The priest sighed to himself and reluctantly got up from the chair.

Time to hear confessions, he despondently thought to himself.

His was no longer a religion of love and forgiveness - at least not from his point of view. Why should these disgusting sinners be forgiven and accepted into the Kingdom of God. Why should they ultimately be treated the same as he? Hadn't he always struggled to remain good and pure - while these sinners had let their lust have its way in disgusting, sinful acts.

Closing the door behind him, he walked head bowed and deep in thought across the grassed slope to the church.

"Hello father," he heard a light, musical voice address him.

Looking up he saw the pretty face with its habitual cheeky smirk.

"Hello Mrs G... ," he sourly replied.

The filthy slut, he thought to himself. Every week she comes to confession and tells every detail of the vile, disgusting, lascivious goings on of her and her queer husband. How a man can willingly set his wife up with other men I can't understand.

Such were the priest's thoughts and he continued on his way into the church.

After a wait of a minute or two, the confessional door opened and closed as the first penitent entered.

It's her, Helena G... , the priest thought to himself as a light musky scent reached his nostrils.

He hardly heard the ritual words that preceded her confession, and even then the murmured words of penitence at her liaisons with other men at her husband's instigation hardly seemed to register on the priest's thoughts.

"You disgusting slut," the priest muttered to himself, but not having his mind on the job, the words came out quite audibly.

There was a slight pause the other side of the screen, then the woman's soft voice, with now a touch of pride perhaps, responded with "yes father, I really am."

The priest began to chastise the woman, telling her that she wasn't trying hard enough to mend her ways and be good.

"I do try father," the sweet voice told him, "I just can't help myself though."

There was a pause and then the woman's voice continued in a softer and slightly hesitant tone, "prayer doesn't seem to be working father, perhaps I should be punished".

"Punished?" the priest repeated questioningly.

"Hurt", the woman replied in an even softer voice.

"Hurt?" the priest said in a complete loss as to what this woman was on about, and getting wild that she was just wasting his time.

"Yes father. Perhaps whipped," she suggested in a voice so soft that the priest doubted that he'd heard her right.

"Holy mother of God," the priest exclaimed. "The Church hardly does that sort of thing in this day and age."

"And yet I am so bad that I need to be hurt". The priest thought that the woman's voice actually sounded disappointed that she shouldn't be ordered a day in the stocks or a session on the rack such as would have been the case in the Dark Ages.

Once more the priest lost himself in reverie, thinking of how he would indeed bring these sinners into line if he had lived in those days before confessions had become the joke that they now were.

He suddenly shook himself back to reality. "Ten Hail Mary's and ten Our Father's every evening," he snapped out, and sent the time waster on her way.

It was two days later when the priest next saw Mrs G... He had been visiting the hospital, giving comfort to the sick, when, on walking back to the presbytery, he had passed her in the street.

She never really dressed like a slut, but she had that look about her, and that smirk on her face that made it known that she was a slut.

"Hello father," she had addressed him in her sweet, simpering voice.

The disdainful tone with which he'd replied did nothing to dampen her lascivious looks or manner.