Although I am a black man, I dreamed I was a white woman. The woman is a botanist. In search of unknown plants, she takes a vacation to a foreign country (where she believes the Garden of Eden might have been.) She stops to admire an odd but beautiful plant on the side of the road. A thorn rips a vein on her wrist and she rushes to a local hospital. After the doc has fulfilled the preliminaries, she notices the wound is rapidly healing, and soon it’s only a scar. She (terrified, amused and c...

DARK ELECTION – A black writer is connected with a political conspiracy after his best-selling novel “King of the North” corrupts the elections and the country plunges into civil unrest. BENEFICIARY—A con-artist preys on lives of the elderly while pretending to care for their needs. MAN OVERBOARD – A teenager joins a group of door-to-door advertisers and believes he has been abducted into an underground slave market. DEADBOLT – A chat line date leads to romance, a restraining order and murde...

Sometimes an inconceivable scheme claims the life of a normal person. Todd, a mixed White and Puerto Rican eighteen-year-old H.S. graduate, sees an ad on a grocery bulletin seeking unattached, energetic personnel who would love to travel while distributing flyers. He passes an in-depth unorthodox interview along with a complete physical, consents to later have company profile pictures taken, and then joins a two-van group the next morning that relocates an hour from his home. He marvels at t...

“Boy, you really had me going there for a minute. It took me a month to track you down. I almost—“ The large man slid forward in his seat, practically towering over the much smaller man. He laughed and a thin white paste of saliva oozed from each corner of his mouth. His powerful arms flew up and his face suddenly appeared deadly serious. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Stop looking all around. Forget about these people. Look at me, will you? Am I being too loud for you?” The small man’s head...

“Look, this is great. But so far you’ve only shown us a paradise of young adults with nothing to do but play all day. Lord knows what goes on at night. Let’s get down to business.” “Right,” his wife said, placing an aging hand over her husband’s. “We were assured this was a retirement community. The best in existence. ‘The best money can buy’ the brochure said.” “A million bucks worth,” her husband said. “Where are the people our age? We haven’t seen one person over the age of thirty.” The y...

By now she had told her lie a hundred times. It would be practically impossible to convince anyone it didn't happen. The news should remain hot throughout the weekend. Derek would let time serve as an extinguisher. If he could dodge discussion, perhaps his friends might be ready for a cooler version later in the week. However, the townhouse had become a modern day Eden. Not only had Megan reinvented the lie, she had infected the male gender with a bad case of hormones. This would be kept bet...

"Okay, bro," Gardner said, squinting into the smoke-filled den, "Where's your pretty sidekick?" "At her aunt's, I guess." Derek smiled that he could speak it so easily. It was one of the lies he had rehearsed this afternoon. He watched Gardner closely. "You know, she does go home once in a while. You coming in?" As Gardner stood in the doorway his shoulders appeared broader than life. They might seem that way to anyone who didn't read the finer print. A trained eye could catch him sucking in...

"Run far, little man. Hide deep." Derek let the receiver slide down his leg. Somewhere far below, the phone clacked against its cradle and Derek left it off the hook. The words kept ringing in his head. And there was a sickening familiarity about them, as though they were part of a recurring dream. His spine fought a chill as he sat on the floor trying to convince himself that the dizziness he was feeling wasn't a condemned man's fear. "Bobby, you catch all that? The nerve of him. He says I ...

"Be careful, my brother. That's a white woman in there. In the slave days she could have you flogged just for looking at her." "Oh yeah? They would have to kill me first." Junior stepped into the laundry room and stood next to Derek. "I'm sure in your case they would." "Hey. What's that supposed to mean?" "Shhh," Derek said. "She's starting to wake up." "About time," Bobby said, peeping his head back through the curtains. His eyes molested her every limb. "I think tomorrow I'm finding some w...

Derek turned the knob. Someone forced open the door--wrestled him out. Blinding light. A blast of cold air. Guns. Uniforms. White snow. White cops. Here for white girls. "Keep your hands in the air. Against the rail. The rest of you come on out of there!" Derek faced the building. Legs spread. A set of strong arms handled him up and down. Something pressed him into the wall. "My socks and shoes. It's freezing out here." Derek heard frightened remains of his own voice whining with fear. Tremb...