https://www.facebook.com/104348314505914/

Good N Fool Records, West Main Street, Riverhead, NY (2025)

11/25/2025

A Nickel Bag Of Dreams

PAGE 1
The drug hit the Briggs neighborhood like a divine intervention disguised as a plague. They called it "The Ticket" on the street corners. It cost five dollars—a nickel bag—and it came in little blue vials that looked uncomfortably like communion wine.
It was cheaper than he**in and didn't carry the messy baggage of fentanyl. It offered something far more seductive than mere oblivion. It promised realization.
Elias sat on the crumbling stoop of his tenement, nursing a lukewarm coffee and watching the sunset turn the smog over the city into bruised purple. His notebook lay open on his lap, the pages blank. He used to think he was a writer. Now, he just thought about being one.
Curtis, the seventeen-year-old kid from 4B, bounded down the stairs, his basketball tucked under his arm. Curtis was the neighborhood’s golden boy—a point guard with hands like lightning and a scholarship offer from a D1 university hanging just out of reach, waiting on his SAT scores.
"Yo, Elias. Still writing the great American novel?" Curtis grinned, spinning the ball on his finger.
"Still thinking about it," Elias grunted. "You heading to the courts?"
Curtis stopped spinning the ball. His eyes darted toward the alley where T-Bone, the local distributor of misery, had set up shop. "Nah. Not tonight. My knee’s aching. Gonna take a rest day."
Elias watched as Curtis walked into the alley and emerged thirty seconds later, slipping a blue vial into his pocket. He didn't go back upstairs. He sat on the curb, right there on the street.
"Don't do it, kid," Elias said, softly. "You got real things happening."
Curtis popped the top. "Four hours, Elias. Just four hours. I’m gonna play game seven of the finals. I’m gonna hit the buzzer-beater over LeBron."
He swallowed the liquid.
The effect was instantaneous. There was no seizure, no violent nod. Curtis just leaned back against the lamppost, his eyes rolling back, a beatific, slack-jawed smile spreading across his face. The basketball rolled out of his limp hands and into the gutter.
By the time the streetlights flickered on, the sidewalk was dotted with them. The Sidewalk Sleepers. They were slumped in doorways and propped against brick walls, a silent, drooling choir dreaming their impossible dreams.

PAGE 2
The neighborhood went quiet every night now. There were no arguments, no crying babies, no loud music. Just the soft hiss of traffic on the distant highway and the collective sighs of a hundred people living inside their own heads.
Elias walked the beat like a ghost in a graveyard. He stepped over Mrs. Ramirez, who was currently accepting her Michelin star in Paris. He skirted around Old Man Henderson, the jazz musician whose arthritic fingers hadn't held a saxophone properly in years, now headlining the Blue Note in 1958.
It was a paradise of comatose bodies. But Elias couldn't shake the feeling he was walking through a harvest.
He circled back to Curtis as the four-hour mark approached. The timing of The Ticket was precise.
At 10:03 PM, Curtis twitched. The ecstatic smile vanished, replaced instantaneously by a look of profound, crushing grey reality. He gasped, his eyes snapping open, staring horrified at the dirty pavement and the scuffed sneakers on his feet.
"Did you win?" Elias asked quietly from the stoop.
Curtis looked up, his eyes glassy and confused. Tears welled up. "It was... it was real, Elias. The confetti. The noise. I could feel the leather, the sweat..."
He tried to stand up. His legs buckled. He grabbed the lamppost for support, wheezing.
"Easy, kid. The comedown is rough."
Curtis shook his head, panic setting in. "No, my legs... they feel... hollow."
He saw his basketball in the gutter. With trembling hands, Curtis retrieved it. He tried to do his signature move—a behind-the-back crossover.
The ball hit his heel and careened dimly off into the street.
Curtis stared at his hands. They were shaking uncontrollably. He tried to flex his fingers, the lightning-fast reflexes that defined his future. They moved sluggishly, stiff and clumsy, like they belonged to an old man.
"Elias," Curtis whispered, terror choking his voice. "I can't feel the rhythm."

PAGE 3
The awakening spread down the block like a slow-moving catastrophe.
Down the street, a guttural cry of despair ripped the silence. It was Old Man Henderson. He had woken up and tried to whistle a tune from his dream set. The sound that came out was a flat, tuneless wheeze. He sat weeping on the concrete, clutching his throat, the music in his mind severed from the reality of his body.
Mrs. Ramirez woke up and looked at her hands—the hands that had just crafted a perfect soufflé in her mind. They were numb. She dropped her house keys three times trying to pick them up.
The realization hit Elias with the force of a physical blow, colder than the night air.
The Ticket didn't create the dreams out of thin air. It wasn't adding anything. It was an extraction engine.
To fuel four hours of vivid, flawless perfection in the mind, the drug siphoned off the user's actual capacity in reality. It didn't just borrow willpower; it consumed talent. It ate muscle memory. It burned through potential like jet fuel to keep the illusion bright.
Curtis hadn't just dreamed of being a champion; he had spent the actual physical capability required to become one to power the hallucination. He had traded his future reality for a four-hour memory of something that never happened.
The street was filled with the sounds of weeping now—the athletes who could no longer run, the singers who had lost their pitch, the thinkers whose minds were suddenly dull and fogged.
Elias looked down at his blank notebook. He felt the heavy, seductive pull of the nickel bag, the desire to finally write that perfect chapter, to feel the words flow like water.
He closed the notebook. His hands were shaking, not from the drug, but from the terrifying clarity of the trap. The neighborhood wasn't sleeping; it was being hollowed out, five dollars at a time, leaving behind empty shells filled with perfect, fading memories of what they could have been.

11/25/2025

The Gospel According To Deacon Jones

Page 1
Teardrop: “Meet Deacon Ezekiel Jones. A man of cloth in a neighborhood made of concrete and iron. He spends his days scrubbing graffiti off the House of God and his nights praying for a miracle to silence the gunfire. But the Deacon is about to learn that when you shout into the abyss, you better be prepared for what answers back. He’s looking for salvation, but he’s standing on the precipice... of The Dark Side.”

The humid air inside the storefront church, The Tabernacle of Last Resort, smelled of floor wax and desperation. Deacon Jones wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief that had seen better days. Through the thin glass of the front window, the neon red light of the "JESUS SAVES" sign buzzed like an angry hornet, fighting a losing battle against the streetlights.
Outside, the bass from a passing lowrider rattled the communion cups on the tray. The corner of 4th and Martin belonged to the disruption—specifically to a crew known as the 4th Street Kings, led by a young man named Bishop. Bishop didn't fear God; he feared not making quota.
Jones watched them through the blinds. He saw the hand-to-hand exchanges, the flash of chrome tucked into waistbands. He had tried talking to them. He had tried shouting. Last week, they had thrown a brick through his window with a note wrapped around it: PREACH SOMEWHERE ELSE.
The Deacon fell to his knees at the altar. The carpet was threadbare.
"Lord," Jones whispered, his voice cracking. "My voice is too small. The wind carries it away. The city swallows it whole."
He gripped the edge of the pulpit, his knuckles turning white.
"Give me the power to reach them," he pleaded, his tone shifting from begging to demanding. "Grant me the tongue of fire. Let my words not just be heard, but felt. Let them bow before the Word. Whatever the cost, Lord, make them listen."
The neon sign outside flickered and died. The hum of the refrigerator in the back room cut out. For a split second, the entire city block went silent—no sirens, no bass, no shouting. Just a heavy, static pressure in the air.
Then, the lights surged back on, brighter than before. Deacon Jones felt a strange vibration in his throat, like a swallowed tuning fork humming against his vocal cords. He stood up. He didn't feel holy. He felt charged.

Page 2
The next morning, the heat was already rising off the asphalt. Bishop and the 4th Street Kings were lounging on the stoop of the abandoned bodega next door to the church. They were loud, profane, and cleaning their fingernails with switchblades.
Deacon Jones stepped out of the church. He wore his Sunday best—a charcoal suit that was too hot for the weather. He carried his oversized Bible like a shield.
"Yo, Rev!" Bishop called out, smirking. "You come to bless the block or bore us to death?"
The crew laughed. A few passersby hurried along, eyes on the ground, terrified to witness the confrontation.
Deacon Jones opened his mouth. He didn't shout, but the sound that came out was impossible. It wasn't just a voice; it was a physical force, a resonant frequency that rattled the windows of the cars parked nearby. It sounded like gravel grinding against a church bell.
"LAY DOWN YOUR BURDENS," Jones said.
The laughter died instantly. Bishop froze, his hand halfway to his pocket. The sound seemed to bypass their ears and vibrate directly into their skulls.
"THE SWORD HAS NO PLACE IN THE KINGDOM," Jones continued. The air around him seemed to warp, shimmering with heat. "COME. THE DOORS ARE OPEN."
The reaction was terrifyingly instant. Bishop’s eyes rolled back slightly, his pupils dilating until his eyes were almost entirely black. His smirk dissolved into a blank, slack-jawed expression. He reached into his waistband, pulled out a 9mm pistol, and dropped it.
Clatter.
The other four members of the crew did the same. Knives, a brass knuckle, another gun. They hit the sidewalk with a metallic cacophony.
"We are listening, Deacon," Bishop said. His voice was devoid of slang, devoid of attitude. It was flat. Monotone.
"Then follow," Jones commanded.
As one entity, the gang rose. They didn't swagger. They marched. They filed past the Deacon and into the Tabernacle, sitting in the front pew with their hands folded neatly in their laps, staring straight ahead at the empty cross.
Jones looked at the pile of weapons on the sidewalk, then at the empty street. Tears of joy pricked his eyes. He had done it. He had saved them.

Page 3
Three weeks later.
The neighborhood was quiet. Too quiet. The graffiti had been scrubbed off the walls, but not by the city workers. The liquor store down the block was boarded up; the owner had "decided" to leave town overnight.
Deacon Jones stood at the window, watching his flock. He should have been happy. The pews were full every Sunday. The collection plate was heavy. But the vibration in his throat hadn't gone away, and neither had the cold pit in his stomach.
He walked outside. Bishop was standing on the corner, but he wasn't wearing his baggy jeans and hoodie anymore. He was wearing a suit—cheap, ill-fitting, charcoal gray, identical to the Deacon's. Behind him stood the rest of the Kings, all dressed in the same uniform. They stood at parade rest, eyes scanning the street with predatory intensity.
A teenager, maybe fourteen, hurried past them, looking at his phone. He bumped into one of the "deacons."
"Watch it," the kid muttered.
Bishop moved with the speed of a viper. He grabbed the kid by the throat and slammed him against the brick wall.
"Bishop!" Jones yelled, running over. "Stop! What are you doing?"
Bishop didn't let go. He looked at the kid, then at Jones. His eyes were still that glassy, dilated black. "He showed disrespect to the cloth, Deacon. Disrespect is a stain. Stains must be scrubbed."
"Release him!" Jones commanded, using The Voice.
Bishop hesitated, his face twitching. The programming fought against the command. He dropped the kid, who scrambled away in terror.
"We are soldiers for the Word," Bishop said, straightening his tie. "We protect the Sanctuary. We enforce the Tithe. We cleansed the liquor store. We cleansed the drug den. We will cleanse the sinners."
Jones looked at them. They weren't saved. They had just swapped their bandanas for ties, their gang signs for scripture. They were still a gang, but now they had a divine mandate. They were zealots with the muscle memory of murderers.
"I just wanted peace," Jones whispered, his normal voice trembling.
"There is no peace without the sword," Bishop quoted, staring through the Deacon. "You gave us the order, Deacon. You gave us the code. We just enforce it."
Bishop turned to his crew. They locked eyes. Without a word, they turned and began marching down the street toward a group of kids playing music too loud. They moved like a wolf pack on a scent.
Jones stood alone in front of his church, the silence of the neighborhood screaming in his ears.

Teardrop: “Deacon Jones prayed for a flock that would listen, and he got one. He wanted soldiers for the Lord, but he forgot that soldiers need a war. Now, the streets are clean, the pews are full, and the Deacon has learned the hard way... that the road to Hell isn't just paved with good intentions. Sometimes, it's paved by the very people you tried to save.”

11/25/2025

Color Blind

Page 1
The California sun didn't shine on South Central in 1969; it hammered it. It baked the asphalt until the heat lines shimmered like bad reception on a cheap TV. Through the distortion cruised a black-and-white patrol car, a shark swimming in a swimming pool. Behind the wheel was Officer "Bull" Strickland. He was a slab of a man with knuckles the size of walnuts and a worldview narrower than the barrel of his service revolver.
Strickland didn't see people. He saw codes. He saw violations. But mostly, lately, he saw blue.
He slammed the brakes, tires chirping. A group of teenagers stood on the corner of Florence and Normandie. One of them, a lanky kid named Leon, had a navy bandana hanging halfway out of his back pocket.
Strickland was out of the car before the dust settled. "Up against the wall. Now!"
"We ain't doin' nothing, Officer," Leon said, hands raising slowly. "Just waiting on the bus."
"I don't care if you're waiting on the Second Coming," Strickland spat, jamming his baton into the small of Leon’s back. He ripped the blue bandana from the pocket. "You think this is a joke? This color? It’s a uniform. You’re an army, huh? A little army of thugs?"
He waved the blue cloth in Leon’s face. It was the color of the Pacific, the color of the sky, the color of the bruise forming on the neighborhood’s soul. To Strickland, it was a target.
"Get out of here," Strickland growled, tossing the bandana into the gutter. "If I see this color on this corner again, you're taking a ride."
The kids scattered. Strickland got back in his cruiser, sweat prickling his neck. He hated that color. It was spreading like mold.
Suddenly, a beat-up Chevy Impala roared past, running the red light. In the rear window, a massive blue flag waved. Strickland’s vision went red.
"Not today," he muttered, flooring the accelerator.
The siren wailed. The chase was on. The Impala wove through traffic, a blur of chrome and blue. Strickland pushed the cruiser to eighty, ninety. He was gaining. He focused entirely on that blue flag flapping in the wind. It mesmerized him.
He never saw the delivery truck pulling out of the alley.
There was a screech of rubber, a sickening crunch of metal folding like wet cardboard, and then, the absolute silence of the void.

Teardrop: Officer Bull Strickland. A man who sees the world in black and white, with one violent exception. He is about to learn that when you stare too long at the things you hate, you lose the ability to see the things that save you. He’s just crossed the city limits... into The Dark Side.

Page 2
Strickland woke up to the smell of antiseptic and the hum of fluorescent lights.
"You're a lucky man, Officer," the doctor said, checking a chart. "Concussion. Bruised ribs. But your scans came back clean. You’ve got a hard head."
Strickland sat up, blinking. The room was bright. Too bright. "My eyes... something feels off."
"Pupils are reactive. Vision is twenty-twenty," the doctor assured him. "Just shock. Take a day, then go back to work if you feel up to it."
Strickland didn't take a day. He took an hour. He needed to be back on the beat. He needed to re-establish dominance. He drove himself home to change.
He opened his locker and frowned. His uniform hung there, freshly pressed. But it looked... wrong. He pulled the shirt out. It wasn't the crisp, dark navy blue of the LAPD. It was a dull, flat charcoal gray. It looked like dirty dishwater.
"Damn laundry," Strickland muttered. "Washed the color right out of it."
He grabbed his spare. Same thing. Drab, lifeless gray. He cursed, assuming the dry cleaners had used cheap chemicals, but he put it on anyway. He didn't need the color to have the power. He had the badge.
He hit the streets at sunset. The sky, usually a deepening indigo, looked like a sheet of unpolished steel. The neon signs flickered in white and gray. It was ugly, but he could see.
He turned onto Florence Avenue. The corner was crowded.
He saw them. The same group from yesterday. Leon was there. But something was different. They weren't wearing their colors. Their shirts were white, their pants were black, and the bandanas... Strickland squinted. The rags hanging from their pockets were a neutral, non-threatening shade of slate gray.
Strickland laughed. A cold, victorious bark. "Finally learned their lesson," he said to the dashboard. "Scared 'em straight."
He rolled the cruiser up to the curb. He didn't unholster his weapon. He didn't call for backup. Why would he? These weren't soldiers anymore. They had surrendered their flags. To his eyes, they looked like civilians. Neutral. Safe.
He stepped out of the car, chest puffed out. "Well, look at this," Strickland smirked, walking right into the center of the circle. "Decided to join the human race, boys? Took off the war paint?"
Leon looked at Strickland, confused. He looked down at his own chest, draped in a bright, royal blue oversized shirt. He touched the violently blue bandana tied around his head.
"What you talkin' about, pig?" Leon asked, his voice dropping an octave.
"The rags," Strickland said, gesturing loosely at the gray cloths he saw. "You took 'em off. Smart move."
The circle of teenagers tightened. They exchanged glances. This cop was walking right up to them, alone, while they were fully flagged up. It felt like a trap. Or an insult.

Page 3
"You blind, man?" Leon asked, stepping closer.
"I see just fine," Strickland sneered. He reached out and flicked the bandana on Leon’s head. "I see a bunch of kids who finally know their place."
The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on, but Strickland couldn't feel it. He was insulated by his own broken perception. He saw submission where there was defiance. He saw gray surrender where there was screaming blue aggression.
"You disrespecting the set?" another kid asked, stepping out from behind a telephone pole. He was holding a tire iron.
Strickland scoffed. "I'm disrespecting your laundry skills. You look washed out."
He turned to look at his reflection in the storefront window of the liquor store behind him. He wanted to admire his silhouette, the symbol of law and order that kept the chaos at bay.
He froze.
In the reflection, he saw a large, angry man. But the uniform—the sacred blue armor of the LAPD—was gone. The figure in the glass was wearing a suit of dull, indistinguishable gray. He looked like a garbage man. He looked like a shadow. He looked like nothing.
Strickland rubbed his eyes. The gray remained. He looked at his patrol car. The black and white paint was there, but the blue light bar on top? Just a gray plastic tube.
"Where is it?" Strickland whispered, his voice trembling. "Where's the blue?"
He spun around to the kids. He squinted, straining his brain to find the color that defined his enemy, the color that justified his rage.
Nothing. Just shades of gray.
And because he couldn't see the color, he realized with a jolt of terrified clarity, he couldn't distinguish the threats. He couldn't tell who was a civilian and who was a soldier. He had stripped the world of the very label he used to survive it.
"You ain't wearing blue..." Strickland stammered, backing up, his hand fumbling for his holster.
"We are Blue, fool," Leon said.
Strickland looked at his own arm. He couldn't see the "Thin Blue Line" anymore. If he couldn't see the line, did it still exist?
"I can't see it," Strickland whispered, panic rising in his throat. "I can't see me."
The circle closed in. To Strickland, it was just a wall of gray shapes swallowing him whole. The last thing he saw wasn't a color. It was the motion of the tire iron.

Teardrop: Officer Strickland wanted a world without the color blue, a world where the lines were drawn only by him. He got his wish, only to find that without the colors he despised, he was just a man standing in the dark, fighting shadows of his own making. Case closed... in The Dark Side.

11/25/2025

Double Dutch

Page 1
The summer heat of 1969 rises off the pavement in shimmering waves. The sound of Motown—The Temptations—drifts from a nearby open window, mixing with the distant hum of a lawnmower.
NIA (10, pigtails, scraped knees) and TASHA (10, bright dress, missing a front tooth) are rummaging behind a brick building. A rusted metal sign on the back door reads: PROPER PHYSICS LAB - RESTRICTED AREA.
The dumpster lid is propped open. Tasha reaches in and pulls out a bundle. It isn't trash. It is a set of jump ropes, but they are woven from a translucent, golden fiber that seems to pulse with a faint, internal light.
TASHA
(Squinting)
What kinda clothesline is this?
NIA
It feels warm. Like a cat sleeping in the sun.
Nia grabs one end, Tasha grabs the other. They pull. The ropes hum—a low, resonant thrum that vibrates in their chest bones. They giggle, the sensation tickling their palms.
They run out of the alley to the sidewalk in front of Nia’s house. It’s a small, well-loved bungalow with a porch swing. Nia’s MOM is visible through the screen door, ironing and singing along to the radio.
NIA
Let’s try ‘em out. I bet they fast.
TASHA
Bet I can jump longer than you.
They tie one end of the ropes to a streetlamp and Tasha takes the other end to turn, while Nia steps into the center.
The ropes hit the concrete. Click. Click. Click.
But the sound isn't plastic on cement. It sounds like the ticking of a clock.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
(Smooth, deep, ominous)
Nia Vance and Tasha Miller. Two best friends with a summer afternoon to kill and a lifetime of dreams ahead of them. They’ve just found a toy discarded by men who measure reality in equations. But on the streets of South Central, physics plays by different rules. They are about to skip a beat, and in doing so, skip a lifetime.
Nia begins to jump. Tasha turns. The rhythm begins.
NIA AND TASHA
(Chanting)
Cinderella, dressed in yella, went downstairs to kiss her fella...
The ropes glow brighter.

Page 2
The rhythm locks in. The golden ropes are moving so fast they blur into a sphere of light around Nia.
Thrum-click. Thrum-click. Thrum-click.
Nia is smiling, eyes closed, lost in the flow state of the jump. Tasha is turning the ropes with a rhythmic, hypnotic swaying motion.
NIA
(Chanting louder)..How many kisses did she get? One! Two! Three!
VISUAL EFFECT:
As Nia counts, the camera pulls back. Inside the rope arc, Nia is moving at normal speed. Outside the ropes, the world begins to strobe.
The sun creates a streak of fire across the sky, rising and setting in milliseconds. Day, night, day, night.
The shadows of the trees lengthen, spin around the trunks, and vanish.
Behind Tasha (who is insulated by holding the rope handles), the neighborhood begins to morph.
TIME LAPSE MONTAGE (OUTSIDE THE ROPES):
* 1970s: The paint on Nia’s house peels. The cars parked on the street change from Impalas to boxy sedans.
* 1980s: Graffiti appears on the fences. Iron bars appear on the windows of the house across the street. The warm amber light of the 60s turns into the harsh glare of police helicopter searchlights, flashing like strobes.
* 1990s: The house next door burns down in a flash of orange, leaving a charred lot. The Motown music warps into G-Funk, high-pitched and sped up like a chipmunk record.
Nia keeps jumping. She doesn't feel the years. She only feels the adrenaline of the game.
NIA..Forty-eight! Forty-nine! Fifty!
The ropes are whining now, a high-pitched turbine sound. The golden light is blinding. The world outside is a grey-and-neon blur of construction and destruction.
TASHA
(Yelling over the noise)
Keep going, Nia! Don't trip!
Tasha’s arms are tired, but the ropes seem to be turning themselves now, fueled by the momentum of time itself.
NIA
I’m barely tired! I could go forever!

Page 3
Nia’s foot catches the rope.
SNAP.
The golden light vanishes instantly. The humming stops. The silence is deafening.
Nia stumbles, laughing, breathless.
NIA
Whoo! I think I got to sixty... Tasha?
Nia wipes the sweat from her eyes. She looks at Tasha. Tasha is still holding the handles, but she’s looking around, her mouth hanging open. Tasha drops the ropes. They sizzle on the concrete, turning into grey ash.
Nia turns to look at her house.
It’s gone.
The cozy bungalow with the porch swing is gone. In its place is a towering, sterile complex of glass and grey steel. A sleek, silent electric car glides by, humming like a spaceship.
NIA
Mama?
The streetlamp they tied the rope to is gone, replaced by a smart-pole with a camera on top. The air smells different—metallic and stale.
A WOMAN walks out of the glass complex. She is on a smartphone, wearing yoga pants, holding a $9 latte. She looks at the two black girls in 1969 dresses standing on the sidewalk. She looks through them, annoyed, then walks around them as if they are traffic cones.
TASHA
(Voice trembling)
Nia... look at the sign.
Tasha points to a digital billboard down the block. It flashes an advertisement for a holographic movie. The date in the corner reads: NOVEMBER 24, 2019.
Nia runs to the glass door of the apartment complex where her screen door used to be. She bangs on the glass.
NIA
Mama! Mama, open the door!
A SECURITY GUARD (robotic, indifferent) steps out.
GUARD
You can't be here. Private property. Move along.
Nia backs away, grabbing Tasha’s hand. They look up and down the street. The neighborhood is clean, expensive, and completely unrecognizable. There is no music. There are no neighbors on porches. They are strangers in the place of their birth.
The camera zooms out, showing two small girls holding hands, surrounded by the cold, towering architecture of a future that erased them.

(TEARDROP)
They say time flies when you’re having fun. But for Nia Vance and Tasha Miller, the cost of a game was the world they knew. They’ve landed in a future that has paved over their past, leaving them refugees in their own zip code. Two children who jumped too far, landing squarely... in The Dark Side.

11/25/2025

The Great Migration Express

PAGE 1
The air behind the Watts industrial district always tasted like chewed aluminum and burnt rubber. It was 1969, and the Los Angeles smog hung low, a dirty yellow shroud that choked out the stars even on clear nights. For Ray, Calvin, and little Tasha, the abandoned railyard was the edge of the known world. Beyond it lay the sprawling, indifferent city; behind it, the rusted skeletons of factories that had long since stopped humming.
They were kicking an empty oil drum along rails thick with weeds, the metal clanging rhythmically against the silence. Calvin was talking again, spinning the same old dreams. "My Pops said down South, the air smells like peaches. Said you can sit on a porch and just breathe, and ain’t nobody watchin’ you with suspicion."
Ray spat on the dusty tie. "Your Pops is a liar, Calvin. Ain't no peaches left anywhere. Just asphalt."
"He ain't lying," Tasha piped up, balancing precariously on a rail. "Grandma said the same. Said it was slower. Kinder."
"Kinder," Ray scoffed, kicking the drum hard. It skittered into the dark, hitting something solid with a dull thud.
Then, the sound cut through the thick air. Not the low, diesel growl of a modern freight train, but a high, mournful shriek. A steam whistle.
The ground began to vibrate, shaking the rust loose from the dormant tracks. The kids froze. The fog rolling off the oil refineries seemed to coalesce, thickening into white plumes of smoke. A singular beam of golden light pierced the gloom, blindingly bright.
It burst from the haze like a phantom—a colossal steam locomotive, black iron gleaming under a moon that wasn't there moments before. It was pristine, an oily beast of a bygone era. The letters painted in gold scrolling along the side of the coal tender read: THE GREAT MIGRATION EXPRESS.
It didn't slow down gradually; it stopped with impossibly abrupt violence right in front of them, the massive iron wheels locking and spraying sparks that vanished before hitting the ground. Steam hissed from the pistons, wrapping the children in a warm, damp cloud that smelled not of smog, but of coal smoke and old leather.
A door in the passenger car swung open.

PAGE 2
A man stepped down, clad in a conductor’s uniform so indigo it looked black, brass buttons catching the locomotive’s light. He held a silver pocket watch, checking it with a theatrical snap of his wrist. His smile was wide, welcoming, and entirely too still.
"Right on time," the Conductor said, his voice smooth like molasses. "Evening, young travelers. You look lost."
"We ain't lost," Ray said, stepping in front of Tasha. "We live right over there." He pointed toward the housing projects shrouded in haze.
The Conductor chuckled, a sound like dry leaves skittering on pavement. "Existing isn't living, son. I see the weight on you. The noise. The anger in the streets. The sirens every night." He swept a gloved hand toward the train. "This train is bound for glory. Bound for yesterday. Bound for home."
Calvin took a step forward, mesmerized. "Home? You mean… the South?"
"Mississippi, 1924," the Conductor confirmed softly. "Before the smog. Before the riots. A simpler time. The time your grandparents weep for when they think you aren't listening. Warm nights, rich soil, and folks who know their neighbors."
"Don't listen to him, Calvin," Ray warned, though his own heart hammered against his ribs. The promise of escape, of anywhere but here, was intoxicating.
"It sounds nice, Ray," Tasha whispered. "Like Grandma's stories."
"All aboard that’s going aboard," the Conductor intoned, his eyes glinting. "One-way ticket to the peace you deserve."
Calvin grabbed Tasha’s hand and bolted for the stairs. "Come on, Ray! It’s a way out!"
Ray looked back at the grim silhouette of the projects, then at the warm, inviting glow of the passenger car. The desperation of 1969 LA pushed him forward. He leaped onto the iron step just as the train lurched into motion.
The ride was a blur of shadow and smoke. There was no sensation of time passing, only a deep churning in their stomachs. When the train finally shuddered to a halt, the air that rushed in when the doors opened wasn't the cool night air of California. It was heavy, wet, and suffocatingly hot. It smelled of damp earth, pine resin, and raw, untamed heat.
They stepped off onto a wooden platform. Crickets screamed in the oppressive darkness. A single gas lamp illuminated a peeling sign hanging above the station entrance.
It read: WHITES ONLY. WAITING ROOM AROUND BACK.

PAGE 3
The silence that followed was heavier than the humidity. Tasha gripped Ray’s hand so tight her fingernails cut his skin.
"Hey! Who are you nigras belong to?"
The voice was a whip crack. A man stepped from the shadows of the station, thick-necked, sweating through a tan shirt, a heavy revolver holstered at his hip. He didn't look like the police back in LA; he looked like an executioner.
"We... we just got off the train," Calvin stammered, his voice shrinking.
The man spat a stream of brown to***co juice near Calvin's sneakers. "Train didn't stop here. Ain't no train till mornin'. You runaways? Or you just lookin' to swing?" He put a hand on his holster. "Boy, you got about three seconds to tell me whose field you’re supposed to be breakin’ your back in before I chain you to the county farm."
The romantic haze of their grandparents' selective memories evaporated instantly. They hadn't escaped to a simpler time. They had landed in the belly of the beast that had driven their families west in the first place. This wasn't peaches and porches. This was terror, naked and unrefined.
The smog of Los Angeles, the distant sirens, the gang turf wars—suddenly, it all felt like a sanctuary. It was a violence they understood, a violence where they at least had the right to walk on the sidewalk.
"Run," Ray whispered.
"What?" Calvin breathed.
"RUN!" Ray screamed, shoving Tasha back toward the tracks.
They spun and sprinted into the suffocating blackness, away from the station light, away from the man whose shouts were already turning into the baying of hounds in their imaginations. They stumbled over roots and soft earth, lungs burning with the thick, hot air.
They reached the tracks, gasping, their eyes scanning the darkness desperately. The tracks were empty. The rails were cold and rusted, as if a train hadn't passed in fifty years.
"Please," Tasha sobbed to the empty night, clutching Ray’s shirt. "Please let it come back. I want to go home. I want to go back to the city. Please."
They stood shivering in the heat of the Mississippi night, three children praying to a ghost, begging for the safety of the ghetto they had been so desperate to escape.

Good N Fool Records

11/25/2025

11/25/2025

11/25/2025

11/25/2025

11/25/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category