The Dead Possum Inn - Characters
The Dead Possum Inn
Character studies
Trey: Male Lead. Mid-20s to
early-30s. Any ethnicity or race.
Trey is the naive and impressionable front
desk clerk at the Dead Possum Inn. He is reliable and hard-working, although he
is easily distracted and influenced by Mark. He gets along well with everyone
at the hotel, although he does sometimes find Hiram’s cheapness and
money-making schemes a bit tiresome. He has a crush on Cindy, one of the
housekeepers.
Trey is our audience surrogate. Our everyman.
He’s a millennial, so he’s keyed into social media and technology. However, he
lacks the activist tendencies of others in his generation. He seems to be
drifting at the moment, uncertain which path he wants to take as far as his
career. He has some talent in video editing, and has a mildly successful
Youtube channel that earns extra cash (usually only enough to buy a twelve pack
of discount beer once a week.)
When he was a boy his grandfather bought him
a set of finger puppets. It’s an annoying hobby he continues into his adult
hood. The front desk at the Dead Possum provides for an excellent makeshift
puppet theater.
Weakness/Flaw: Impressionable, naïve, easily manipulated, socially awkward.
Strength/Redemption: Loyal, kind, easy-going, smart, resourceful.
Hiram: Male Lead. Early-40s to
early-60s. Any ethnicity or race. Open to gender change.
Hiram is the owner of the Dead Possum. He won
it in a court case against a game show producer. Hiram knows nothing about the
hotel business, or any business for that matter. Before owning the hotel he
held a string of demeaning and unrewarding jobs. He longs to be successful, but
always falls short. He’s frugal for the most part, although when he becomes
obsessed with something, money becomes no object. He jumps from one money
making scheme to the next, easily influenced by trends, fads, and scams.
He wants to be a friend to his employees, but
usually fails to make any meaningful connections. He’s closest to Trey and
Mark, mostly because of Trey’s pity and Mark’s ambivalence. He is constantly
reading self-help books to make himself more likeable and influential. He
speaks fluent Spanish because he accidentally fell asleep for three days
listening to a Rosetta Stone CD instead of one of his business administration
correspondence courses.
When he was 8 he learned he was allergic to
white caterpillars. To this day he is terrified of them. Even the mention of
them sends him into a panic.
Weakness/Flaw: Arrogant, easily confused, overly ambitious, envious, greedy,
stubborn.
Strength/Redemption: Tenacious, friendly, spontaneous, playful.
Mark: Male Lead. Early-40s to
early-50s. Any ethnicity or race.
Mark is the head maintenance man at the Dead
Possum. He was Hiram’s first hire. Mark is very competent and knowledgeable,
but he has a slacker mentality. He hates the guests, barely tolerates most of
this co-workers, and has very little respect for Hiram. He’d much rather be
joking around and having fun than working. He’s always up for a prank and loves
tricking Hiram into various schemes or misadventures.
Mark has taken Trey under his wing, and
considers him a friend. He feels responsible for the young man, and wishes to
impart his knowledge and slacker wisdom.
He’s married to Betty, the head housekeeper.
He loves her dearly and never even looks at other women. He claims Betty saved
his life, but never tells anyone how. The secret is that Betty tied Mark up
during a weird sex game and forgot about him for two days. Consequently, Mark
missed his train to Chicago, which ended up crashing into a bus full of lepers.
Mark was a guitarist in a somewhat successful
folk-rock band in the 1990s. He quit and vowed to never pick up his guitar
again after the lead singer, who was his best friend, died while having a
threesome with a stripper and a garden gnome. Consequently, he hates garden gnomes
and smashes them any chance he gets.
Weakness/Flaw: Slacker, irresponsible, cynical, reckless.
Strength/Redemption: Protective, honorable, faithful, clever.
Cindy: Female Lead. Early-20s to
early-30s. Any ethnicity or race.
Cindy is one of the housekeepers at the Dead
Possum Inn. The only reason she has the job is that her mother, Gary, pays
Hiram to employ her. Gary is afraid all of the success from the charging
station will spoil Cindy. She wants her daughter to learn responsibility and
humility.
Cindy feels she’s too good for housework, and
does everything she can to avoid work. For this reason she’s one of the few
co-workers Mark actually respects. As Cindy is an aspiring singer, she can
often be found practicing her singing and dancing in the rooms she’s supposed
to be cleaning. Most people find her singing annoying. But Trey genuinely loves
it. That is because Cindy is actually capable of reaching a pitch that no other
person on the planet has ever achieved. And Trey just happens to be the only
person on the planet who can hear it. Well, him and a few million dogs.
Cindy honestly doesn’t even know Trey exists
when she first starts working at the Dead Possum. She’s too wrapped up in her
own world, and concerned with her own problems. Her relationship with her
mother is strained. Her father ran off with a garden gnome. And her older
brother is in a coma after driving a bus full of lepers into a train. Eventually
though she starts to notice Trey, and even like him. He’s the only one who
encourages her interest in music, which offers her a bit of respite during her
current patch of misfortune.
Weakness/Flaw: Arrogant, spoiled, undisciplined, self-involved.
Strength/Redemption: Ambitious, grateful, passionate, creative.
Gary: Female Supporting. Early-40s
to Early-60s. Any ethnicity or race.
Gary owns the charging station next to the
hotel. Hiram hates her because he claims he had the idea first. But Gary comes
by her success honestly, through hard work and an uncanny ability to seek out
and find opportunities. She credits her success to dream she had about
marshmallows. She never goes into specifics about the dream, which irritates
Hiram even more.
Gary’s name is short for “Garland.” Her
father was a department store Santa Claus, and was obsessed with Christmas
while Gary was growing up. As a result, Gary doesn’t care much for the
holidays, and actually gets very depressed that time of year.
Her ex-husband left her for a garden gnome. Gary bounced right back though, and started dating a wide variety of
successful men from all over the world. Many of them stay at the Dead Possum
Inn when they come to visit her, much to Hiram’s continued annoyance.
Gary is very generous with her money, and
holds a huge Halloween costume party every year, where she offers one lucky
guest a “wish.” She also donates money to the local college, hoping to get her
daughter enrolled. But Cindy continues to fail her SATs (on purpose.)
Gary loves her daughter, but also expects a
lot from her. Since her husband left, and her son is in a coma, Cindy is all
she has left. Well, Cindy and her vast, vast wealth.
Weakness/Flaw: Sappy, happy, syrupy, overly optimistic.
Strength/Redemption: Generous, loving, energetic, brilliant,
successful.
Betty: Female Supporting. Early-40s
to early-50s. Any ethnicity or race.
Betty is the head housekeeper at the Dead
Possum Inn. She’s cynical, sarcastic, snarky, and unflappable. She’s married to
Mark, who is the only person she seems to tolerate. She absolutely despises the
guests and hates dealing with them. She’ll try to drive them away with insults
and negativity if she can.
Betty was raised in an orphanage by nuns. She
had particularly fond memories of a nun named Sister Twip. She still
corresponds with Twip, who is now 95-years-old. Twip urges Betty to leave Mark
and enter the sisterhood, using her supernatural snark in service to God.
Betty constantly reads. She has a
photographic memory, which considering some of the things she sees when she
cleans the hotel rooms, can be a severe disadvantage. She often wakes up in the
middle of the night with night terrors. Mark calls them “Scare-gasms.”
Weakness/Flaw: Unfriendly, bitter, cynical, disinterested.
Strength/Redemption: Witty, knowledgeable, faithful, well-read.
Norman: Male Supporting. 40 to 60. Any
ethnicity or race.
Drunk, incompetent, senile. The only reason
Hiram hasn't fired Norman is because he always forgets to cash his paychecks,
saving Hiram a lot of money. Norman lives in the hotel basement, but often gets
lost on the way home from work.
Of all the Dead Possum employees, Norman is
probably the rudest to the guests, even going so far as to physically assault
them sometimes. He doesn’t do this out of anger or meanness so much as because
of the flashbacks he has from the Cola Wars in the 1980s. Norman used to be an
advertising executive, but the stress of the Coke campaign caused him to snap.
Weakness/Flaw: Incompetent, senile, lazy, rude.
Strength/Redemption: Cheap labor.
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