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 157: He looked at her.
He looked at her. “Sometimes it is necessary to do what is distasteful.”
“I see,” Penelope said. “Did you kill this Jerome person too?” she asked.
“Of course,” Peter said as though surprised she would even need to ask. “I expected my property to be at his house. I knew he hadn’t given it to that feather wit sister of his so logically he passed it to your mother. With her gone I should have been able to search the house, but it wouldn’t let me in because of you.”
Peter frowned and looked at her. “You are proving remarkably difficult to eliminate.”
“The grocery store?” Penelope said.
“Yes,” Peter replied nodding. “I must say I am surprised you figured that out. It was just bad luck that you used the other cart return. I could have sworn you wouldn’t. I even thought I saw,” he shook his head. “Irrelevant. Then of course you managed to spot the damage on your car. That was most unfortunate. I thought for certain the explosion would have done the trick. Yet you managed to evade that as well.”
He sounded puzzled by Penelope’s survival.
“How did you manage to get the car to blow up?” Penelope asked. She slipped her hand to her back pocket and felt her phone in her pocket. As she doubted Peter would let her call anyone at the moment her best bet would be to grab it as she turned to run, hopefully pressing the right buttons as she ran away.
‘Either that or hurl it at his head.’
“Magical transfer,” he said. “I built it elsewhere and then when the car stopped at the light I sent it into place.”
“Sounds difficult,” she said. “Certainly more than I’ve ever managed.”
“Well it has taken a lot of practice,” he said. “I don’t mean to brag…”
As Peter started to brag, Penelope remembered that her one skill was in making plats grow rapidly. She wasn’t in control yet, but at the moment she needed a distraction rather than control. She nodded politely as he talked about his triumph in placing the bomb underneath Agent Michaelson’s car at just the right time. To his left, Penelope saw a decorative pot with several creeping vines spilling out and to his right there were rows and rows of fruit trees.
The bragging stopped.
“You never said what it was you lost,” Penelope added.
“Stolen,” Peter fairly spat the word at her.
“Right, by Jerome. If you tell me what was stolen I might be able to find it and get it back to you.”
“Like you would return such a treasure,” he declared.
“I’m not generally in the habit of hoarding stolen treasure,” Penelope replied. She took a deep breath and thought about making the plants nearest her grow.
Ten til Midnight 