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Chapter I The Confession By: Richard Davidson on 8/10/2008; 9:44 PM She bowed her head in disgrace, as she walked slowly, painfully to the confessional, where she opened the door and slipped inside. She recognized the breathing right away. Father Tim had always been her favorite. He was a kind, attractive man, always understanding and compassionate. That made this all the more difficult. She wished she'd gotten that vile Father Murdoch. Still, she couldn't imagine unburdening herself to Murdoch, and would have to suffer the embarrassment of baring herself to a man she so admired. "Forgive me father, for I have sinned," she started out in a cold, breathless voice. "Father I did the worst thing I could ever do; something I was always sure I would never do, and I don't even know why I did it." She took a deep breath, and whimpered. "Go ahead, my child," Father Tim's soft voice reassured her. She could barely choke out the words, "I cheated… cheated on my husband," she ended in sputtering tears. "Do you love him?" asked Father Tim. "Oh yes, of course I do," she sobbed, "I've loved him since we first met, and I don't know how I could've done this. The man, the man, I'm not even attracted to the man. I don't even LIKE the man; I just…" her voice tapered off, "…I just don't understand how this could have happened." Father Tim started to talk to her about the temptations and traps that await married people, and he was making a pretty good case too, when she interrupted him. "This was different. We've been married thirteen years, and I've never ONCE had a though of being with any other man than Mark; I was madly in love with him the day we met, and it has never let up. I think of him as beautiful and sexy, and so very capable of satisfying me in every way…" and then she started to feel uncomfortable "…I mean, we've got chemistry together, father, we always have, and I don't see how a thing like this could happen." "So if you are to atone for this sin, you first need to understand it, is that correct?" "That's just it, Father; I don’t' know if I can ever atone, because I just can't understand it, and I've tried so very hard, how I've TRIED!" she began weeping uncontrollably. "Well, why don't you tell me what happened, and let's see if that helps us to find the root of the problem." "Oh Father," she said in disgust, "I was in the city, looking for a birthday gift for Mark. Mark was on my mind that day. He'd been getting suspicious of me lately; just little things like asking who had been on the phone, or where I had been that afternoon; seemingly just little things that any husband might wonder, but odd that it had only started to happen now after all these years. I was a little hurt by this, I suppose, but I didn't give it much though; I just wanted to make him happy, and I wanted to get him something nice for his birthday." "I was shopping in Mighty-Mart, looking at some beautiful hand-stitched suits that had come in. These weren't the kind of suits you usually found there; these were Italian, and gorgeous, and much cheaper than you would expect to pay, and Tailoring was 25% off. I thought I'd get him something nice in grey with maybe some pinstripes, and some shoes to match. I ran into this man who was simply impassioned with Italian suits, and we talked about fit, and style, and the luxuriousness of material that can make a man feel like he's important, you know?" Father Tim nodded his head, although he did not, in fact, know. "I was not attracted to this man." "I found him to be shallow, and somewhat annoying. He had a bit of a paunch, needed a shave, and had just a little bit of an unpleasant odor to him. There was nothing about this man at all that could've tempted me to stray from the love of my life." Father Tim stayed very silent. "An hour later, I was laying alone, naked, in a strange hotel room bed, all by myself, crying, and wondering how it was that I had just done what we had just done." She had a faraway look in her eyes; an emptiness; like that of a rape victim, or person in shock from a serious injury, that blank look that comes when the mind is not accepting the reality of what has transpired. Father Tim had trouble thinking of anything to say. He had never heard of a case like this before. Surely there had to be some missing information. Was she angry with her husband, and used a stranger to fill that whole? Had she been drinking? He was fairly sure she was not. Had this man slipped her a date-rape drug somehow? But where? When? "Did you have anything to drink?" he asked, almost embarrassed. "I was drinking some complimentary coffee in the store when I met him, and I refilled it on the way out to the car," she answered, with that look of disaffection, "I might have had a glass of water out of the tap at the hotel." "Did he pour it for you?" asked Father Tim. "No, I wasn't drugged," she answered, wising up to this line of inquiry. "It FELT like I was drugged, for sure, oh yes it did!" she said, a bit more animated than she had been the entire time, "but not like some chemical drug. This was like losing yourself to some unexplainable force. Maybe that force is locked up in you your whole life, and you don't even know it." She paused for a moment, and Father Tim remained silent. "Maybe it's a force that doesn't come from you at all." Father Tim had a very strange feeling come over him. Very strange indeed. At first, he wanted to giggle, and pictured himself imitating Flip Wilson as Geraldine and ask "oh honey, now are you saying the Devil made you do it?" but he didn't of course, but he did feel the corner of his mouth turn up, as if to smile, but managed to force it back down.
Re: Chapter I The Confession By: Seth Dillingham on 8/10/2008; 10:12 PM Yay Richard is back!!! W00t!
RE: Chapter I The Confession By: Mark Morgan on 8/10/2008; 10:18 PM Welcome back Richard! This is great. Please bear with me if it's a bit before this is published--it's been an...interesting....month for me.
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