The computer stared at him, empty. He returned the gaze. All I have to do is write episode 261 and I will have completed my contract, he thought. But he couldn’t. Mei Wan laughed at him, and Octopus Duke could go fuck himself.
Sitting back, sighing, lighting up another cigarette. This children’s show was finally getting to him. He had some serious TV writing work lined up, but had to get through this show first. It felt impossible; he hated these characters so much. For the past four years he had done nothing but think up absurd scenarios for Mei Wan and Octopus Duke. The target audience for the show was kids between the ages of four and six, but he knew it was mostly stoned college students who watched it. That gave him some room to put in entertaining hidden messages, but after the first year that wore thin.
Earlier in the morning he had almost completed a draft of the episode, but then deleted it. In it, he had Mei Wan getting willingly gangbanged by a group of irate cephalopods while Octopus Duke sat on the sidelines recording the whole thing and masturbating, in turn, with his various arms.
He wasn’t even sure if Duke, or any octopus for that matter, had a penis. Afterwards he stared at length in the bathroom mirror. How the hell do I come up with this shit? Don’t worry. It’s not an obsession. It’s nothing more than transgression from annoyance. Can I be sure it’s not a secret obsession? Probably. Yes.
With that, he sat back down in front of the computer. Again, nothing.
Getting up, he went for a walk in the midday swelter. Almost immediately he broke a sweat. Breathing heavily from the thick air, walking up the steep hill outside his house, he wondered why Suzie had left him. He had thought about it endlessly but he still couldn’t come up with a good reason. All the nonsense she had spouted did nothing to explain the situation in terms he could grasp. What is wrong with me? Everything.
Up ahead he could see a car speeding around the corner, as though time had come out of joint, and striking a woman running across the street with her headphones on. She was knocked over the car, a flurry of limbs, and the driver slammed on the brakes. While the driver got out and ran behind the car to see if the woman was still alive, the entire storyline appeared to him in a burst. The words began to pour out of the typewriter in his head. He could hear himself read it aloud, though he couldn’t anticipate what he was going to say next. It was simple and funny and might even be his best shot at the characters yet. Mei Wan would placate Octopus Duke with physical comedy and he, in turn, would use his powers of negotiation and self-deprecating humour to calm the irate cephalopods. He could feel episode 261 complete itself in his mind, and he knew he had to rush to his computer before he forgot one word of televised genius.
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