[Excerpt]

It was 6:35 A.M. Monday, and Mack McCray stirred fitfully in deep REM sleep. He pulled his pillow over his eyes and tried to convince himself that he did not see what his mind told him he was seeing.

“What a stupid dream!” Mack thought as he tossed and turned in a futile attempt to shed the vivid mental image that wouldn’t go away. “You aren’t there,” Mack silently pondered as he shook his head from side to side. “Why am I talking to a dream?”

“Because I am here,” a soft male voice replied.

“No you’re not!” Mack responded aloud with his eyes tightly closed. “Go away!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the voice responded.

“You’re just a bad dream,” Mack offered aloud as a defiant but useless challenge. “When I wake up, you’ll be gone!”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” the soft voice responded as a counter challenge to Mack’s verbal defiance. “You need me. You’ll see.”

“Yes you will!” Mack challenged with his eyes still tightly closed.

“No I won’t! We must talk.”

“No we don’t!” Mack stated with his eyes still tightly closed as a sign of denial that he had an unwelcome visitor. “Get out of here and leave me alone!”

“I should’ve known that I’d be wasting my time with you,” the soft, but authoritative male voice responded with an accompanying sigh. “You’re nothing but a hopeless white man.”

“What do you mean by that smart-mouthed comment? Who do you think you are? Get out of here and leave me alone!”

There was no response.

“Where’d you go?” Mack, now awake, cautiously opened his eyes one at a time, first the left and then the right.

“I didn’t go anywhere. I’ve been out here for the last five minutes listening to you yapping away to someone,” a male voice responded from the kitchenette area directly outside and to the right of Mack’s bedroom. “Who’re you talking too?”

“Ralph! Is that you?” Mack quipped as he sat up in bed.

Yep! It’s me,” Ralph responded as he cautiously peeked around the edge of the bedroom door. “You got someone in there with you that I should know about?”

“Of course not! What makes you think that someone’s in here with me?”

“Maybe it was something you said,” Ralph offered as he grinned and raised the coffee cup in his right hand to his lips. “You were having a great old time yakking away to somebody.”

“I was dreaming. Was I talking in my sleep?”

“Maybe,” Ralph replied as he winked and turned away from the doorway. “Shouting was more like it.”

“What did you hear me say?”

Ralph didn’t respond directly to Mack’s question but a soft chuckle emanated from around the corner.

“I must’ve been dreaming because of the two dozen raw oysters I ate at Shrimper’s last night,” Mack offered as he stumbled through the bedroom doorway into the bathroom and softly closed the door behind him.