Morning all and welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Here I take the start of a story idea and work on it for fifteen minutes a day. I started with an old writing prompt that interested me, cleaned it up a bit to fit the basic outline of the story I want to write and then set aside fifteen minutes each week day to see it grow. Each morning’s writing starts with the last sentence of the day before. And so now we have the story of Kasca…
Day 6: Kasca let herself drift into sleep.
Kasca let herself drift into sleep. Her sleep was uneasy and in it she dreamt of the dead and dying. She seemed to run from house to house finding only markers on the door claiming the occupant died and was no longer there. They were generic markers with no details.
It was with some relief that Kasca woke. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up in the darkness of the abandoned mining tunnels. She thought about the lantern, but left it unlit for the moment as her heart slowed and the dreams faded.
Dreaming of death was not unusual. She had been having dreams of the dead in one form or another for most of her life. She was young when the Overlord rose to power. Stretching her memory back she could remember a time before the Overlord but it was dim and even in those far away early memories there was worry. His rise wasn’t complete, but it began before she was born and reached worrisome levels by the time she drew her first breath.
After the take over Kasca was still young but she remembered the markings on the doors. They were the markers for the dead stating the occupant was gone. There was the general marker that they used to identify a death of a family but instead of disease, accident or age being the additions to signify how death occurred and let everyone know what needed to be done next, there were the Overlords markers. In the beginning there were markers signifying they were executed for treason or acts against the people. Later as the signs multiplied the marker was simplified. There was a symbol that just stood for the Overlord.
‘Instead of death by disease it was death by Overlord.’
She remembered seeing entire neighborhoods with every door marked with the sign. At first there were whispers, then there was silence as even whispers were too dangerous. Gradually those signs were eradicated. The people moved on, daily lives continuing. While children were born and eventually grew to start families of their own, most of those hoses marked were left to sit empty.
She remembered an initiative a few years prior where the Overlord’s governors were asked to remove the marked doors from the still unoccupied homes and businesses. Some thought they were considered too much of a memorial, others thought that the governors wanted the area to return to occupation.
It didn’t change anything, not really. The old marked doors were taken away and the new fresh doors were put on. The buildings continued to be unoccupied and the new doors simply stood out sharply on the abandoned buildings.
Kasca untied her hair and ran her fingers through it letting her fingers massage her scalp. She then finger combed her hair and pulled it back into a tight braid, curled up at the nape of her neck, pinning it into a small bun.
She dreamed of those doors with the markings. Friends and family once lived in those houses. The dreams faded with time but with the new doors the dreams returned.
Ten til Midnight 