Heroes come in all shapes, sizes, and educations. Thanks for the reminder that they all don’t have to look and talk like James Kirk or John Sheridan.

Send it to FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.

And thank you.

Great story. Though, I’m a little embarrassed to admit, I think I’m failing to catch something important at the end. Why does the little girl make it out okay even though Winston screwed up the terms; and why is there apparently a replacement Winston living with the widow? Did ‘Old Scratch’ just decide to do right by him/the family, or did I miss something?

The sense I got was that yeah, the Devil actually felt a little sorry for the former Winston so he said to himself “Why not? What he was asking really wouldn’t be much trouble, and I’ve won something valuable from him as compensation.” And he cured Jackie.

I’m curious about who this other Winston is too, though. I guess he might have been created by the Devil to take the old Winston’s place and been given the old Winston’s memories. Or maybe after losing his name, Winston was split into two people, one of whom remembered nothing of his game with the Devil but everything else, and the other of whom remembered very little of anything in his past, including his name. (Also, he apparently looks different from the man now known as Winston Sligh. Whether that’s because his own appearance has changed or because the memories of Myrna and the rest have been altered and so that they think Winston Sligh has always looked like this new guy is uncertain.) Or maybe it’s something else.

By the way, as I was writing this post I realized something that other readers of this story probably realized before me (sometimes I’m not as perceptive as I’d like). Which was this: Winston started as a guy who avoided risk because he didn’t feel anybody had ever done anything for him (so why should he stick his neck out?), and in the end he was a guy who cared about the people in his life so much that he was willing to take the ultimate risk for them. When that dawned on me, it made me appreciate the story that much more.

It seems kind of a shame to waste this on a web site, rather than publishing it in a professional magazine somewhere. Do you think one of them will take it now that it’s already appeared here?

Unfortunately, getting published ain’t easy. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of talented people in the world who just never get a break. MGK has nothing to lose by submitting this to somebody, and I’ll add my name to the list of those encouraging him to do so, but I wouldn’t consider it wasted because it’s written here. A lot of people have read it and enjoyed it because it was written here, whereas if he sent it to be published and hoped that they’d choose his story over God-only-knows how many others, then there was a good chance that nobody would ever see it.