Her Daughter in Darkness

Her Daughter In Darkness By Michael Boatman

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Her Daughter in Darkness by Michael Boatman

Red Rose™ Publishing Publishing with a touch of Class! ™ The symbol of the Red Rose and Red Rose is a trademark of Red Rose™ Publishing Red Rose™ Publishing Copyright© 2008 Michael Boatman ISBN: 978-1-60435-216-0 Cover Artist: Editor: Lea Schizas Line Editor: All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. Due to copyright laws you cannot trade, sell or give any ebooks away. This is a work of fiction. All references to real places, people, or events are coincidental, and if not coincidental, are used fictitiously. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only. Red Rose™ Publishing . www.redrosepublishing.com Forestport, NY 13338

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Her Daughter In Darkness By Michael Boatman

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Her Daughter In Darkness

The first thing Neema Umayma sees, when her abductor takes off the blindfold, is light, too much light. She has lain in darkness for hours, and now she can‟t stop blinking. Finally, her eyes adjust and a face swims out of the light. Neema knows the face. It belongs to the man from Chicago Cups. “Hello, Nancy” he says. He is staring into her eyes as if searching her soul for flaws. The man is pale, his hair a listless brown, limp, lifeless. In contrast, his eyes are a luminous electric blue, vibrant as clear summer skies. It was his eyes that had first gotten Neema‟s attention. “Ooohhh, she‟s pretty,” a voice from somewhere nearby says. “For a nigger anyway.” The man with electric eyes inclines his head, as if he were a courtier in some medieval kingdom. He smiles. “Welcome to my Babylon.” Neema keeps her gaze focused on the floor between her feet. She cannot face him, not yet. She is hurt, bleeding from where he struck her across the back of her head. She is cold, and she is hungry but the man with electric eyes is worse. His sickness billows around him like a storm of imminent violence, a black fog

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that surrounds him with an invisible aura of harm. He moistens his lips repeatedly, as if the heat of his secret desires has left him as dry and barren as a desert. Neema had noticed this habit back at Chicago Cups. She was working the counter when he came up to ask her a question. She‟d pegged him as a „potential‟ right away, his hunger as evident to her as her own. She‟d sensed his hidden darkness; it had drawn her to him. “I call this place my Babylon because this is where I unearth Mysteries,” he says. “How are you feeling?” Someone moans in pain. Somewhere over her left shoulder. Neema tries to turn her head. The movement fills her skull with broken glass. She squeezes her eyes shut and focuses her will to force back the rising surge of nausea. “You hit her too hard, Clyde,” a rough voice says. “She‟s no good to us if she‟s too loopy to play.” “You hit me?” Neema says. “Where am I?” “Oh, come on, Nancy,” the man says. “Every one of you says the same things: „Where am I? Who are you?‟ “Pleeese don‟t hurt me, mister. Please don‟t huurt meeeee!”“ The disembodied voice behind Neema laughs. The man with electric eyes laughs too, his face scant inches from Neema‟s. She recoils, her eyes filling with

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tears. The man‟s breathe smells strongly of garlic. Neema almost laughs: If she were one of the Cousins she would have been blinded. “When we spoke back at the coffee shop you seemed intelligent,” the man says. “I was hoping for something a little more creative to kick things off.” Neema shakes her head: her vision is blurry, the throbbing ache from her injuries all encompassing. Focusing her eyes seems impossible. But there is also the sickness in him. This close, his deathlust enshrouds her, suffuses her senses. She gags, repulsed by his potency. Back at the coffee shop, she‟d been barely aware of him. Now he thrums with dark life-force. The scent of it is so intoxicating that she has to remind herself to listen to what he‟s saying. “…weren‟t my first choice, you know. The other one, the blonde who works the register…” “Kimmie,” Neema says. She‟s got to keep him talking, keep him engaged, distracted, until she can focus. It‟s not supposed to happen this way. She‟s not supposed to die. “Her name is… Kimberleigh.” “Kimberleigh,” the man says softly. “Yeah, she‟s much more my type. But there was something about you.” His brow furrows. “It‟s funny,” he says. “I don‟t usually date women of color.” From behind her, the disembodied voice grunts, a harsh sound both masculine yet somehow, female.

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“First time for everything.” Neema can only nod as the man grabs her wrists. She‟s still bound, secured with some kind of small plastic ties at both wrists and ankles. He grabs her wrists and jerks them up, pulling her rump off the hard wooden chair. He is thin, wiry, and stronger than he looks. He grinds her wrists together with one hand, and presses something sharp to her throat. Whatever it is, it digs into the flesh beneath her chin. The sharp pain brings more tears. “I‟m going to untie your ankles, Nancy,” the man says. “If you try to kick me I‟ll shove this knitting needle into your eye. Do you understand?” No, she thinks. Not my eyes. The man shakes her as if she were nothing more than a rag doll. “I said, do… you… understand?” “Yes.” “Good.” He licks his lips and kneels in front of her. “Remember now, you gave your word.” Neema lies still. She has no intention of letting this man blind her. And she doesn‟t know what the person behind her is doing, what he or she might do. There are too many variables to this situation, but one thing is certain: If she is incapacitated here she will surely die.

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The man unclasps the white plastic ties from around her ankles. Until that moment she hadn‟t realized how tightly she‟d been bound. She flexes her right foot, listening to the bones crackle, then she flexes the left. “You have beautiful legs, Nancy,” the man whispers. “You must work out.” Neema cringes as his hands slide up her bare thigh. She clamps her thighs together to bar him from reaching between her legs. The effort costs her. He strikes, a swift backhand across the face. Red stars explode behind her eyes, and for a moment, she hovers at the edge of consciousness. Stay awake, she snarls silently. The man grabs her hair and pulls her head back. He lays the knitting needle on her cheek, scant millimeters from her right eye. His breath washes over her as he breathes into her face. “You will not do that again,” he snarls. “You will not forbid me in any way. Are we in agreement?” Neema bites down on the inside of her right cheek as hard as she can. The pain is sharp and immediate. Blood fills her mouth with the sweet coppery taste of old pennies. “Yes.” The man roughly flips Neema off the chair and onto her stomach.

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That‟s when she sees the fat woman. An immensely obese woman is squatting in the farthest corner of the room. She‟s blonde, her hair a bright yellow nest of spiky tendrils. Her skin is florid, almost fire-engine red. Neema can‟t tell if her complexion is natural or the result of her exertions. She‟s dressed in a floor-length cotton dress covered with red, yellow and orange flowers. To Neema the bright flowers look like eyes. The fat woman squats on her haunches, smiling, her eyes like slits of darkness buried beneath thick layers of fat in her cheeks. “Hi, Nancy,” she says brightly. The fat woman shifts her weight, as if moving to adjust to an uncomfortable chair. “Just… taking out… the trash.” And now Neema can see a single leg, the small foot clad in a bright red sneaker, sticking out from between the fat woman‟s thighs, and she realizes the fat woman is sitting on someone; that there‟s a person trapped beneath her. The leg kicks, once, weakly, the small foot pointing, flexing, pointing and flexing, then a spasm of frantic movement as the heel bangs against the floor. The fat woman giggles and grinds her hips rhythmically, bouncing up and down, her thrusts moving with greater and greater intensity, matching the rising intensity of the red sneaker, her giggles growing louder as the sneaker‟s spasms grow weaker. From somewhere behind and beneath her, a muffled cry of pain

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punctuates the fat woman‟s giggles. Then the red sneaker stops bouncing. The fat woman gasps, her breath chuffing out in a series of short squeals, and releases a long shuddering rasp of pleasure. Finally, she falls backward, breathless, onto her forearms. After a moment, she opens her eyes and stares at Neema, purring, her voice a nasal Midwestern wheeze. “That rings my bell every time!” Laughing, the fat woman rolls off onto the floor. Now Neema can see the body of a young woman. She is also bound, her hands tied, suspended by a chain affixed to a ring in the ceiling. She is wearing only a bra and panties. Her body is a mass of bruises and cuts. The right side of her face is swollen, her right eye battered shut. Patches of hair are missing, shaved or ripped from her scalp. Her left leg is missing below the knee. It ends in a ragged stump. Neema can see the rough evidence of a hasty amputation, the edges of the wounds stitched together and then cauterized with some kind of crude branding device. A dinner plate containing a naked foot lies on the floor next to the woman. The foot is covered with long dark brown lines, tracks like the marks on a piece of chicken after too long on the grill. “Get up.” Neema rises. The man pushes a chair to her and gestures for her to sit. She obeys. The blue-eyed man winks at the fat woman.

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“I like this one,” he says. “Julia there was too defiant. No matter what we said…how much I nagged, our fancy Miss Julia wouldn‟t eat her supper. Isn‟t that right, Bonnie?” The fat woman climbs to her feet. Moving with surprising dexterity for a person of her size, she hops over the dead girl on the floor and saunters toward Neema. “Oh, she was wicked that one,” the fat woman sings, nodding at the dead girl. “Thought she was gonna sashay into our little world and dictate terms.” The fat woman laughs with good-natured disbelief. “That about right, Clyde?” “Yup,” the man says. “She was a pisser alright. After a while, I‟m afraid I lost my temper. By the time I was finished she couldn’t stop eating. She gobbled the whole thing right down, bones and all.” Neema stares at the dead girl, unable to tear her eyes away from the horror in that darkened corner. “You „bout ready fer me, Bonnie?” the man says. He keeps his eyes on Neema while he speaks, licking his lips and grinning his uneasy grin. The fat woman reaches over and strokes the blue-eyed man‟s crotch. Then she smiles at Neema.

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“Isn‟t he magnificent?” she whispers conspiratorially. “You‟re in for it now, girlfriend.” The man kisses the fat woman. Her hands rove hungrily over his body before he pushes her away. “I‟ll go get ready, hon,” she says. Moving toward the door at the far end of the cellar, she turns and waggles a finger at Neema. “Don‟t you kids start without me!” She pulls the door open so forcefully that it bangs against the wall on the other side. “Honey!” the blue-eyed man whines. “My mother‟s gonna kill us if you ruin another wall!” “Well excuse me all to Hell!” Bonnie moans, rolling her eyes. “Maybe if we got our own goddamn house…” “You shut the hell up about that!” Bonnie rolls her eyes again. Neema can make out only darkness on the other side of the doorway before the fat woman steps through and slams the door. The man is staring at Neema, licking his lips. And now she can sense something else in him; a howling rage stalks beneath those everyday features. “Women,” he mumbles. “Can‟t live with „em…”

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The man leaves the rest unsaid. He walks over to where the plate lies on the floor and picks it up. Holding the plate over his shoulder the way a waiter in a busy diner might carry a heavy tray, he crosses the room in three quick strides and sets it down in front of Neema. “We‟re going to have a little warm-up before the main event.” The man walks over to a large wooden cabinet. A heavy padlock secures the doors to the cabinet. He reaches into his pocket and produces a single key, inserts it into the padlock and opens the doors. “I call this game “Plate or Fate,” he says. “When I was a little boy, it was very important that I cleaned my plate after every meal. My old man worked a double shift at our local steel mill for not a lot of money. Sometimes it was hard to put food on the table. My father drank a lot. Once he drank up his entire paycheck. We didn‟t eat for a week.” He turns and stares at Neema as if he‟d just discovered her sitting there. “That was a bad week.” The man reaches into the cabinet. Despite her best effort to remain focused, Neema gasps when she sees what he‟s holding: a can of crystallized drain cleaner. “My father didn‟t like to hear us kids whining about our food. I didn‟t like liver. God, I hated the stuff. My mother once tried to tell him that I was „finicky.‟

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He punched her in the face, broke her nose and her right cheekbone. Then he really let me have it.” The man pulls a chair from under a nearby worktable. He throws one leg casually over the seat and sits down facing Neema. “We‟ll start with something simple before Bonnie comes back and we move on to the more advanced elements.” He picks up the plate. “The rules are simple. The Plate: When I tell you to take a bite, you take a bite. Nothing too piggy. Small ladylike nibbles will do. If, however, you choose Fate…” He waggles the can of drain cleaner. “Have you ever seen what Drano can do to the human eye? What a teaspoon, a single teaspoon, can do to your esophagus? The lining of your stomach?” The man leans forward, his sky-blue eyes alight with a childlike glee. “Can you imagine what this would feel like if I put it inside your ladyparts?” Neema feels something at the back of her neck, a shimmer of pressure, a growing warmth that extends from the top of her head and all the way down her spine.

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“Most people scream, you know,” the man says. “Some pray, or call for mommy, call for Jesus. They‟re really funny. One fella died before I could pry his mouth open. We were playing „Keep away.‟ I was behind him, holding the Drano. He was sitting right there in that chair while Bonnie held his right eye just out of reach. Just to be fair I went ahead and freed his left hand. His right hand was breakfast.” She can feel him now… Neema …his sickness rising like a black fog rolling shoreward from a burning sea. It’s happening. Even if she closed her eyes she would sense him there… It’s time. …his lust. His heat. “… when I showed him the drain cleaner the poor fella just gave up the ghost. Oh shoot. I almost forgot!” The man crosses to a tripod-mounted camera on the far side of the room. He moves the camera closer, sets it up directly in front of her and pushes a few buttons. Neema sees the red light flicker like a blood-red eye regarding her from the shadows.

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“I have to document this part of the game for Bonnie,” he says. “Smile, Nancy.” Neema‟s answer is a grimace of pain. The emotion surging into her is too great, the fear overwhelming. It‟s all too much. She screams. “Oh that‟s good,” he says from behind the red light. “Really dramatic, Nancy. My god you‟re beautiful. The camera really loves…the camera…” He pauses. “What‟s wrong with this thing?” It‟s time. Cold, as blistering as an arctic blast, envelops Neema, submerges her beneath a world of silence and ice. At the same time she realizes that she‟s sweating... Neema wait… …burning… And she looks at him, sees him as he really is, a glimmering network of memories standing behind the camera, a shining packet of awareness within a nimbus fraught with darkness. To Neema‟s eyes he is lightning at the heart of a storm cloud, beautiful and terrible, a pulsing, multicolored iridescence. His real name is Waylon Clagget and he is pain and suffering and unending rage wrapped in human form.

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It‟s time. “What are you…?” he says. He‟s staring at her on the camera‟s screen, seeing her electronically, just as she is seeing him. But what he sees fills his eyes with horror. He staggers backward, flailing at the thin air like a man beset by phantoms. “You‟re not” he stammers. “You…you‟re…” “Shut up,” Neema says. Now her voice is strong. There is a compulsion in her words, and a power that she has only recently begun to understand. Only now. Clagget goes quiet. “Come here.” He gasps, as if he‟s just discovered something murderous in the heart of a trusted friend. His feet shuffle forward, his head shaking back and forth, No. No. No. Neema concentrates. “Come… here,” she snarls, her voice husky with need. Waylon Clagget shuffles forward and stops. “How…” he stammers. “How…?” “Untie me.”

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Clagget shakes his head forcefully. Neema feels him hardening his mind, strengthening his will. “No,” he growls. “No…” Tension strains the air between them. She goes into him, digging deeper to solidify her grip. She‟s surprised at how easy it is to reach into his mind and steal from him. The dead girl… Her name is Juliette Salkind. She is an assistant professor at Northwestern University. She is thirty-three years old on the day that Waylon Clagget abducts her. She spends her thirtythird birthday inside the trunk of his car, fighting off five hungry rats he keeps in a terrarium in his room... Neema tastes the life of Waylon Clagget and through him, those of his victims. Clagget‟s right eye bulges, distending like a grape being squeezed through the eye of a needle. Then it pops free from its socket. “I‟m sorry!” Clagget gasps, “I‟m sorry!” “Untie me.” Clagget falls to his knees. Blood dribbles out of his ruptured eye socket like the last dregs of a dying fountain. His eye bounces against his cheek like an errant ping pong ball. With trembling fingers he grasps the ties around her wrists, and in moments she is free. Neema stands, flexing her wrists to restore circulation while Waylon Clagget grovels at her feet.

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“Look at me.” He looks up at her. Her talent has already pushed him past his instinct for self-preservation. It has made him her creature, her plaything. “Please,” he moans. “I‟m afraid…” Neema takes his face in her hands, gently. Staring into his remaining eye, she plunges into him. To facilitate contact she kisses him. His tongue cringes in the cave of his mouth. She hunts him deeper, penetrates his defenses. She claims him, all of him. In a flash, Neema sees his secrets. He has tortured and murdered five women and three men in this special room in his mother‟s basement. She tastes each of those lives now, but unlike Clagget she takes no joy in their suffering, only sustenance. She Feeds, and her Talent, the part of her that has lain dormant for twenty years, that sets her race as far above the Undead as they are above humans, rouses itself, claws, elegant and invisible unfurling in the dark. She Feeds. And Waylon Clagget screams. Blood streams from his nose. His remaining eye turns fishbelly white as Neema draws his substance in. In return she gives him back the pain, the terror, the despair of his victims. Her own pain. She gives it all back to him. “It hurts!” he cries. “It huuuuurtsss!”

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Sifting through Clagget‟s most recent memories, she sees herself. He‟d approached her outside the coffee shop as she was walking to her car, his fingers curled around the handle of the small hammer he‟d used to subdue Juliette Salkind. “My place isn’t far from here,” she‟d said, smiling, seductive. “We can talk there. I’ll drive.” Through Clagget, she sees herself waggling her car keys suggestively, sees herself turn toward her open car door. She feels the surge of his bloodlust as he raises the hammer and strikes... Clagget jerks, his body shuddering as if receiving a powerful electric shock. He reaches for her. His fingers tangle themselves in her hair, spasming, tugging weakly, until finally he slumps in her arms, dead. Neema drops him. She swoons, as voices, Clagget‟s memories, the memories of people she has never met, echo around her like the tattered wings of hungry crows… Please don’t hurt me. Why are you doing this? Happy birthday, Jules! “Oh my God!”

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Neema whirls, unsteady on her feet; the memories… the suffering that she has absorbed…the pain… it‟s all flooding into her, threatening to wash her out of herself. She falls to one knee. “Waylon! What happened?” The fat woman is standing in the open doorway. Her real name is Cora Lutz and she has suffocated three women in the last five months. “What did you do?” she wails. “What did you do to him?” The fat woman is wearing a butcher‟s leather apron. Nothing else, the apron woefully insufficient to cover her girth. Beneath the apron, her massive breasts have been pierced, a length of chain inserted through her nipples. In the center of the chain a small padlock bounces against her sternum. In one hand she‟s holding an electric carving knife. “You filthy… black… whore!” The fat woman shrieks. She rushes forward, again lunging with that uncanny grace, the carving knife screaming as she holds it aloft like some obscene knight preparing to deliver a dragon‟s deathblow. Neema falls to one side, extends her left leg, and stiffens it, making it a rod of iron as she has been trained to do. The fat woman trips over Neema‟s leg and falls facedown onto the floor. Her own screams drown out the electric shriek as the carving knife buries itself in her flesh.

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Neema rises as the fat woman scrambles to her feet. The carving knife has sheared away a fist-sized chunk of the woman‟s breast. Blood cascades down the fronts of her naked thighs and her pendulous belly. Her eyes are wild, hungry now. If Neema didn‟t know better she could almost believe the fat woman is one of her unliving Cousins. But no blood-drinker ever shone with the madness that gleams in the fat woman‟s eyes. No Jackal hates what it kills. “I‟m gonna gut you, you bitch.” The fat woman snatches a hunting knife off the table at her side, and charges again. But this time Neema is prepared. She meets the fat woman‟s charge, reaches for her throat. Contact She sends her power careening into the fat woman‟s mind, smashing past her rage, past torture and the silent screams of a dozen snuffed lives, until she reaches the black kernel of awareness squatting at the fat woman‟s core. Neema exerts her hidden strength and crushes this nugget of darkness. She switches the woman off. Sheer momentum and mass carry the fat woman forward, the knife clenched in her fist, and her body strikes Neema, smashing her to the floor. Neema screams as the blade pierces her side. A moment later, she is buried, crushed beneath an avalanche of flesh.

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For a while she lies there, unable to move, unable to breathe. She can feel wetness beneath her hip where her blood is pooling. She extends her perceptions into her own flesh until she senses it there; a red slash of pain throbbing dully in time with her heartbeat. She reaches out with her talent and slows the bleeding. Then she stokes healing fires from within her own body, knits her torn flesh with borrowed life-force, until the pain recedes and she is able to crawl out from under the fat woman. She climbs slowly to her feet. She is strong now, but she senses this strength will not last. She will sleep deeply tonight, and tomorrow, or maybe the next night, she will grow hungry again. She reaches out for the chair to steady herself, and someone grabs her wrist. “Help me.” Neema whirls. Juliette Salkind‟s eyes are desperate, pleading, her face a riot of indignities, her nose smashed into red meaninglessness, a smear of blood across her face. She drags herself up Neema‟s arm. The stump below her right knee thumps against Neema‟s kneecap. “Pleeeese,” she whispers. “Hellp meeee…” Neema staggers backward. She was sure the woman was dead, had sensed no life in her body, but now… “She‟s a „haint.”

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Neema turns. Magdalena Bathshua, her ancestor, separates from the shadows. The tall brown woman with long white dreadlocks is dressed in the colors of the desert. Tan sandals adorn her feet. Taupe robes swirl about her like mist. She points one long, silver-clawed finger at the dead woman. “She‟s a shade,” she says, her voice still lightly accented even after centuries away from her native Senegal. “The psychic remnant of an innocent life, silenced by murder.” Magdalena shudders. “This place is full of them.” Neema looks at the shade, then past her, through her, to the dead woman on the floor. “Please,” the shade says. “I need to call my mother…” Magdalena holds out her hand toward Neema. “Come away, child,” she says. “There‟s nothing we can do for her.” But Neema feels…something…a sensation of… Falling …plunging into the dead woman, into the remnants of her mind, her life… “Neema… Child… what‟s wrong?” “It doesn‟t have to be like this,” Neema whispers. “I can help.” Neema reaches out her hand, touches the shade. Her fingers pass through its ephemeral substance like a sharp blade through smoke. The shade‟s eyes widen.

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“Oh…” the spirit sighs. “Oh wow…” There is a smell, of lightning and blood, of afterbirth, the silent tearing of invisible flesh and a rumble of distant thunder… then the shade is gone. Magdalena and Neema are alone in the basement. After a while, Magdalena breaks the silence. “Well, that was interesting.” Something crashes above their heads, as voices, harsh, male, rise up from somewhere outside this darkened cellar. Several voices thunder from the rooms upstairs. “Police Department!” Neema glances at Magdalena. The older woman shrugs and offers a grin filled with mischief. “When I sensed your location I called the police. I wasn‟t sure you could hold him off „til I arrived.” Magdalena turns and surveys the carnage, the fat woman‟s corpse, Clagget‟s blasted body. But her eyes linger on the body of Juliette Salkind. To Neema, her ancient mentor looks like a woman struggling to assemble a gigantic puzzle. “You transitioned,” Magdalena whispers. “Without the aid of an Elder. Remarkable.”

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The voices upstairs are joined by more voices, harsh commands. Booted footsteps draw closer. Magdalena turns and, moving briskly, embraces Neema. “Welcome, Daughter. Welcome to the Nneka.” Magdalena frowns at Neema‟s nametag; the one that says Hi, my name is Nancy! “Foolishness,” she says. Moving with the speed and dexterity of a true immortal, Magdalena removes the nametag. “You won‟t be needing this anymore.” Magdalena frowns and the nametag bursts into flames. Neema stares at it longingly. She was Nancy Jenkins for nineteen years. Her tribal name, Neema Umayma, is beautiful, but it will take some getting used to. Upstairs, men are hammering at the door leading to the basement. Magdalena‟s eyes turn black, a sign that she is readying her power. “Take my hand, Neema.” Neema extends her hand. There is no pain now. The Talent sings within her and she is strong. Not as strong as Magdalena surely. Magdalena is centuries old, while Neema is merely two weeks past her twentieth birthday. But she feels as if she can crush bones, rise above this house and soar upon the night winds, as Magdalena and some of the Elder Sisters do. Her first Feeding has made her powerful, and fatally certain.

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Magdalena accepts Neema‟s hand, and the curious expression on her stern face grows deeper, drawing lines across her flawless, immortal skin. As she lets Magdalena wrap her in the scents of sandalwood and desert flowers, Neema Umayma smiles. Shadows rise up around her, whispering her true name. Calling her home. She answers them, laughing, and fades into darkness.

The End

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www.michaelboatman.net

Author Bio:

Michael Patrick Boatman is an Image Award-nominated American actor and writer. Besides being a talented author Michael has wowed the world as a talented actor as well. He is best known for his roles as Samuel Beckett in the drama series China Beach, as Carter Heywood in the sitcom Spin City, and as Stanley Babson in the comedy series Arli$$. Versatile supporting and occasional leading actor Michael Boatman has worked steadily on stage, screen, and television since making his feature film debut playing Motown in Hamburger Hill . MichaelBoatman was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was raised in Chicago. Boatman is a graduate of Western Illinois University and received its “Alumni Achievement Award” in 1997. Michael studied acting at Western Illinois University, where he played a variety of roles including Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Purlie in Purlie Victorious. He was a member of the student sketch comedy troupe Shock

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Treatment, which performed at local bars and nightclubs. During his senior year Boatman won the prestigious Irene Ryan theater award for best supporting actor, during the finals competition at the Kennedy Center. In 1986, Michael moved to Chicago, where he studied acting with Jane Brody, a popular acting teacher and casting director. Later that same year, he auditioned for and won the role of „Motown‟ in the critically acclaimed Vietnam action drama, Hamburger Hill. That same year he appeared in Running On Empty with River Phoenix, and The Trial of Bernard Goetz for the PBS American Playhouse series. In 1988 he auditioned for the pilot episode of the Vietnam era television drama, China Beach. He went on to play Samuel Beckett, the mortician in the China Beach mortuary, for the next three seasons. He later co-starred on The Jackie Thomas Show with Tom Arnold, and the short-lived WB series Muscle. In 1996 he won the role of Carter on the ABC sitcom, Spin City, playing “Carter”, the irascible, openly gay minority affairs liaison. For his work on Spin City he was nominated for five NAACP Image Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy. He also won the GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Association Against Defamation) award for Best Actor. In 1996, Michael also played the role of “Stanley Babson”, the anal-retentive Chief Financial Officer on the HBO original series ARLI$$. For his work on ARLI$$, Michael was nominated for four Image awards, also for Best Supporting

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Actor. He played the lead role in the critically acclaimed Charles Burnett drama, The Glass Shield. Later, he appeared in the feature films The Peacemaker, with George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, and Woman Thou Art Loosed, and in several made-for-TV movies. In 2007 Michael co-starred in the feature films, The Killing of Wendy (2008), American Summer and My Father's Will. He has had many notable guest appearances, including five episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Less Than Perfect, Yes, Dear, Scrubs, CSI: Miami and Grey's Anatomy. Michael is also a screenwriter and novelist. He writes in the splatterpunk horror genre, and his short stories are included in the multi-author anthologies, Until Someone Loses an Eye, Sages and Swords and Badass Horror, and magazines such as Weird Tales, Horror Garage and Red Scream. His first collection of short stories, God Laughs When You Die, was published by Dybbuk Press on October 23, 2007. His humorous horror novel, The Revenant Road, will be published by Drollerie Press in October 2008.

Red Rose Publishing The Ravenous Series

Her Daughter in Darkness: Book 1 of The Ravenous Series- available now DYBBUK Press

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God Laughs When You Die Mean Little Stories From The Wrong Side Of The Tracks.

Drollerie Press The Revenant Road.

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