Her Confession

She makes a tentative entrance into the room. I observe her from my seat on the couch as she silently begins to strip away her clothing; each item a plate of her armor of dignity. Before she can replace bespoke dignity with the comfort of nudity, she halts undressing. Remaining are her nondescript sports bra and cotton panties. Feeling sexy has no residence here and since she cannot utilize the crutch of being fully nude, she is left with exactly what I want her to feel at this moment.

She kneels onto the rug near my feet while focusing her gaze forward. Thus we mark the moment she truly begins the struggle of remaining mindful during our ritual. I arise to conduct inspection. My steps carefully circumscribe the rug as I examine her frame. I immediately note a taste of a palpable nervousness. Her ears have significantly shifted to a bloody hue, inciting from me a sneer of contempt. Having completed inspection I return to my seat. Her body quakes with dread.

"What do you have to tell me, Susie?" The words almost sound foreign to me as they escape my maw.

I drill my focus directly into her dilated pupils, however the connection is severed by the dropping of her eyelids. In that instant a judgment sparks into existence somewhere deep within my chest. It arcs into my right scapula, permeating into my rotator cuff. My arm, now Gabriel's trumpet, culminates in the manifestation of that judgment as the union of my palm and her cheek. This eternity between the spark and the delivery of judgment is in reality no more than a heartbeat in time from when she closed her eyes. A crack echoes in the air between us. Her hand twitches with instinctual desire to cover her cheek but doesn't leave its position. Good girl. Maybe we are making progress after all.

"What did I tell you about that? You look at me when you are confessing. You don't get to escape into your head."

Her chest expands as she fills her lungs with air. "I did very good with not smoking this week. I made it almost the whole week." This sentence wasn't a confession. My teeth grind in response.

"Almost?! You *almost* made it the week? Explain."

"I was doing really well, but..." There it is. She begins her confession with this short, saccharine prologue. Another spark arcs and judgment is delivered before a ninth syllable can be birthed. I know she is above this and I will not tolerate less.

"Stop sugar coating things. You aren't stupid, stop acting like it." I note a brief yet visible recoil to my chastisement. She realigns.

"I was bored sitting up late at night. I bummed a cigarette from my roommate. And when that one was gone, I searched through the ashtrays and found all her half-smoked cigarettes and I smoked those too. I wanted more so bad. I can't say no. If they are in front of me, I will smoke them. I will smoke all of them."

As the last few words breach her lips, my anger launches me from my seat. She's silent again as she finds herself staring upward at my visage, head wrenched backward by the bit of her hair clenched in my fist.

"You are such a weak little bitch. Where is your self-control? You searched through the ashtrays like a homeless person living on the street. Disgusting. Is that what you are going to do next? Pick up butts from the gutter and smoke those too?" I relinquish my hold and return to my place on the couch. I give an indignant gesture for her to continue.

"I gossiped with my friend at work about our coworkers. I was annoyed with how slow one was. I was mean. He has never been anything but nice to me. I ignored group work because I knew someone else would do it, and when no one did, I was mad that I had to do it and I complained about that too. I slanted the conversation to make it sound like I was the only one doing the work and everyone else was lazy. I was unhelpful to the new guy. He wasn't logged into the phone system and I complained about it loudly. It was hypocritical, because..." Shame chokes her voice to an inaudible mumble.

"Speak up, bitch. I want to hear loud and clear just what kind of a cunt you are at work."

In a shout she repeats herself. "I do the same thing! Sometimes I don't log into the phone for 2 hours! I complained about him doing exactly what I do, what we all do."

"How do your coworkers even tolerate you? Is it possible for you to be a bigger fucking bitch?" I nearly falter in my chastisement from both surprise at the confession and hesitance to apply such harshness to my words. However, we both know she wants exactly this. It's a need that must be satisfied.

"YES! It gets worse. At the grocery store, I gave a mom with a fussy toddler the evil eye. I thought about accidentally hitting her other bratty kid with my cart. I know how hard it is to shop with uncooperative kids, and I didn't extend ANY kindness, not even a commiserating smile. I considered running over a slow old lady in front of me who wouldn't let me pass. Then I sat in my car and checked my phone when I knew someone was waiting for my parking spot."

I convert my internal feelings of desire and awe of this woman into an outward expression of elitist contempt. For her, I will elevate myself into a moral echelon with a stare of disgust. She almost physically shrinks inward.

"I guess it is possible to be a bigger bitch. I have actually never met anyone who is as big of a fucking cunt as you are. But I'm not surprised. I already knew what kind of a bitch you are." In this moment, in her pain and humiliation, she is beautiful. I have to force myself to keep breathing lest her divinity quench my own flame. I perceive a small shift in her eyes that communicates she knows we are not done. "I think you're stalling. You have been whoring around. You want absolution for all the fucked-up shit you did this week? Finish. Finish by telling me exactly what kind of filthy fucking whore you have been. Maybe, I'm wrong and I'll only have to punish you for being a complete fucking bitch. Maybe I WILL be able to forgive you. I doubt I'm wrong. You've always been a whore, just like your mother."

I could have elicited a far less painful reaction from her if instead I had driven a hatchet into her ribcage. Tears fill her eyes while she processes the insult. The confessions heretofore had been overtly platonic. I will humiliate and punish her for those, but to do so exclusively would be a disservice. She needs a whore's humiliation just as she needs her blood to course through her body. Before me is knelt an avatar of desire and beauty deified precisely by the pain and shame I'm bestowing. I can see her bracing herself in preparation. She straightens her spine after a few moments in thought and then from her spills forth hot strings of names and details of every carnal moment she had recently enjoyed...