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 250: “Maybe it wasn’t intended to be so bad.”
“Maybe it wasn’t intended to be so bad.” Janine shrugged. “Maybe there is information on the news?”
“Possibly,” Sophie agreed. She could see the detective not sharing details but someone might have reported what went on at the apartment building. ‘After all how many apartment buildings have their mail boxes burst into flames in the middle of the night.’
“I’ll have to look later,” Sophie said. Janine nodded. “I’ll circle back around dinner time to see if a pizza night is in the works,” she said.
“Thanks,” Sophie said. Janine left and Sophie turned back towards putting her apartment back together again. The first thing she did was put the slip cover over the couch. It covered up all of her temporary stitching and made her feel a lot better about the living room. She felt even better when she replaced the broken coffee pot with the new one and cleared not only the broken one but the packaging out of her apartment. With groceries now in the fridge, her kitchen, living room, and bedroom back ion order, minus the damaged clothing, Sophie felt more in control. She managed to remake her bed with the newly washed betting and hung the undamaged and now freshly washed items in her closet. It left only her work room and the damaged clothing to be sorted.
“Can’t do anything about the damaged clothing until I put the sewing doom to rights,” Sophie sighed. She had been dreading dealing with the seeing room. With her supplies so recently restocked, she was hoping that it wasn’t all just a wasteland of destruction. She took a deep breath to steady herself and stepped into the space. At first glance it was worse than the other rooms, even though there were no condiments.
‘I guess they ran out by the time this room was trashed.’ In place of condiment attack, Sophie found that drawers were emptied and their contents flung about the room. Beads and buttons as well as straight pins were everywhere. Material was unfurled but it didn’t seem to be damaged. Sophie shifted the beads out of her way so she wouldn’t crush them to powder and slowly picked up strips of cloth. She refolded them and carefully set them out of the way on the couch.
Sophie managed to stab herself a few times on loose pins hidden in things but over all, there was less damage, even though there was more mess. The pins, were put in a box as she came across them and once the bulk of the material was separated out she could get a good look.
“Not as bad as I thought,” she consoled herself. With the material out of the way she started in on the unspooled ribbons and threads. Sophie then started to gather buttons. She wasn’t entirely certain what she could doo with the beads except scoop them all up into a box and sort them later. She suspected quite a few would sink into the carpeting and need to be vacuumed out later.
‘It’s a waste but not as bad as I thought,’ She kept repeating the thought to herself as she worked. Sophie found herself actually smiling when she unburied her dress form and found the in progress dress still pinned to the form.
Ten til Midnight 