Kilodney stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. “How long does it usually take you to write a story, on the average?” “How do you, like, get your shit together to write a story?” I wish I could get my paper all wrote up and marked by the teacher before you die so you could see what he says. “Wow, this is far out!” Phil scribbled furiously. “But I thought, shit, I need something extra on this, like stuff from you personally to jazz it up, like and nobody’d know where it came from. I only had time to read one of your stories because of basketball practice, but I bought the Coles notes.
“I didn’t know who you were when the teacher gave me the assignment. I always put off essays till the last minute because I hate them so much.” Well, um, I got these questions I thought up myself, like for my essay. “It’s okay, they’ve already taken that into account.” He put down the chair, removed his jacket, draped it over the back and sat down, pen and pad at the ready. Phil picked up a chair and approached the bed, stopping suddenly. Next to it lay a Pez candy dispenser, a tiny rubber kangaroo and a button that read “Support Mental Health or I’ll Kill You.” A single red rose in a pewter vase stood on the bedside table. He was the only occupant in the bright three-bed ward. The 40-year-old author was sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette and answering his fan mail, which came mostly from the United States. How fortunate, therefore, for him to have noticed the small article on page 40 of the Toronto Sun headed “Lit Star Kilodney Close to Death” and to have recognized therein a wonderful opportunity to get some inside dope straight from the author. He was failing the course and would need something special on this assignment.
Two weeks before, the student had been told to write an essay on “a famous and important contemporary writer, Crad Kilodney,” whom he had never heard of. Just come this way, will you?” she said, with a mandatory terminal ward smile. “I’m doing an essay for my English class.” The back of the jacket announced fiercely: GOLIATHS. “Crad Kilodney? He’s in the terminal ward,” said the head nurse to the pimply high school student in the red school jacket. This story appeared in Only Paper Today in 1981. Crad Kilodney was a writer and self-publisher whose titles included Lightning Struck My Dick, Terminal Ward, Simple Stories for Idiots and many others.
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