…Even Hell learned to pray
A Fiction
They said he was a devil. Not the horned, fire-breathing beast from childhood Bible stories, NO!, nothing that obvious. He was the kind of devil that wore perfume and linen, the kind that held doors open for you and told your mother “Good evening ma” with a smile that could fool even God if God wasn’t paying attention.
His name was Uche. In this part of Surulere, his name was enough to quiet a room. He had charm, the dangerous kind. The kind that made mothers say, “Be careful of that one oh,” and made daughters ignore them anyway. He didn’t just lie, he sang his lies like worship. He didn’t just cheat, he planned his betrayals like a man planning a wedding; every detail so perfect. There were stories of him laying hands on women, of bruises covered with long sleeves and excuses whispered behind trembling lips.
And yet he met me.
My name is Adaora. The church girl who wore oversized skirts and carried her Bible like it was a piece of her body. The type that said “God bless you” after everything, even insults. I lived two streets away from Uche, taught Sunday school, and still helped my mother sell groundnut every Saturday morning at the junction.
We met on a rainy Tuesday. I had slipped, and he had caught me. The irony wasn’t lost on the universe. A girl falling, and the devil catching her.
From that day, something began.
Uche didn’t understand me. I didn’t flirt, didn’t laugh at his jokes that usually made girls weak, didn’t ask him what car he drove or how much his wristwatch cost. I asked about his soul. I asked if he believed in heaven.
“Uche, are you happy?” I asked, like his heart was a house I wanted to sit inside and tidy up.
For a moment he let me in, He said things no one else had heard. He told me basically everything; the abortions, the girl he slapped and left in the hospital, the married woman he was still seeing. He wanted to say more, to confess, but shame has a way of tying tongues, so he covered it with silence. Until the night everything cracked; he had a child. A child he never acknowledged, and I found out.
I didn’t scream, I didn’t curse, I didn’t slap him. I just looked at him the way light looks at darkness. Not with hate, but with truth. My eyes watered, my hands trembled, but my voice was steady:
“Uche… is this who you want to be forever?”
He couldn’t answer.
I left.
And that was the first time in his life, the devil wept.
They called me an angel, like that explained everything. As if being an angel meant I didn’t bleed when I was cut. As if wearing skirts and quoting scriptures made me immune to heartbreak.
I was kind, not stupid. Soft, but not blind nor weak.
From the first day he caught me on that wet road, something tugged at my spirit. I’d felt it, a shadow behind the smile, a storm hiding in his eyes. But I stayed. Not because I didn’t see the red flags, but because I hoped love could be a lighthouse; and for a while, it was.
He laughed again, prayed sometimes, even fasted once with me. He said all the right things, even cried once in my arms. But love is not always enough to fix a man who doesn’t want to heal.
When I found out about the child, my heart cracked, not just from the betrayal, but from the realization that I had loved him deeply… and he had handed parts of himself to everyone else but me. I broke quietly, I folded myself into silence for a while, cried into my pillow when no one was watching, asked God questions without waiting for answers. Then one morning, I stood up, made tea, and chose myself.
I moved to a new city, taught in a small school where my peace was louder than my past. Sometimes, I think of him though. I still do!
Every now and then, when a student asked me why I was still single, I smiled and said,
“Because peace is a person too. And I won’t settle for someone who brings war into my home.”
I never hated Uche. No! I just refused to shrink for someone who didn’t know how to hold a heart with clean hands.
He still walked with ghosts, but he no longer worshipped them. Sometimes, he’d sit with old friends who didn’t know the new him and smile politely at their jokes.
Other times, he’d stare at my old text messages
He sent me a message once:
I never deserved you. But thank you for showing me who I could have been. Who I still might become.
He never really changed into an angel; Devils rarely do. But I think something about ME still lived inside him - a light he couldn’t shake. A softness that interrupted his rage.
He was born of fire and sin.
I of light and grace.
And yet in my eyes, he found a heaven that even hell couldn’t burn away.
In the end, even hell learned to pray.
I wrote this piece while listening to “The Devil Doesn’t Bargain” by Alec Benjamin
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