Maria looked up at the ornate ceiling of the entrance to the church to see the carving again. The woman was naked and suspended by a rope around her waist. Her long hair hung in swirls over her face and her arms reached down at full stretch as she clung desperately to her ankles. Behind her, a naked masked man wielded a cane and was bringing it down hard onto the woman's taut buttocks.
There was also a carving of another woman, blindfolded and tied by her wrists to a post, being beaten by three naked men: one with a chain, one a rope and another with a long knotted whip. Yet another depicted a woman, spread-eagled on her back and manacled to the floor by her wrists and ankles. She was being fucked while two other men forced their cocks deep into her mouth. The last woman in the series, the most realistic and therefore her favourite, clothing in tatters, hung suspended by a rope around her neck, and was being beaten across her buttocks and breasts as dogs snarled menacingly around her feet.
Maria had gazed up at these same carvings as a young girl. She had wondered what it would be like to be whipped and chained, and how it would feel to be beaten, fucked and humiliated. Often she had leant against the wall of the entrance, gazing up as she lifted her school skirt and slid her fingers down the front of her white panties. She had dribbled from the corner of her mouth as she slowly inserted her fingers between the pink folds of her young cunt, and gasped with anxiety and joy as strange shivers of excitement coursed jerkily through her limbs.
Maria had been brought up a strict Catholic, and had been used to confessing as a young girl, but it had been years since she had come here to pour out her sins.
She stopped just inside the heavy oak doors, and for a few moments stood in the silence. She stared down towards the dimly lit altar. Candles flickered on the white cloth that draped it and the gold candlesticks stood up glistening with darkly etched veins mysteriously entwined around them.
She jumped as the door closed behind her with a low thud. She must be even more tensed up than she had expected.
The metal-capped heels of her shiny black shoes clicked on the stone floor as she walked over to the small wooden confession box that was built into the wall behind some towering grey columns. She paused at the closed door and peered through the lattice-work front; she could just make out the dark figure that crouched like retribution inside. Without hesitation, and falling into the old habit, she reached up and drew back the heavy red curtain that hung in velvety folds from a brass rail fixed between the side of the box and the wall.
She paused for a few seconds, just to let her eyes get used to the dim light inside, then, bending slightly, she pushed behind the dark shroud of the smooth curtain.
There was a narrow seat fixed to the side of the booth and below that, raised only a few inches from the floor, an even narrower shelf for penitents to kneel on. She knelt down as she had always done before, but the hard wood hurt her knees so she got up again and slithered onto the little seat. It was cold and she shivered. She turned her shoulders towards the grill in the side of the confession box and, as if sensitive to her presence, it slid back.
She looked through the open grill and saw the white teeth of Father Thomas, it was as if no time at all had passed since she had last crouched trembling there.
He waited in silence. She felt sure that he recognised her even after all this time and a wave of embarrassment swept over her as she wondered where to start. She squirmed her bottom around on the narrow wooden seat, tightening the muscles of her buttocks and lifting the soft flesh inside her panties away from the cold wood. But it was no good, it only felt worse, so she eased the tension in her buttocks and felt her panties press down against the smooth surface of the seat.
Maria's thick black hair was cut to shoulder length and lay tousled around her pale face. She had full lips, bright blue eyes with long lashes, and was slim and very attractive, although, as people sometimes told her, she looked too vulnerable and could have made more of herself.
She had a small delicate frame and was not very tall, but she had shapely hips which curved out from her narrow waist. She had firm thighs and her compact calves led down to slender ankles. Her feet were narrow and her carefully filed toenails were painted with the same bright red varnish as her fingernails.
She had to wear a black suit for work and her skirt was quite short. The cold wood of the seat was pressed against the bare flesh of her smoothly curved thighs as they peeped out between the flattering tops of her fine, sheer stockings and the plain edge of her white panties. She wriggled her bottom again and nervously pulled her skirt down as far as she could, but she could only get the hem halfway down her slender thighs. She wore a white shirt which was open at the neck and her jacket was buttoned up tightly around her slim waist. Her small, firm breasts were secured snugly in the cups of a flimsy, embroidered bra. A small sewn flower just poked from the open neck of her well-ironed shirt as it nuzzled snugly between the curves of her cleavage.
Now she was sure that he recognised her, but still she could say nothing…
She had not felt tongue-tied when she was a child; then there had been so many things she seemed to do wrong that she could hardly wait to pour them out. She would wait anxiously all week to do her confession on Friday. She would write down all her sins in a little notebook then read them out carefully, one by one, to the thoughtful, shadowy figure behind the fretwork panel.
"Oh Father, what must I do to put these things right?" she would beg as she sat forward eagerly on this same hard seat with her hands clasped tightly between her legs. "I feel so dirty, so sinful, so horrible! What must I do? Oh Father, how can I be punished?"
Father Thomas would listen quietly, occasionally drawing his long fingers down his thin moustache and tugging at his pointed beard. Every now and again, when she looked through the grill, she would catch sight of his flashing white teeth and staring eyes and imagine that he was a wolf. Sometimes, she pretended that she was Red Riding Hood and that he was going to eat her and that she did not care if he did, as long as she could tell him how bad she was before he sank his pointed teeth into her neck. She tingled all over at the thought of that first bite and tingled more as she felt herself wanting to bleed for him and be sucked dry as he gnawed and slobbered at her throat.
Sometimes, as she leant forward to pour out her secrets, she thought she saw him staring at her budding breasts. It caused a dark terror to well up inside her and she trembled with fear. But it was not a fear that she wanted to run away from; it was a fear that seemed to delight and beguile her, it was a fear that she wanted more of and it forced her to lean even closer to the lattice-work grill.
In a way, she sincerely believed that she tried not to be sinful. But how could she confess if she did nothing wrong? The two things went hand-in-hand, she did not so much want to be sinful but she could not bear the idea of having nothing to confess. She wanted to be purified but she did not want to be pure, for if she was pure she would never be able to confess again. Her life was driven by this perverted desire to confess; driven by a need to be forgiven for being so sinful. Her badness was the means of acquiring purification, and as the act of purification was what she needed more than anything, she always needed to be bad.
Wrongdoing stalked her everywhere. By the time she was thirteen, her lists grew so long that sometimes, when she came out of the shadowy booth, she was sweating and exhausted.
Sometimes she felt a tingling deep in her stomach as she told Father Thomas every detail of her sinful behaviour. She would squeeze her hands tightly together and move them higher up her thighs, feigning to ease the delightful pain that the confession bestowed on her. He knew everything about her yet still she wanted him to know more. He knew all her sins and always forgave them, but still she wanted to be more sinful and suffer the pain of confession and forgiveness.
Then the problem got even worse.
One summer, there had been some men working on the road outside her convent school. There were three of them, all dark haired and swarthy. She saw them from a distance as she approached one warm morning. She was wearing her new white panties and a light cotton dress. Even before she got close to them she felt an excited fear prickling across her skin as she sensed their rough masculinity. Their torsos were naked in the warm sunny morning and they leant lazily on shiny steel shovels with hard-skinned hands. They flexed their glistening muscles and looked up eagerly as she approached; then they leered at her and instantly she felt a sting of shame and fear run through her ripening young body.
Their hole was right across the gates to her school. It was deep and contained a heavy iron railing against one of its sides; it looked like the entrance to a subterranean cavern. The three men stood around its rim, pushing each other and laughing as she approached nervously. There was no way around them; she hung her head, drew her brown leather school bag up onto her shoulder and scurried towards them, hoping to get past as quickly as possible. As she drew alongside them she could smell their sweat; it was sweet and sticky and hung heavily in the air like steam rising from overrun horses.
The one nearest her said something, she did not know what, or could not understand. Then, as the others chimed in, she gripped tightly to the leather strap of her satchel and ran past them shaking with fear. When she got inside the school gates she looked back at them and they laughed and jeered at her. They leant back on their shovel handles and as they stretched their bodies backwards she could see how their stomach muscles ribbed up hard and shiny with the tension of their laughter. She turned and ran inside, shaking and gasping for breath.
The next day it was the same, but this time she did not hang her head so low. As she came up alongside them the first one shouted something. Again she could not really make it out, only the word 'panties'. It frightened her as it had done the day before, but this time she also felt something that thrilled her. When she got inside the gates she turned and looked back at them and this time she noticed the way the material of their trousers mounded up at their crotches.
For the next few days, though she dreaded running the gauntlet of the workmen, she also found herself looking forward to it. One night she woke up sweating with her fingers probing high between her thighs and she lay awake for quite a while before she moved her hands outside the bedclothes. The next morning she felt so guilty she cried as she wrote down what had happened in the little notebook.
Every day they were causing her to be sinful and providing her with everything she needed. On the Thursday morning of that week, as she excitedly pulled up her satchel and ran towards the hole in the road, her heart sank when the men were not there. She stood at the rim of the gaping excavation and looked down into it.
There were two girls from the school down in the bottom of the hole with the men!
It was muddy around their feet and the girls' white ankle socks were spattered with dirt. Both of them were crying. They were being bent over in front of the three men with their bottoms up. One of them had her panties pulled down to just above her knees and Maria could plainly see the rosy darkness pressing out from between her young buttocks. One of the men was pulling down the panties of the other girl but they were tight across her bottom and were hard to get off. He had to pull at them roughly and the white, sewn edges cut into the girl's slender bottom.
The girl who was having her panties removed looked up in tearful appeal. Maria recognised her, she was in the fifth form. As the girl turned, the man swung back to her and ripped her panties down violently. She gasped as he pressed one of his hands on her back to force her to bend over even more, then spanked her hard across her rounded bottom. She let out a bleating cry. Maria saw the expression of pain on the girl's face before she was finally forced to turn away by the pressure of the man's hand on her back. There was another smack and an even louder scream and Maria turned and ran.
Her heart felt as though it was going to explode. She felt violated and frightened by what she saw, but even more frightened by what she thought. More than anything, more than fear, or wanting to run away, more than disgust or sympathy for the girls, she wanted to go back and clamber down into the muddy hole herself and have her panties ripped off by the men and be spanked and…
She flushed terribly, wild thoughts spinning uncontrollably through her head as she ran in panic for the sanctuary of the convent school, and when she arrived she dared say nothing.
At the end of the week it was all of this that she confessed. She poured out her wicked thoughts and wrongdoing as normal, but this time she admitted something she did not fully understand. This was no simple misdemeanour. This time she had enjoyed shaking with fear every time the workmen made rude gestures and offered to 'take her little white panties down and give her a good thrashing.' This time, she told him how she had kept her fingers high between her thighs as she lay awake in her bed thinking of the mounds in the men's trousers. This time, she trembled tearfully as she told him how she wanted to be one of the girls in the hole.
As she made her confession to Father Thomas she heard him sigh loudly. She knew he was angry with her and the realisation set off a tingling in her stomach and sent shivering thrills throughout her young body. She pleaded for forgiveness and punishment; she wanted to throw herself on the floor and beg for punishment. She wanted to stretch out before him and kiss his feet until he said she was saved. She felt so guilty and yet so satisfied; she felt so fulfilled with her sinfulness.
"Father," she had begged, "I'm so wicked, I walked past those horrid, smelly men and listened to the horrid things they said. I can't get to sleep at night because I think of them; their muscly stomachs and what it is beneath their trousers that makes them bulge out at the front. I can't stop thinking about what it would be like to be bent over in that muddy hole and have my panties torn down and my bottom spanked by those rough hands. What can you make me do to put things right? What has made me so bad?"
"What did they say again my child?"
"About taking my panties down?"
"Yes, what did they say exactly?"
"They said they would take my white panties down and give me a good spanking."
"Why? Why would they do that?"
"They – they said that I looked as if I would enjoy it."
"And would you?"
"I don't know Father. I don't know what is right any more. Father, perhaps they were right, perhaps I deserved a spanking. Perhaps I still do."
Father Thomas hesitated, then, stroking his beard to its thin point, spoke softly.
"You have been very wicked indeed. Your punishment should be severe this time, very severe, my child."
She shuddered with fear and clasped her school notebook tightly against the tops of her thighs. Suddenly, this was not a game and a sense of real fear spread through her.
"There is only one thing for it,' he continued.
Her hands started to shake and she pressed them down even harder against her thighs. What would it be? Would it be enough to save her?
"No prayer will make this better," he said, "you will have to be punished directly, here and now – by me."
She felt herself beginning to sweat with dread. The pages of her little notebook were sticking to the sweat that was covering the smooth skin of her young thighs. She waited, barely breathing.
"I will have to spank you my child. I must take your panties down and spank you now." He spoke slowly as he adjusted himself on his seat. "Come into my confession box and I will bend you over my knee."
Her head spun dizzily as a sweat broke out on her face and she felt herself flushing all over. This was what she wanted, she knew that, and yet she felt so fearful. She just did not know what to think. She was terrified! She took one frightened glance through the grill, caught a brief glimpse of Father Thomas's flashing teeth, then jumped up and ran out of the church crying and horrified.
When she got home she threw herself down on her bed and sobbed relentlessly. She stayed in her room for three days, weeping and saying prayers. And that had been the last time she had entered this place. That was six years ago…
Now, new feelings of guilt were spilling out and she needed someone to lap them up and guide her to repentance and salvation. It had been six years of an ever-growing need for forgiveness, six years of remorse for refusing her punishment from Father Thomas. There had not been a day that she had not felt guilty for running out of the confession booth all those years ago.
She glanced through the grill and saw the priest's thin fingers stroking his pointed beard and his eyes flashing as he raised his head. She turned away fearfully, shrunk back into the darkness and pushed herself hard against the cold stone wall of the church.
"Father, I need to confess," she said nervously, "I need to confess so much."
There was a pause. Maria anxiously looked through the grill again and saw Father Thomas' white teeth shining between his thin lips. He still reminded her of a wolf. For a second she imagined him slavering at her neck before sinking his teeth deeply into her throat. For a moment she was enthralled by the thought of him sucking her blood and drying her to a husk.
"Begin then, my child."
She turned away and stared down between her legs; her knees had fallen slightly open and she quickly drew them back together again. She pressed the palms of her hands against the tops of her smooth thighs as they stretched out from beneath the hem of her black skirt. She took a deep breath.
"Oh Father, I have been so wicked, I just don't know where to start."
"Start at the beginning," he said.