Jelly Babies

Extras and Deleted Scenes

During part of the time I was writing this trilogy, another site I belonged to began posting weekly writing challenges. Since I tend to obsess about whatever I’m working on, my answers to those challenges ended up being related to “Sugar Hearts”. In the tradition of DVDs, I thought I’d include them at the end of the story, along with some commentary, for anyone who might be interested. To make them a little easier to follow, I’ve arranged them in chronological order, based on the timeline they would follow in the story universe.


Story Frame Challenge – When Sylvia initially appears in “Sugar Hearts”, she isn’t given a name, and I had no plans for her to be anything other than one of Kale’s minions. But while writing the scene where she talks with Marzi, I realized, somewhat to my surprise, that she’d fallen in love with him. Everything else followed from that. The rules of this challenge were to start the story with the sentence “I should have known the second I saw him” and end it with “I felt like such a fool.” This represents my first stab at trying to understand more about Sylvia and how she came to work for Kale.

I should have known the second I saw him. Eyes like tarnished fire, and a smile that dripped with the innocence sucked from every person who\'d ever been fool enough to gift him with their trust. I should have known he was no savior. But I was just a scared kid, on the run from everything, unable to understand what had happened when I yanked a bird from the jaws of my pet cat -- unable to understand why its cuts had closed as I touched them, unable to understand why its broken wings had mended and grown straight. Unable to understand why it had flown from my hand when it should have died.

But he seemed to know. He seemed to know everything in the whole world. And yet, despite that, he didn\'t treat me like some dumb child. He bought me a drink, and told me that I had a gift. A very rare gift. He told me that I was vulnerable, that people would try to use me, but if I entered his employ, he would protect me. Would teach me to protect myself. And that sounded like such a good thing, such a safe thing. A way to finally stop running.

Looking back on it now, I wonder why he wanted a healer. Life meant so little to him -- even his own. I suppose he was just planning for contingencies. That was the sort of man he was: plans within plans, endless layers deep. Anyway, he kept his word. He taught me to build walls, mazes within mazes, endless layers deep. I thought I could erect a fortress strong enough to keep the evil out. I thought I could hide away so deep inside myself that I\'d never need to run again. Too late, I realized the true price of protection. Too late, I realized that barriers work both ways. Too late, I felt love stir in my heart, and knew it would never be able to get out. Too late. I felt like a fool.


The death of Marzi and Pepper’s parents occurs several years before “Sugar Hearts”. It’s not discussed much (we don’t even find out that they’re dead until “Candy Kisses”), but it must have been a very defining moment in the relationship between brother and sister. Of course, each of them deals with it in their own way. As the following two challenges illustrate.


First Time Challenge – This challenge was restricted to 100 words. As you’ve probably noticed, I have trouble confining myself to 100 pages, much less 100 words. It nearly killed me.

Marzi stared at his sister. She kept fiddling with one of the floral arrangements, as if by fixing it she could bring balance back into her own life. He didn\'t know what to say to her. He didn\'t know how to tell her that he couldn\'t stay for their parent’s funeral, that it had taken more drugs than he cared to admit just to get him into the church.

“It doesn’t fit!” Pepper shouted, yanking out a funeral lily. Angrily, she twisted it in her hands, and white petals dropped to the church floor like murdered angels.

“Nothing fits anymore...”


Word Challenge – We had to write a story using the following words: velvet, oranges, salad, Christmas decoration, brilliant, dish, skills, endure, and necrophilia.

The ground was frozen and brittle, crunching beneath Marzi’s boots as he walked through the cemetery. Here and there, flowers shriveled by the cold dotted the scenery, like macabre Christmas decorations. Marzi tried not to think about Christmas. Tried not to think about his mother, juggling oranges to entertain him while they waited for Christmas dinner to be ready. Tried not to think about his father, cutting vegetables into little animal shapes for the Christmas salad.

Finally, he came to the grave. Just a single headstone, and somewhere beneath it, just a single coffin. Marzi wondered if any other couple had ever loved each other so much that they asked to be buried in a single container, arms twined around each other for eternity. For a moment, he let his fingers skim across the marble marker, tracing the names that had been carved there. Then he sat down on the chill ground.

He’d come here to speak. But now, the words wouldn’t come. Funny how that worked. The last time he’d seen his parents alive, the words had come easily enough. They’d fallen from his lips like an avalanche, as he screamed about what they’d made him endure, the thing they’d tried to make him become, despite the fact that he lacked all the skills needed to ever be it. He’d screamed, and then he’d fallen silent, waiting for them to tell him that he was a failure, to confirm what he was sure he’d seen so many times in their eyes. But they never said it. And, somehow, that had infuriated him even more.

Marzi opened his mouth. And yet, the words still refused to come. So, unable to push anything out, he lit a cigarette and drew a deep breath of the smoke, letting it caress the inside of his lungs like warm velvet. But he barely had time to exhale before a hand reached down and plucked the cigarette from his lips. “If you’re intent on killing yourself, I wish you’d at least choose a method that doesn’t make you stink.”

Craning his neck, Marzi saw his sister standing beside the grave, her red hair catching the sunlight like a brilliant halo of fire around her head.

“Hey,” he greeted, his voice as dead as the bodies buried all around them. “What brings you here?”

“Necrophilia.”

That word, coming from his sister, shocked Marzi so much that he must have twisted his face into a particularly comic expression. Immediately, Pepper started to laugh. The sound of her mirth shattered the solemn oppression of the cemetery, until it lay all around them like pieces of a broken china dish, and Marzi couldn’t keep himself from grinning.

“I came,” she assured, sitting beside him, “because I knew you might.”

“I thought I had something to say. But now I can’t remember what it was.”

“Oh, honestly, Marzi! Even I know that.” Turning away from him, Pepper addressed the gravestone. “What my idiot brother wants to say is that he’s sorry. He didn’t mean those hurtful things. He loves you, and somewhere deep inside, he understands that you loved him, that you were proud of him, whether he could do magic or not.”

Lowering his face, Marzi tried to blink away his tears, but they fell anyway. “Yeah...I guess that was it...”

“But don’t you see?” Gently, Pepper wrapped her arms around him. “They already knew that. They knew it even when you were screaming at them.”

Nodding, Marzi knew his sister was right. Drawing deeper into the comfort of her embrace, he rested his head against her breast, listening to the steady beat of her heart -- soothing him, calming him, reminding him that, even here, there was life.


Something Stolen – This challenge focused on writing about a theft, with the twist that the stolen item had to be something that the character didn’t want to get back. The result is Pepper being Pepper.

Just take it, Pepper mentally urged the boy, while still pretending to be completely focused on her work. Just go ahead and take it!

She\'d been setting up an Easter display -- one of the rare times she left the comfort of Sugar Heart\'s kitchen -- when she noticed the boy come in. It would have been nearly impossible not to. About sixteen, and dressed in a worn leather jacket and pair of jeans that were only scraps of fabric held together by safety pins, he seemed completely out of place amid the candy shop\'s more richly dressed patrons. Out of the corner of her eye, Pepper watched him wander up and down the aisles, and the scornful glances he gave to the chocolate rabbits, marshmallow chickens, and baskets of jellybeans, made her wonder exactly why he\'d come into her store. Then, her gaze went to the store\'s front window, which looked out at Lakeshore Drive. There, on the sidewalk, she saw a much younger girl in equally battered clothing, standing outside the shop, her face pressed up against the glass, and her fingers leaving eager, dirty smudges all over it.

When Pepper\'s attention returned to the older boy, he\'d stopped in front of a shelf featuring sugar eggs, richly decorated on the outside, and hollowed out, to feature a little scene on the inside, which could be viewed through a window in the front of each egg. People who looked at the interior scenes several times often found that things weren\'t arranged exactly as they remembered from their previous viewing. But that must have been a trick of their imagination. Surely it was absurd to think that the tiny creatures were actually moving around inside the egg.

Here, the boy lingered, looking nervous, and Pepper guessed his intentions. She wanted to go over and tell him to pick one, as a gift, but she felt sure that as soon as he saw her approaching, he\'d panic and run. So she sent Margaret and the current salesgirl off on some contrived errand, hoping to give the boy a chance. However, even then, he seemed slow to act. Margaret would be back soon. She was too efficient to linger over such a simple task. And if the boy attempted his theft under her watchful eyes, there would be trouble.

Come on, Pepper urged. Now!

Like an answer to a prayer, the boy reached out, grabbed a beautiful pink egg, and shoved it into the pocket of his leather jacket. Pepper watched with a smile as he hurried out of the shop, and handed his treasure to the little girl. Then, both of them ran down the sidewalk, and out of sight.


Write About An Intervention -- This one really stumped me, since my characters never manage to keep each other from doing incredibly stupid, self-destructive stuff. So I decided to make it about an intervention that didn’t happen. Peirene doesn’t officially exist in the “Sugar Hearts” universe, but I like the idea that, perhaps, she’s still looking after Nicholas.

Peirene liked being a guardian angel, liked the human she’d been assigned to watch, and performed her duties with cheerful industriousness. When he left his wallet behind in a restaurant, she ensured that the nicest waitress found it. When it looked like he might get caught in the rain, she placed distractions in his path, so that he lingered in the store while the worst of the storm spent itself. And when he felt sad, she tickled the neighbor’s cat, until its antics made him smile.

But last night, the order had come down from Heaven. She couldn’t intervene. Not this time. She could only stand there, unseen, as the demon knocked on her human’s door.

“Nicholas Foster?” the demon inquired, with a voice like poisoned silk. “My master has a deal he thinks you might be interested in.”

It nearly broke her. And angels do not have fragile hearts.


Include the Words – This was another challenge where we needed to include specific words and phrases: cute little thing, yellow, Harry, ugly, peppermint, kitchen sink, shoe laces, strawberry bubble bath, mascara, and \"Don\'t you think this is wrong?” The thing I really like about this snippet is Pepper’s genuine horror regarding the odd flavors of jellybeans in Harry Potter novels.

“Oh, isn’t he a cute little thing? What’s his name?”

Pepper had made one of her rare appearances outside the kitchen at Sugar Hearts. And, as always, Nicholas found himself completely unable to concentrate on anything else. Even when a harsh, ugly buzz from the cash register told him that he’d hit the wrong button, he still couldn’t take his eyes off her. Luckily, the customer seemed more interested in showing off her baby than in getting her purchases properly totaled.

“He’s called Harry.”

“Like Harry Potter? I love those books! Although...” Pepper wrinkled her nose, and Nicholas fought the urge to melt into a puddle at her feet. “...the candy is appalling. Imagine making jellybeans that taste like earwax.”

“Actually,” Harry’s mother corrected, “he’s named after my husband’s father. I’ve never read the Harry Potter books. They seem so silly. I mean, really, it’s not as if magic actually exists.”

Nicholas and Pepper exchanged a meaningful glance. Then Pepper reached across the counter, pushing Harry’s yellow baby bonnet back a little, so she could clearly see his face. Nicholas thought that she looked like a fairy godmother, bestowing some wondrous gift. “Well, Harry, as soon as you’re old enough to eat candy, be sure your mother brings you back, and I’ll make something special for you. Just not anything that tastes like earwax.” Pepper shuddered in horror at the thought. “Earwax! You might as well make ones that taste like old shoe laces.”

By now, Nicholas had finally managed to complete the woman’s transaction, and she departed, taking her peppermint candies and Harry with her. After watching her go, Pepper placed a gentle kiss on Nicholas’s cheek. Then she returned to the kitchen.

For a moment, Nicholas couldn’t move. Then, taking advantage of the momentarily empty store, he stepped from behind the counter, walked over the door, and flipped the sign to read “Closed” instead of “Open”. A rare, wicked smile played on his lips as he followed Pepper.

He found her at the kitchen sink, washing her hands. Somehow, she made even such a mundane action seem so beautiful, like an act of grace. Watching her, Nicholas thought of all the different faces she’d shown him – the one hidden behind heavy lipstick and mascara, the one reflected in an enchanted mirror, the one that shifted her brother’s features until they became her own. When someone’s inner light shone as brightly as Pepper’s, masks mattered so little. Moving quietly, Nicholas snuck up behind Pepper, and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling their bodies together. Her skin smelled like an intoxicating mixture of cotton candy and strawberry bubble bath.

“Nicholas!” she squealed. “We can’t do this now. Not in the kitchen...”

Raising a hand to brush aside her hair, Nicholas pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. And Pepper made one last attempt to protest.

“This is wrong. Don’t you think this is wrong?”

Nicholas turned her around, letting the desire in his eyes tell her just how right he thought it was. Finally, Pepper yielded to his advances, and her moans of pleasure dripped into the pots of cooling syrup, making them once more boil and bubble over.


An Invitation Refused – When Nicholas falls in love with Pepper, he doesn’t realize how much their relationship will cost him. He doesn’t understand that by entering her world, the world of magic, he will be forever estranged from his old life. This piece explores a bit of that estrangement. The island cabin is based on an island cabin owned by the family of one of my friends, where we spent a week one summer.

Nicholas stared at the letter until the writing blurred, as if by distorting the way the words appeared to him, he could also distort their meaning. But the sentences refused to realign. Really, he should have expected this. Every summer, his family spent a week at the cabin they\'d inherited from his great-grandfather, and now, just like clockwork, here was his mother, writing to ask when he would join them.

Nicholas loved the simple cabin, loved the rocky Canadian island on which it was built. And he knew Pepper would love it, too. For a moment, he allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy of taking her out in a canoe one evening, when the water all around them would glow with the colors of the setting sun. Or helping her pick cupfuls of the small, tart blueberries that grew on scraggily bushes around the island, until they had enough for a simple fruit cobbler, baked in the cabin\'s wood fire stove. Bliss.

But, of course, it wasn\'t that simple. Because bringing Pepper meant bringing Marzi, and Nicholas suspected that Pepper\'s brother wouldn\'t be thrilled by the prospect of a vacation which put him hundreds of miles from the nearest club. And even if Marzi did agree to come, Nicholas would still have to spend the entire week repressing any romantic gestures, for fear of his family deciding he was gay, which he wasn\'t. Not really. Or he could tell them the truth -- that he was in love with the spirit of a dead woman, currently residing in her brother\'s body. That would earn him a quick trip to the loony bin.

Nicholas sighed. Even if he went alone, even if he said nothing about Pepper or Marzi, he couldn\'t pretend to talk. His parents still thought he was enrolled in the Chicago Institute for the Performing Arts. He hadn\'t told them about losing his voice, because he knew what would happen. His mother would order all sorts of expensive tests, which would all be useless, because there wasn\'t anything physically wrong with him. And if he tried to explain that the reason he couldn\'t talk was because he\'d backed out of a deal with a demon...well, that brought him right back to the loony bin.

Crumbling the letter, Nicholas tossed it in the trash, and wondered when -- if ever -- he would be able to face his family again.


No Dialogue Challenge – This is my favorite. One of the things in the “Sugar Hearts” series that I wanted to explore more was Nicholas’s changing relationship with Marzi. How it would become increasingly impossible for him to separate his feelings for the brother and sister. Because most of that happens between “Candy Kisses” and “Jelly Babies”, there never ended up being space in the story for it. But I love this little glimpse.

The bedroom was never truly dark. Even at midnight, the unnatural golden glow of streetlamps bled in through the lace curtains, and as he lay awake, Nicholas noticed the way the light turned Marzi\'s skin the color of caramelized sugar. Or was it Pepper\'s skin? When they were awake, he knew the difference between his lover and her brother. But what about when they slept? When they slept, was there any real answer to the question of who was who? Or were they like the cat in that experiment, neither alive nor dead, neither Pepper nor Marzi, until someone opened the box and looked?

Absently, Nicholas ran his fingers across Marzi’s (or Pepper’s?) skin, as if the light was something tangible, something he could trace patterns in, something that might, even for a moment, hold the shape of the words Nicholas could no longer speak. And, inadvertently, his caress opened the box. Eyelashes trembled, and then twitched apart, revealing the gaze Nicholas recognized as being Marzi. Nicholas knew he should pull back. Roll over to his own side of the bed. But he didn’t. He just continued his caress, as he stared into Marzi’s eyes – so dark with loneliness that not even light could penetrate their depths.

How long? How long could you love one person without coming to love the other? When they were always there, Pepper nestled inside Marzi, and Marzi inside Pepper, like one of those Russian matryoshka dolls? When it was Marzi’s body he slept beside every night, Marzi’s body that he’d given his virginity to? Was it a betrayal to have feelings for the brother as well as the sister? And if it was, what on earth could he ever do about it?

At first, Marzi looked like he might say something. But he seemed to realize that words would only shatter the moment. Instead, he snuggled closer, pressing himself against Nicholas. And Nicholas wrapped his arms around him, holding him tight, as he wondered if, once you opened the box, there was ever any way to close it again.


Christmas Cookie Challenge – My characters see the world in a variety of ways. Some of which are true, some of which are not. Because of his ego, Kale usually thinks of himself as a demon, despite the fact that he actually carries very little demon blood. I was worried that might confuse readers, but they seemed to get the idea. Other than directly addressing the demon contradiction, this is just a fluffy little Christmas scene.

Kale looked at his lover. He looked at the chaotic pile of sugar, flour, eggs, mixing bowls, spoons, and assorted sprinkles. Then he crossed his arms, and repeated in a firm voice “Demons do NOT bake Christmas cookies.”

“Why is it,” Marzi challenged, his head stuck deep in some random cupboard as he searched for a baking sheet, “that you only think of yourself as a demon when it’s convenient? You have some infernal blood, diluted by several generations of human influence. That doesn’t make you a demon.”

“Fine.” Kale kept his arms folded across his chest. “Feared crime bosses do not bake Christmas cookies.”

“I see.” Marzi withdrew from the cupboard, with a battered baking sheet gripped in one hand. “So, will a feared crime boss explain to his little daughter why the holidays have come without any cookies shaped like bells, or stars, or candy canes, decorated with colored icing, and topped with all sorts of festive sprinkles -- even the chocolate sprinkles, which don’t really taste like anything, but how else are you going to decorate the trunks on the Christmas trees?”

“She’s a month old!” Kale exploded. “She can’t eat cookies. We could celebrate Mardi Gras for all the difference it’s going to make to her.”

Marzi set down the baking sheet. Then he placed his hands on his hips, and fixed Kale with a familiar look. The sort of look which told Kale that Marzi had already won this argument. “She can smell them baking. And she can look at them when they’re finished. But if you’re too busy with crime boss stuff to help make Christmas special for the reborn spirit of my sister – who, by the way, you murdered in the first place – then I’ll just go get Nicholas.”

Kale winced. The reminder of the role he’d played in Pepper’s death was enough of a blow, but the threat to replace him with Nicholas finalized the deal. He no longer had any choice. “Alright. You win.”

“Wonderful!” The look of happiness on Marzi’s face made Kale regret all his earlier protests. “Here. You start creaming the butter with the sugar, and I’ll be right back.”

“Right back? Where are you going?”

“To get Sylvia and Nicholas, of course. Christmas cookies need to be made by the whole family.”

Left behind in the kitchen, Kale mashed butter with a fork, and cursed Christmas, love, and Marzi’s twisted definition of “family”. But he was smiling while he did it.

Picture Gallery

During the writing of a story, I\'m always hesitant to post pictures of my characters, because I want people to be able to envision them as they choose. But the truth of the matter is that I usually do base my characters on actual people. So, if you\'re curious about what I see when I talk about Pepper, Marzi, Kale, and Nicholas, check out my page:

http://home.earthlink.net/~katy.brown/