For those just tuning in, this challenge is about taking a story idea from bare bones idea into a fully fledged story by writing consistently every week day for fifteen minutes. The sentence I end with on one day, is the sentence I start with on the following. Part one was Bob’s story and has nothing whatsoever to do with the story below. Part Two follows a character named Penelope. I have a few basic sentences to act as road marks on her journey. I am loosely calling that an outline. We will see where she ends up by the time the story is done. For now, we start Part two of the 2025 Fifteen Minute Writing Challenge.
Day 32: Penelope had never visited so she didn’t think the estate saw a lot of visitors.
Penelope had never visited so she didn’t think the estate saw a lot of visitors. She also didn’t think her mother went out there a lot. ‘Just a guess though,’ Penelope mused. She saw the map and guessed about the time it would take to drive to the estate. She couldn’t imagine her mother had the spare time to drive out there routinely in her daily life.
“It would have had to be an arranged trip.” Penelope thought. “Babysitters at least for me.”
She remembered that her father often took business trips over the weekend while her mother was at home. If her mother went out at night then she usually did so with her father. “They went to dinner periodically, when he wasn’t working late.”
Those were the only times that she could remember being left with a babysitter. “I’m sure there were other times,” she thought. She couldn’t remember them at the moment though and suspected that it wasn’t often.
Penelope shook the thought of babysitters away for the moment. She thought instead of that cut brake line. It seemed almost designed for the Old Briarwood Road. It was curvy and hilly. Despite never going to the estate, she had driven the road. It was a fun one to drive. “Like a rollercoaster you control,” Penelope thought. When she needed to think, or let her mind process something without actually thinking about it, she often drove a way down Old Briarwood Road. She had to pay attention to the curves and watch her speed on the steep inclines. Paying attention often shifted her thoughts and let them simmer, or simply took her out of them so she wouldn’t’ obsess.
Having no brakes on that road would be deadly.
‘But someone would have had to know she was going out there.’ She could easily imagine someone calling her mother for a meeting but if that happened there was no mention of it in the file.
“I suppose the road could have been a bonus,” she conceded. The city was set up on a grid pattern and was more or less level, at least there were no hills or sharp turns in the area they frequented. There were turns and hills in some of the more picturesque neighborhoods. “But with no breaks she could have gone through a stop light and been killed that way.”
There was more risk that way. “If the intent was to kill.” Other cars could have been lined up at the stop light and while her mother might be hurt if she plowed into them, the crash might not be deadly.
“So either someone knew she was going out to the estate or they might not have planned it being a deadly crash. Or maybe they just hoped for the best?” Penelope frowned. “Or worst?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t certain how to determine the truth. “I suppose I could go out to the estate.”
She just wasn’t certain if she would find anything relevant. ”Or recognize it if I did.”
She opened the drawer and slipped the file inside. She closed the drawer and opened the layers file, again flipping to the information about the estate. She had just reached the right page when the phone rang.
Ten til Midnight 