LIGHT
Dedication
Book dedications are an author's way of giving their ego a cameo by thanking others, just before the real story starts.
So, I thought, enough of that nonsense!
I dedicate this book to myself.
Sure, I might be convinced to throw in a nod to my kids, but let's be honest—this is about me.
Well, my wife did endure my creative tendencies, so maybe she'll get a mention too—no, scratch that. This book is a full-on tribute to me.
I mean, it's not like I fought an epic battle to save humanity, tighten my screws and gather up my marbles, and then decided to write a story about myself. No, I battled it out with my daughter for the rights to this story—like a chain-smoking duck stoned on pot and a purple cat in drag. And I won because: masculinity.
And let's be clear: all those baboons, elves, trolls, bats, and jellyfish in this book? They're not just random fantasy creatures—they're all manifestations of me. Every character and fantastical being reflects my modest ego--and my ego is the most modest of all egos. And if you think I'm a bit too eager to explain all this, well, I do have a tendency to mansplain and tell a few dad jokes.
So just consider this unpretentious dedication my way of warning you about the intricate details of the brilliant story you are about to read.
You're welcome.
Chapters
Chapter 1. The Park
Chapter 2. The Taxi
Chapter 3. The Plane
Chapter 4. The Train
Chapter 5. Humberto
Chapter 6. The Purple Cat
Chapter 7. The Cave (the gay one)
Chapter 8. The Trolls
Chapter 9. The Underworld
Chapter 10. Color in the Cave (the other cave)
Chapter 11. The Elves
Chapter 12. Light in the Cave (but I forgot which one)
Chapter 13. The Goblins
Chapter 14. The Desert
Chapter 15. The Tornadoes
Chapter 16. Humberto -- the Homage to Faulkner.
Chapter 17. The Bats
Prologue: Because I feel like putting it here, so just deal with it.
Chapter 18. The Purple Cat
Epigraph: Don't ask questions--talk to the hand.
Chapter 19. What's Your Favorite Color?
Chapter 20. The Big Bang
Chapter 21. The Falling
Chapter 22. The Park
Epilogue: 1
Epilogue: 2
Epilogue: 3
Epilogue: 4
Appendix: The Recipe for a Good Life
Chapter 1 – The Park
Picture this: the sun, still, at the center of the solar system. The sky, blue. Sofia's rowing, smoother than a penguin's ass sliding off a glacier. Suddenly, the ocean rises in anger and slaps Sofia in the face with a fish and she did not say, "WTF?" She shouted, "Seriously?"
Then the sky grows dark, and this happened next.
A hurricane appeared out of nowhere (it happens) and spawned columns of tornadoes that twisted the surface of the sea. Lightning illuminated the sinister expanse with a thunderous malevolence. The maelstrom plucked the ocean, like a black widow tuning its web.
Sofia wondered whether the winds were an apparition conjured by unresolved turmoil. The child within her feared the storm's ferocity; however, the woman was resolute.
"We become weightless when enshrouded within beauty," her father whispered that day, long ago. "Like when we gazed upon the Milky Way, in its iridescent ascent over a glacier, and don't interrupt me, Sofia; or when our canoe drifted in a spiral beneath an aurora's cosmic shadows—that was quite the sarcastic rhetorical, Sofia; or when we witnessed a blade of grass genuflect to a snowflake's mass; because this is my story. These are the moments when beauty reveals itself. Space contracts, time dilates, all stories converge into one; and our differences cease to matter, as we rise to energy."
Summoning this energy, Sofia increased her tempo and rowed her boat toward the eye of the male storm. Her hair billowing in streamlines, she muttered with definance, "Like hell it is. I am Sofia. This is my story."
***
As Sofia stepped into San Diego's Balboa Park, the scene unfurled like a medieval tapestry on a castle's walls.
Her daughter Lily disappeared from her side. Another step, and her husband vanished. Sofia pressed on, resolute as she ventured deeper into the park.
At the center of Balboa Park, the fountain surged skyward, its white spray cascading like chrysanthemums blooming amidst late summer's warm tones. The roar of the fountain laced with the whirl of children's laughter.
Her dream internship at a Manhattan literary agency faded into the recesses of her mind. Waves of academic struggles, lost friendships, and fleeting spring breaks pulled the sands back up the hourglass, defying gravity.
Sofia continued through the park, her attention caught by a child's abandoned tricycle in the Eucalyptus grove, streamers fluttering from its handlebars. She briefly wondered what had happened to that boy and why he left it there, but the pace picked up.
High School homecoming, assemblies, and field trips—each step forward like a step back in time.
The air crackled with an unusual energy, time and space began to convulse, warping reality into a tapestry of unspeakable terror. Above her, two streaks of cosmic light sliced through the sky. From this celestial rift, two enigmatic figures materialized, shimmering with otherworldly intent. Sofia remained blissfully unaware.
In her mind, her childhood home reappeared. She saw the front lawn adorned with three plastic pink flamingos, a source of playful mischief for neighborhood boys who would steal them, much to her father's frustration.
Sofia imagined herself at the helm of a ship, her father's silhouette at the stern, looking out over lands left behind. She reached out to him, but a blaring trumpet from a Mariachi band jolted her back to reality, and he faded.
Nearby, a child's train ride circled its track, laughter, jasmine, and honeysuckle blending in the afternoon air.
As Sofia wandered through the park, she swirled in carefree nostalgia, her blue jeans flowing, hair surging, shirt billowing like a cerulean sea. Her LA Dodgers cap was turned backward, a small yellow star swaying from her belt loop.
Her visit to the park that afternoon had three purposes.
First, her father was in the house, engaged in a heated argument on the phone, railing against the abuse of keypress options. His voice boomed with anger as he navigated the labyrinthine depths of automated phone menus, his temper radiating as he shouted his demand for the tele-operator.
Second, this day marked the final day before her family's departure for a visit to her grandmother living by a fjord framed by ice-blue mountains. Her mother had advised her to savor the park's serenity and expanse before the confinement of the airplane journey.
There was a third reason she was in the park, but she forgot.
Suddenly, a cataclysmic force from the same cosmic frontier that brought the streaks of light, descended, threatening to extinguish the sun and shroud the earth in an icy darkness—but no one in the park seemed to notice. This spiraling vortex, disguised as a gentle breeze, trailed the two enigmatic predators who had previously sparkled into Sofia's world.
The first predator moved with a raptor's toe-tapping deliberation, while the second exuded the aged rage of a saber-toothed feline from the Pleistocene.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Meanwhile, a duck chased a cat.
The breeze wasn't just wind; it slithered, coiled, its touch cold as a predator's breath. Men, women, children—everyone in its path—shivered not knowing why.
They didn't see.
The wind whispered in dark, twisted tones: Where is the girl?
They had all come for Sofia, this young warrior preparing to pound the gates of an amazed castle. In her world, she never needed to utter the words, "Daddy, look at me," for her father's gaze was a reassuring presence. From the moment she drew her first breath, her feet had never touched the ground. Passed from father to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and her mother, she had learned to navigate the world as if it were her playground, never seeking the comfort of the firmament. Her heart yearned not just to fly but to soar to unimaginable heights, a passion that defied her father's spirited insistence: "Sofia, it's a kite, not a Lockheed Martin F-22 Jet Fighter." (Her mother would often respond to this in jest, "Just like you:" her tribute to her husband's neurosis indomitable spirit.).
In a quiet corner of the park, in the showering in the scent of orange blossoms, an old man and a white cat watched Sofia sailing in a whirlwind of joy. The old man whispered to himself, "She's ready," as he popped a pinhole in his shoe box.
Close by, a gang of disaffected kids, colder than ice in the Arctic, cast judgement on everyone. Their envy of those who seemed to row, row, row their boat gently through life's dreams, blinded them, and they failed see time's receding waters; anchored to their own discontent, they were.
A little boy who had been playing beside the fountain tried to pull his toy sailboat to safety as the winds rose. A violent gust slammed into the toy sailboat, snapping the bow from the stern in a brutal twist of fate and steel girders, consigning its imaginary occupants to a watery slumber a thousand millimeters beneath the surface.
As Sofia watched the maritime catastrophe, a bubble burst above her. The shock wave fragmented the image of the writer she would one day become. However, the sight of the abandoned tricycle frightened her, and she raced toward the boarding platform of the child's train ride that encircled the park's perimeter and forgot the vision.
A park ranger in pinstripe overalls operated the train ride as conductor—ex-marine, built like a brick house, tall, and late middle-aged. Life had presented challenges for the rugged vet, whose gruff demeanor and commanding presence hinted at a storied past. The adversity had been met head-on, with a transition that spoke to a journey of self-discovery and resilience.
The vet accepted the tickets for the ride and welcomed the children aboard. She had a place in her heart for Sofia — "my little jalapeño pepper," she would call her.
Mariachi music stirred the late afternoon air, mixing memory and imagination with hopes, regrets, trumpets, and castanets.
A breeze caressed Sofia's face and she lifted her hand to hold her Dodgers cap in place. Otherwise, she paid no attention to this wind. She should have—for this was no Santa Ana slouching toward Bethlehem; this was destiny rising to a conflagration.
The conductor gazed toward the east and whispered, "I know these winds—they once came for me. Change is coming for you, now, my little one," then raising an octave and decibel, she added, "And where the hell are these bubbles coming from?" as she popped each one.
Sofia turned toward the perimeter of the park and saw a wisp of smoke, a flash of orange, and four eyes smoldering from the underbrush.
"People need to read the script," continued the conductor. "And fix the bubble machine."
A blink later—the eyes vanished as the Arctic ice floated into focus. Sofia turned to the conductor, and asked the immortal words that precedes any cosmic showdown, "Where are we going?"
"The wind now comes for you," the conductor continued in a foreboding melisma that often warns the reader that some serious shit's about to pop. She raised the back of her right palm to the left side of her mouth and boomed in a thunderous bass that could launch a C♯₁ aloft, "All a-boar-oared!" yet adding with soft elision to Sofia, "C'mon along for the ride, Peps?"
"I need a real one. I got to get out of here," Sofia replied, tugging the conductor's pinstripes, afraid to let go, and having chosen "here" as her final word, and not "Dodge" as her dad would have, because this is not his story; or so they say.
"Then this—my ticket to you, Pepper," the conductor replied as she gifted Sofia a free ticket.
The Arctic ice moved into position to mock Sofia and the conductor—that weird girl who refused to act girly, and the "flaming train tranny," they would mock.
Nearby, the raptor stalked the undergrowth, and the saber-toothed beast dripped saliva onto a black widow spider drinking her liquefied mate, while a Praying Mantis waited patiently for the likes of a turducken.
The cat chased the duck.
"Can't those kids step off and stop judging?" Sofia asked the conductor as she looked down at her feet, tattered sneakers covered in mud, laces untied, jeans not fashionably ripped, and placed one foot on top of the other, concealing her shredded sneakers.
"Dismiss those Neanderthals, Pepper—erase them from your mind; I wonder, no, I know, they will float the jetsam out to sea—and you will rise. Let love perfuse your pose, Peps. But, by the way, tell your Pops not to be a stranger; he's hurting—you may have to dig for him; you'll need an excavator for that one."
Sofia accepted the ticket, while knowing that the next morning she would begin a trip of thirty-six thousand seconds to the land of the midnight sun, over eight hundred million centimeters away.
The conductor leaned close and whispered, "Save the ticket for when you return, Luke."
"Luke?" asked Sofia.
"Oops! Sorry, I mean Sofia—sorry, and if you unearth jewels in those Norwegian fjords—I know you're heading there tomorrow; we talk, your dad and me; got a little mixed up there—leave them for a lost traveler to find. May your voyage uncover new worlds, within and without. Now, go take your pulse, pepper."
Then, leaning out, she added, "Good man, your Pops is—I hope he feels it one day; he can't keep acting like a child, forever—it'll only make him a bitter old man."
After thanking the conductor and re-sync'ing with the park's rhythm she moved toward the park's central fountain where a bevy of Mallard ducks had found a home.
The little boy, now daydreaming about raising the Titanic, still holding the tether to his sunken ship, was smiling now with a raspberry ice cream cone.
Sofia thrust herself through the rainbows gracing the mist and landed by the fountain's edge with a thud, as the gang of Arctic ice cubes tumbled into view.
With nowhere to hide, she leaned over the surface of the water and studied her reflection.
"Nobody gets me," she whispered to herself.
A mallard paddled into view.
"Are you smiling?" Sofia asked the duck as she gripped the side of the fountain.
The duck submerged and on surfacing held an orange stone in his beak. It leaned its head back and flung the stone against the side of the fountain. The boy with the raspberry ice cream cone turned his head toward the clanking sound.
Then the duck hopped out of the fountain and snatched the cone from the boy's hands. The duck shook its beak, hurled the ice-cream into the water, and turned its gaze toward Sofia.
Then the duck tossed up the waffle cone which flew up, stilled, turned, and descended into his beak. He chiseled it to smithereens and paddled away after winking at Sofia.
The gang of Arctic-eyed kids laughed, their cold voices cutting the air like shards of glass. The boy stood frozen, his cheeks blooming red as the remnants of his toy ship and his ice cream resurfaced from the fountain's now blood-pink water. The fountain's surface radiated pink from the melting ice cream.
"It is beginning!" a voice shouted from the spiral slide.
On the other side of the park, a park-worker had been painting the spiral slide with an anomalous shade of purple.
Savage smoke curled through the air, devouring the last of light. Darkness descended. The sky, once with warm oranges and reds, shrieked with cold, harsh blues, as if the spectrum was in torment. A darker blue glow clung to the worker atop the spiral slide. Gone were the relaxing reds and oranges, as mourning's stressed blue forced its way back on stage.
It seemed as if something was devouring the sun. She shielded her eyes from its unexpected intensity. Shadows were fading and people were lifting shoe boxes over their heads.
Then she remembered the third reason she was in the park: the solar eclipse. She had wanted to watch the ring of fire with everyone else.
Sofia turned back to the worker on top of the slide while discordant conversations rumbled around the park: "the alignment of the sun, earth and moon," "don't look at it," "eat a flashlight," "cement bag," "Pluto is a planet," "a distorted gravitational field," "rectal fumigation," and "the fabric of space-time rent asunder."
The worker glanced toward the underbrush and his face froze in horror. Blood drained from his face; his lips cracked dry. His pupils dilated as he studied the silhouettes of the predators slithering through the grass. He raised his hands to the sides of his face and could not contain the terror. He, the only one who saw, wanted to shout his warning to flee from the horror.
"Great Scott!" he screamed.
"Great Scott? Seriously?"
All motion ceased as Sofia scanned the scene, whispering, "Who said that?"
Flummoxed after the worker's cloying cliché, the crowd lowered shoe boxes and mumbled about a miscue, to which the train conductor snapped, "Don't look at me—I didn't write this. I'm a conductor—and who broke the bubble machine?"
The agitated crowd turned to look at the park worker who feebly offered, "Shiver me timbers?" amidst the pulsing of the galaxy's center.
Lub dub.
Lub dub.
Lub dub.
The park worker then tried, "Ay Caramba?" with a rhetorical intonation, but the crowd's impatience simmered.
"I got to try something," he muttered to himself, "They are all judging me, now—oh, I know: Holy Shit!"
The eclipse stalled, bubbles froze, musical notes hovered, and birds levitated in mid-flight—except for their eyes which moved freely, as they waited for their cue—all ignoring the worker's latest attempt to garnish attention.
Having had enough of the stalled action and colloquial misnomers, Sofia's confident persona took two steps forward.
Sofia ascended the see-saw, her legs poised on either side, preparing her response.
In that moment, softened by shadows, she was struck by something she couldn't quite name. The world around her shimmered with a beauty beyond reason—colors of the park blurring together, laughter carrying on a strange and otherworldly melody. The shadows from the ring of fire moved like life, and for a heartbeat, past and future collapsed into one, spinning together in a seamless dance. The edges of everything—time, space, even self—dissolved. Colors wove into one another, and love seemed to pulse from every soul, filling the air with warmth that was almost tangible. The sky became a kaleidoscope, iridescent bubbles floating on the breeze, while pigeons and flamingos dotted the grass like strokes of some divine hand. Reality felt paper-thin, as if the line between memory and imagination had frayed, stretching toward some unknown, infinite truth just out of reach.
The beauty overwhelmed Sofia and she struggled to regain balance. Reality rushed back in, and Sofia shouted "O.M.G., OK? O.M.G.—is that what you all want to hear? O.M.G? Alright! O.M.G." to the crowd, before whispering to herself, "But what was that vision? Did I see what I saw?"
To a collective relief, on hearing the required O.M.G., everything started up again, as if an unseen force clicked "reset,"—the train ride, the mariachis, the bubbles, the laughter, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then the worker lost his balance, shouted "WTF?" and fell off the slide and onto rubber mats, taking the paint canister down with him; and Sofia, slipped and fell off the see-saw.
When the canister reached the ground, it hit a form that dashed off in a purple blast. A burst of orange light pursued the purple to the park's perimeter, leaving a wake of smoke. A spiraling black vortex followed, as all three raced into the canyon beside the park, inducing a layer of darkness to rise and fall, like the billowing black sheet of the Grim Reaper preparing a bed for a new arrival.
Purple paint flooded the mats with a congealing viscosity as the moon continued its eclipse of the sun.
As the gang of Arctic ice ran past, following the orange, the purple and the smoke into the canyon, one of the thugs slapped Sofia's cap off her head.
"The shadows are disappearing!" shouted the park worker as he lifted himself from the sand.
"My cat!" exclaimed the old man from the bench who was advancing on Sofia, "She's going to have a conniption over this."
"My cap?" Sofia shouted, lost a surge of anxiety, forgetting the beauty she had just seen, holding her hand to her head, "and where are the shadows?"
"Like rats," the old man said, as he approached Sofia, pointing at the fleeing kids. "Where's my cat?" he added as he picked up Sofia's cap, "Here's your cap."
"The cat took the shadows?" Sofia asked.
"Gee Willikers indeed, and that cat has done gone purple," the old man shouted to Sofia, before lowering his voice, adding in a whisper, "Cuz' home-boy here don't play OMG," as he rolled his fingertips across the brim of Sofia's cap.
Screams erupted from the canyon.
"What's happening?" Sofia whispered. "Are they coming back?"
"That clown posse will turn on itself soon enough," the old man replied, "Pay them no mind. Fall into your own lightness; or you'll get wound up like a jumpy toy, looking at your own reflection in a mirror. You saw it; I saw it on your face. I'd be dazzled to find out it wasn't that persnickety purple cat, yes, that spooked those kids. Did you see her just a moment ago? Did you see what just happened to my cat?"
"Was it the cat that ran past me?" Sofia exclaimed. "I thought I saw something, just now; and what did you say about reflections? What purple cat? The mirror?" "Where's my cap?" Sofia blasted, no longer digging for answers—she was excavating like Michelangelo Mulligan's steam shovel mining marble in Carrera for The David.
"So many questions, Pepper. Just ignore those kids. Don't spend your life posing in mirrors like they do—you'll only meet the other crazies; see the life you just saw on the see-saw."
Sofia turned her attention to the Arctic ice cubes now stampeding back out of the canyon, now white with fear, before the darkening sky.
"Some foul darkness is crawling in," the old man murmured, pulling his collar tight against the chill as he pointed toward the brooding clouds. "Evil—this thunder. We'd best save our words for another time. You've got a journey ahead—clutch your heart for the ride and write your story. As for me? These binders are suffocating, and it's time for my weekly T-shot. Pass on a grim hello to your pops," he continued, his voice lowering, "and give him this—he left them behind last time we played. Make sure he knows he'll have to confront the pain one day, capisce?"
With that, he handed Sofia a worn bag of marbles.
Toward the coast, ominous black thunderclouds loomed, gripping her gaze with an insidious pull. Terror washed ashore like a tidal wave, and she frantically searched for her shadow as she sprinted toward home. The old man's voice echoed after her, heavy with urgency: "Let life's gears turn for you, little girl—let them turn. This is your time, traveler. Don't let anyone lead you astray; don't stumble when you board the train. Only the mad seek beauty in the mirror—it's not there; it's buried deep within you."
Sofia sensed a purple blur darting from tree to tree; followed by an orange glow and a spiral of smoke. She turned to look, slipped on wet grass, and rolled down a small embankment.
The duck from the fountain, having followed her, rolled over her, quacking, as they tumbled. Sofia imagined a Kraken gripping her, pulling her beneath the sea.
The duck freed itself and raced away as she heard a voice whisper from the brambles, "Don't get so caught up in yourself that you forget you saw the beauty."
Horrified by the clash of fear and thunder, Sofa rose and began to run, resolving that she would revisit this park, shortly.
The first drops of rain slammed into the ground, cratering the soil like fists pounding the earth. Sofia looked up as a suffocating wave of darkness eclipsed the late afternoon sky. The clouds twisted and churned, resembling the rotting undersides of barnacle-encrusted trawlers, looming ominously over a murky ocean of despair.
A crack of thunder shattered the silence, a growl echoing through the air. Thunder like this—one could never tell if it was heard, felt, or even smelled, but its presence was unmistakably sinister, an omen of dread.
Thin lines slashed across the sky: thousands of bats erupted from the canyon adjacent to the park, their leathery wings flapping wildly. Their massed streaming began as a torrent, branching into two sinister rivers, each splitting again like streams of blood spilling from a wound, an unholy procession drawn toward the gathering darkness.
Sofia ran home, across the lawn, uprooting the three pink lawn flamingos, into the house, slamming the door, and hid under her bed sheets.
For it was going to be a dark and stormy night, after this ominous day of wrath in which no one can make up their minds, and nobody seems to know what is going on; or so they say.