I Became a Prostitute for the First Time in My Life—But That Same Night, I Walked Into a Hotel Room and Found a Deadly Snake Waiting for Me Instead of the Man Who Paid Me

Chapter 7

“My hands are not clean,” I began.

And then the words came — the whole terrible truth, from the beginning. Beatrice. The party. The man in the black shirt. The hotel room. The green snake on the bed. The money. The life I had lived. The nest in my room. Every dark thing I had hidden from him since the day we met.

Jude listened without moving. His face was unreadable, a mask of stone.

When I finished, the silence stretched between us like a wound.

“Helen,” he said at last, his voice so low I barely heard him, “are you telling me… that you were a prostitute? That you slept with a snake man?”

I lowered my head. “Yes.”

He stared at me for a long moment, and I braced myself for the rejection, the disgust, the end of everything. But instead, he reached out and took my hand.

“I don’t understand any of this,” he said slowly. “But whatever happened before me — that is not the woman I married. That is not the woman carrying my child. And whatever is hunting you now, we are going to face it together.”

I broke down in his arms. I wept until my chest ached, and he held me the whole time, and when I finally looked up, I knew that whatever happened next, I was not alone.

—

I could not keep it inside anymore. So we traveled to the village to see my mother.

When I told her the truth — the whole truth, from the hotel room to the nest in our new house — she almost fainted. She fell against the wall, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Then she began to cry — not softly, but loudly, beating her chest with her fist.

“So you were doing prostitution in the university?” she wailed. “While I thought you were studying! Helen, you have finished me! You have brought shame to our family!”

She rolled on the floor in her grief, and I knelt beside her, crying, unable to find words that could possibly make it better. There were none. There are never any.

But my mother was not a woman who stayed broken for long. She was a prayer warrior, a woman of fierce faith and fierce action. And she was not going to lose this second grandchild.

The next morning, she announced that she had found someone who could help.

“An old woman,” she said, her voice determined. “Far away, deep in the forest. People come from everywhere to see her. She knows things — things that cannot be known by human eyes.”

We drove for hours. Then we walked for more hours, past the end of the road, into a thick forest where even the birds did not fly. The trees closed over our heads, and the air grew cold and still, and I held Jude’s hand and tried to keep my fear from showing.

The path was barely a path — a thread of beaten earth snaking between giant trunks, roots curling across it like fingers. My mother walked ahead without hesitation, her wrapper gathered in one hand, her lips moving in silent prayer. Jude walked behind me, and every time I stumbled, his hand was there at my elbow, steady and warm.

I was six months pregnant. My belly sat heavy and round beneath my dress, and with every step I imagined I could feel the little life inside me kicking — or perhaps it was only my own heart, hammering against my ribs. I had not told my mother how afraid I was. I had not told anyone. But the fear was there, a cold companion walking beside me through the dark.

At last, the trees opened, and we came to a small hut.

The woman who came out was very old. Her hair was white as cotton. Her eyes were red — not from sickness, but something deeper, something ancient. She looked at me for a long, long time without saying a word. She looked at my belly. She looked at my face. She looked past my face, into something I could not see.

Then she shook her head.

My mother’s hand flew to her mouth.

“The man you slept with that first night,” the old woman said, her voice like dry leaves, “is not a human being. He is a king in the spirit world. He has been using your womb to renew his ritual sacrifice. Every time you become pregnant, the snake comes to take its food. This is why the first child died. And this second child — unless something is done — will go the same way.”

My mother screamed. “Please! Please help my daughter! She is my only child! Do not let her womb become a feeding bottle for spirits!”

The old woman turned and went into her hut. When she came back, she was holding a small bottle filled with a dark liquid.

“Listen carefully,” she said, pressing the bottle into my hands. “You must find that man. You must find him and sprinkle this liquid at the front of his house. Only then can the curse be neutralized. If you do not find him, you will never carry a living child in your arms.”

I stared at the bottle. My hands were shaking.

“Find him?” I repeated, my voice cracking. “It has been years! I don’t even know his name! How am I supposed to find a man I met once, years ago, in a hotel I can barely remember?”

The old woman looked at me with those red eyes, and I felt the weight of her words settle onto my shoulders like stones.

“Find him,” she said. “That is your only way.”