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 75: Her steps slowed as she approached her car.
Her steps slowed as she approached her car. Something was off. She could feel it. Penelope looked around. There was no one in sight. There were a few people moving about inside the building, she could see them through the glass, but they were all staff. There were no other patrons at the moment.
A look around the parking lot showed her that all of the employee cars were parked in a line on the other side of the lot. The few customer cars that were there when she arrived were gone. Nothing and no one was near her car.
Still there was that feeling.
She reached for the doorhandle and her hand nearly curled back on it self as it refused to open the car door. It was a similar sensation to putting her hand too close to a hot stove. Her hand registered the heat before her brain did and pulled away before she realized she could be burned.
There was no heat here, but it felt the same. Penelope took a step back. Her insides stopped jittering as she did. Testing herself, she eased a foot forward. There was nothing stopping her. She reached out a hand to the door again and the same ‘hot don’t touch’ reaction occurred.
Penelope pulled her hand back. ‘So being near the car is fine, driving it isn’t.’
Penelope took a deep breath. She remembered looking under the car in the garage. It was one thing to get on the ground and look under the car when in a garage and away from the front cameras. Here she was visible to anyone passing by and anyone working in the bank.
“I already look sort of crazy for thinking the door is hot,” she decided. Knowing she couldn’t stay in the parking lot forever, Penelope squatted down and looked under the car. This time she didn’t need to lay flat on the ground or to worry about not knowing much about cars. She could see a small hose that looked like it had been cut with a sharp knife. It was dripping liquid down onto the pavement.
The liquid was a yellowish brown. Penelope wondered what color brake fluid was. She didn’t know but her car hadn’t been leaking any fluids before and now it was.
‘That can’t be good.’
She straightened and brushed the wrinkles out of her shirt. Thunder rumbled overhead and she looked up as a fat drop splashed down. It hit her on the nose, and she wiped it off. Knowing she couldn’t get into the car, she raced back to the bank and slipped inside of the building.
The door banged hard as she reentered and caused everyone to look towards her. “Sorry,” she said to the room at large. Fairchild had been dealing with one of the clerks and he walked over to her.
“Ms. Douglas, was there a problem?”
“I think there is something wrong with my car. Something underneath seems to be cut and leaking?”
He lifted an eyebrow and looked outside. While there were a few drops coming down and the sky looked dark and gray, the full rain had not hit.
“Give me a moment,” he said. He slipped through the doors and strode purposefully to her car. He bent down and Penelope watched him use his phone to take a few pictures of the underside of the car.
‘I wish I thought of that,’ she thought as she watched him.
With the pictures taken he strode back across the lot. The rain was starting to come down hard now.
Ten til Midnight 
Well done!!
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