Worlds of Samsara

by James Heron

Overview

"

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU LOST YOUR DAUGHTER?

When one grief-stricken father, Alexandros Vassago, loses his daughter Angelina, he embarks on an induced out-of-body experience as he tries to reconnect with her in the afterlife. But unbeknownst to him, this is just the beginning of a riveting journey he would not forget. What happens next is an inevitable unveiling of a myriad of life truths and revelations that will challenge his convictions.Led by his desire to be with his daughter, Alexandros enters one parallel world after another, and in the process begins to open his eyes to the true workings of life — discovering that the people, places and events we encounter are no accident.

At the end of his journey, will Alexandros reunite with his daughter? Will he survive all the challenges in store for him? Enter the Worlds of Samsara to find out.

"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469793092
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/16/2012
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.53(d)

Read an Excerpt

Worlds of Samsara

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By James Heron

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 James Heron
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4697-9309-2

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Chapter One

Estrus

My girl. My sweet, precious seven-year-old Angelina was standing in the dining room of our old home in front of the china cabinet. She was wearing her favorite pajamas—the ones with the winged bunnies—and she gave me a small, upturned smile. I reached out to touch her just to show her I could. My hand brushed her shoulder, and I felt the impact, flesh upon flesh. Only it wasn't.

She said, "I am a ghost."

* * *

I woke up with the crushing realization that I was completely severed from my daughter. I was on the ground in an alleyway, yet I was not drunk or on drugs. I had blacked out while being mugged, one man restraining me in a choke hold as another man advanced toward me with a switchblade in his hand. I had dreamt of my dead daughter and then regained consciousness in this world, one that was far from my own.

My watch said it was just past 3:00 p.m., but here it was already night, and as I would discover, it was always night in this world.

I checked my pockets—empty, not that it made a difference, considering that money from the last world I'd been on, disks that looked like casino chips, was probably useless in this one.

As I got up and brushed myself off, two teenage girls approached me. Both were wearing bellbottoms. The first girl's jeans had serpents on the flares, and the girl who walked a step behind her wore scorpions. "You okay?" the first girl asked me.

I nodded. As I walked away, I noticed they were checking me out. I was forty and balding and could stand to lose ten pounds—all right, fifteen pounds—but to them I was Zac Efron.

I emerged onto Hollywood Boulevard and attempted to make sense of my surroundings. Still the same potheads and street kids, but more of them were female. There were head shops, clothing boutiques, and porn shops on every block—only the latter were called sex emporiums, and I saw women going into them. Musso & Frank Grill still existed in this world. I stopped by a newsstand on Cahuenga and glanced at some headlines: PRESIDENT PELOSI SIGNS DOMESTIC PROTECTION BILL.

I made my way over to Highland and noted there was no Kodak Theater or pseudo-Babylonian statues. Just a bookstore: Druidia Booksellers. I went inside and checked out the books. It seemed that romance novels and relationship books were the hottest sellers. In fact, the number-one bestseller was How to Snag and Bag a Man in This Jungle Called Life, by a Leticia Lowenbrau. I flipped it open and took note of one of the chapter titles: "The Way to a Man's Heart Is Not His Stomach but Six Inches Below." I shit you not.

A coffee table book caught my eyes: 100 Dickless Celebrities. Some faces on the jacket I recognized from my own world. I couldn't help letting out a chuckle.

"Nice you can laugh about something like this."

I turned around and saw a very attractive black woman around thirty. But I didn't think of her as African American. She gave off a black vibe, and when you traveled from world to world, you had to be quick on your feet, picking up cues and improvising like Wayne Brady on Whose Line Is It Anyway? What could be innocuous in one world could land you the death penalty in another world.

I said, "Where I come from, trashing celebrities is a pastime."

She was wearing a denim jacket with vulture patches sewn onto the breast pockets and what looked like a Greek fisherman's cap. "What's your name?"

"Alex. Alex Vassago. And you?"

She leered at me. "They call me Estrus 'cause I'm always in heat."

"What's your real name?"

"Valeska Warfield. What kind of a name is Vassago? Italian?"

"Something like that," I said.

"What do you do for a living?"

"I travel a lot."

"That must be fulfilling. I teach fourth grade. Can I buy you a dinner?"

I didn't like that she was so forward, but I had to remind myself that maybe there was a level playing field here when it came to who could ask out whom. What were my options? I had no money, and I was hungry, having missed lunch.

We agreed to meet in front of Musso & Frank.

* * *

All this parallel-words stuff began when my pastor counseled me one-on-one a month after my daughter's funeral. My ex-wife disapproved of him because he said things that seemed to fall outside of mainstream Christianity, but I gravitated toward him for that very reason. I wanted answers to my life beyond the prevailing bullshit.

"The body wants," Pastor John Martin told me as if my grief was insubstantial. "It hungers. It thirsts. It gets hot. It gets cold. It pains. It itches. That's why when Jesus was dying on the cross, he said, 'Why have you abandoned me?' That was his body talking. But the spirit is pure, giving, loving energy."

"What does that have to do with Angelina?" I asked him.

His eyes blazed with certainty. "Your daughter is in a much grander place—a place of joy. She has no body. She is spirit, and when she looks down upon you, all she wants to do is give, give, give."

"I don't feel that."

"Because you drive her away. You must remove the veils of anger and anguish from your eyes. The kingdom of heaven is truly within, Alex."

I mumbled a "thank you" for his time, but I didn't know how to stop feeling what I felt. All I knew was that I hated God, and if I could, I would disembowel Him and lop off His head for taking my daughter away from me.

You don't know what it's like to lose a child. You just don't know.

* * *

If she couldn't come to me, I would go to her. I sought comfort in psychics. One of them was able to accurately describe Angelina's silky dark brown hair, her honey skin, and her dimples. She mentioned Angelina's love of geography, the Cartoon Network, and her best friend, whose first name initial began with an L. But all I was left with were shards of the life with her I had known.

I began to investigate out-of-body experiences, or OBEs, and would not have become obsessed with having an OBE had I not had a brief, spontaneous one at the age of four. I read books, searched websites, attended conferences and workshops. I lit candles and incense, meditated, fasted, prayed, all to no avail.

Eight months later, I was lying in bed, almost asleep, when I felt paralysis and a tingling sensation come over my body. The moment was here! I could either allow it to happen or disengage. I went with it, focusing on the ceiling. Then I lost consciousness.

And I awoke in a world that was different from my own. I knew then that I was just a plaything in the hands of a cruel God.

* * *

Estrus and I were sitting in a private booth. She had shed the vulture jacket for a pink dress and remarked on my casual attire.

"I travel light," I said.

She ordered the lobster thermidor, and I opted for the beef stroganoff. We made small talk. I learned that she had an eight-year-old daughter named Stephanie who stayed with her grandma, but she found out nothing about me. And she seemed to be content with that. She tried to ply me with merlot, but I limited myself to one glass. She paid for the dinners and insisted on buying me a new outfit before we went clubbing.

We stopped at a department store near Vine, where she insisted on getting me a white suit, long-sleeved floral shirt, and wide-brimmed hat that looked like something out of the seventies. She paid with cash, using currency featuring the faces of living presidents. Jimmy Carter was on a ten, and Pelosi was on a twenty. We put my old clothes in a shopping bag and went straight to a club on Ivar called Plato's. I seemed to recall that there had been a sex club with a similar name on my world a few decades earlier. I checked my shopping bag with the attendant, and Estrus led me by the hand to the dance floor, where it seemed we were the only couple. Maybe football was on Friday nights in this world. The music was a combination of disco and techno; rap, on the other hand, didn't exist here. During the slow numbers our lips locked, and she let me grab her butt cheeks. The way she pressed her body against mine made me want to have sex with her right then and there. I noticed there were back rooms for that sort of thing, but she bit my ear lobe gently and whispered, "Wait until we get home."

Hooyah! After landing me in worlds where ants were the size of terriers and where street violence was pandemic, a way of life, the universe was finally throwing me a bone.

* * *

She lived in an apartment building on Las Palmas—walking distance from the club. As she pulled me by the hand up the stairs, a plump black woman in tight red shorts peered down at me, lust burning in her eyes. "Who do we got here?" she said.

"Ignore her," Estrus grumbled.

"Just tryin' to be polite."

Estrus's eyes narrowed into fierce slits. "Keep away from my man, nigger. I cut you up, bitch!"

In a lame attempt to defuse the situation, I said, "All we need to make this complete is Jerry Springer."

"If he's a friend of yours," the plump woman said, "bring him over. He white?"

"Very," I replied.

* * *

As Estrus led me inside her apartment, I couldn't help noticing a security camera just above the door as well as security cameras perched above the doors of the other apartments.

"Come on," she said. "Let's do it." Her tongue sought mine.

"Don't you think we need protection?" I said.

"From what? The East Lake Strangler?"

"What about AIDS?"

"Don't need sex toys." She grabbed my crotch, unzipped me, and pulled out my hard cock. "Not when I've got this."

* * *

For the rest of the night, the next day (which, again, was just like night here), the next night, and the day and night after that, we made love, stopping only for meals, showers, and bathroom breaks. I once read that Adam and Eve were originally one conjoined being, and that's how it felt with Estrus. I couldn't tell where my flesh ended and hers began.

On Monday morning, she fixed me a breakfast of scrambled eggs and English muffins with orange marmalade. "Gotta go teach school," she said. "You know how it is." She counted out three hundred dollars and pressed the money into my hand. "Buy yourself some clothes. There's an extra set of house keys on the dresser. Come back to me, hear?"

"I will." How could I resist an offer like that?

After she left, I watched TV. President Pelosi was on a goodwill tour of China and India; a train had derailed near Pittsburgh; and there was some snippet about a dickless football player, no one I knew. I switched off the remote. They sure liked to insult their celebs in this world.

I hit the streets. I spotted a couple of rail-thin girls around nineteen loitering in front of a convenience store. One of them called out, "Blow job for twenty dollars!"

I ignored them.

"Thirty dollars."

I turned around, insulted. I rejected her, and she was raising the price?

"I'll pay you thirty dollars for a blow job," the girl said.

What could I do? I'm a dog. And I indulged in my dogginess.

* * *

In My Fair Lady Professor Henry Higgins lamented, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" He had it all wrong. I say, why can't a woman be more like a dog (though not the kind that a man is)? Why do they have to talk, or at least, why do they have to talk so much? Why can't a woman be so happy to see her man when he comes home to her? Why can't she be grateful for the smallest gestures of affection?

Why couldn't Maria have treated me with consideration and respect? Why did she have to tear me down while I was trying to make more money for our family? Had she given me just a tiny measure of support, I wouldn't have had to relieve the pressure with other women. And she wouldn't have caught the signs—coming home late and perfume on my collar—and gone through my text messages.

I could have saved our marriage, gone to counseling, said, "I'm sorry. I'll never do it again." But I didn't. I'm a man, and a man can't admit when he's wrong. So we split up, and it was while my daughter was spending a weekend with me that I lost her.

* * *

With Estrus at work during the days, I was left to my own devices. I acquainted myself more with this world. There were no cell phones, no Internet; they had LPs instead of CDs; and would you believe it—videos were on Beta.

Then there were the sex emporiums, X-rated magazines in the front and private video booths in the back. The films were oriented more toward women, with romantic music, female orgasms, and very few money shots. Women were always available. They would leave the door to their booths open a crack while rubbing their private parts, and I would usually oblige. Some of them paid me in Pelosis and Carters. One TV commentator mourned the fact that only 17 percent of men and women were in committed relationships. What did they expect? This world was crawling wall to wall with pussy, wet and willing. Had it not been night 24/7, I would have called this place a paradise.

One night Estrus said to me, "I know you're getting some. But that's okay as long as you come home to me."

Like I said, paradise.

* * *

On the twentieth day of our relationship, Estrus said, "I'm gonna cook us a very special dinner. And then I want us to talk." She squeezed my hand. "Okay?"

"Okay."

I walked the streets of Hollywood feeling light-headed. It was obvious that she wanted some kind of commitment. I weighed the pros and cons of a future relationship with her and decided on a compromise.

On this day I decided to forego the sex shops.

* * *

She made us mixed green salad and poached salmon with asparagus. For dessert, there was cherry sorbet. And plenty of white wine. I felt something land on my lap: a small velvet box. I opened it: a gold ring.

Her eyes were shining. "Alex, we haven't known each other for a very long time, but I feel us. I really, really feel us. Alex, my darling, will you marry me?"

I felt the color drain from my face. "Estrus," I began in my best-rehearsed manner, "I find you very beautiful, I love the way you smell, and when we get it on, we really get it on—off the charts." I paused, gauging her face, and found my voice. "However, as I tried to make clear to you, I travel a lot."

"But there is a time for settling down, boo."

"That's true, but ..."

"Alex, I missed my period."

"I thought you were on the pill."

"Doesn't always work."

"Listen," I said, "here's what we'll do. We'll continue to live together, and I'll get a job, and we'll take it a day at a time."

"But you stayed with me twenty days." There was an edge to her voice. "Twenty days."

"So?"

"Have some wine." She poured me a glass, and I took a few sips.

"Look, we just need to take things slower." I felt my tongue get furry.

"What you need to understand, Alex, is—no ifs, ands, or buts about it—you are mine."

My face was numb. I suddenly felt very sleepy. I stood up, struggling to stay awake. "You ..."

Before I passed out, she said, "You will be mine."

* * *

My head was throbbing. I slowly opened my eyes. It was night. Damn! I was still in the same world. I was lying in bed, and I felt pain in my right arm. I felt my biceps—a needle prick. What the fuck?

Estrus came into the bedroom and sat on the corner of the bed. Her eyelids were puffy. It was obvious that she had been crying. "How you doing?"

"You tell me."

"You'll live."

"Good to know."

"Boo," she said in a strangled whisper, "how could you do this to me? I feed you, I pay for you to have nice clothes to wear, I give you a roof over your head, and you're gonna walk out on me? What's the matter? You don't like black women?"

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Worlds of Samsara by James Heron Copyright © 2012 by James Heron. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. 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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Table of Contents

Contents

1. Estrus....................1
2. Valeska....................24
3. Flickers....................32
4. Not Home....................62
5. Feed....................68
6. Liquid Love....................90
7. Slow Burn....................93
8. Call Me in the Morning....................98
9. Sleepover....................125
10. For Your Amusement....................144
11. Binding....................155
12. Think of the Children....................177
13. Hellacious....................203
14. Heaven on Earth....................214