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 152: The air stank but it was cooler than the air in the overheated car.
The air stank but it was cooler than the air in the overheated car. “Hot,” she told him.
Stevens looked her over and nodded. “I can see the sweat.”
Penelope fought the urge to wipe herself down. She kept her hands by her side and waited. Stevens walked away and when she looked over, she could see him conversing with Hank.
‘At least I assume it is hank. Hank was located in the pit below the car he was working with. If she tilted her head slightly she could see his hands and some sort of light.
‘But there must be more to him than hands and a voice,’ she thought. ‘At least eyes to see if he needs the light to work.’
As Hank and Steven’s spoke, she pictured a pair of floating hands and a pair of eyeballs serving as a magical mechanic. ‘He’s gotta have a mouth at least,’ Penelope decided. ‘I did hear him speak.’
If Michaelson was wondering about Hank’s corporeal form, it didn’t show. He seemed content to wait until Steven’s approved the vehicle for release. There was a clattering metal sound and Penelope watched a man emerge from the pit below.
He looked like a perfectly ordinary man wearing an identical coverall to Stevens. Like Stevens the name patch was removed. ‘I wonder why they bother,’ Penelope thought now that her fiction of the floating eyeballs was dispelled. ‘They use names but remove the name patches.’
The newly emerged Hank spoke with Stevens as he wiped his hands on a rag. Their voices were too low to carry over the noise of the garage as other people were working on other things. She didn’t think they were whispering, they just weren’t yelling.
‘Maybe they just keep a pile of coveralls in the back and each one grabs one when they arrive,’ Penelope decided as they walked over.
“Sensitive then?” Hank, or the man she assumed was Hank said. He actually looked at her when he asked, but Michaelson answered.
“It would seem so,” Michaelson replied.
Hank nodded. “This is going to feel a bit like fire ants crawling on your skin.”
“Why fire ants?” Penelope asked. “The other one just felt like ants.”
“That was a simple adjustment,” Hank told her. “This one will have some bite.” He shrugged. “But at least once it is done you won’t feel like your car is roasting you alive.”
“Well, that would make it easier to drive,” she said. He smiled and walked over to the side of the car. He lifted up a metal plate in the floor, revealing a ladder leading down to the pit below her car. Penelope watched him descend and then close the metal plate.
“To keep people from falling in,” Steven’s said after the plate clanged closed.
“Oh,” Penelope said. She then had to bite back a curse and she felt like fire ants were indeed crawling all over her body and biting up a storm. She clenched her fists and clamped her teeth down. The sensation seemed to last forever, then all of a sudden it was gone. Penelope unlocked her jaw and took a deep breath. She unclenched her fists and ran her hands over her arms.
“Definitely sensitive,” Stevens said. “Could come in handy.”
“It could,” Michaelson replied. He looked pleased and she wondered if useful skills got him gold stars.
Ten til Midnight 