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 57: Slowly Penelope lowered her arms and the plastic cutting board she still held.
Slowly Penelope lowered her arms and the plastic cutting board she still held. “That was more excitement then I was planning.” She said. She walked back to the kitchen. The fan for the oven vent was still roaring as it tried to pull the remailing smoke from the air. As it was doing a pretty good job, Penelope left it on as she moved to the sink.
The water was still running and the few ashes left behind by the odd green fire were being washed down the drain. Penelope couldn’t see a reason to keep them and doubted they would actually do any harm to the plumbing. She took the spray nozzle part of the faucet head and used it to help rinse the last of the ash down the drain. When the sink was once again clean and empty, she washed her class and plate used for her happy hour items and turned the water off. She put the empty bottle in the recycling bin and decided enough smoke had been removed from the air that there was no danger of fire alarms going off.
Penelope turned off the fn. The house seemed unnaturally quiet with the fan off. She leaned against the counter and let her thoughts turn. Tired of them circling she pushed off the counter and went into the bedroom. She took out a notebook and a pen and flopped down in the middle of the bed.
“Bullet points,” she decided. She opened the notebook and put a dash on the first line.
“Someone knows I inherited,” she added next to the dash saying the words aloud as she wrote them down. She thought of Mrs. Merriweather’s visit earlier. “Clearly,” Penelope added.
Underneath the point she added, three dashes as relating to the knowing of her inheritance. Mrs. Merriweather was the first, the second was the note deliverer and after a moment’s hesitation she added the arranger of the accident. She still didn’t have any proof, but she thought it best to add.
Thinking those were enough sub headings she added another bullet point and put, threats beside it. Underneath she added additional subheadings. “Money first I suppose as if someone gets money others might want it. She wasn’t certain who, if anyone wanted what she inherited but it seemed logical.
“Or at least more logical than a magical ability.”
Under Money, Penelope added property as a possible motive for threatening her. Then because she couldn’t deny both Mrs. Merriweather’s visit and the note, she added ability as the third subheading.
“Not that I know what ability that is.” Thus far the only ability Penelope thought she might have involved avoiding things that might kill her. “Useful I suppose,” she decided. “But according to the diary not on the list of abilities.”
Penelope frowned thinking of the journal she read through. It was the first of many on the shelves. ‘And the start of the tale,’ she thought looking at her bullet points. While Penelope was curious, she also realized that if she inherited this odd trait or knack or ability then finding out who knew of it might be a good idea.
Ten til Midnight 