The Confessional
SARAH TAZEWELL, A CEREBRAL, highly intuitive woman, knew from an early age that she was psychic. She and her husband David buy a church confessional from a renovator and convert it into a phone booth for their Queen Anne Victorian. Then Sarah hears jumbled voices the first time she uses the phone and senses a presence in the confessional. Before long, the voices become only one: that of a murderer that rapes and strangles his victims. Though consumed with fear and anxiety, Sarah refuses to be a victim and sets out on a journey to learn more about the confessional.
Sarah’s antagonist is a brilliant, charismatic sexual psychopath who conforms to his own rigid ritual; a ritual of murder and confession. The confessional in the 100-year-old church where he confesses is an integral part of the ritual. Before confessing, he carves the initials of his victims into the confessional wall. His confessions bring him release to begin the ritual once again. When he comes to confess after another murder, he finds “his” confessional gone and begins a frantic search to find it. What might the result of Sarah’s and his searches?
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Reiny Pierson holds a doctorate in English education from Old Dominion University and is a retired educator and administrator after thirty years in Virginia Beach. She is the recipient of the Virginia Technology Teacher of the Year award from IBM and Technology & Learning Magazine. Her article, “The Influence of Brain Hemisphericity on the Composing Process of Twelfth Graders,” was published in the Tapestry of Knowledge, for which she received an award for Excellence in Research from the Virginia Beach City Public Schools. In addition, her poem, “The Gift,” was published in Virginia Writing, Longwood University. She was the editor for a collection of teacher writings published by The Tidewater Virginia Writing Project, at Old Dominion University. She lives in Virginia Beach with her husband. They have has three children and three grandchildren.