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 149: He looked irritated.
He looked irritated. Penelope wasn’t sure if it was her question that irritated him or not.
‘It could be that he has to go back through old paperwork where details might not be recorded,’ she thought. ‘Or maybe he is irritated that someone else didn’t do their job.’ She didn’t know the agent well enough to guess. She tried to think of a question that wouldn’t irritate him further.
Before she could, they were pulling into another parking garage. This garage was a bit different. There were spaces for cars to park and it looked like it went up several levels. However they drove to a wide parking space that was clearly not meant for parking. There were red and yellow lines on the concrete floor and no parking signs galore. There were also cameras and mre signs stating violators would be towed.
Michaelson parked there anyway.
“You don’t think we should take one of the other spots?” she asked. He smiled. A door off to the side opened and a man in a blue gray jacket with ‘parking attendant’ stamped on the left hand side stepped over. She wondered if he was going to yell at them for parking and warn them of the impending tow truck.
Instead, Michaelson lowered the window and held up his badge. The man lifted a small hand held device and scanned the badge. Penelope saw the red light from the scanner. The scan was completed and the parking attendant nodded. He stepped away, turned and walked back to his door as Micahelson lifted his window and put his badge down.
The door closed behind the attendant but the agent made no move. He didn’t even turn the engine off. There was a buzzing sound and Penelope started as the wall in front of them lifted. It was in reality some form of garage door. Michaelson rolled forward and Penelope looked up at the door above them. It was at least eight inches thick.
‘Reinforced I guess.’ She thought. She looked to Michaelson who was wearing his smug face again. “I guess that’s why no one is allowed to park there.”
They passed through and the door lowered behind them. To Penelope’s surprise, this side of the wall looked a lot like a parking garage. It had parking spaces, although there were only a handful. It was like someone walled off a separate section of the parking garage.
‘Which makes sense I suppose.’ She found herself slightly disappointed that the walled off section didn’t look like some sort of mad scientist’s lab. ‘But why would it?’ Michaelson may have been an agent of the Empire but he wasn’t a secret agent who needed all sorts of cool spy gear.
At least, she didn’t think he was.
Michaelson parked the car and turned off the engine. He unfastened his seatbelt and got out of the car. Penelope followed suit. As she got out of the car she looked around. While it overall looked like part of a parking garage, there were far more security cameras in this little section than there were in the entire rest of the structure.
‘At least I think so,’ she corrected. For all she knew they wired the entire parking garage so they could monitor every inch of it.
Ten til Midnight 