""Randolph." He calls my name. I still remember my name. But my thoughts are receding and I'm becoming unclear of much of the details of my life, like a crystal ball filling with soot. They're all leaving me. The distant past was first to go-my childhood, what my school looked like, what I looked like, my family, my friends-all being absorbed into this death that swallows me. There are flashes of things before they disappear, though. Hand-me-down clothes two sizes too big, falling off of my skinny arms and legs. My hair growing long and awkward in places due to home haircuts. Then flash again. Gone. Flash. And then there's college, now at the forefront. Where I met my wife, Ella. I had friends, whose names are now lost to me, but she is there. Special, different. Beautiful. One of the rich riding through college on parents' money, but she's not like the other women, or even like me. -from the short story "The Affair"" "Portraits in the Dark" is a collection of nine tales that delve into the darker side of human existence. From a lonely man succumbing to the wiles of a mysterious female to a young woman confronted with her own possible insanity, this compilation holds stories that range from the literary to the traditionally macabre.