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 160: She looked around.
She looked around. She felt dazed and hollow. She blinked, feeling as though she could fall asleep where she stood. ‘I must not have been unconscious that long,’ she thought.
Gradually she became aware of movement around her. She looked and saw more agents with glowing medallions around their necks cautiously push their way through the trees. Agent Michaelson spotted them as well and gave them orders.
Peter singular was trundled away, vines and all, the pot they came out of being placed on his chest as they carried him out of the space. Then everything seemed in motion. Fallen and broken pots were picked up and plants were shifted about. Michaelson walked over.
“They have this covered,” he told her. “Let’s get someone to look at that arm.”
Penelope nodded and let Agent Michaelson lead her out of the jungle she created. They moved slowly and carefully around the foliage and finally Penelope found herself standing on the concrete floor of the greenhouse building once more. They moved more quickly after that. Once through the building and out into the parking lot, Michaelson asked for her keys. She handed them to him and he passed them to someone else with orders to take the car to the garage and park it into her designated space.
‘I guess since they put the cameras up, they know which that is,’ Penelope thought. She felt a little light headed and a headache was starting to pound in her temples. Her wrist hurt and she wondered if there was more than just burns. When she looked at it she could tell the writs itself was starting to swell.
Michaelson led her back to the car he used previously and she got into the passenger’s seat. Once she was belted in, He backed out of the space and they drove across town. With every jolt of the car as it went over bumps in the road, Penelope felt a corresponding pain in her wrist.
‘That’s not good,’ she thought.
The pain and her empty belly were making her nauseated and it was all she could do to keep from throwing up. It left her little mental space to pay attention to where they were going. Once the car stopped she looked up and was not surprised they seemed to have arrived at some sort of discrete looking medical facility.
Penelope got out of the car, noticing her wrist was definitely swollen now. The bracelet that hung loosely on her wrist was now tightly pressing against the skin. She was surprised the thin chain hadn’t snapped.
Michaelson took her inside and to her surprise they were shown back to an exam room immediately. She head never been in a doctor’s office where she hadn’t waited for less than twenty minutes before. Once in the exam room she was told to sit and place her arm on the small table. She winced with the movement.
There were two men in the room. One looked like a doctor with a coat over a set of scrubs. The other was wearing regular street clothes, black slacks and a gray sweater. The doctor looked to the other man. He stepped forward and sniffed. He nodded and then removed the bracelet from her wrist.
Ten til Midnight 