Chapter Six

Project Overview: Untitled Document is a serial comedy novel dealing with the sort of topics that we so frequently make fun of here at Something Awful. This Chapter: In the latest mind-bending chapter of "Untitled Document", Cokey Washington heads to Fort Wayne Action News 7 for a snap contest with destiny. Can she get a job there, or will a sudden run in with a beverage cause a misfire? Only time and possibly a more coherent and accurate summary than this one will tell! Meanwhile, in California, Tara and her crew from the NWO have dispatched Bob Barker and his immense penis, but they haven't even noticed a new and far more sinister foe lurking in the hills.

Cokey Washington was beginning to think that missing the bus was the single worst mistake she had ever made in her life. She had been walking in her only pair of high heels for more than eighteen blocks and her back felt like it was going to give out. The rain had stopped during the night, but the huge puddles were evaporating under the appallingly hot late morning sun to make the humidity unbearable. Cokey was working up a sweat, and it wasn't going anywhere except all over her only nice dress. The word "nice" of course being relative to her very modest means. It was a neatly pressed and shockingly bright pink dress that Cokey loathed but her grandmother had insisted she wear to her big interview at Fort Wayne Action News 7. The high collar was ringed with cheap lace that was beginning to chafe Cokey's neck. She only ever wore the dress to church, and she felt embarrassed even doing that in it.

Cokey glanced at the time and temperature signage outside of a Bank One on the opposite side of the street. It was 92 degrees and she was almost 45 minutes late, with still four blocks to go. At least she could see the plain office building that housed Fort Wayne Action News 7 up ahead of her. Trudging through the heat with an aching back and arches and no visible goal in sight had nearly prompted her to give up.

To fortify herself Cokey had stopped at a gas station and had purchased a fruit punch flavored shaved ice drink. This drink was about to become the exclamation mark to a day already gone much further south than Cokey could have envisioned in her worst nightmares. As she hustled through a crosswalk trying to beat oncoming traffic the condensation on the outside of the flimsy wax paper cup colluded with gravity and the momentum of Cokey's swinging arm to launch the fruit punch slushy out of her hand. Through an unknown reserve of lightning fast reflexes Cokey's other arm zipped out and her body contorted forward. Her hand closed around the flung cup just as her body pitched into it. She yanked her left foot out of its high heeled prison and placed it firmly in a brackish puddle of leaves and cigarette butts. Then, instinctively, her other arm brought the slushy in towards her body and smashed it at full speed into her chest.

Shockingly cold and indelibly red, the contents of the cup were propelled across her chest, neck, and even up into the neat cornrows of her hair.

"Motherfucker!" Cokey screamed, throwing the cup into the street and stomping her mud-caked foot back into her shoe.

She wiped futilely at the bits of red ice soaking through her dress, dropping the ice onto the sidewalk but leaving behind an immense smear of what might as well have been red ink. Cokey strode over to a dark storefront window that she could see herself in and, her hands shaking with anger, began plucking the clumps of ice out of her hair.

"Fuck this," Cokey muttered, on the verge of tears, "I don't need their goddamn job anyway."

She did though. She needed the money; needed something to force her to distance herself from Grandma Jayne.

Cokey swallowed her anger, her pride, and her shame, and walked the last few blocks to the Fort Wayne Action News 7 offices. As she opened the heavy glass door and entered the comfortably air conditioned lobby she continued to encourage herself within her mind.

"Get it over with. Just an hour at the most. One hour is so easy. One hour gone just walking here. Get it over with. Just an hour. So easy. Gone like it has wings."

The receptionist was a pudgy bottle-blond with at least an inch of dark brown roots showing and one of those little metal wire head sets. She looked up at Cokey as she approached the desk and didn't even try to hide her amusement at the skinny black girl with a big red stain on her pink dress.

"C-can I help you?" The woman half laughed.

"I'm Cokey Washington, here to see Dale McElroy." Cokey looked the woman dead in the eyes, like her grandma taught her.

"Ummmm, just a second, let me see if he's at his desk." The woman punched buttons beneath the high privacy screen on the desk and spoke quietly into her headset. "He'll be down in just a moment. If you want to have a seat-"

"No thanks, I'll just wait here for him." Cokey interrupted, stepping slightly aside so the nonexistent line of people waiting behind her could speak to the receptionist.