I have several feature-length screenplays available for option or purchase – please contact me for loglines or more information.

Though I am currently developing a few collections of poems beyond the pieces featured on this site, for now please check out 365 days of poetry.

Take a look at a sample from one of my short stories below -  if you’d like to read it in its entirety, download the pdf.

The Appointment

I was five years old the first time he looked at me.

It was the middle of the night; I had chicken pox and I’d been scratching feverishly at my body all day only to be put to bed wrapped up in a wool blanket. You’d hope it was a cruel joke and not just malevolence, and truth be told it was neither. Auntie Lilith never had any children of her own, and when she looked after me during the summer months it had always seemed more of a neutrality with which she approached my presence there. Being her sister’s child, she’d look after me when needed, but her general disdain for most children and other people led her to spend more time in the garden with her adopted saplings than with me. I and my largely uninterrupted play time were fine with this arrangement, even when confined to the bedroom for the day with my pox.

So yes, without giving it much thought Auntie Lilith wrapped me up in a woolen blanket, tucked me in, and then turned out the lights and went downstairs. And I began to itch. And itch. And itch.

Eventually I thought whatever the five year old version of “to hell with this” is and threw the blanket off of myself, finding enough momentary relief in the absence of any friction against my skin other than cool air from the window to fall into a slumber.

It was some time later that I woke with a start, eyes fixing on the popcorn ceiling above and wondering how many little nubs there were above me in hopes of boring myself back to sleep. But it didn’t take, so I sighed and looked out the window to my right and that’s when I began to feel it. Even a child can feel it: the sensation of being watched. Normally when this happens in the middle of the night you will look and find no one there staring back at you other than your own imagination, its eyes having already bored holes into your paranoid mind.

I looked slowly, thinking the sensation might fade before my eyes had crossed the room, but I didn’t rotate long before setting my sights on a dark figure in my doorway, a man, very tall, with a somewhat thinner build. I could see no facial features in the dark other than his eyes, bathed by a strip of light falling just perfectly across his sockets. Was it by chance? Did he position himself purposely? I wanted to think the former while experience tells me it’s the latter.

He didn’t say anything. I had no idea who he was, but being five even the shadiest of figures were innocent until they indicated otherwise in my eyes, so I assumed he was in the right place, standing there in the doorway where he was supposed to, because the world was wondrous and wide and I found something new each day and surely this man must just be another part of life, another adult to buy me toys or read me a story or take me to the carnival as my father had a week before.

“What’s your name?” I asked him, because above all else five year olds want to know how to address the person from whom they’ll soon ask for things, and in order to do that they need a name.

But he didn’t answer, so I frowned, and rolled over in bed onto my other side so as to not have to acknowledge him. I now sometimes wish I was still capable of as much indignation as I was then. Alas.

I shut my eyes and tried to sleep, but failed to do so. After awhile I opened them and stared at the wall. There was no shadow cast there by the moon shining through the window behind me, but I felt as if he was indeed standing there. It was at this point that I became scared.

The floorboard creaked behind me. I heard the rustle of fabric.

I turned over, starting to say “what are you doin mister?” but only made it to the point of uttering “what,” because as I turned the wool blanket was thrown down over my face and body, smothering me in its itchy warmth.

I screamed and began flailing wildly, and managed to roll off of the bed, the blanket coming with me, intertwined amongst my legs and arms, and once I hit the wooden floor I instantly pushed up in my wild movements, tearing myself out of the thorny fabric and breathing as heavily as a child can I bolted for the door, not even looking to see if the man was still in the room.