"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
Warm and lush, her voice trickled through the thin partition of the confession booth, and jolted me into consciousness. I had been mulling over the dream that had attacked me that morning, a dream surely sent by the devil to torment me. I had dreamt of a sea of rolling flesh, quivering buttocks and strident nipples, which left me exhausted and ashamed. I was in no mood for giving confessions but Tuesday mornings were my responsibilities at the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Chastity, and so I had risen, washed the vile sweat of my nocturnal torment from me, dressed, and gone to church.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
It was an unfamiliar voice, golden as sunlight through a cathedral window, rounded, mature. Driving the memory of my hellish night from my mind, I composed myself in the cramped darkness, and intoned, "When was your last confession, my child?"
"Yesterday, Father."
Only something big could bring someone back so soon. Murder? I idly wondered. Robbery? Or just a night-long orgy of gossipping?
"Of what nature were yours sins?"
"Father..." The honeyed voice hesitated, and for a moment it sounded like the voice of a child. "Father, I have committed a sin of the flesh."
At this, I looked up. In the dim light of the confession booth, hampered by the thick wooden lattice between us, I could only see the outline of her head, with long dark hair, bent in penitence. I tried to comfort her.
"All that is flesh, sins," I said.
She raised her head, and in that moment, I felt as if my own words had been turned against me. This was no heavy Irish housewife complaining about beating her sons, or a mousey Asian secretary driven to church by her parents! The woman separated from me by the lattice was ageless, and impossibly beautiful. In the narrow light from behind the thick curtains, I glimpsed the dark slash of her eyebrows, and the darkness of her fluttering eyelashes beneath. Lips red and swollen, glistening. And beneath that ... my eyes travelled downwards, I could not stop them ... beneath that, the white shining expanse of her bosom hemmed in by her low-cut black dress, scored down the center by cleavage deep as promise. All at once, I wanted to bury my aching head in that broad white pillow that seemed to shine in the dimness, wanted to suck my own forgiveness from nipples that must be dark against such white skin. She shone as the Virgin Mary shines, mature and fertile, yet soft, quiet, virginal.
How long had I been staring in silence? Quickly, I stammered out, "Tell me your sins, my child."
"Last night," and once again she hesitated. God, I thought, this woman cannot be older than twenty five, and she is so afraid! "Last night, my dad came into my room. He came into my room and he ... he touched me."
So that's it, I thought, incest. I felt a powerful surge of rage, against any man who would dare disrespect God enough to covet his own daughter! And then to make her feel guilty about it! I looked down, and felt the rage transform itself into a surge of different sort, one that longed to pour itself down the dark crack of her cleavage.
"How long has he been doing this?"
"For the last year...maybe longer. At first, he came in when he was drunk and he would just stand there. And then he would start rubbing himself between his legs, and after a while, he would go away."
"And then?" I asked, and knew straight away that I should not have asked. I should be counselling this girl, telling her that none of this was her fault, suggesting she speak to someone who could help her. But a desire to know flooded me, and I wanted to hear her voice relate every detail of her father standing in her bedroom, masturbating over his daughter's sleeping body.
"Then he would unzip his fly and..." her voice trailed away.
I needed to comfort her, before she would speak to me. "How old are you, my child?"
"Twenty."
"Why aren't you in college?"
"He ... he won't let me go. He says I have to stay home and look after him. He never lets me out." Her words were coming in a rush now. "I never get to see anyone. He lets me go to church. I go to church a lot. All over the place. He doesn't want anyone to start asking questions, so I don't go to the same church. He asks me where I go as soon as I get home, and then, when I'm in bed, he comes into my room and unzips his fly and..." she took a deep breath, "And pulls it out. And then he starts to rub his hand all over it, standing right next to my bed." Her words were tumbling out, she could not stop herself. "And then one night he put it against my lips, and I pretended to be asleep, and I turned away, but he grabbed my head and pulled it back and forced it against my lips. And he pressed my jaw until I opened my mouth and then ... then he put it in my mouth!"
She stopped, aghast at what she had said. In the silence, I felt my cock jutting up under my robes. I longer to touch it, to help ease the terrible urge, but in the silence she would hear me.
"Tell me everything, my child, don't keep it in," I said.
