Dead woman walking

I was so tired I couldn't remember how I got home, washed my face, or went to sleep in my bed. Fortunately, I wasn't drunk enough not to set an alarm clock. I allowed myself to sleep for less than four hours. I hoped that it would be enough to sober up.

My head was entirely filled with flashing images of the man who caught me and didn't let me fall to the ground. Was it possible that it truly was the one person I was looking for? Well… with all my luck, I figured the probability of that happening was around 0.1%. It was far more likely that my drunken senses simply captured the scent of a man. That alone was enough to wake up every hormone in my body and make them start a celebration!

There was another thing… Those two words that the rescuer said also sounded familiar… But then again, it could all apply to the probability I had already mentioned. I was way too drained to keep discussing with myself the odds of finding that man inside my company. I fell asleep.

The annoying alarm sound finally forced me to open my eyes and throw that screaming clock far away from me. I had no idea how I managed to get up, yet dress myself and put make-up on… more or less. I used tons of concealer to fix the big sign hanging right below each of my eyes saying, "Sleep-deprived person here!" and I dropped my eyes to get rid of the redness around the pupils.

I passed my Grandma by when I was going out to the office. She gave me a full of pity gaze, patted my shoulder, and told me, chuckling, that she would teach me some beautifying spells later… Seriously?! Something like that existed, and she didn't tell me about those earlier…?! Like, perhaps… ten years ago?!

"Grandma… aren't there some herbs for hangover, or lack of sleep? I would seriously use some of those now…" I muttered with pleading eyes.

"Oh... yes, there are," she smirked as she walked to the corridor leading to the magic shop's back entrance.

"Wait!" I called, "Aren't you going to give me the herbs then…?"

"Nope. You are a talented witch, fix them yourself," she stated, wearing a wicked grin, and kept walking down the corridor.

"That's not fair!" I sulked.

Grandma suddenly stopped, turned my way, and smirked.

"If you started learning magic when you were 16, you wouldn't have a hangover in the first place," she said as she entered the shop and closed the door behind her.

I was left alone, speechless. However, I didn't have the strength to get angry. I had to save my energy to fight for my job, if there was still anything I could save…

I almost fell asleep on a bus and was close to missing my stop. I got out and started to think of myself as a dead man walking the closer I was to the office. I entered the building and felt like my steps were getting heavier. By the time I reached my desk, I found the air around so depressing that I could almost hear Mozart's funeral march playing.

Charlotte entered our open space and sat behind her desk. I couldn't understand how her complexion could be that glowing, while I could be an Edvard Munch's model posing for "The Scream".

"How did you do that…?" I muttered in disbelief.

"Do what?" she replied in her usual arrogant tone.

"You don't look like you were drunk and then slept for only four hours… how?" I was dying to know her method.

"That's because I didn't," she smirked.

"Huh?"

That was the most intelligent reaction I could give her considering the state of my mind.

"I didn't sleep at all," she chuckled. "I drank more booze and had sex."

I quickly figured that her method was highly unaffordable for me… I only felt that my depression was getting worse. I had already been single for three and a half years. Now I could also become jobless. To make it all worse, my lack of sleep was slowly turning into anger, creating a possibility where I would likely kill one of the higher-ups reevaluating my usefulness, if something went wrong...

Soon later, Sonia and Grace joined us, and we all waited to hear our sentences. I could tell that we were equally disturbed by the situation… or maybe not equally… Sonia still looked like she had overdosed on Prozac and kept a striking grin on her face. Only her nervously tapping feet were giving her away.

Charlotte held her cool as usual expression, but I could easily tell that she wasn't predicting a happy outcome by the fact she had already packed the things on her desk.

Grace remained natural. She looked naturally pissed. She breathed deeply, clenching her teeth and fists, and looking like she was going to hit someone, or crash something… valuable… soon.

Finally, Marcus came to our room. I didn't know it was possible, but his expression made everyone even more depressed and frustrated.

"I have good news and… bad ones," he announced.

"Give us the good news first," Grace stated and kept clenching her fists.

"The script was accepted without further corrections. That means that our work together… is done," he mumbled.

I had never heard any good news that sounded so miserable.

"What's the bad news then?" I asked, getting ready for the big blow.

"Only one of you will join me in the entertainment department… They will choose which one it will be," he conveyed the decision.

"What about the rest?" Charlotte inquired, hesitantly.

"I'm not sure, but the rest may be… fired," he replied, reluctantly.

"When will they decide…?" I muttered.

"They will ask you separately in an hour. Someone will call you in," he declared sadly, and walked inside his office to start packing.

This view of all of us sitting miserably infuriated me. We were hired for our creativity… or connections, but mostly creativity. I couldn’t say that we had always agreed with each other, but I would never wish for any of those fine women to lose this job. Worst of all was the fact that we were all treated unfairly, and the series could have been so much better if we didn't spend our energy constantly rewriting the good parts of the script.

An hour had passed, and the general manager's secretary, Natalie, came down to call one of us for the interview. The first one was Charlotte. She sprayed the perfume on her wrists, pushed up her breasts and nonchalantly walked out of the room. She looked fearless… but that was only the surface. For the first time, I saw her taking a deep breath and forcing a confident smile. If she were the one among us with the most developed social skills, I could easily tell that the rest of us were screwed…

I could easily tell that saving this job would mean convincing people that you could work in any other department in the company, which in my case was… almost impossible. I had never wanted to have an office job! I chose the field of my studies so that I could find work where I could create… I needed money, but I wasn't able to even convince myself that I wanted to become an office worker.

Truth be told, I couldn't see myself in the entertainment department either. It was Grace's area of expertise since she could write a book on creating talent shows… I knew that being Marcus's assistant at his new position would be perfect for her…

I was slowly getting ready to be fired and say goodbye to this place. I looked at Grace. She wasn't clenching her fists anymore. Now she just hid her hands under the table, trying to cover her anxieties. I knew well that she wanted to keep the job as much as possible, and there could be a way up for her if she were working in the entertainment department.

When Charlotte returned, she only smirked wickedly, then took her purse and left the company. Sonia was next, but her interview was short, and she was on the verge of tears when she came back. She only mumbled something incomprehensible. I wanted to ask if she was ok, but even she would rather leave the place immediately than to discuss something that was an obvious failure.

Grace spent the longest time at the interview, I could already expect that much, but even she came back without any traces of satisfaction from her accomplishment… I was next.

I walked inside the interview room. There were three people in the room: Eric Valentine, general manager, Dereck Cliff, chief of the production department, and Violet Herlan, manager of the new projects department. They were all casually drinking coffee and chatting merrily. They didn't stop when I walked in and greeted them. Their attitude towards me was obvious. I noticed a camera right in front of their desk. It looked like they were recording all our interviews…

"May I ask what the camera is for here?" I formed a question while taking my seat in front of them.

"Oh, don't care about it too much. Just focus on the interview," the general manager chuckled.

I didn't like it in a bit. The level of my annoyance was slowly reaching my limit…

"Ms. Eder, You've been working here for over three years. Would you tell us what your accomplishments were during that time?" Mrs. Herlan began the interview nonchalantly.

"During that time, I worked on creating a script for the second, third, and fourth seasons of "The CEO's Only Weakness". It was a team effort. That is why I cannot tell you which exact scenes were written by me alone…" I explained.

"You are saying that you can't take the credit for the whole team… How about taking the criticism then?" she chuckled.

I looked at their faces. All of them wore disgusting smirks. They simply waited for me to admit that the script we wrote was full of dull nonsense, yet they all knew why it was written that way. I truly wanted to take the chair I was sitting on and hit each one of them with it. That was what my subconscious did anyway. I hid my thoughts behind a sweet smile. If I were to get fired, at least I could tell them all the truth.

"Taking the criticism… It depends," I smirked.

"Depends on what?" Mrs. Herlan asked, irked.

"It depends if we were to talk about the actual script we created, or what was left of it," I stated, trying to remain composed.

"What are you trying to imply?!" Mr. Cliff burst out.

"Nothing at all. I'm just stating the truth," I smiled beamingly.

"It's normal that when there are failures in the script, the corrections are unavoidable. Are you trying to blame the production team for your lack of competence?!" he hissed.

"Mr. Cliff… Let me ask you a question. Do you think it's a standard procedure to completely rewrite at least 14 episodes from every 24-episode season of the drama? Or perhaps, you think it's reasonable to correct at least 5 scenes in all the other episodes… those that "not needed rewriting"?" I squeezed out.

"Well… that only proves my point," Mr. Cliff smirked.

"Really?" I twitched, took a deep breath, and stretched my arms, saying, "I realize that the series need a good cast. The more popular the actors are, the more money the show will earn. However, if you work with celebrities who have poor acting skills and are in high demand, the show is already doomed." I smiled and made direct eye contact with each of them, one by one.

Mrs. Herlan frowned and glared at me, yet I guessed she couldn't find an argument that would deny my words. I decided to keep talking.

"At the beginning of the second season, we created a second female character who was supposed to have a brief romance with Christopher, our male lead character. All the scenes had to be changed because Ms. Amanda Sierra, who plays the female lead, got jealous. The whole thread, which mostly created the plot for the season, had to be rewritten. In the end, the only acceptable by Ms. Sierra version was a cumulation of affectionate scenes between the female and male leads. The same demands appeared from Mr. Gareth Aguilar, playing Christopher in the third season, when we wanted the male villain to get intimate with the female lead. Later we were told to erase the villain character entirely, because Mr. Aguilar had an argument with the actor who played the villain's role. But I guess… you are right. The requests were reasonable…" I smiled evilly.

I stopped and observed their reaction. All of them became silent. The general manager pulled out a tissue and wiped his forehead. For some reason, all of them were getting nervous. That only made me more eager to continue.

"I see…" Mr. Valentine cleared his throat, "I mean… We all see what you mean... You made your point…"

I could see that he wanted to prevent me from saying another word, but I didn't want to stop…

"But that's not all," I grinned, "There are lots of tiny things like that time our CEO, Christopher, was meeting a friend from China, and we wanted him to say 3 short sentences in Chinese, but he was unable to pronounce them. We changed the scene, so that we would meet an Italian friend… but he was unable to learn Italian either… In the end, during the scene where there were full of foreigners, all the dialogs were only in English," I chuckled.

"Ms. Eder…" Mrs. Herlan hissed, "You sound like you were treated like a slave in your work. Your remarks concerning the cast and production are rude and out of line!"

"But I only stated the truth…" I confessed sincerely, "Those three years made me learn a lot, and develop a lot. This job demanded tons of creativity, and the whole team put a lot of effort to make the show interesting and adored… against all the odds. I would like to use the knowledge and experience I got here to write and create something spectacular… But I know my limits… for now. Thank you for allowing me to work here all this time," I stood up and bowed.

All three of them went silent. I looked at each other nervously, but none of them said a word for a while. This silence became truly awkward. I stood before them awaiting some reaction, but then I decided to end it all myself.

"Thank you for your time. Goodbye," I bowed slightly once more, and since nobody answered quickly enough, I left the door.

As soon as I was out, I started breathing hectically. My whole body trembled, and I was on the verge of crying.

"I think, I have just become jobless…" I burst into tears.