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 165: She was still hungry, but the cookies took the edge off.
She was still hungry, but the cookies took the edge off. She felt a little better and realixed now that she wasn’t starving, that she had to use the restroom. She set the box of cookies to the side and slipped out of bed. She picked up the water glass with her good hand and took it to the bathroom with her.
After relieving herself and washing her hands, Penelope went into her toiletries bag and pulled out her bottle of ibuprofen. She took a couple of those, leaving the cap on the pain pills the doctor gave her on. She then put both containers of pills back into the toiletries bag.
While she hoped the pain would soon lessen, she also knew that moving around was going to make things more painful. “Might as well get a shower in before the meds kick in then fight against them later.”
She realized she still smelled like strawberries. Penelope retrieved clean clothes from her bedroom and returned to the bathroom.
The shower was slow and needing to keep the cast out of the water made her think about every step of the process far more than usual. In the end though she was clean and dressed in non strawberry scented clothing. She was also hungry enough that the box of coolies looked like a good idea.
“Maybe eggs instead,” she told herself. She picked up her phone, leaving the cookies behind as she went into the kitchen.
Scrambled eggs seemed like a good idea but as with the shower she had to think through her actions, conscious of being one handed. Eventually, she managed to have a plate piled high with scrambled eggs placed on the breakfast bar. She poured a glass of juice to go with it and settled herself down for a meal.
As she ate, the hollow feeling started to fade. Penelope felt better and she was able to think about things other than her belly and her immediate movements. She expected to feel fear as the exploding car and attack in the greenhouse replayed. “I suppose being too tired to dream has it’s benefits,” she told herself between forkfuls of scrambled eggs.
She also thought it helped that the person who was trying to kill her was now locked up. “Probably have nightmares later though.” She sighed and tried to set the thought aside. Peter tried to kill her because he thought she had something Jerome stole. Since he wouldn’t tell her what it was, she tried to imagine what it could be. She found her eyes looking around the room. Nearly everything in the house was here when she arrived.
‘If it was out of place I wouldn’t know,’ she thought. The probable was that as she thought of things someone might kill to get back she couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t worrying.
“He said it was powerful and that might mean dangerous.”
Penelope was not used to danger and found she didn’t really like it. She knew others thrived on that sort of excitement but personally, she had more than enough for a life time.
Ten til Midnight 