Lighter Side to Darkness

by Sage Eternal

Overview

For the culture, the mystic who swallowed the moon made a tale out of it all. For some people, life is no fun without a trance. They need something pretty to keep them stuck in inspiration, but they fatally miss the point. As sadness goes, its on the top-five list, but no one cares. Theres a way to use and work with God and make insanity your tool, but the burden of incite has too many burning traits. To have things like that requires sharp eyes, a terrible crisis, and very much forgettable ancestors. The Lighter Side to Darkness is a colorful tale from the yesteryears of EnRe San. It was a time where my only wish was to keep the sky blue, but going gray meant harmony, and attacking the soul meant I didnt have to go for blood. Theres an inherent strength in pain thats best known when you let chaos take advantage of you, so I went for blood too. You can be raped, be betrayed, or be in the middle of a worldly possession; if its so good that you forgot that you can still kick everyones ass, then I call that a reason to learn. Because just like swallowing the moon, you officially have a friend in mastering your emotions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504395076
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	07/16/2018
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

In my adolescent years, EnRe San was the trick that I despised. I love being a roughneck so much, but even that was ironys tool to make me magickal. Secretly as a child, I was educated on the craft of my imagination, without my parents knowing. After my return to California, I became oblige to use the gifts more associated with my sister. So, for more than spiritual reason, I was the brother trying to eliminate his ruth, to save his sister, with what he hated. Aside from the fatal blows to my love life, Im not so ridiculously emotion to not see how helpful psychic talents are. You can teach and trade them like playing cards for Christ sake. But with the completion of the Lighter Side to Darkness, Ive finally come to terms with that old trick up my sleeves.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Halcyon

I walked up that hill like I did every day that year, but now, the death of my polite nature is upon me.

"No! You have enough ... already!" was what I heard, but it was all too funny. Who are you really, to tell me that I actually had enough? If it was up to my mother, she'd have me wake up to her Vanity Speech, but you'll never be magickal if you don't know how to work a sin. But who knows, maybe now, after it's all in stone, I'll want what those small deaths took from me.

For some reason, in the summer of 2008, everyone was blocking a good fire under their seat. It wasn't rich enough for my mother and I, so we fled from whence we were and back to Southern California. With things in her car, my favorite four-legged creature wagged his tail all the way back to where we both belong. A while back, we agreed that the only thing good about the miles behind us was the snow during winter. The mystery of it tricked me from missing my home for the last three years, but I've finally came to my senses.

By the afternoon, our predictable return was complete. Dad had flew in four months earlier to set the pace and secure our place to stay. Pulling up in front of the garage, we saw him waving at us, and uncomfortable holding a cell phone to his ear trying to talk to Mom. He'll never be the man of the new millennium, but he has with a hug and kiss. "I missed you," he said. "For driving half-way across the country, you look great."

"It was easy with your son talking my ear off, keeping me awake," Mom responded. To each other, they were the perfect amount of needed edge. He was the country-boy turned Navy-Man, and she was the Chicago born estranged from her family. In the 80's, my mother was some light-skinned, trim waisted, 20 something, with black hair down her back, and hopped his fence to see who was cooking steaks with a lonely grill. A year later they jumped the broom. Mom was pregnant with my sister, and Dad was so nervous that I'm surprised that there's no story of him slipping on his own sweat.

The family dog Pepper was next to jump out, but frankly he is a Shi-Tzu too convinced of his own royalty to think himself second. I believe he is the only dog who can prance and run all in one motion. Like any true member of the canine family, he ran to my father and said, "I missed you Daddy" with only his huffs and puffs and ran around him and my mother.

"Hey Phat-Man!" said Dad, resorting to one of the many nicknames the family gave him. Squatting down, he let the black-and-white dog-man smell his hands to calm his jumping. Sniffing away at them both, Dad got his paw print of approval, and rubbed away at the dog's stomach.

Out of the car last, my priority was to get my bo-staff. Staying in one place had driven me anxious for too long. The first good look Dad had of me was with staff in hand, and a framing my face. It's too much against my nature to spare expenses on theatrics, blame my good childhood. With all my father's praise and my mother's good evil, Dad is right to call me the Total Package. Once I had a hand over my composure I hugged my father, we were home.

Our apartment was nestled by a foliage filled hill. Call it a great place to rest my eyes and retrain them to match a palm tree by every head turn of my head. It was so close to the Pacific, the seams of it where still obvious in the air, but it wasn't so close that you'd be captured by it. There, no cloud was bold enough to interrupt the sun and the constant blue. The sky went on so far that if you weren't used to it, you think it was an upside down wishing well. Sunshine aside, I always wished I was fool enough to throw a coin to it.

Getting back to it all, where the sun favored me, I began to understand how quick royalty dulls. Dad worked until the ocean was on fire and came home in the afternoon. Until he did, Mom and I were of the business of being reintroduced to Southern California. Youth had given me a sketchy memory, so the whims of my mother helped me rekindled my home. I was at the guide of my mother's whims. She lived in California since she was 13 and after high school she worked at fast food restaurants to pay for her apartment. Her biggest claim was that if she could go back to freeze time, it be in the 80's, when everyone was dancing. I lost count of all the times she pointed to some abandoned building and called it the favorite club of her heyday. Yet unlike, other women of her time, she had a way to become untouchable.

The subject of interest to the family spirituality has always been, yet as a family, we never found the opportunity to get a good conversation about it going. Secretly, my sister and I thought our maternal grandmother was a witch. Respectfully, we never said it to her face, but we proved we knew that she held some sort of craft by all the jokes we made about her. We even suspected her to fly in on a broom, and tell us tales of Halloween Town and cursing one of her several ex-husbands, but when Mom heard us, she'd run through her rehearsed scolding.

"Stop talking about my mama like that!" she would nag.

Ceremonially, my sister was the first to shoot back. "Well if she's not ... then why you don't let her have pictures of us."

"Yall better stop it," my father would say. Inevitably, he'd be the one to close the conversation. "You know your grandma be shaking dem chicken legs. Besides, them Mason parties feed you good."

Occasionally, I might give a side comment about my possible Voodoo Priestess of a grandmother, but it was rare. I was young and did not really care what my grandmother was. I giggled and laughed and saw her as a person I liked playing cards with. Other things dwelled in my mind and kept me busy during those early years. All I knew was that on a census bureau my family circled Christian, and every Easter we made our rare appearance to church. If anyone asked, my mother trained me to say that my grandmother is a God-fearing Christian of a small church in Pennsylvania, who could win the lotto whenever she felt like it because that is just how the good lord chooses to bless her.

All my mother's driving eventually got us to a shopping center by a harbor. By the lead of bronze mermaids, I remembered how Native I was to it all. Like the blue, the most beautiful things are well arranged and pricey. Past the turtle waterfall, cross the street, and towards the boats, there was the stereotypical gypsy. It was too picturesque, like the start of a child's anime. The woman was wrapped in purple, and flanking her table were two tall amethyst stones on each side. On the center of her table, she kept her deck.

It's been done before, Mom indulges in the occasional psychic reading from time-to-time, and each time I was never allowed at her side. Ironically, some of my fondest memories are of me sitting in new age shoppe and browsing their collection. I had to do something while I waited for her. I get bored easily, and this time around there were no shelves to distract myself with, but to replace it, the predicament had allowed me a rarity. My mother called me over to come. Kindly answering my mother's request, I sat with her and the robed woman shuffling her deck. "Hello, what is your name?" asked the Gypsy Woman.

"E," I answered. "It's short for something special."

"Where is it from?"

"Somewhere old and thank you."

"Well, you're welcome. You can pick a card if you like."

I looked to my mother to ensure it wasn't trick. "Go ahead," she smiled at me. After that, I reached out, pulled the first card my hand went for and flipped it over. "E, you weren't supposed to flip it over yet."

"I'm, sorry," I said nervously

"That's okay," smiled the Gypsy. "It happens all the time. She guided the card above the original spread on the table. On it was the visual of a man piercing the sky with a rod in his right hand, the left pointed to the Earth. Surprisingly, he had his own table with three items. A sword, a cup, and what looked to be a metal star, but beyond all his distraction, above his head was a sideways eight, my favorite number. "Magician, nice first choice. Choose three more please."

I looked at the spread one last time and let my hand pick a set of three cards. One on the left end, one in the middle, and the last at the end. The Gypsy Lady placed them and flipped them over one by one. The first of the three cards were The Chariot and the next had the image of a regal lion that paused Gypsy Woman, "Are you a Leo?"

"No, I'm a Capricorn," I said smiling.

She flipped the final card over and on the bottom, was written "Dominion." It had a picture of a medieval tower in a lightning storm.

"It looks to me that everything in your life is in order. But I also see that you are going to have to learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Be happy though, right now you are in your realm, I don't see why you would be ... uncomfortable."

CHAPTER 2

What Happens to Weeds

Miles away from California, a girl was hungry and broke. There, the heat alone is enough to break you down, but having no money makes you desperate. And having desperation on top of hot, on top of hungry, and on top of weed will turn you into the wrong type of fun. Looking back at it all, with my degree of conceit, she had enough slender to her body to call her my type. Honey dipped hair and good grasp over insanity never harmed a woman's chances to earn my favor, but shamefully her want for men was just terrible.

Romantically, The Girl's favor was aimed at the squirrelly type, so she had to keep a rodent façade. Personally, I'd expected her to at least go for one with wings and call him a scavenger, but who cares, she was independent and knew it's power. That morning, with a dried-out voice, she rolled over to her usual rodent, and said, "I'm hungry." He was the thing that didn't have an excuse to leave their dance between marijuana and sex a few times over. Irony made it a three-way because by none other than The Girl, she was the first to notice the lack of food.

"Shit, well don't you got some money?" backpedaled the boyfriend.

"Ha, fuck no. I don't get paid till the end of the week silly, and tips don't do shit no mo," she said Turning away from her more jester tactics, she grabbed back her misplaced royalty and said, "Don't you got some friends we can ... go to?"

"Girl, I always have friends." Falling for the trap, he kissed her on the cheek and jumped out of the bed. Carelessly he went to put on his oversized black blue-jeans, one leg at a time and they dangled when he walked. He wasn't the type to buy a belt, or anything for that matter, but the ghetto sheik was a necessity. He had the rarely good combination of light skin and a skinny body. Marrying those two makes it hard to handle the cold. Worse than that, the squirrelish thing of a boy was so dense that traveling by foot and sleeping in abandoned buildings couldn't teach him that lesson. Simply put, too many winters had cut him down, and he wasn't the type to look up. To him, baggy and thick jeans like those are a yearlong miracle. For all I know, maybe he realized it and drenched his body in black ink to help pull down the sun.

Still stripped from yesternight, The Girl pranced to the bathroom, enjoying her nudity. Stuck in a marijuana halo, her goal was to look reasonably presentable. She didn't go for the trademark female sprucing that went an hour long, The Girl's conceited, but that's usually the right way to be. A dash of it will make anything taste better, but too much of it will get you killed, so see it equal to salt. It's one of those ingredients that if you don't have, no one will ever indulge you.

By the time she got out, her rat of a boyfriend was dressed and already in the kitchen. He was looking for a forgotten meal stuck in a plastic bag of a cereal box. His luck was so poor that even his girlfriend started laughing at him.

"Stop laughing! There ... there could be some crumbs in there or something!" he stuttered around the hole replacing his stomach.

"Let's go," said The Girl blowing the scene off. At times like these, they had to do what any drugged out broke teenager would do - go meet up with a friend with more weed.

It didn't take long for their mutual friend to meet them outside an alley. It was a good trap between two old brick walls, and a fence blocking off the other side. Chances are, twenty years ago a fire broke out and cut through everything that wasn't brick. Someone might have called the area trash, but to the fowl, it served a family of crows as their bird's eye view. You can't completely fault humans, they gave some work to the ground and cemented everything down. Their stone just got its ass kicked by plant life. The next round, they must had come back slinging tar everywhere to seal up the cracks. You think putting up a good fight would do the trick, but the Earth partnered up with irony and broke the black muck with weeds alone.

Only two cars broke the solitude on the road that day. It might have been The Girl's idea, but it was the Boyfriend's trick. "Thanks for coming broah," he said to their mutual friend.

"Yeah what eva man, you just best have my money for this stuff," the dope dealer shot back.

"Man I aint got no money man, my shit been on low."

"The fuck you call me fo den Nigga!?!"

"Dude I need ... I need a favor."

"Favor, Nigga I'm always doing you favors, if you just hurry up and worked for a Nigga then there be no need for all dese favors."

"I know. But seriously, after this, I ain't gonna need not one mo favor from you." He was too obvious when he said that, and allowed too much of the typical momentary pause. The night before gave him that glazed-over stare, and the plastered smile to match. He was the hamartia to his favorite setup and his posture snitched on himself, but the people here ... they're just so damn slow. If it was New York The Girls boy would probably be head first in the pavement by now. A Californian would have someone with a finger on the trigger watching the dope dealer's back, but here of all places, all that grey water in the air makes the mind slow. The Dope Dealer couldn't react fast enough before he had a gun in his face.

"Fuck? Shit, this damn thang won't work!" shouted the boyfriend.

Pulling the trigger repeatedly, he was officially an inch out of his high and realizing things. Recovering from the shock, the dope dealer buckled back and pulled out his own rifle and shot back. It was the bullet that broke the sky and glued The Girl's boyfriend to the ground with his own blood.

"You little fuck nigga! Who the hell you think I am! You know how I respond to a backstabbing muthafuckas like you! Don't even know how to clean yo goddamn gun you fucked up dumbass!" exclaimed a rabid Dope Dealer. "I got yo last favor nigga. "I'm gonna kill yo bitch, and then I'm gonna put a got-damn bullet through yo fucked up head!" Committing to the deed he aimed his gun right at The Girl's face and to it she was a fawn stuck in headlights.

"Click, click," said a cocked back gun, but nothing came out. Where ever she was, The Girl had stayed there for too long because the slowness of that place had finally stolen her reserved royalty. Replacing it, only her blood could help her.

"Drive!" it said. Trying to, The Girl pressed down on the gas, aiming to ram the dope dealer against his own car. Hitting his own car, the attack turned her own window to shards. Instinctively, the Dope Dealer jumped on top of her car and rolled on the side of the curb.

"Damn gun, must be empty, shit!" he complained. Seeing him limp back to his car, The Girl got out and ran to help her boyfriend. Pealing her lover off the ground, he left a streak of blood from his near death-bed to the car. Pressing through the fear, The Girl glanced in her left rearview mirror and saw a shotgun aimed straight at her head. "Bye hoe, tell the devil I said what's up," said dope dealer.

"Bammmmm!" was what she heard, but again for the third time, a gun was disallowed to cut someone down.

"Drive!" her blood shouted. All she knew was to get out of there, so she nailed the gas pedal down and backed out of the alley.

"Baby, baby wake up! You're goanna be alright. Come on babe, wake up don't play with me like this, you can't fall asleep! If you fall asleep you might not wake up! Don't fall asleep baby just stay awake!" Alright, what do we do, what do we do? Damnit! I don't want to drive you to the hospital, but I don't know what to do!"

"Hospital!" he belted. "Take me to the hospital!"

"Okay, Okay. I'll take you to the hospital! Just calm down and don't fall asleep." Inching out of her hysteria, The Girl drove to the closest hospital she could think of and arrived at its lobby minutes later. Sprinting out the car, she shoved her way through a line of people and slammed her hands on the desk to take her first breath in the last hour.

"Ma'am what's wrong!" uttered the lady at the front desk.

"My boyfriend got shot!" belted The Girl. "He got shot and he's in the car outside of the lobby."

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Lighter Side to Darkness"
by .
Copyright © 2018 EnRe San.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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