Heather pretended to read but she was actually in the book, wandering around the paragraphs through various scenes in search of the pizza delivery boy mentioned briefly on page 37. Something was not right. The boy was just a little too polite, too much of a cliché. He'd dropped off his pizza, then vanished from the story altogether, but something about his stock nature was a cry for help. She felt that and had to find him! Heather slipped onto page 38 and cornered Sherrie Baxter, the lead character, a strong-willed twenty-something with long, auburn hair and an icy demeanor, and demanded information on his whereabouts. In a droll, emotionless voice Sherrie claimed ignorance. Heather knocked the pizza from Sherrie's hands and it would have turned violent, except Sherrie had no idea how to react, being firmly anchored in another plotline. She froze. The pizza fell cheese-side-down on the carpet, revealing a message on the flip side scrawled in charcoal: "Save us - Basement." Heather rushed through the house until she located the cellar door, stormed through, switched on the light and saw scores of characters huddled together at the base of the stairs. The delivery boy was there, too. When they realized she was a reader they cheered at having finally been freed. The author had plagiarized them from other books and kept them in hiding, waiting for an opportunity to pull them out and introduce them as his own.

Story #161