Wild Fiction

‘I could’ve easily been abducted with the amount of attention you were paying,’ she barked at him once he had joined her.
‘I knew exactly where you were,’ he retorted. ‘I was being clever and watching the reflection of the pub door in the window of the shop. I knew when you came out. I was just making myself inconspicuous. You see, that’s why the author asked me to come back from Africa. He knew I had all these subtle in-built skills.’
Conrad pestered her all the way back to Possum Lane, asking her who she had met and what they had discussed. Rebecca refused to say anything until all the fictionals were together in the basement and out of earshot of the author. She then gave them the details, in fact a verbal transcript, of what had been said.
‘I don’t believe any of it,’ James said at the end. ‘It’s all just been done for dramatic affect.’
‘No I don’t think so.’ It was Conrad who now spoke. ‘I’ve seen him do this sort of thing before. He can’t work out what direction the story should take. He has a million ideas in his head and he doesn’t know which one is the right one. So what he does is create a diversion that introduces a new character, in this case Retir, and a new concept, in this case a society for our benefit. Traditionally, from this point, the story spirals downhill and becomes more and more far fetched. The original plot is forgotten about or lost. It’s the most common reason that editors reject his work. Have you seen any of the rejection letters?’ He raised his eyebrows at the others, indicating that there was a question mark at the end of that last sentence. They shook their heads at him. ‘I can’t remember exactly what they say but it’s something along those lines.’
‘At least he doesn’t kill everybody like Kilgore Trout,’ James said.
‘What do you mean?’ Rebecca said with a puzzled look on her face.
‘Kilgore Trout’s a science fiction writer who can never work out how to finish a story and so he just kills off all the characters at the end. Once all the characters are dead then the story has to stop, and that’s the end,’ James said.
Rebecca looked uneasily at the other two.
‘That’s not exactly true,’ Conrad said. ‘Kilgore Trout is himself a fictional character in a few of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. He’s a not a real science fiction writer as he never gets anything published but he dabbles in writing short stories based on science fiction.’
‘Kurt Who?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Kurt Vonnegut,’ they replied together.
‘Strange name, who’s this bloke?’ Rebecca asked.