Soap Opera Script Writers.

Dale tugged on the bill of his baseball cap, pulling it down over his eyes. He was tired, hung over and cranky. He felt gross, like he hadn’t taken a shower in ages. He would swear that it was yesterday, but he’d lost track of his days since ratings slipped.

Diana and George had already left. It was close to 4 a.m. and they just had to write in one character. It couldn’t be that difficult. Eric had stayed to help him finish it. It was really important but Diana and George didn’t want the credit if it damaged the ratings.

Dale knew he should just quit, if he wanted to be really honest with himself he would just quit. This was the part he really hated about this job--accommodating assholes who wanted to make a cameo appearance to boost their career. Why they would pick this soap opera was beyond his comprehension. It was the worst hour in the history of daytime television.

It wasn’t his fault. Maybe it was Eric’s. Dale uncrossed his arms and slammed his fist on the desk. Eric’s head jerked up from behind a pyramid of beer cans and coffee cups and began ruffling papers around. Several had pizza sauce on them. They were never going to finish at this rate.

“Do you want some more pizza?”

“We just had some.”

“Do you want another beer?” Eric rummaged through the mini fridge loudly, and then erupted into a lion-size yawn.

Dale rubbed at his face roughly, trying to stay awake. It was no use. They had a meeting in four hours.

“Some coffee? Should we make coffee?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Dale said through his hands, which were covering his eyes. “Let’s just please try to make something up so we can finish this.”

They made coffee. It was the first decision they’d made since Diana and George were asked to leave because they couldn’t stay focused. He began to wish that he could ask himself to leave. Eric had spent the last two hours asleep or pretending not to sleep. Dale had hoped whatever it was he’d sleepily scrawled on the back of a Domino’s receipt was good enough to be handed in to his boss. He so did not care anymore.

“I’ve got a great idea,” shouted Eric, who could never contain himself once he thought of something. “He has an extreme deformity. Something you’d notice right off.”

It was a terrible idea, but it could mean an end to an endless night of “brainstorming.”

“Yes! A foot on his head!” Dale shouted back a little too enthusiastically.

“What? That’s insane!”

His writing partner stared at him as if he’d never seen him before. Dale decided to expand on his idea.

“Well, it’s an extreme deformity. It could have toenails and hair. It could be like half a shin and some ankle with this hairy foot at the end of it.”

Eric continued to stare but started to smile.

“Interesting,” he whispered, pondering the idea as he continued to stare weirdly over at Dale.

“We could say that he absorbed the leg of his evil twin brother Andrew in the womb.”

It was coming together so nicely. There was a good chance he would be fired, but then again many times Dale had come up with horrible ideas for the show only to find that the other writers loved them and even the fans too. There was a good chance that his boss would enjoy it or at least the audience response.

Dale became momentarily disheartened as he thought about this; could there really be a chance that he would lose his job? He couldn’t just quit, that’d be insane. He had already tried that and ended up in the boss’s office for an entire day, listening to the insane ramblings and pleadings of an entire writing team. It seemed that he was the only one who had anything “fresh”. Two raises later he decided that most people hated their jobs. But it couldn’t hurt to at least try to get fired.

“I like it,” Eric said after a long bout of silence. “We could write Andrew in later with a peg leg.” Eric scribbled something down on an empty pizza box and then looked up sharply at Dale. “Could the foot have calluses, maybe?”

“No, he doesn’t use it.” Sometimes his writing partner could be really ridiculous, Dale thought, trying not to laugh. “It’s sticking out of his head.”

“Maybe he puts a shoe on it?”

“Yeah, I was thinking a flip flop,” Dale answered, already drawing a sketch of it on the paper in front of him.

It was all coming together. He looked at the clock above the water cooler. Three hours until the meeting. At least now they were making some progress.

“You don’t think a boot would be more appropriate?”

“A boot? No. He’s not ashamed of it.”

“You don’t think he’d be ashamed of a foot sticking out of his head? He’s had it since birth. Growing up it must have been hard with three feet.”

“Yes, but he’s 30-something now,” Dale said with an exasperated sigh. Sometimes Eric didn’t understand the characters at all. Granted they had just made this one up, but who wouldn’t have to go to therapy if they had a foot sticking from their head? Eric had no common sense. “He’s had therapy and isn’t ashamed of who he is anymore.”

“But he’s coming back for his mother’s funeral. A flip flop would just be inappropriate.”

“Fine, but it should really be a dress shoe, then.”

“When I close my eyes, I see a boot.”

“Okay, a boot during the funeral scenes and we’ll save the flip flop for his date with Tina.” Dale put his head on his keyboard and smiled sleepily. “I can’t wait to be fired.”

The End.