Heart Recaptured

My heart skipped a beat and a deep panic set in my chest. I felt like I could not breathe… I cannot breathe!

My hands began shaking and my palms sweated. I prayed Ky hadn’t noticed anything was amiss. His hands gripped me tighter, and I stilled.

“Li, I wanna know if—”

“Ky! Get your fuckin’ ass to church now! Styx is ‘bout ready to slit your throat!” someone shouted from the hallway and pounded heavily on the locked door.

“Shit!” Ky spat and jumped from the bed, pulling on his pants and shirt in quick succession. Reaching for his cut on the floor, Ky pushed back his messy hair with his fingers and stalked toward where I lay in the bed. He smiled, his teeth raking his bottom lip as he looked down at me.

Placing a knee on the mattress, Ky leaned down and crashed his lips against mine. I could taste my scent on his lips, and tears filled my eyes as I let myself enjoy his touch, his soft mouth.

Breaking away, Ky sighed and gripped my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Fuck, Li, what the hell are you doing to me?” he said and walked to the door, casting me one last look. He shook his head and muttered, “Cunt-struck, one hundred percent cunt-struck.” With that he left the room, taking my heart and all hope with him.

It had happened again… only this time I had lost my heart to the victim.

I had swayed Ky to evil. I had taken a man with no desire to give his heart and my temptress ways had trapped him. I had lured him into believing he loved me… but it was all a fiction. He did not love me.

He is under my spell.

Lord! Everything Prophet David said was right. I was a harlot, the devil in disguise. I committed adultery by lying with an outsider. My punishment was his false love.

A pained cry ripped from my throat. I tossed back the sheet from my naked body and jumped to my feet. Rushing to the bathroom to pick up my discarded dress and headdress, I caught a glance of my reflection in the mirror and could not help but stare. My face was flush, my hair messy and wanton, and my body was damp with sweat from where our bodies had joined.

Tears were now streaming down my cheeks. I hated this hell! Hated that I was born this way, of Satan. I hated these looks, hated that the man I had fallen so deeply in love with was enamored not by my heart, my soul… me! But by these seductive looks, this brazen sexuality that poured from every inch of my body.

With shaking knees, I dressed quickly, throwing up my hair in a haphazard bun, and secured my headdress in place. I paced back and forth on the bathroom floor, my heart fracturing by the second, breaking into smithereens.

Ky did not truly love me. He was under my spell. He said so himself, from his very own lips. It was an illusion. I had ruined my purity, my virtue, for a man entrapped by my allurement. I had stolen his freedom… I was the sinner, not him. I was the damned, not the men at this club.

What are you doing to me? I was gone… for your beautiful face… Like a bolt of lightning, I was struck. Ky’s words kept tormenting my mind. What are you doing to me? It was my face. He was in love with the face, but not the woman underneath. He could only ever love this face.

I cannot breathe… I cannot breathe!

Gripping my chest, I focused on inhaling air into my closed-with-panic lungs, but the room was so stifling. I was unclean. I needed to cleanse, to pray. I needed to repent, seek the Lord’s forgiveness, try and wrestle back my soul from the devil’s clutches.

Creeping to the closed door, I pressed my ear against the wood, trying to hear any sound. There was nothing. Carefully turning the doorknob, I opened the door just a fraction to check the hallway was clear. Voices drifted through vents from the lounge, but drawing my courage together, I entered the hallway, closing the door behind me, and tiptoed to the exit. I had to go to the river. I did not know what else to do.

Reaching the exit door, I pushed on the handle and instantly felt better as the night air kissed my hot skin.

Checking around me, I could see no one. Clattering and drilling noises came from the direction of the front gate, but I ran across the yard unseen and quickly reached the cover of the trees.

With every step I took, scripture poured from my lips, reciting my shame. Shame of my fornication, my adultery… my harlotry.

“Proverbs 5:3-20. ‘For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, And smoother than oil is her speech; But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, Her steps take hold of Sheol.’”

Branches hit my face, cutting at the skin. The hard, dry soil ripped at the soles of my feet, but I kept running to the river. The cleansing water would rid me of dirt and sin. The cleansing waters would take away the unclean.