Kaleidoscope

As the French author Marcel Proust once remarked, the mind evokes endlessly changing thought patterns, much like a kaleidoscope. Reading Derrick R. Lafayette's Kaleidoscope: Dark Tales, a genuinely extraordinary collection of five short stories and a novella, is like gazing upon the world again and again through bits of colored glass.

What happens when . . .

An old gunfighter, accompanied by a Billy-the-Kid wannabe, arrives in a weird Wild West town to claim a straightforward bounty? But triggered by mistaken identity, the pair run afoul of a supernatural occurrence.

What happens when . . .

A loner, held captive for months in a mud castle, escapes but feels certain he is still doomed? Walking a deserted highway to Elysian he meets Kali, the most perfect being, as well as assorted man-eating monsters while slowly descends into madness.

What happens when . . .

Two Abbott-and-Costello-like scientists, marooned on a nuclear bomb-blasted planet, try to re-engineer soldier-cyborgs? Convinced they're living in the best of all possible worlds, they struggle to survive as enemy armies swarm around them.

What happens when . . .

A priest with supernatural ecclesiastical powers and an innocent young girl who has just buried her father board a Victorian horse-drawn coach, beginning a journey into a spirit-infested netherland where nothing is as it seems?

What happens when . . .

A middle-class black family - father, mother and teenaged son - reveal their innermost thoughts and experiences, unaware that COVID-19 will strike its first deadly blow within a week?

There's more. Medieval fantasy. Science fiction. A paranoiac who plays chess against himself but cannot win. No dark tale in Kaleidoscope - whether magical realism, fantasy, science fiction, absurdist, dystopian or Fabulist - is beyond Lafayette's keen observations and engaging storytelling. Rod Serling ("The Twilight Zone") would have loved to create radio dramas from these dark tales.