THE DEVIL I MET IN CHURCH

After about five years of life outside the church, I decided to make it to church and give my life to Christ again. Though I felt heavy and guilty owing to the messy life I’d led over the past five years, I had this strong conviction that God was ready to accept me no matter how filthy I appeared. My parents stood still in awe when I told them I would join them to church. “What happened? What has changed?” my mum spewed out. I however tactically ignored the question since I was not ready to discuss my reason for going to church with anybody and the fact was that I had no reason, I just felt like going to church and that was all. I felt within me that the reason was not strong enough to tell my parents and feared provoking them to laugh at me. After searching through my wardrobe, I realized that I didn’t have a “church dress”, all my dresses were jeans, ‘lacost’ and khaki knickers. There were no African print dress, no suit, and no ‘material/cloth-sown-trousers’. These were the dresses psychologically accepted in our churches and anyone in jeans, ‘lacost’, etc was seen as an ungodly person and thus wasn’t embraced in the church. Bent on going to church anyway, I swooped into a black pair of jeans trousers and matched it with a red and white striped ‘lacost’. The white symbolized my readiness to lead a pure life thereafter and the red represented the stained life I had led over the past years.

After about thirty minutes, we got to church and we were ushered in by Mr. Eshun who stood at the entrance and served as an usher in the church. He was my primary school teacher and he was very happy on seeing me at church again. With smiles on his broad face, he showed me where to sit. Though I wasn’t ready to socialize and interact with anybody, I still received a few ‘how are yous’ from some of the old men and women who knew me about fourteen years ago when I was one of the promising youngsters in the church. The expression on their faces betrayed their happiness in seeing me in church again. Some of them obviously thought I had come to join them for good but I knew I will definitely go back to my “worldly” life.

Church was good and I was fully engrossed in every single activity from the praises, prayer, and worship sessions until I felt a tap on my shoulder from behind. I turned back only to see Fosuwaa staring at me. Wearing a broad smile, she called my name, Joe. She was the only one apart from my parents who knew that aside Daniel which was known by all, I was also called Joe. The presence of Fosuwaa brought back a lot of memories that were too heavy for me to bear so I stood up quietly and without uttering a word, gave her a quick gaze and shifted out of the church. Where was I going? Nowhere. Though I had led an iniquitous life, womanising was not part of the numerous notorious things I did. Mine was gulping down any alcoholic drink that came my way and doing anything I could to get money including sacrificing the only cousin I had for money. The okomfo wouldn’t take anything apart from the blood of my only cousin before he could honour the request I placed before him. Chasing women was really out of the question. Fosuwaa however was the only girl I’ve had sex with all my life and though I enjoyed every moment I spent with her when she was my girlfriend, I hated that moment she devirginated me. Now a level 200 student in the university, she had grown more beautiful and attractively irresistible.

Outside the church room, Fosuwaa joined me and we conversed till close of church. She told me about life in the university, her inability to fall in love with any other guy and the death of her mother. She appeared so collected and innocent that I felt it would be a blow below the belt, since I have grown into the “devil” himself, to let her know I still have a soft spot for her.

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We went home after the church service and for the rest of the day, naked, we were locked body in body. After about three hours of sexual enjoyment, and she was still begging for a last sexual round, I remembered what the okomfo told me, “you will go gaga if you sleep with a fair lady with beads around her waist and that will happen in not more than thirty minutes after such act”. “Jesus, am dead”, I screamed. Laughing, obviously not knowing the reason behind my scream, Fosuwaa retorted, “Jesus in the middle of fornication?” Imagining what the okomfo told me as the repercussions for such action, tears welled up in my eyes. I knew in not more than thirty minutes time, I would remove my dress and step into the streets naked.

“God, why would you let me meet the devil in your presence?” I thought. I then sat on the edge of the bed waiting to embrace my embarrassing end. Twenty five minutes had already gone when Fosuwaa stood to dress up. After dressing up, and my eyes still fixated on the beads around her waist, I felt a strong force hit my occiput and all I could do was scream aahh and……

Writer: Daniel Arkoh Fenyi (FADA)

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