Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: STEAM (12/03/15)
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TITLE: Atlanta In The Mist | Previous Challenge Entry
By Brenda Rice
12/10/15 -
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Atlanta’s homeless suffer no more than homeless in other places. Its steamy nights and wet cold winters aren’t comfortable, but they are manageable. So we find our vixen, twenty year old Ceanna wandering through inner city canyons of cold steel and glass. She’s alone. She came to Atlanta with the love of her life, but she found out the hard way that love and sex are not the same thing.
A virgin raised in a Christian family, Ceanna was loved and nurtured. Her passion for bad boys led her far away from everything she had been taught. She gave her body away, and unfortunately, her heart went too.
She came to the city in early spring and was abandoned in the sultry nights of summer. Jay came back less and less. He stopped paying the motel bill. Ceanna had no money and nowhere to stay. Again she resorted to sex to pay for a night in a motel once or twice a week.
Thick mist from the hot water filled the room. Ceanna stood motionless under the pulsating stream. She felt dirty all the time. Sin is more difficult to wash away that dirt. Scrubbing at her tender skin, she felt remorseful. What had she become? Her tears mingled with the water.
There are a few things about sin never learned in the beginning. It will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay. Wisdom doesn’t have to come as a consequence. We can just ask God for it.
Ceanna didn’t ask. Now she wanders the allies and hobo camps, the drug infested dark hideaways where humans rot in their own depravity.
The night grew cool as Ceanna made her way to a dead end ally where she knew two girls often slept. Maybe they were there and maybe, they had food. Darkness engulfed her as she walked down the narrow passageway.
At the end of the ally were several large boxes. “Sheila are you here?” Ceanna called out cautiously.
“Who wants to know?” came the reply. It wasn’t Sheila.
Ceanna bolted back up the ally, but it was too late. “Stop! Leave me alone!” Her screams went unheard.
“Com’on, don’t make this harder on yourself.”
The grimy man held her against the wall tearing at her clothes. Knowing she should give up, she fought him and he responded with his fist to her face, and ribs. Cracking sounds told her bones were breaking. Then everything went black.
Ceanna was found the following morning and taken to an inner city mission for the homeless. Marge a staff member took Ceanna under her care. A doctor came and wrapped her broken ribs. He treated her cuts and bruises, but he couldn’t reach the hurt inside of her. The wounds were too deep and her walls too thick to let anyone in.
Marge prayed for the girl as she had prayed for all the others before her. “Lord you healed and restored me. I know You can heal her.” After days of pampering her, Marge heard the voice of Lord. “You’ve done all you can for her. She’s not at the end yet. Release her.”
“Lord don’t ask me to do that. She’s someone’s daughter. She just needs more time.”
“There are others who are ready for what you have to give. Use your time wisely my child.”
Marge discovered Ceanna missing at a mid-night check-in. “She’s all yours now, Father.”
It was a cold night. Huddled near a sidewalk grate for warmth, Ceanna cried herself to sleep. The next morning she rode an elevator to the top floor of a skyscraper and made her way onto the roof. A thick mist rose skyward softening the hard lines of the city scape.
Ceanna walked to the edge of the roof and stepped up on the ledge. Hot tears burned her eyes. Hopelessness gripped her mind. “Where are you God?”
“I’m here Ceanna. I never left you. Your life is precious to me.”
The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy and singing. Paraphrase of Zephaniah 3:17.
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The line about sin, "It will take you further than you want to go ... was so true.
Truly an excellent piece.
God bless~