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 130: Each was a small snippet of a scene, they arrived hitting with the sting of humiliation and then they were whisked away again.
Each was a small snippet of a scene they arrived hitting with the sting of humiliation and then they were whisked away again. The incidents whirred through her mind, there and then gone, only to be replaced by another one. When it reached the end, the sequence restarted in the school lunchroom.
It was with more relief than wakefulness that Penelope greeted the morning. She rubbed her eyes. “Who would have thought I’d miss the lake,” she said as she slipped out of bed. She gathered her clean clothes for the day and went to the bathroom. When she turned on the light, Penelope saw the necklace and its seven beads.
“Seven dream scenarios,” she thought as she looked at it. Penelope shook her head. She set her clean clothes down on the top of the closed lid of the commode and reached up to unfasten the necklace. She set it on the bathroom counter in a little dish designed to hold jewelry. She then reached into the shower to turn on the water. She let the water warm up as she stripped off her pajamas. Then, water at showing temps, she stepped under the spray. As she bathed, she turned over the dreams.
All were moments when she felt the sting of rejection. Where she was made to feel small and unwanted. ‘And there were seven,’ she thought again cycling through them. ‘But how would that relate to seven flare ups of magic before I got my abilities?’
She couldn’t see the connection. ‘Surely the magic would flare to protect me, and nothing did in those moments. At least nothing I could see.’
She thought of all the books she read and as she rinsed the shampoo out of her hair, she decided that perhaps fiction wasn’t the best place to look for answers. ‘Maybe I could go into the library and ask the books there.’
While they were still books, there were very few fiction volumes on the shelves. It was a possibility. She certainly couldn’t see any magic in the incidents. ‘But probably not sleeping with the necklace on again. Just in case.’
Penelope rinsed the last of the body wash from her skin and turned off the shower. The spray turned to a drip as the showerhead let loose its last droplets. She reached for a towel and dried herself off. Clean and dry she dressed for the day. She knew that Agent Michaelson was coming by at three which gave her plenty of time for other things. ‘Maybe I can be out past the happy hour time and not join,’ she thought. She didn’t really like the idea of socializing with her neighbors after she looked in and found their motives weren’t simply neighborly. She was pretty sure she could get through the happy hour without telling them anything they didn’t already know but she wasn’t really looking forward to seeing them.
‘But I have time,’ she thought. As she left the bedroom, Penelope dipped into the library before heading to the kitchen. She cleared her throat and for a second it felt like all the books came to attention. “Incidents of magic before abilities are gained from the lake?” she asked.
The question sounded strange to her ears, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to phrase it. One book popped out of it’s line on the shelf. “Excellent,” she said. Penelope picked up the book and took it to the kitchen. She placed it on the counter while she poured herself a bowl of cereal. She added milk, fished out a spoon from the drawer and moved the bowl in front of one of the stools lines up along the breakfast bar.
She picked up the book, set it beside the bowl and hopped up on the stool. She was careful to keep any milk and cereal splatter from the pages as she flicked through them.
Ten til Midnight 