in bed, heart pounding.
The scream of sirens woke her and she sat up in bed, heart pounding. Sophie gasped and looked around. Her heart was pounding wildly. The scream of the sirens was loud and when she looked to the window she saw flashing lights. There were red, blue and yellow lights for some reason. The multicolored lights meant she couldn’t place the emergency vehicles.
‘Either that or there are a lot of different ones,’ she thought. Sophie flung back the sheets and slid out of bed. She jammed her feet into her slippers and threw her robe on over her pajamas. She left her bedroom and went towards her front door. On impulse she grabbed her wallet, keys and cell phone slipping the wallet and keys into her robes pockets.
‘So I don’t lock myself out at least,’ she thought as she unlocked the door to her apartment and stuck her head out into the hallway. She looked around and saw Janine walking down the hall. Sophie closed her apartment door and locked it behind herself. She tested the knob just as she always did before leaving her apartment.
The sirens were louder out here and echoed off of the concrete of the buildings. Janine hurried over.
“What’s going on?” Janine asked. She practically had to yell. Sophie shrugged her shoulders. Others were tumbling out of their apartments and all were heading towards the stair well. Sophie and Janine joined the exodus and were part of the group congregating in the parking lot. Kevin walked over to join them and had no better idea than they did. He was about a foot taller than either of them and looked out over the crowd.
“They seem to be doing something near the manager’s office,” he reported back after craning his neck to see over the crowd. “Can’t see what,” he added.
The sirens were still loud but not nearly as loud now that they were in the open and there weren’t echoes bouncing at them. The siren’s stopped but the lights remained. There were uneasy whispers that raced through the crowd. To Sophie it sounded like no one knew what was going on. They waited, no one seeming to want to go back into their apartments until some explanation was given.
Finally a man in a fireman’s uniform walked to the head of the crowd. “If we could get anyone who did not pick up mail from their mail box today to come forward please,” he asked. His voice was harsh from the yelling but friendly enough.
“That rules me out,” Kevin said.
“But not me,” Sophie said. “I only check it once a week,”
“Same for me,” Janine said.
“So I guess we go forward,” Sophie replied. She and Janine slowly made their way to the front of the crowd. About half of the people it seemed did not check their mail every day.
“Right, I want you to follow me and line up over there. We are going to question you one at a time.” He turned back to the crowd. “The threat has been contained and you can all go back to your apartments. If we need you we will contact you later.” He then turned away. Apparently there was no more information being given.
“I bet something was put in someone’s mail box,” Janine whispered.
Ten til Midnight 