Devonne Brown

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“Excalibur, I call upon thee,” wrote Sam in his journal. He put his pen down and scratched his butt. He’d been sitting for hours and writing for minutes. He was ankle deep in gore and guts in his story. When the muse bit him, she must’ve bit blood, because that’s all that he was able to smear upon the page. He felt childish, writing about Excalibur was just a metaphor for his uselessness.

He needed more marshmallows, more tenderness, more details about real emotion and less swashbuckling. Sure, he’d built a world with a great hall where torches and a stone fireplace cast long shadows and flickering lights. Big deal.

Sam had a good case of writer’s block. 

He let his mind flit to s’mores. He had the ingredients for s’mores with a gingersnap base, a piece of dark chocolate, and the requisite marshmallow. Why not? He wasn’t getting anywhere with words. Maybe food would tear him out of the horrible slump he was in.

He dug a chopstick out of the drawer and lit a candle. After piercing a marshmallow, he turned it slowly over the flame. Sam watched the white edges of the marshmallow bubble, turn gold. He slowly twirled the chopstick above the single flame, the smell of burning sugar pleased him. He liked his marshmallows with a touch of black ash around them, not much, just a touch.

 He waited until the marshmallow decided to slip on the stick before removing it from the flame. He put it on top of the gingersnap, a slice of dark chocolate topped that. Another gingersnap squashed the lot into a melt of glorious goo. Thankfully, Sam was armed with coffee. A confection so strong could not be faced alone and dry.

Marshmallow oozed into Sam’s beard when he bit down on the ginger biscuit sandwich. Chocolate squirted from the center and slid off of his tongue. “Excalibur be damned. His damsel would have to fight her way past the chocolate forest to get to the king.” he thought to himself. 

Sam looked back at his story. “Excalibur, I call upon thee,” were the last words he’d written and the first words he erased. Chocolate was mightier than his words, it dotted his manuscript to prove it.