Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

A Bad Start to the Day

Joey knew it was going to be a bad day when he saw the pile of papers sitting on his desk. They taunted him, this pile of inefficiency, this plethora of over researched research. He thought he'd given Marla, the buxom blonde intern with a face like Jessica Rabbit and the body of Roseanne Barr, a fairly simple assignment: find out how many places already sold their product, and if so what were the responses. Where were they selling it? Who was buying, and why?
C'mon people, it ain't rocket science... he thought. Joey took a fast furtive glance around at the empty office cubicle and sank like a brick onto his underpadded chair. He wasn't going to look at it, no he wasn't, not until he got the rest of his other work done, that he'd been ignoring for... two and a half weeks before Marla flounced in here on the arm of the company vice president and announced she was The Intern, the Brain from Brainerd. Master's in God Knows What, Ph D in Who Cares. (For that matter, what the fried chicken was a PhD doing in a place like this?)

To make matters even more interesting, it was half past a freckle and Marla hadn't shown her face yet for "conferencing".

Hives rose up the back of Joey's leg and he bent down under the desk to scratch it... and that's when he saw it.

Oh. My. Goodness... he thought, as he scrunched under and pulled the folder from its hiding place behind the plastic trashcan. It was thick, white, the kind they stamp RESTRICTED FOR YOUR EYES ONLY... as a matter of fact, it was stamped RESTRICTED. Joey set it on the table again, hands, arms, toes, toupee shaking like he'd been electrocuted. This was not on the syllabus.

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