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 241: She turned away from the door and started surveying the damage.
She turned away from the door and started surveying the damage. Somehow without the other people in it, the damage looked worse. Sophie looked at the clock. “It’s an office phone,” she thought. Sophie pulled her own phone out of her robe pocket and dialed the office number Elizabeth gave her. It was too early for her to be at the office, but Sophie left a message explaining what happened and why she was not coming in. She also gave the name and number of the detective looking into the matter.
“Not exactly a doctor’s note, but hopefully it will work,” Sophie told herself. After she called the office, Sophie called the company that held her renters insurance and gave them more or less the same message. She then went around her apartment and took pictures with her phone just in case they didn’t get the pics from the police department. Sophie ended up back in the kitchen. She slipped her phone back into her pocket. Her eyes continued to scan the wreckage until she shook herself.
“I need to get dressed and start clearing up,” she told herself. She looked toward the opening leading towards the bedroom. She wasn’t sure what was left for her to wear. “Best see about that first though.”
Braced as though going to look at a car accident, Sophie went into her bedroom. The carnage was just as bad as she remembered it. Almost all of her work clothes were hacked and slashed. “A few might be repairable,” she thought.
AS Sophie looked around she realized that the small dresser didn’t seem to be touched. It was small and partially hidden by the bed. “They might have thought it was a night stand,” Sophie thought. “Unless something nasty is waiting inside.”
Realizing it wouldn’t get better if she waited, Sophie skirted the damage and opened the first of the three drawers. It held underwear and socks. None of it looked to be damaged. She closed the drawer and opened the second one. It was filled with her work out year. Yoga pants and tank tops. It too appeared to be unharmed. She opened the bottom drawer and found two pairs of jeans and a couple of shirts she kept more for nostalgia’s sake than anything else. They too were unharmed.
“At least I can put clothes on,” she told herself. She extracted a pair of jeans and an old buttoned down shirt that belonged to an ex. She then added clean underwear to the stack and then backed out of the space. The only sort of clear area she could find was in the hallway, and so Sophie stood in the small square of space between the rooms of her apartment and quickly changed into the jeans and shirt.
Knowing that any clothing she found that wasn’t destroyed would have to be washed, Sophie decided to start in the bedroom. She stripped the sheets and blankets off the bed trying not to inhale the heady scent of condiments mixed into the cloth. She took them straight to the washer and made them her first load. With the washing machine chugging away she returned to the bedroom. With the bed stripped and the mattress bare, the room looked a lot better.
“At least the mattress wasn’t destroyed,” she thought. It was a nice clean white rectangle in the room. Sophie turned to the closet.
Ten til Midnight 