Casting Down Imaginations

Casting Down
Imaginations

A Novel

by LASHANDA
MICHELLE

L.M.Ink

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013, 2011, 2009 by LaShanda Michelle

All rights reserved.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet
or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and
punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do
not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but
mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

Casting down imaginations,

and every high thing that exalteth itself against the
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of
Christ…”

~2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (KJV)

one

Anaya

I hurried
through the crowded parking lot of First Bethany Christian Church as fast as I
could and climbed into the passenger side of Deacon Patterson’s truck. Once
inside, I slid the seat back as far as it could go, lying flat on my back and
out of sight to anyone who may have looked in my direction.

“I hate
this place,” I muttered under my breath, and smoothed my ruffled dress over my
knees. I’d spent my entire life here, and now that I was moving away to
college, the only part of this church I wanted to see was it getting smaller
and smaller in the rear view mirror as Deacon and I drove away— if I gave it
that much attention.

I reached
down, careful not to let my head rise above the door window, and retrieved my
purse. Earlier, Pastor Fields had given all of the college bound students
scholarships to see us on our journey to higher education. I didn’t want to be
rude at the time, so I politely placed the envelope in my purse without opening
it. Now that I was alone, I couldn’t wait to see how much it was for. I hoped
they made it out to me instead of the school. That way I could deposit it into
my checking account and do what I really wanted with it: Shopping.

I tore
open the letter size envelope addressed to me and pulled out the check. A big
smile came across my face as I read the first line: Pay to The Order of:
Anaya
Patterson
. YES! …

A twinge
of guilt came over me. Maybe I shouldn’t play the church like that. The money
was supposed to go toward my education… Oh well, what they didn’t know couldn’t
hurt them. Besides, after all the things they put me through, they were lucky I
didn’t go up to them and demand more. I missed out on a lot of important things
in my life because of them. I wasn’t allowed to date, go to any dances, or be a
cheerleader. They had Deacon Patterson so brainwashed, he thought the best way
to raise me was to make me go to church twenty four hours a day, seven days a
week! He kept me locked in the house all of the time. Thank God I had sense
enough to take matters into my own hands; otherwise I would be a social misfit
like some girls from the church. I knew Deacon meant well, but he sheltered me
too much. That revelation became painfully obvious my freshman year when I met
David.

David and
I met at a carnival that fall. As usual, I was with a group of people from the
church, but somehow I had managed to sneak away. I was in line for the roller
coaster when I spotted a group of guys standing against the concession stand
wall. One of them walked over and struck up a conversation with me. We talked
for a while and I realized that he was David Jones, the most popular guy in
town who’d graduated the year before. I was so excited that he wanted to talk
to me! I thought I surely had to be all that to get the attention of a guy like
him. He was in college, and I was only fifteen!

We
started things off rather slow at first. I didn’t know a lot about guys at the
time because Deacon Patterson would never let one near me. We went from late
night phone calls to me stuffing pillows under my sheets and sneaking out of my
bedroom window because he “just had to see me.” I was infatuated with him and
would have done anything for him. Well, almost anything.

Because
David was a grown man and I was still only in high school, he was used to
things that I wasn’t. One of those things was sex. From day one he tried to get
it from me, but I let him know I wasn’t ready to take our relationship that
far. Even though I’d been taught to only have sex after I got married, I told
David I had to make sure that I was in love with the person I gave my virginity
to. He tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t budge until I knew for sure
that I was in love with him. When that finally happened, he kept pressuring me
until I finally gave in and let him touch me. He enjoyed the experience way
more than I did, but I was happy to please him.

Our
relationship continued throughout my sophomore year as well, but by the
beginning of my junior year, David wanted the real thing. Petting and kissing
didn’t satisfy him anymore. He began to tell me all the classic excuses of why
I should give it up, saying he was a real man with real needs and he was used
to getting what he wanted before he was with me. One day he had the audacity to
tell me that if I wanted to stay with him I had to give him what he wanted. I
was outraged when he made that comment and broke up with him. My heart was
broken, and I was depressed. We were separated for about six months before he
started calling again, apologizing. He said I was the only girl that he ever
loved and that he couldn’t be without me. I forgave him and we got back
together.

That same
week I started hearing rumors that David was cheating on me with a girl that I
went to school with. I asked him about it, but he said it wasn’t true. I kept
hearing the rumors though, so I finally asked the girl about it. That turned
into a fight in the cafeteria and I got expelled from school for three days.
Deacon grounded me for two weeks with no phone, no radio, and no TV. David and
I continued our relationship through that episode, but it wasn’t the last. In
fact, it was the first of many. All in all, I had four fist fights over David,
and a lot of other altercations as well. But I learned from my past mistake and
had the girls that wanted to fight meet me at the park down the street from the
school. Jayla, one of David’s college friends, would meet me there and together
we would beat down any girl who tried to come between me and David’s
relationship.

Jayla was
cool. She and I met at a house party that I snuck out to with David. The two of
them met in class. She liked me and we became friends right away. She said I
was a sweet girl, but she mostly liked me because David was so in love with me.
We were like sisters. She taught me a lot of things that I didn’t know, like
how to have sex when I finally decided to do it, how to get a man in the mood,
how to fight, how to dress, and how to steal. She even got me a fake ID so that
I could get into the clubs with her and David and the rest of their friends.
Some would say that she was a bad influence, but at the time I didn’t care. I
was having too much fun spending time with my man and being away from Deacon
Patterson.

David
didn’t let up on the sex issue though. He kept bugging me about it until I
finally agreed to do it with him. One weekend Deacon Patterson went out of town
with the church and left me at home alone. David came over about ten o’clock
that night and the two of us got into a heavy kissing and touching session. We
both ended up fully undressed under the sheets of my bed. But, right when he
was about to finally get what he wanted, I got scared and jumped up. David
became so angry. I could tell that he wanted to hit me. He went off on me and
told me I was acting like a baby and that I shouldn’t have told him I would if
I really didn’t want to. He left angrily, and I cried myself to sleep. By the
next day he’d calmed himself down and we tried again, but this time it was even
worse. I just couldn’t get the thoughts of how wrong it was out of my head. I
tried hard to ignore them, but at the last minute I jumped up again. He held me
down and pinned himself on top of me. I thought he was going to rape me, but
instead he shook me really hard and left again.

After
that we just decided to wait until I was totally ready and committed to the
idea before we did anything else. I thought it was a good idea, and I loved him
even more for his willingness to stand beside me and put my wants above his. I
thought he really loved me. It was the height of our four year relationship. He
even told me that he’d been thinking about moving to Daytown after he graduated
so that we could be together. I was very excited about all of it, until I got a
phone call from Jayla two weeks ago.

She
called me late in the evening and told me that she had some very important
information to tell me. David had gotten a girl pregnant and didn’t even tell
me about it. He’d been cheating on me the whole time since we had gotten back
together. I was outraged and couldn’t believe it. I asked her why she didn’t
say anything if she knew about it the whole time. She said that she didn’t want
to see me hurt, but she couldn’t let me leave for college thinking that David
was going to stay faithful to me. I got the strange feeling that maybe she and
David had messed around, but I didn’t want to accuse her of anything that I
didn’t know. I haven’t talked to her since and don’t plan to ever again. If she
was really my friend, she would have let me know from the beginning that David
was cheating on me, so I had to let her go.

After I
got off the phone with her, I called David and cussed him out. He kept asking
me how I found out, but I wouldn’t tell him. The more I questioned him, the
more information came out, some of which Jayla hadn’t told me. He confessed to
actually cheating on me the entire time of our relationship with many different
women, some of them I knew, some of them I didn’t. The entire four year
relationship had been a joke. All of the drama was for nothing. I didn’t have a
man. I didn’t have anything.

After I
cursed and screamed at him, I wanted to know why he did it to me. Why didn’t he
just tell me that he wanted to be with other women? Why did he have to make a
fool out of me for four years? He gave me some tired lines about how he really
did love me, but he was a man and men couldn’t live without sex. If we had been
face to face I would have smacked him. I told him that I never wanted to see
him again, and if he accidentally laid eyes on me as we were passing through to
look the other way and pretend he never saw me. As far as I was concerned, he
could erase me out of his memory because he was already out of mine. That night
I burned every love letter, picture, diary entry, and anything else that
reminded me of him.

Even
though David played me like a fool, he had a point. Men needed sex. They even
talked about it in church when they told the married women not to withhold it
from their spouses. Guys just weren’t waiting for it anymore. They wanted it
when they wanted it, and they wanted it now. No woman was going to be able to
keep a man without giving it up. And no one wanted a virgin. That was cute in
middle school, but nowadays, a man wanted a woman that knew what she was doing.
That’s why as soon as I got on campus, I was going to get a fine college man
and get as much experience that I could. The next time that I fell in love, I
was going to be able to keep him. If I hadn’t been so stuck on the stupid stuff
they taught in church, I would still be with David now and would not have gone
through the heartache and pain of losing someone I really loved.

Coming
back to reality, I peeked over the window and peered through the tinted glass
in search of Deacon Patterson. He was nowhere in sight. What was taking him so
long? I was ready to go. Knowing him, somebody probably told him they needed
prayer and he was in a corner speaking in tongues and putting his hands on
their forehead. The whole scene was tired and played out and I couldn’t wait to
get away from it all.

It wasn’t
that I didn’t believe in God or anything like that. I actually did. I just
didn’t believe that it took everything that church folks did to be pleasing to
God. All that jumping and shouting and staying in church all day and hollering
and screaming was ridiculous. Then everybody stayed so long afterwards, hugging
and kissing, pretending they loved you and cared for you, but in reality they
knew they didn’t. It was so stupid. I could praise God from the house by
watching one of the many preachers on TV, and God could hear my prayers wherever
I was at. I didn’t need to go to Saturday morning prayer or anything like that.
And I could live my life anyway that I chose, as long as I repented for all the
things that I did wrong. God understood my issues, so I didn’t need some man
hollering at me week after week, telling me to get my life together before I
went to hell.

I
squinted and scanned over the many people leaving the church until I finally
saw Deacon standing in the doorway. He was talking to Karen. Ugh!

I flopped
my head down on the headrest in disgust. I couldn’t stand that girl. As usual,
she was doing something that bothered me.

Karen and
I grew up together, right here in this church. When we were little we always
had to play together every Saturday when the deacons met. We were the best of
friends. We snuck out to wild college parties all the time and always got crazy
drunk. Karen couldn’t hold her liquor though. There were plenty of times I had
to fight dudes off of her to keep her from getting raped. We smoked weed
together and everything. We even got tattoos together one night. Deacon
Patterson still didn’t know about that one. We were always together, until
about two years ago when she started being fake and judgmental.

Karen
tried to act perfect now, pretending to be as holy as Jesus’ mama, but I knew
the real deal. She lost her virginity when she was in the eighth grade to a boy
that everybody knew wasn’t any good. She had an older man right along with me
when we were in the ninth grade, with whom she also had sex with, and when we
were in the tenth grade she got pregnant by another guy. Yeah, he was her
boyfriend, but still. That’s three different guys by the time she turned
sixteen. Ho-ish. Now she was trying to tell everybody not to date and to wait
on God to bless them with their husbands. Puh-leeze. These people at this
church could believe that goody-goody attitude if they wanted to, but I wasn’t
falling for it. She claimed that she lost the baby due to a miscarriage, but
she didn’t fool me. I know she got an abortion. She was just scared to admit it
because she didn’t want all these church people to look down on her and her
family. Well, forget them and forget her!