PLANET FICTION
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LEMON TREE
Mr Arthur Corn is a balding, 43 year-old Accountant. Every morning at 7:45, he leaves his house and drives his car to work. Except today. Today he�s delayed by five minutes because he cut his mouth whilst brushing his teeth.
Now he�s dropped his door-keys while rushing to lock his door, which is just as well, because this is the point where his car explodes on the drive-way.
Arthur watches the smoke rise from his car, a grey trunk of greasy fumes that grows vaporous arms that waft gently in the wind. Arthur notices that the glass-pane on his front-door is shattered.
Brushing himself off and retrieving his briefcase from the ground, Arthur heads back in to phone the police.
The next morning Arthur is very tired. He spent all of yesterday telling the police that he has no enemies. Arthur even tells them that he has no friends or family too. No one even knows, or cares, that Arthur exists. So no one would go to the trouble of denying Arthur this privilege. The rest of the day was spent negotiating a courtesy car from the insurance company and arranging for a glazier.
To make up for his �day-off� yesterday, Arthur was preparing to leave ten minutes earlier for work. As he approaches his newly-glazed front-door, a small insect flies through the glass-pane and embeds itself in the wall opposite. Arthur looks at his newly-broken glass � there�s a perfect hole in its centre, with shattered rivers of glass branching directly out from it.
Arthur inspects the wall where the heavy insect had driven into. Like the nearly-shattered glass, there are cracked stems of plaster eddying out from the point of entry. Inside the small hole, he could see a bullet.
Arthur phoned the police and asked them to come around, and then he looked for the phone-number of that bloody glazier.
The day after, Arthur didn�t even try to go to work. Instead, he sat in his living-room, wearing his plaid pyjamas and eating toast, nervously staring at the front door.
At about 8 AM, someone knocked at the door.
Arthur stayed in his chair, holding his breath.
Eventually a handful of bills were shoved through his letter-box, rattling the inexpertly replaced glass in the door-frame.
Arthur took a relieved breath, got up, and retrieved the bills from the door-mat before turning back to his chair � except there was a man sitting there.
The man looked to be in his early twenties and wore long greasy hair, a hole-ridden blue jumper and a pair of wire-thin glasses. In his hand was a steaming mug of coffee, which had a picture of a tree on it. After a few seconds of silence, the man took a long drag on his cigarette, blew out a long train of smoke, and said �
�Hello, Arthur. I�m Ian Matuszczyk. The guy who�s been trying to kill you.�
�Umm, hello,� said Arthur, �I�m Arthur.�
The man shook his head and muttered �terrible dialogue.�
�How did you get in my house?�
�I wrote myself in,� answered Ian.
�Sorry?�
�Sit down, Arthur,�
Arthur looked for somewhere to sit, he only owned one chair.
�I can�t,� said Arthur, �You�re in my seat.�
�Sorry,� said Ian, �there should be another chair behind you now.�
Arthur sat down in the newly-materialised chair.
�Why have you been trying to kill me?� asked Arthur.
Ian took another drag on his cigarette, �Drama.�
�Drama?�
�Yup, you see Arthur, I�m a writer. The idea was to try to kill you through a number of assassination attempts.� Ian took another mouthful of coffee.
�Why?�
�That�s the problem I run into, Arthur, why would anyone want to kill you? You�re unimportant. You don�t hold any secret information that might save the world. You�re not a super-smart spy that can overcome any obstacle. To be honest, you�re a piss-poor protagonist.�
�I don�t understand,� said Arthur.
�Look, I�m a writer, ok? I write stories; I create worlds, and plots that occur in those worlds, and characters that drive those plots. But I hit a dead-end after paragraph two. I was going to create a huge action-filled piece, with guns and sex and goodies and baddies, but I run out of ideas. So now we�re doing something different.�
�Like what?� said Arthur, disappointed that he wasn�t going to be a part of wild gun-fights and have passionate sex with beautiful women.
Ian lit another cigarette, �We�re going to have a conversation.�
�Oh, what�s so different about that?�
�When was the last time you read a book where the author inserted himself into the story and talked directly to one of his characters?�
�I don�t read, sorry,� said Arthur.
�Of course you don�t. You�ve never been to school, you�ve never bought a lottery ticket, and you�ve never seen a movie. You didn�t exist until I made you.�
�You�re God?�
�No. In the real-world, I�m a student that�s sitting at his computer, smoking his eleventh cigarette of the day and drinking his fourteenth cup of coffee. I tend to smoke and drink a lot when I�m writing,� answered Ian.
�So you�re saying you�re not God?�
�No, Arthur, I�m not God. I�m a creator,� Ian pulled a face as he drank his never-ending cup of coffee. �This is bitter,� he said before flinging the coffee out onto Arthur�s carpet.
�My carpet!� cried Arthur as the puddle of coffee soaked into it. But then the stain began to grow roots that sunk down into the floor and the puddle grew upwards, a dark brown shape that reached upwards and touched the ceiling. Knots and whorls etched themselves into the brown trunk and lemons rapidly grew from its branches.
�Why did you do that?� cried Arthur.
�The conversation was growing boring. I�m sorry,� said Ian. �I thought it would be a great idea for me to step into one of my own stories, but its not going as planned.�
He took a sip from his mug, which had refilled, before taking another drag on his ever-lasting cigarette.
�You see, Arthur, the idea of me stepping into my own story isn�t as original as you think. Grant Morrison, the comic-book writer, did it. Paul Auster inserted his name as a plot-device in one of his novels, and Alfred Hitchcock was always walking onto his set.�
�Who?� asked Arthur.
�Never mind. Anyway, what I�ve wanted to do in my stories is break the fourth wall, to make the character directly address the audience. Oh, excuse me,� said Ian before vanishing.
Arthur went over to check the chair, in case the man had fallen between the cushions like loose-change.
�Sorry about that,� said Ian, behind Arthur, sitting in the other chair.
Arthur sat down in the chair where the writer had vanished from.
�Where did you go?� asked Arthur.
�To feed the cats. Then I watched Eastenders for half an hour, and had a bit of food.�
�But you only vanished for a second!� cried Arthur.
�To you perhaps. In the fictional world, time can go fast, or slow, or disappear totally. But in reality, it�s unchangeable. In fiction, we can magically appear in Australia, but in the real world I would have to travel for three days.�
�Can we go to Australia?� asked Arthur.
�No,� said Ian, sipping his coffee, �anyway, I�m running out of words so I�ll be off soon. But could I ask a favour?�
�Umm, ok,� said Arthur.
�Can I use the bath-room?� asked Ian.
After five minutes, Ian came back into the living room, taking care not to step on a squirrel that was running around the base of the lemon-tree.
�Thanks for that,� Ian wiped his hands on his jeans, �I think I�m the first fictional character to use a bath-room in a story. Characters never use the toilet. In the real world, Frodo must have stopped for a shit on his way to Mordor.�
�It�s probably been done before, like that fourth wall thing. What�s a Frodo?�
�A Hobbit, listen, I�m off now, so when I leave you�ll cease to exist.�
�What? Why?�
�Because you don�t exist, and I�m tired of writing and want to go to bed.�
Ian opened the front-door.
�Wait� called Arthur, �before you go, can I ask a favour?�
Ian stared at Arthur for a bit, �Maybe.�
�Could you use me in one of your other stories? Please?�
�I don�t know, I don�t really need a balding 43 year-old accountant for anything,� answered Ian.
�You could give me hair, and make me younger, and I could have adventures involving gun-fights and women. For sex with, I mean, not gun-fights with,� said Arthur.
�Well see, maybe I�ll do a sequel or something. Ta-ra,� said Ian as he slammed the door behind him. The pane of glass fell to the floor.
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