Chapter 3: Confessions on Fire
1084 Words
Confessions on Fire
Adrian
“You shouldn’t have played that piece.”
Her voice was calm, but there was something behind it...like wind brushing against flames.
Layla leaned against the piano, her fingers trailing lazily over the chipped ivory keys as if she hadn’t just scorched my thoughts into ash the night before.
“I thought it was beautiful,” she said softly. “Did I offend your sensibilities, Father?”
“More than you know.”
She smiled at that. Not innocently, not even coy, but something in between.
The funniest thing is, she was dangerous, and I knew it.
Yet here I stood....completely drawn, tethered, and stupidly present.
“I have choir arrangements to finalize,” I said, reaching for the sheet music she hadn’t touched. I needed distance, maybe words, anything at all.
But she didn’t move.
Instead, she leaned forward...so close I could smell her skin.
Jasmine, maybe. Or sin bottled like perfume.
“Do you want me to stop coming here?” she asked.
My hands froze midway while taking the book.
She was close enough now that I could see the pulse in her neck, beating fast beneath her olive skin.
I didn’t answer, I had no intention of answering.
Because no, I didn’t want her to stop.
But yes, I needed her to concentrate.
And that was the curse I carried now...being split down the center by a desire that had her name carved into it.
“I have a confession,” she said suddenly. Her eyes never left mine.
“Now?” My voice cracked slightly.
She just nodded with an innocent face.
And I...like the fool I am...nodded back, unable to control it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The booth felt smaller that day.
Or maybe it was just me. My cassock clung to my skin. Sweat prickled endlessly beneath my collar. The crucifix above my head suddenly felt heavier, more judgmental than ever.
She knelt behind the screen. I heard her breath before she spoke.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
I cleared my throat. “Speak freely, child.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“I’ve been having thoughts… unclean ones.”
My pulse throbbed in my neck as I tried to control myself.
“I see.”
“They’ve gotten worse since I started playing again. Or maybe it’s your voice. I hear it even when I’m alone.”
“Layla…”
“I think about you a lot.”
My body stiffened like a rock, unable to move.
“Doing what?” I asked before I could stop myself.
There was a deafening silence.
Then...she continued...
“Touching me at different places. Telling me I’m forgiven while in your hands…”
She stopped abruptly.
I closed my eyes as I imagined the things she was saying. My hand dug into my thigh, hard enough to bruise.
“This is inappropriate,” I said, trying to breathe. “You shouldn’t confess this to me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you know what it does to me.”
There was another pause, a longer one.
Then she said it, very soft and deliberate.
“Then absolve me, Father.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I barely remembered how the confession ended.
My words slurred through the Latin, the ritual fraying at the edges as I stumbled through the motions.
She left the booth first. I waited....counting the beats of my pulse, praying she wouldn’t linger around longer than necessary.
But when I stepped out a few minutes later, she was gone.
Or so I thought.
Until I saw the folded paper in the pew.
I picked it up with fingers that trembled uncontrollably.
Some desires are sacred, Layla.
I had written that just a few days ago.
But I left it tucked in my private journal.
She had found it?
Or… had I wanted her to really see it?
>>>>>>>>>
That night, I tossed around and couldn’t sleep.
I sat in my study, the candlelight beside me, casting blurred shadows of her over the pages I didn’t want to reread.
The more I sat there, the more I didn't reread the pages.
Every word I’d written from the past week bled with obsession.
I hear her voice when I close my eyes. Her breath during confession turns my blood to fire. I want to bury myself in her innocence and ruin it. I want to taste sin from her mouth.
Page after page. Entry after entry.
Then, I started journaling just to release temptation.
But instead of that, it turned and started feeding it instead.
I opened an older journal, one I hadn’t touched in years.
Back when I was seventeen.
When my hands still knew what violence felt like.
Back when rage had a face...and I broke it.
I found an old entry marked in red ink:
'I hurt someone. I saw red. I liked the power. I came to this church to cage it.'
I stared at the words before me.
Then I heard her again instead of concentrating on the book before me.
She was in my memory. In my soul saying absolve me, Father.
My breath caught each time I heard her, my fists clenched.
I wanted to go to the chapel. Fall to my knees, and beg for strength.
But I knew if I walked through those doors…
And she was there…
Strength would be lost completely.
>>>>>>>>>>
By morning, my eyes were bloodshot. My collar felt like a noose.
I stepped into the chapel, empty and quiet.
And then, I heard a sound. It was more like a flutter of clothes. It was a movement behind the confessional.
I turned, slowly to see for myself, but there was nothing there. No one.
But on the altar, just barely visible beneath the veil...
I saw her journal, open, exposed and waiting for me.
I approached it slowly, my breath shallow.
And I stretched my neck to read the first line:
"I think I want him to ruin me. I think I want him to break his vow."
And just as my hand touched the paper...
The chapel doors creaked open behind me, and I heard footsteps approaching.
I turned sharply, my heart racing uncontrollably.
And there she stood.
Layla.
Not saying any word. Just her eyes on mine.
The journal is still open between us.
And at that moment, I knew
it....
This wasn't a confession anymore.
It was a seduction.
And I had just stepped willingly into the fire.
- Writer
