Up in Lights

Holiday Shapero

Description

The child reaches for her hand. “Look. That light…coming from the cave. What is it?”
“Fire. Long ago, the gods stole it from us, but Prometheus risked his life and took it back. We must never let them take it from us again. Do you understand?”
He squeezes her hand. “Yes. With fire, we are free.”

Sujets

• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669863410
• Langue: English

Extrait

BOOKS BY HOLIDAY SHAPERO
Scarlet Waters
Tears of Amber
Lluvia Suave
The Fate of Atlantis
UP IN LIGHTS
 
The Iconoclastic Memoirs of Holiday Shapero Book Four
 
 
 
 
 
 
Holiday Shapero
 
Copyright © 2023 by Holiday Shapero.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023901095
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6343-4

Softcover
978-1-6698-6342-7

eBook
978-1-6698-6341-0
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 03/14/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
787026
 
 
 
 
To Zahid, who met me in that delicate borderland, where, for precious moments, we embraced all we had suffered and ran hand in hand in search of our primitive roots . . .
CONTENTS
Introduction
On Show
The Sugarcoated Devil
Tear-Stained Pebbles
In the Sea
A Thousand Yom Kippurs
Chain-Smoking with Spiders and Mice
A Karmic Tryst
The Chant of Frankencense and Myrhh
A Five-Foot Gangster
A Gypsy on the Road
The Garden of Betrayal
That Milk Carton
The Taste of Poison
The End of the Mayan Calendar
Milarepa’s Cousin
The Promised Land
The Exodus
All My Dirty Secrets
A Desert Dream
Guided by Fate
Epilogue
Post Script to Epilogue
INTRODUCTION
When I was a little girl, I used to lie in bed with Mama Bella and have her tell me stories of our life in New York City. As we had left my father there, I especially wanted stories about him. But no matter what theme I chose, before we began, I would have her write my name in the air with her cigarette. I closed the curtains and shut the door so it was nice and dark in there, and then I gave her my instructions. They never varied; I always wanted my name with lots of light around it. “Put me up in lights like New York City, Mama Bella.” Then I would watch as the bright ember of her cigarette wound its way gracefully through the air.
 
ON SHOW
I have lagged behind because this latter part of my life was shadowed by a type of trauma, the worst I have ever endured. If you have read my first three books, Scarlet Waters , Tears of Amber , and Lluvia Suave , you are probably stunned. I can hear you asking, “How could it be worse than that?”
I suppose there is more than one answer to that question. The suffering I endured from 2000 to 2012 is more recent. When I wrote my other books, much time had passed between the events and the telling of the tales. With this one, the sting is more vivid, partly because of its nearness, but also because I am more conscious in this phase of my life. I did not repress as much, nor did I do drugs to take the edge off. But also, the nature of what I faced was nearly beyond my capacity. Nothing on Earth is more challenging than dealing with evil beings on the invisible realm, precisely because you can not see them! Psychic battles are far more difficult than physical ones, especially when your adversaries are very powerful, as mine are.
Granted, they were behind the scenes all my life, working through humans at times, to kill me. But it was not until the twenty-first century when they stepped out from behind the veil and I was able to see from whom the attacks were coming.
You might say, since they had been my secret enemies all along, it should have been a relief to see them unmasked, and I agree it is helpful to know who you are facing. Generally speaking, open enemies are less daunting because there is less shock involved. But what about when your adversaries turn out to be those you love ? That is far more complex to integrate and not easy to write about either.
Perhaps that is why it has taken me sixty years to clear the wounds and the conditioning of what happened to me in the first seven years of my life. That also was a circumstance where my attacker, my father, was someone I cared about.
So these events that happened in recent times, 2000–2012, and the events that took place in the first cycle of my life mirror each other. Of course, they do. All unresolved emotional issues repeat themselves. And those that begin when we are a baby are undoubtedly patterns our soul is trying to work out.
Yes, it has taken me some time, but I am victorious . Although it has been painful, I have recently cleared the trauma around my father at the very deepest level. Also, I am no longer bound to relationships with beings on the invisible realm. I have enough freedom now to write this final book.
For that, I am eternally grateful, and as always, as I tell you the stories, another type of closure happens for me. We, humans, are storytellers by nature. We have been sitting around fires, telling stories, since we were living in clans.
So let me begin again. I left you hanging at the end of Lluvia Suave at the darkest of times. I had just crashed my Carmen Ghia and was about to leave Kane, ending a very long cycle of being with satanic men. Certainly, that was helpful, and it was the beginning of a turning point, but I still could not see why things were happening as they were. Perhaps it was fitting then for me to move back toward my roots , as going back to the origin often reveals things we might have missed. Still, logical as that may be, beginnings are not always rosy. Yet that grand loop was my road. I boarded a Greyhound Bus and headed for Memphis, Tennessee, straight into the arms of my infamous father, Wesley, Daddy, my all-time star and idol.
THE SUGARCOATED DEVIL
The time I spent in Memphis with my daddy was coated with sugar on the outside, but every time I bit in, it tasted bitter. I used to be tantalized by bitter things though. Why else would I have been hanging out with satanic men for years?
So I was lured in by my father in the same way I had fallen for all those men. Or more likely, I was with them because my life had begun with him , and I was repeating my patterns that had begun at birth. By now, you have probably forgotten the stories of my childhood in Scarlet Waters , book 1. Even I used to forget what happened to me back then, but I made myself remember because those events hold the keys that unlock the secrets of my life. Driven by the demonic lust of heroin, my father took me sexually when I was a little girl, and I was forever imprinted to draw in sex and drugs and demons.
A lot of that time in Memphis is a bit of a blur in my mind. I was stripping in several clubs at night and prowling the bars by day. I only went in dark bars though; it was hard for me to confront the sunshine, mostly because I was more lost than ever. My precious letters from my brother still smelled like gasoline from the Carmen Ghia wreck, and I had no idea what to do with my life. But nevertheless, I was able to score meth and keep myself satiated.
There are two events in Memphis that stand crystal clear in my memory. Although one happened at the beginning of my time at my father’s house and the other at the end, they are linked.
Of course, they are. Every action has consequences. In India, they call that karma, and I was linked in a karmic embrace with my father. I was irresistibly drawn to Daddy. I wanted all his attention.
I also liked the woman my father was married to. In many ways, Sammie was more of a friend to me than Wesley was, but it was him whom I craved. And as fate would have it, on my second day there, Sammie went out shopping, leaving me alone with Wesley.
I remember exactly what I was wearing and where I stood when it happened. I had on a hot-pink sleeveless one-piece leotard. It was skin-tight, and I wore black leather boots folded over just above my knees. I was leaning into the door frame, smiling.
We started out like that, me smiling at him ever so seductively as he kneeled to pull a bottle of French red wine from the case, but of course, we found our way to my room. And although I am sickened by this now, I bit in to the bittersweetness of my father. It was hard to swallow, but the red wine helped. The French make very seductive wines.
As the weeks went spinning by, my father was gone a lot. He was avoiding me, probably because he feared Sammie would catch us and throw him out. She was very wealthy, and he probably did not want to risk his privileged condition for a couple of flings with me. I still wanted him though. As I had seen my father rarely in my life, Wesley was like a mythical character to me. I knew him mostly through my mother’s stories, but I had embellished them, so he was a hero more often than a villain.
The second event in Memphis indelibly etched in my memory is the morning Sammie asked to speak to me. I do not know if she was aware of what happened between me and Wesley. If she did, she hid it well. She was very kind to me. I felt no resentment or anger; rather, she spoke in a quiet compassiona