Confession Novels & Stories

The conference room was packed with doctors from every department, each one poised for the case review. I cleared my throat, started up the prepared PowerPoint, and began. "This case is for Jason Hamilton, male, five years old. He was first diagnosed at age three and has been on dialysis for two years now..." As I spoke, murmurs started among the crowd. I turned to the large screen behind me, realizing something was wrong. To my horror, my patient report was swapped out for a presentation called "Confession of an Affair”.

The confessional waited at the side, wood dark and creaking, like it knew what he was about to do. Rum slipped inside. He heard the other side click open a moment later—quiet, hesitant. "Ru—" "I need to confess," Rum cut in, eyes fluttering shut, head leaning back against the wooden panel. “I needed to talk to someone. About my... urges.” A pause. “Go on.” Rum bit his lip. “I’ve been having thoughts. Bad ones. Wanting to do things. Needing things done to me.” Elijah didn’t speak. But Rum could hear his breathing. Measured. Controlled.

Her confession today was different; not the usual petty transgressions of thought, but something deeper, more unsettling. "I… I have been having… impure thoughts, Father," she confessed, her voice barely audible. "Thoughts that shame me. Thoughts of… flesh. Of touch. Of wanting…" She trailed off, her cheeks flushing a deep scarlet visible even in the dim light. Father Michael clenched his fists, the cheap fabric of his cassock rough against his skin.

“It’s been… it’s been one week since my last confession.” “What do you wish to confess?” His voice was calm. I squeezed my hands together. “I… I’ve been struggling with thoughts.” “What kind of thoughts?” Heat crawled up my neck. “Bad ones.” “Be specific.” His voice sharpened. “What thoughts?” I swallowed hard. “I… touched myself.” The words felt filthy out loud. Silence. I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me. Then— “And what did you think of when you did it?” My entire body went stiff. My heart slammed. “F-Father—”

Cried. He fell to the floor more than once, groaning with a pain that had no name a spiritual labor. Every memory of compromise, fear, failure surfaced like smoke drawn from a deep chamber. He began to confess them aloud. Not just sins. But weights. “I confess every time I ran from my voice. I confess the bitterness I swallowed in silence. I confess my father’s absence and the shame I buried. I confess the moments I believed I was too broken to carry purpose.” Tears fell freely.

I took a sip of my drink and replied, "It's water," trying to maintain my facade. Triston seemed puzzled by my response, but I didn't bother explaining further. ----------------------------------- Some time had passed by, as I was ignoring the man at my side. He was going on about something- probably the fact that I’ve had four more what he believed to be waters and have finally begun to feel numb at his words. Music began playing in the ballroom again, and I felt like dancing. I was handed one more drink that I happily took.

“Of myself.” The truth leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. “I believed that I had mastered my desires,” I continued, my voice trembling now. “I believed prayer and silence were enough. But last…” I stopped myself. ‘What are you doing?’ one mental voice asked. One that sounded like the evil one. “Will you tell him what happened last night too?” The other gentle voice came. This one the Lord's. “If you withhold information during confession, how will you be saved my child?”

SARAH Confess. To openly admit something or declare something that you’ve been hiding, keeping secret, or feeling guilty about. Turns out what the rest of the world knows—and that includes their psychotic foster father who has been out of touch with the world, their world, for almost twenty fucking years—that I don’t, exists. It is not just a concept I made up in my head. It is not an abstract. It is a thing. It is their history, their truth.

The eleven days that were now counting down. The facts stayed the same. But the shape of the telling would be different. The confession version started with my guilt; I have done something wrong and I am telling you before you find out another way. I am sorry. Here is the damage I caused; This version would treat Adrian as the person I had betrayed. The whole conversation would become about managing how he would take the news, it all came from fear, and months of playing it safe had turned even telling the truth into another calculated move.

“I’m just asking. You don’t talk about things related to your pregnancy with her. You just told me about your wedding. I get it, I can stop pestering you about whether or not you are. Will you please, just answer my question?” “I didn’t know I was pregnant with her. I had a light period on schedule, then I got the flu for 8 days. I recovered from it, then returned to work. Coming out of a meeting, I got extremely dizzy, to the point I vomited in a trash can. It passed; I was fine. Then it happened again the next day, and the next day after that. Like clockwork, I thought I was having vertigo attacks, so I went to the doctor about it. You know my mom suffers from vertigo, which is