Like A Prayer

In the shadowy layers of the mind, there Hell resides. One circle at a time, we confess our sin and climb. Higher circles; stronger purge: until we unfetter ourselves from this Earth. In the beginning, sin was born. Of sin, was born choice, and we all have the power to choose.

She peered into the mirror with bloodshot eyes. Night spent crying had left her empty inside. She had forsaken her husband and her child for a man who had already found someone younger more beautiful. Her tired eyes mocked her and the silver hair at her temples made her remember a love she would have done better to remain true to.

She ran for miles trying to get rid of this wild burning building inside. After hours she collapsed in an abandoned field far from home. She wept until she had no breath left and was swept away in dark dream to a place she had hoped she would never see.

She knew this place. People ran around engaged in chaotic screaming. Flies and wasps were chasing them in endless undulating circles. She walked amidst the chaos until she came to a darker place where people were staring at walls, vapid expressions on their faces. At least she had made a choice. In Limbo, they linger unaware of their choice. In Limbo, they linger afraid of their voice.

Quickly she passed through this space, and was engaged by a beast who wrapped his tail around her to decide where in Hell she would reside. She lowered her eyes afraid of what he might see. She wore her hunger like a scarlet letter upon her chest. She was bereft and beset by a beast she had never even seen.

In the second circle of hell she was daunted by the sights that met her tear stained eyes. The first figure she recognized as King David. He was wailing on a small precipice of rock. The only vision in his view was Bathsheba bathing on that fated roof. She had turned to stone. Her eyes cast in dead stare into his very soul. He could not look away. Would this moment never end?

Next she was distracted by the sound piercing the center of her ears. Madonna on a stage clutching a microphone, but all that was heard was a dial tone. Millions of fans all faced the other way offering no interest in anything she had to say.

She wandered away from the sound drawn to the flashing of colorful lights. Here she finds Brittney Spears, scantily clad, dancing and touching herself. There are many others dancing on the floor around her but none will make eye contact with her. She is infuriated by this lack of connection and moves toward specific dancers. Like a magnetic force they are repulsed by her forward motion. Every time she gets close to any of them they are automatically pulsated away. She dances herself into a panic, dying to be attractive; longing to be seen.

The adulteress’ mind raced in poetic phrasing: “The power of the lust is in the finishing touch. There is no fulfillment in this way we’ve paved. You long to touch but cannot feel. Even the beast between your knees does not seem real. Here she would hunger, waiting for the spark to return. The yearning would never again be satisfied.” Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by a desire to see herself in a mirror. What had she become? She knew something was wrong.

She found herself face to face with her husband and her nine year old daughter, Anna. She was so relieved at their presence until she saw the response in their eyes. There was horror, fear, and something that resembled pity. She reached out for them but they backed away. Anna began screaming begging her mother not to touch her. The space was limited and resembled the family home. But they desired her to be nowhere close.

In the corner of what appeared to be the family den, there was her grandmother’s old vanity mirror. She was now terrified but had to know what had become of her once model like looks. She approached slowly, having no idea what to expect. She would never have been armed for the hideous beast that met her gaze. She retracted with a scream, and backed slowly away. “Please, someone, wake me from this nightmare! Return me to my family and I will never again satisfy the hunger of my lust.”

She retracted to a corner opposite the mirror. Across the room near a window bathed in a hazy storm filled light, sat her daughter shaking in tremors and her husband doing all he could to console her. What had she done? If she could only find herself waking from a terrifying dream in that old abandoned field, the changes she would make.

She fell into a deep level of sleeping and began dreaming of a particularly perfect afternoon where the three of them had taken the boat far out on the Bay and had eaten a spectacular picnic lunch complete with ice cream and strawberries. She could almost taste the bouquet of flavors that met her taste-buds that ancient afternoon.

She awoke with a start to find her precious Anna banging her head against the floor wailing louder than any other sound. Her husband could do nothing to make it stop and was glaring at his wife in a hatred that could almost be touched. This was unbearable. This was her eternal nightmare. If only she could go back. If only she could do it any other way. The price must be paid. It was too late to be saved.