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 249: It was a new thought and Sophie turned it over as they drove.
It was a new thought and Sophie turned it over as they drove. She wasn’t certain if being used to catch someone more important than Kristen was better or worse. If the person others paid to do bad things, like set fire to mail boxes was caught then there would be others who wouldn’t have those things done to them, presumably. ‘Unless someone else steps up and fills the role.’ She was certain there was more than one person in the city willing to be paid for such nefarious acts. ‘But stopping someone like that is a good thing to do.’
As she thought about it Sophie realized the only issue she had in being involved with something bigger was Kristen. Would she be let loose with only a warning so that they could get whoever she paid to enact her retribution?
‘I am still not entirely sure why she is getting revenge on me,’ Sophie thought. She was certain Kristen blamed her for things but they weren’t really things she had done. She shrugged. ‘Surely there will be some punishment.’
She couldn’t imagine looking over her shoulder for Kristen’s next ‘Prank’ for the rest of her life. That, she had to admit, if only to herself, was the thing she was most worried about. That this would not end. That it would continue to be just one thing after another.
Janine pulled into the parking lot and Sophie tried to set it to the side as she worked on replacing the items she knew would need replacing. While she knew she could create new covers for the couch and it’s large cushions she ended up getting a slipcover to put over the Frankenstein stitches until she could get the new covering’s made. Not seeing those gashes in the couch would make her feel a lot better.
There were other things and Sophie filled the cart. She was worried less about spending the money at the moment since she was told she wouldn’t be losing her job over this. She and Janine made it through the big box store and headed off to the grocery. There too Sophie stocked up. Since she knew she was not going to work there was no possibility of lunch out.
‘Not that I want to go too far from my apartment for a bit,’ she realized. As they left the grocery store, Sophie found herself wondering if anything happened while she was gone. ‘Hopefully that fear will fade,’ she thought. She couldn’t be afraid to leave the house.
‘Surely no one would attack a second time.’
Sophie shrugged as they pulled into the apartment complex’s parking lot. People were working over in the area with the mail boxes now. ‘But who would have thought that would happen.’
As she and Janine took everything up to Sophie’s apartment another thought occurred to her. She stopped in the middle of the hallway and Janine frowned and turned to look at her.
“Do you think it was a timed explosion?” she asked.
“What?” Janine asked. Sophie shook herself a little and kept walking. They reached the apartment and Sophie unlocked the door. The apartment was exactly how she left it, Half cleaned up and half still a mess.
“What was timed?” Janine asked.
“The explosion fire thing,” Sophie clarified. “Do you think it would have just caught fire when it was taken out of the box or was there a timer of some sort so that it would have gone off when I took my mail back to the apartment?”
Jananie frowned in thought. “I don’t know,” she said. “Neither sounds very good. Both sound like you could have been hurt or even…”
“Killed,” Sophie finished.
“Maybe it was just a small flash fire thing like a firework and it only got so bad because it didn’t pop in the open but in place with all the other paper form the other boxes,” Janine suggested. “Maybe it wasn’t intended to be so bad.”
Ten til Midnight 