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scone-lover · 4 years ago

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Happy Birthday to Holding Out For a Hero!!! ❤️

art by @subparselkie

I published the first chapter of my longest and most popular fic just about a year ago! And I bet you always wanted to see some shitty outlines. Right? Just giving the people what they want. My brain is chaos and now you all have to be subject to it. Strap in, boys. 😂 Everything’s below the cut!

Read Holding Out for a Hero on AO3

This fic was born because I saw a tumblr post about a hero and villain who are roommates and I just had to Snowbazzify it. I had so many random ideas in my brain, and I’d been engaging with fan content for the CO fandom for a few months now.

So I started off by opening a blank document and writing the Prologue, featuring Shep. I had a few basic facts in mind: Shepard’s a reporter, Simon’s a hero, Baz is a villain, Mage is an evil mayor. And that’s. Literally it. I made it up as I went along. I actually still do that with fics, even though I do try to outline in more detail now—I have to write a scene or two that’s been bouncing around in my head to get a feel for the story, then I can give it a direction.

The document is 337 pages on google docs, LOL.

Here’s the first ever set of notes I had. I wrote this on March 29, 2020, directly after typing out the Prologue!

Like I said, absolute chaos. The third Simon bullet point originally said something like “also I’m a superhero and only Penny knows,” then the following day I changed it to “but he’s so handsome? what do???”

I didn’t publish the prologue until writing 5-6 additional chapters, but I think the only major change was going from Baz being “The Vampire” to just “Vampire.”

Chapter 1 was originally called “not a bloody avenger” before I decided to do the rhyming thing. I actually decided that because I wrote “counter spray and earl grey” down for chapter 2, unintentionally rhyming it, and then @ashspren-writes was like, “you should make them all rhyme”... so I did. 😂 For 25 more chapters.

I have a section labeled “quickie backgrounds” in which I finally sat down halfway through writing Chapter 2 (the blade/vamp fight) and said to myself, okay, maybe they should have backstories or something. Or like, reasons for being the hero and villain. Right, yeah, those would be good to make this into a coherent story. In the first version of that, Simon was a sports coach on the side, not a baker, and Baz was an English teacher. LOL.

Once I had all that, I literally just wrote for four days. There’s a weird kind of magic to your first-ever fic for a fandom. All your ideas and thoughts and wishes for these characters comes to a head as you suddenly have an outlet for the first time. It’s why I think people’s first works are often their best or most creative or most profound. The first couple chapters took some time and a couple 1am epiphanies, but once I got into a rhythm it was quick going. I wrote a lot of it in a linear manner, but after writing the first Simon/Baz scene (watching the news together in the flat), I doubled back and added Simon going to Penny’s house after meeting the Mage so that I could work her in as a character earlier.

Fast forward to April 5, I had 5-ish chapters written? I thought this fic would have like... 10 total. And be less than 20k. Haha. Ha. I asked @ashspren-writes to beta read for me - I’d been bouncing ideas off her since the beginning - and then I started brainstorming titles.

The list actually started with that second one. It took a whole 24 hours to decide on the final title. 😂 I thought it might be too cheesy. But hey, it worked out -- now I can’t open AO3 without the damn song getting stuck in my head.

I worked a LOT with my friend @ashspren-writes on this fic - we were friends long before fandom, and she was the only person I knew at the time who had read CO and was involved in the fandom. I didn’t even have a tumblr at this point, I interacted mostly through Instagram and AO3!

On April 6, right before I posted, I realized that if I was going to actually put this on AO3 I should probably know where the story was going. So I made sure Chapters 1-6 were complete, then I wrote one bullet point per chapter up until 12 or so -- you can read those below.

Then I texted ashspren THIS mess:

Some silly notes:

Then I have a section that says “Why do they even have roommates?” because it was a few chapters in and I hadn’t justified richboy Baz and superhero Simon... living together. Cool cool cool

I also did this cool little writing experiment I want to share. Remember that line in Fangirl that’s like—“Once Cath wrote what she thought was a swordfight, and Wren turned it into a love scene.” (Or maybe it was the other way around? LOL.) Anyway, there’s swordfights in this, AND love scenes, so I wanted to do a play on that for two alternate ways Simon might figure it out.

I have a huge Deleted Section in which I wrote an alternate version of Simon and Baz finding out about their secret identities. I have one version where Baz figures it out first—it’s a very tropey yet angsty scene where Simon comes home totally wrecked from a fight, and Baz realizes as he’s helping with the wounds that he caused them. I actually like it a lot, but it ended up not quite fitting with the vibe of the fic (and I rather like them finding out through kissing better). :) I also had an idea where Simon figures it out because Vampire smells like cedar and bergamot, but it really just wasn’t interesting enough. 😂

Now onto... Outlines.

I say that hesitantly because I think these are literally a disgrace to outlines everywhere. These are the baby ones I wrote on April 6 right before posting. Some are more detailed than others, clearly...

Gotta live up to my username somehow.

We do love to see it.

I love this next one: 😂 CHAOS, SCONEY.

THEN, I wrote this as a very long text to ashspren, when I realized no sconey, this is not going to be under 20k words. LOL.

And then I did A Dumb Thing and I put it on AO3, having absolutely NO CLUE WHERE THE STORY WAS GOING. 😂

This is my favorite heading on the document.

Another one of my favorite notes in there.

This next part wasn’t even divided into chapters yet, it’s just a word vomit. I’m so sorry you have to read this mess.

Hahaha, once upon a time there was angst in this story. 😂

And then I realized my true calling: bakery fluff.

Then and only then, I actually decided to divide into those things called Chapters. This is the point where I made the admission to mr scone (boyfriend, not husband lol, we just call him that) that I write gay fanfiction, whoops, and can he please help me because he’s a HUGE DC comics fan and knows everything. And of course, he was super chill about it, and he did. He really did. He’s the genius behind Egghead!!! And also the entire Mage-Humdrum-Supercomputer/Politics plot. I’m serious. I did none of that.

I can’t even say I’m trying anymore. “Flort”??? I AM LITERALLY NOT TRYING.

Why yes sconey, so very specific. 😂

This is what qualifies as a “good” outline for me, that heading was just for my betas. Isn’t it fabulous to see that some of this actually made it in and I’m capable of planning in advance? 😂

Get ready for the shock of your life, though -- I actually have a SUUUUPER detailed outline for the two finale chapters. Because, well, it’s the finale. Wrapping up loose ends does actually require planning, WHO KNEW. Also I’d been writing and posting for a couple months at this point and it had been several more weeks in quarantine so maybe I’d regained some sense of reality? It’s like two pages but still shittily written, so I’ll just share a couple tidibits.

That bullet point is extraordinarily cracky BUT actually, Baz shooting up from the cloud like an awesome fucking hot dramatic person was one of the very first scenes I envisioned for this fic :D

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my writing brain! It’s a terrifying place. I love all of you that say Holding Out For a Hero is a well-crafted masterpiece, but respectfully, no ❤️

(Though I swear I AM super, super happy with how it turned out - it’s still my favorite thing I’ve ever written. Read it here!!!)

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spookyspaghettisundae · 4 years ago

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Working Like a Charm

Sammie Smith’s body ached. Every muscle screamed to the high heavens, lamenting long hours of work, telling a tale of soreness and overexertion. He could feel how sunken his eyes must have looked but avoided rubbing them.

Numb to the layers of grit and filth from the coal mine that clung to every surface of exposed skin, his weary calloused hands burned from clutching tools for as long as he had. Still was he clutching them now, carrying his heavy shovel and pickaxe on a shoulder. Part of why “Baron” Callan had hired him—he brought his own tools to work.

The day had been entirely too damned long, he thought. His head hung low, he looked forward to crashing into his creaky old rocking chair, warming up a bowl of beans, taking a bath, and getting a good night’s sleep. Night came fast this time of year, and the day had dragged on into overtime due to a cave-in, setting them back and subjecting the workforce to Callan’s barking admonitions. At least nobody had gotten hurt in the accident.

Sammie’s feet dragged and kicked up tiny clouds as he walked the dusty road back to his home on the edge of Dead End.

His shanty little shack stood amid a copse of trees, just far away enough from the town’s center that he needed not deal with the raucous noise from the saloon or the farrier’s daily toil or other busywork in the rugged frontier town, but not so far away that it made fetching water and supplies too much of a hassle.

He tripped over something, stumbled a few steps, and caught himself before gravity could drag him down. Sammie slowly turned to look at what had snagged his boot.

A linen sack. Sopping wet and dark in color. About the size of a human head.

It took him several moments to register what he was looking at. For the realization to sink in. He lost track of time, oblivious to how long he was standing there, staring at the linen sack, piecing together why his own brain figured it to be the size of a human head, or that the stain in the coarse cloth and on the dirt around it had to be blood.

And then his mind snapped onto a decision. He did what he believed every other conscientious citizen of their fine town should do upon finding a severed head by the roadside on their way home. He kicked it away with full force, cringing at the squelching sound and how little it flew past the shrubs, heavy with fluid, and it flopped unevenly, disappearing awkwardly into the shade of the underbrush.

He had been stealing pennies from Callan and often cheated at cards. He had pissed off plenty of people around town in some of his bouts of drunken aggression, and Sammie did not want to have Sheriff Moody on his ass for accusations of a murder he did not commit.

With a heavy sigh and hoping to leave the severed head behind for wild animals and vermin to claim, he continued his way home.

Only about thirty paces away from his shack, he stopped and groaned, beginning to second-guess and regret what he had just done. If it did draw wild animals, they would be a bit too close to his hut for comfort. And leaving it there for some rascal or dog to find might just make people think he did it either way.

Branches bent and snapped as he hastily dumped his tools by the side of the dirt path and started poking around in the bush where the head in the burlap sack had rolled off to.

Sammie swore up a storm as he searched. The blood drained more and more from his head with every second, a sense of dread forming a knot in his stomach as he could not find it and began to imagine people pointing and laughing while they hanged him from the gallows.

It had not flown far. How in tarnation could he not have found it already?

Glass shattered and metal clattered, and the burst of ruckus stopped him dead in his tracks. Sammie’s head jutted over, and he craned his neck over the edge of the bushes to peer at his shack.

Someone was in there.

The murderer?

He could feel his heart pounding away as it uncomfortably pumped blood through his throbbing chest, digits, and ears. Even his belly pulsed with his festering sense of fear.

Straining his eyes to see inside the darkness behind the small and shoddy windows of his cabin, he could not make out anybody in there. Eagerly awaiting a motion to make itself noticed.

He licked his parched lips and returned to his tools, keeping his eyes trained on his home. He ducked down, pawing at the first wooden shaft his hands found purchase on, then gripped the pickaxe in both hands.

Step by step, careful to not make too much sound as he approached, he drew his axe up high above his head, ready to swing it and kill if need be.

The closer he drew to the shabby front door of his cabin, the more subtle sounds he perceived from inside: scratching, followed by a man’s clipped cough, followed by wooden objects scraping against each other, followed by what sounded like someone smacking their lips—

Sammie arrived by the door. His heart throbbed with such pounding force that it felt like it was trying to escape every orifice, trying to drown out every little noise.

He kicked the door and started swearing once the sensation of the jolt reached his ankle and knee—the door just rattled in its hinges, refusing to yield anything but additional pain in his already sore leg. He lost balance and stumbled away, using the pickaxe to brace himself from falling, skidding across the dirt.

Whoever had invaded his home did not react to his fumbling around outside. Still sounded like someone was eating in there.

Was this rat bastard eating his jerky supplies?

The fury welling up in his gut—being stolen from, being possibly framed for murder, making a fool of himself in failing to kick his own door open, frustrated by the ghoulish foreman and “Baron” at work, being too tired for any of this—somehow eclipsed his fear.

Fuming, Sammie ripped the door open, gripping the pickaxe in one hand, knowing it might as well just scare off the scoundrel to show he could drive the pick right through him if he started messing around.

One step beyond the threshold, he froze.

Faint light from the setting sun poured in through the cabin’s small windows, revealing a cloud of dust motes to be dancing in the rays. The smell of feces and vomit lingered in the air, like someone had dragged the horse trough from outside the saloon into here.

A stranger sat at his table, eating. Eating what looked to be shards of glass in one of Sammie’s wooden bowls. The stranger smacked his lips and the glass crunched between his teeth as he chewed, with rivulets of blood trickling down his chin. He looked like he had once sported a dapper black suit and jacket, like someone far more well off than Sammie—like a businessman from Louisville—but myriads of dark spots and dust marred his attire, like he had been rolling around in the dirt and human refuse.

And his hands were slick and shiny with crimson. His fingers looked way too thin at the tips, all pointy and narrow, mismatched with the rest of his meaty palms.

The stranger met Sammie’s horrified gaze with an air of confounded indifference about him, idly crunching down on the glass being ground down between his teeth. His eerily thin fingertips gingerly grabbed another shard from the pile of broken bottles in the bowl in front of him and guided it to his mouth.

He opened his mouth and revealed a nightmare of blood and shiny jagged bits, teeth painted in black and red.

The pickaxe landing on the floorboards with a heavy thud helped Sammie break out of his trance. All semblance of fatigue had escaped his weary body and he now felt lightheaded, his stomach churning and turning upside down like it needed to expel his meager lunch, and his knees buckled for a split second before he braced himself against the frame of his front door.

The stranger stopped chewing. Swallowed with visible effort and a loud gulping sound to accompany it. Coughed, choked, gurgled. Swallowed again.

He tilted his head and stared Sammie in the eyes. Piercing, unblinking. Uncaring of the blood dripping from his own chin.

“I—”

The glass-eater spoke and coughed. He cleared his throat and coughed again.

“I, too, have discovered, that poring over the secret pages of Doyle, I sometimes feel the distant spirit of God,” said the glass-eater. Blood bubbled from between his lips and stilted his otherwise eerily calm manner of speaking. “On the whole, our questions are quickly eaten by the—by the—”

His words trailed off. His gaze remained fixed upon Sammie, going blank.

“W-who? Who are you?” Sammie finally asked.

He wanted to crouch down and snatch the pickaxe back up, but it was all too weird. The stranger, this glass-eater, had clearly lost his mind, but he was not threatening him in any way. Just sitting there with a calm that did not match the damage he was doing to himself in eating all those glass shards.

The glass-eater blinked, finally, reminding Sammie of a human. His focus returned; his gaze hardened again.

“Who are you?” the glass-eater echoed him, almost mimicking his tone.

Was that a mockery?

Sammie almost shook his head as much as his mind told him that was not the case. The glass-eater had repeated his question more like children learning how to speak by mimicking the words of adults they heard spoken.

He swallowed the dry lump of coal dust and grit and fear that had lodged itself into his parched throat and started thinking differently.

Maybe this glass-eater fellow needed help.

“You don’t look alright, man,” said Sammie. “I can get you a doc. You want me to get you a doc?”

Glass-eater tilted his head the other way and did not answer the question. Instead, without breaking eye contact, he picked up another shard and brought it to his lips, parting them and inserting it into his bloodied jaws.

Crunch, crunch.

“You, uh, you know where you at? This is my home,” Sammie said. “I can get you—I will go get a doc, alright?”

Crunch. Crunch. Dead stare.

“Maybe, uhm, stop eatin’ all that—uh, all that glass?”

Crunch. Staring unbroken.

“I will go find the doc,” Sammie said, walking out of his cabin without turning his back, not daring to turn until he had distanced himself from the door by several slow and careful paces, as one should in the presence of a beast in the wild.

Slowly peeling his gaze from their unnervingly long eye contact, he shot a glance over his shoulder every few steps, making sure that the crazy man still sat there and did not just jump up from the chair and give chase.

Instead, he continued to calmly eat more of the broken glass. With growing distance, Sammie could not hear those blackened teeth crunching down on the shards. He merely heard the haunting echo of it in his mind.

Crunch, crunch. Crunch.

His pace accelerated and he nearly jogged the last bit towards the rows of buildings that constituted Dead End’s main street. Bumped right into someone, nearly falling onto his ass as he stumbled sideways past the next person.

A man in black, standing tall, the powder of the trails sticking to a long duster coat. U.S. Marshal’s star on his belt, two six-shooters slung into holsters hanging from a belt around his hips. A visage featuring a symmetry broken up only by a milky-white eye, framed by a scar speaking volumes of a beast’s claw raking over the lawman’s face.

The marshal’s one good eye scanned Sammie up and down while he caught himself. Sammie nearly soiled his pants right then and there, at the mere thought of all the trouble he might get into if this lawman got on his case and misunderstood the situation somehow. Just find the doctor, now, and—

“What in the hell is wrong with you, son?” asked the marshal with a growl. “You look like you seen a ghost.”

He tipped his hat at Sammie and hooked a thumb into his belt, demonstratively flapping open one side of his coat to display the badge and one of his revolvers.

“O-oh, uh, it's—it’s, uh, it's—uhm, it’s nothin’, sir,” stammered Sammie. “Jus’ lookin’ for a, uh, physician, bit of a personal medical ‘mergency?”

He silently cursed himself for being such a bumbling coward, now of all times. Swallowed another lump stuck in this throat. His heart now pounded as fiercely as it had when he found the severed head.

Shit. The severed head.

Sammie had nearly forgotten about that.

The marshal took a step closer towards him and lowered his voice to what could only be described as a conspiratorial whisper, “Listen, I know there are strange things goin’ on in this town. You lead me to 'em, I oughtta have a shot at fixin’ these things somehow.”

He rolled his jaw and then set it while he awaited a response from Sammie. Sammie’s mind and thoughts however melted into a puddle of worthless soup.

Sammie blurted out the words, “Ah, shit, m-man—uh, I mean, uh—I-I need your h-help, sir.” He then lowered his voice to a desperately pleading hiss. “There’s some crazy man in my house. H-he's—he’s eatin’ glass, man. And talkin’ weird.”

He could get to the head later. Or maybe that would never come up.

Sammie held his breath, ready to soon be staring down the wrong end of one of those revolvers.

Instead, the marshal nodded and ordered, “Show me.”

He led the lawman back down the trail. Noticed a whiff of something dead and rotten about him, leaving him to wonder if something was not off about the marshal, as well. At the very least, Sammie hoped, that might throw him off from noticing a head in the sack out in the bushes nearby. Then he wondered if it was even a human head in there, as he had never bothered to look inside. Then he quietly scolded himself to shut about it already, like he might draw attention to the bloody linen sack if he thought too much about it.

Approaching the cabin, hasty step by step, he expected to find the glass-eater missing and putting him in the predicament of having to explain things. Things like this did not happen. Should not happen.

Some part of him dreamt that this was just a nightmare, and he was about to wake up anytime soon. No such luck, though. His body still ached from the day, the sun set on the horizon, and every step hurt his blistered right heel. It was all too real.

Like a dream, he hoped to cross that threshold and find no sign of the glass-eater. To find everything in its rightful place, to wonder if he was just losing his own damned mind.

But Sammie froze by the door. The stranger still sat there, gingerly picking up another shard of glass, bringing it to those bloodied split lips and the crimson fluids running down his chin in rivulets, and then chewing on the shard.

Crunch, crunch. For some reason, it reminded Sammie of bones now. Like this was the sound that bones made when something ate them. Snapping, cracking, crunching.

Crunch. Crunch.

A calloused hand clapped down on Sammie’s shoulder, tearing him out of this new daze of his. The marshal squeezed his shoulder for a second and then pushed past him, stepping inside the cabin.

“Sir?” the marshal asked. “This your home?”

Even with his back turned to Sammie, the marshal’s presence was imposing. All dressed in black and looking weathered, it was like he absorbed all the remnants of light in these gloomy cramped quarters, like he had a strange inverse halo about him where all light bent and gathered around him.

Crunch, crunch.

The glass-eater tilted his head again, just like he had when speaking with Sammie.

“Yes, of course this is my home,” the stranger spoke, another bubble forming between his tortured lips.

Unfazed by his condition and what all those shards must have been doing to his—in his—

Sammie fought the urge to throw up at the thought. The marshal cast an inquisitive glance over his shoulder, catching Sammie’s gaze. For a moment, he worried if he had to argue about some crazy man walking onto his property and getting other people to testify that this was, in fact his home.

The marshal did not question it, though, instead turned his attention right back to the glass-eater.

“All under the sky is my home, now, as we awaken, sea, by sea,” said the stranger, cementing what the lawman must have instinctively grasped. “You are a child of the mountains. I am the ocean.”

His thin fingers—and only now, somehow, as it grew darker, did it dawn on Sammie what was so off-putting about them—grabbed another shard from the bowl. His fingers looked the way they did because all the skin and nails from their tips had been flayed off somehow. Just bloodied skeletal husks of what they must have been, thinning towards the tips.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

“That so?” asked the marshal. He shot another glance at Sammie, his brow arched.

The marshal knew. He understood the insanity of this situation. The madness of that man.

To the glass-eater, he then added, “You touch any… strange objects lately, sir?”

Crunch, crunch.

“You involved on the rail work between here and Louisville?”

Crunch.

The glass-eater tilted his head again. More blood trickled from the corner of his sealed lips. His eyes sparkled with something strange in the dying light.

Crunch.

“You even remember a name anymore?”

Crunch. Crunch, crunch.

The glass-eater grabbed another shard, not breaking eye contact with the marshal.

“My name is the many, and my song is the return. I am the ocean,” he finally replied, putting particular emphasis on the word “am”. It echoed in Sammie’s mind.

The marshal violently expelled air from his nostrils, something in between a sigh and a groan.

“Shit,” he said.

In a flash, loud claps of gunshots pierced the air. The stinging smell of gunpowder soon hit Sammie’s nostrils. The deafening noise startled Sammie, sending him reeling, stumbling backwards, away from the eruptions of muzzle flashes brightly illuminating the gloomy cabin for split seconds. Then another volley of shots ripped, fired from both revolvers, one in each hand of the marshal.

The glass-eater dropped the shard into the bowl and looked down at his chest, now pockmarked with pitch-black bleeding bullet holes. He probed one of the wounds with those skeletal fingertips, almost in disbelief. Not trembling with fear or weakness—no—with a certainty that seemed wholly unnatural.

More thunderclaps, more shots released from the revolvers until both weapons had been emptied through repeated fire. The glass-eater slumped over the table, the wooden bowl with the glass hurtled to the floor where the shards sprayed in every direction with high-pitched clinking, and the stranger stopped moving.

Frozen in shock, Sammie knew not what to do.

Why in God’s name had he just shot the man?

“Too late to save that poor bastard. Too far gone,” the marshal growled, followed by another sigh; almost as if he had read Sammie’s mind and responded to his thought.

The floorboards thumped and thundered, and spurs jingled, as the marshal strode through the narrow cabin’s interior, closing in on the dead body of the glass-eater. He poked him with the smoking barrel of one of his pistols, then used it to lift the lifeless head and ensure the stranger had expired. A veritable vomit of blood poured out from the dead man’s half-open mouth.

Still dumbfounded and with a panic budding deep down, Sammie was only moments removed from running away and looking for help. Because now he feared the marshal again, perhaps far more than ever before.

What if he found the head? Blamed it on him? Blamed glass-eater on him Gunned him down without question? Without trial?

The thoughts circled at the speed of a hundred miles a minute, but they also rooted him firmly in place while the marshal’s eyes scanned Sammie’s meager possessions around the cabin. Then their eyes met again.

“You hold on, sir,” the marshal said, taking a step towards him. “I will get this mess cleaned up, lickety-split. Damn shame he had to ruin your home like that. And I reckon I, uh—I apologize for the holes I put into your back wall.”

He had already holstered the guns, which had happened so quickly that Sammie never registered it. He wanted to back away, but now dreaded seeing those guns flash right back out, giving him the same treatment of judge, jury, and executioner, all in one.

Instead, the marshal dug around in his duster and produced a silver amulet. Its shape looked foreign, odd—not a crucifix, not a locket, not a pocket watch—before he could discern its precise form, the marshal clutched it firmly in his fist and whispered something incomprehensible.

A warm light flared up in the cabin for a split second. The stench of rotten eggs suddenly filled the air, adding to Sammie’s nausea. And he heard something fidget in there, just out of sight. The marshal looked at a corner—focused on something just out of sight for Sammie. He only needed to step inside to follow his gaze, but—

Something held him back. Something in there had appeared out of nowhere, and it unsettled him deeply. Made his mind race even faster, so fast he could not form a single coherent thought.

“You clean up here, alright?” the marshal spoke to whoever was in the corner.

Pause. Scratching sounds.

“No, we will not discuss this now. Just clean it up, and we can bicker later,” the marshal said, responding to seemingly nothing.

Another long pause, more scratching sounds. Someone else was in there. Or something.

The marshal walked outside the front door, paused, swiveled, and closed the door behind him. He cracked a feeble smile at Sammie, something that screamed of dishonesty. Or perhaps pain. Or regret.

Sammie did not know what to do. He had to tell others about this. Get word out. They might think he was crazy, but if the marshal was truly crazier than him and the glass-eater combined, then he might find protection in numbers. Hell, maybe even that useless sheriff might help cover him if the going got rough.

The marshal lifted the amulet to eye height between them and then let it drop. It dangled from its silvery chain and Sammie tried to study it as it swung back and forth.

Up close, it looked like a long, steel cylinder, roughly the length of half his pinky finger. Reddened grooves coiled around it at rhythmically pleasing intervals, and strange symbols etched into the side formed a harmonic pattern all over its surface. The symbols reminded him of arithmetic, for some reason, though Sammie was illiterate.

“Look at the amulet, sir,” said the marshal, his voice now flat and calm. Almost soothing. “Next thing you know, all these worries o’ yours will be wiped away.”

Another flash of light. Next thing Sammie knew, he was walking down main street, in Dead End. No recollection of anything that had just transpired.

His body ached. Every muscle in him complained about the long day of toil behind him. He just yearned to sink into a bath and wash off all the grit and filth from the coal mine. His weary calloused hands burned from clutching the pickaxe and shovel that he carried on his shoulder. His tired gait gained more zest as he veered off to the side, taking the open spot between the buildings and following the dirt path back to his cabin.

The day had been entirely too damn long, he thought. His head hung low, he looked forward to crashing into his creaky old rocking chair, warming up a bowl of beans, taking a bath, and getting a good night’s rest.

Night had somehow come faster than it should have, he reckoned. They had worked late, but he must have been so tired that he did not realize how fast the sun set on his way home.

Must have just been that time of year.

Sammie’s feet dragged and kicked up tiny clouds as he walked the dusty road back to his home on the edge of Dead End.

He did not trip over anything this time. He did not notice anything amiss in his cabin when he plunked down his tools on the table and looked around for some jerky to bite. He went about the rest of his evening. Oblivious to what had happened here earlier.

Something had reached deep inside his mind and scrubbed it clean. No head, no glass-eater, no marshal, no shooting, no talisman. Just some missing time he could explain away.

The marshal’s talisman worked like a charm.

—Submitted by Wratts

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