Mary MacDillon, 22, thought nothing of her being moved to a new convent in a new city. She assumed most of the nuns here, just as they were in the one she’d just left, would be almost all plain-looking or much older than she.

As soon as she came in, however, she noted a peculiar thing about the place. Not only were there, as she first started looking around at all the nuns, more…and more…young, slim nuns with pretty faces, but all of them were young, slim, and pretty…without exception!

What a strangely fortuitous occurrence, she thought…with a bit of a shudder. It was paradoxically good and bad luck for her. Secretly, she had lesbian desires that her strict Catholic upbringing would never accept, so being surrounded by unattractive women would keep her safe from temptation. But now,…

The bad luck was precisely that this was also good luck.

She whispered a “Hail, Mary” prayer over and over again as she approached the cell where she was to sleep. As she looked over the sea of faces of nuns walking by, hoping to see at least one wrinkled face or one obese body, yet being disappointed (and secretly thrilled) to see only beauties, she noticed one nun from a distance who lifted up her tunic to reveal a creamy-smooth white leg with a…tattoo?…up towards her left thigh.

No, it couldn’t be a tattoo! Mary thought. What self-respecting nun would have one of those on her body? My eyes must have been deceiving me! It was a large birthmark of some kind, surely.

Finally, she reached her cell. “Here you are, Sister Mary,” said Father Funn, the only male (also young and handsome, not that she was interested) who lived in this convent…alone in his own cell, surely! He put down her two bags of luggage by the door. “In you go now, and meet your cellmate. If you need anything, you know where to find my cell.”

“Thank you, Father,” she said as he turned around to leave. “Goodbye.” She faced the door. Before opening it, she took a deep breath and said another “Hail, Mary.” Lord, don’t put me to the test, she thought as she slowly turned the doorknob. Please, cellmate, be fat, old, and ugly.

She opened the door wide. Not only was her cellmate not fat, old, or ugly, she was also…not…dressed.

Mary stared at the naked loveliness of her new cellmate with her eyes and mouth at their widest. The young woman had her back to Mary, who in a daze was admiring her coffee-coloured skin, her curves, and her round buttocks. Her hair was a wavy cascade of brown that draped down to just below her shoulders.

She turned her head around to see Mary. She grinned from ear to ear. “Oh!” she said in high-pitched delight. “You must be Sister Mary MacDillon, my new cellmate. So nice to meet you finally. I’m Sister Jessica Bell, but everyone calls me Jessie.”

She turned around and walked towards Mary to shake her hand, displaying her frontal nudity–firm, medium-sized breasts with erect, brown nipples, and all her pubic hair removed!–in all insouciance.

Mary, in her amazement, had forgotten that the door was still open.

“Mary,” Jessie asked with a smirk, “do you want to display my body to all passersby, or do you want to close the door?”

“Oh! I’m sorry,” Mary said, snapping out of it and immediately turning around to close the door.

As the door clicked shut, Jessie began to say, “Father Funn just passed by before I reminded you of the door. I’m sure he just got the best thrill he’s had in a long time.” She giggled lewdly at this.

“I’m sorry,” Mary said again, trying to look Jessie straight in the eyes and not look any lower. Why does she have to be so immodest?

“That’s alright,” Jessie said. “It’s my fault. I just returned from the shower and took off my bathrobe. It’s been such a hot day that I didn’t want to put anything on at the moment. Instead, I was making some tea, which just heated up the cell even more. Would you like some? It’s really tasty.”

“Oh, yes, please, Jessie, I’d love some.” Why won’t she put some clothes on? God, why are you putting me to the test?

“Have you eaten dinner? They just finished serving it, and we all just ate in the dining hall, so I think you’ll be too late to have some.”

“Oh, I’ve eaten already. I’m quite tired actually, and ready for bed.”

“Oh, good,” Jessie said, handing Mary a fresh cup of hot tea.

Mary brought it up to her nose. “That’s quite a unique aroma.”

“Yes, I combine a lot of special ingredients–herbs, spices, mushrooms, and other things–to get a unique flavour. Try it. It’s also very healthy.”

“Yes, of course,” Mary said, then took a sip. “Mmm. As you said, it’s really tasty.” She turned away from Jessie for obvious reasons, put the cup on the bedside table, and looked with alarm at the one bed she was to share with Jessie every night, Jessie who was as unashamed as Eve was before eating the forbidden fruit. Trying to take her mind off her temptation, Mary reached down to her bags to begin unpacking, and said, “I always thought cells were supposed to be lived in by only one person at a time. In my previous convent, we all slept together in a dormitory, but I thought I’d be alone in my cell here.”

“Well, there are budget constraints in our convent, so we nuns are paired up in our cells,” Jessie explained, still not bothering to put anything on. “Often, new nuns like you are paired up with nuns like me, who have been here for quite a while, to show the new girls the ropes. Only Father Funn sleeps alone in his own cell, and I hardly need to explain to you why that is.” She giggled lewdly again.

“I see,” Mary said with a sigh of annoyance at Jessie’s flippant attitude. Mary took some clothes out of her bag and put them in a drawer by the bedside table.

“Drink your tea,” Jessie said. “Don’t let it get cold.”

“Oh, I won’t.” Mary picked up the cup and had another, larger sip, then went back to unpacking. She looked out the window for a moment: the sun was setting. She noticed, while still trying to resist the temptation to look at Jessie’s body, that her nude companion wasn’t having any tea for herself. “Aren’t you going to drink some?”

“Oh, I’ll have some a little later. You just enjoy yours for now.” After that, Mary noticed that Jessie was whispering something to herself…was it in Latin?

Once Mary finished unpacking, she began taking off her habit. It would feel good to take it off, for as Jessie had observed, it was a really hot day; though Mary had her own reasons for sweating so profusely–her nervousness, for the eyes of ever-naked Jessie had lit up to note her undressing. Mary had another gulp of her tea and tried not to think about that naughty nun.

She made sure that she had her nightgown ready to throw on as soon as she was stripped down to her bra and panties, for Jessie was still looking at her. Jessie also hadn’t drunk any of the tea she’d made, though Mary finished her cup and gave it back to Jessie with a “Thank you,” naïvely not even considering the possibility–with all of her worries of her naked cellmate watching her undress–that there might have been something…unusual…in that tea.

Mary got into bed and closed her eyes, now feeling remarkably relaxed. “Good night, Sister Jessie,” she said, then let out a big sigh and let herself go.

After turning off the light, ever-nude Jessie climbed into bed beside Mary, using the dim night light from the opened window to watch her silhouette drift into…what Mary would assume to be…unconsciousness.

Jessie continued chanting in Latin, but no longer in whispers. Mary was able to make out fragments of what Jessie was saying, the first fragment being, “Blessed art thou among women…” Was Jessie chanting the ‘Hail, Mary’ prayer? Mary wondered. Whatever she was chanting, it suggested that Jessie was a good nun after all, if a little eccentric.

Next, Mary heard, in Latin, “He who loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love,” emphasizing the word love. Again, Mary felt reassured of Jessie’s commitment to her faith. Her nudity must have been an anomalous occurrence, nothing more. Mary was able to relax even more, though something in her was making relaxing surprisingly easy.

Then she felt a light, brief kiss on her lips.

Instead of rising from her bed in wide-eyed shock, though, Mary just enjoyed the sensuous touch of Jessie’s lips. She opened her eyes slowly and saw…her young mother’s face? No, that couldn’t have been: her mother was now fifty-five and living in a city on the other side of the country. Mary must have been having a dream.

The dark room was moving left to right in slow waves, as Mary saw it. A spot of moonlight from outside, coming in the window from Mary’s far right, was trailing in a wavy line when her eyes moved to the left, away from it. She felt her body undulating with the waves in the air all around her. She felt as if she were merging with her surroundings.

She felt another kiss on her lips. Her eyes, having adjusted to the dark, met those of her kisser, and she could make out Jessie’s face this time. Again, though, instead of being shocked, she welcomed the kiss. Something in her body was telling her there was nothing sinful about what she and Jessie were doing.

She felt more soft kisses on her lips, cheeks, nose, and forehead. She fell Jessie’s hands stroking her hair and caressing her cheeks. Jessie said in Latin, “These three last forever: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love,” this last word being stressed, as before.

Now Mary felt Jessie moving up on the bed to bring her breasts level with Mary’s face. She felt the raspberry nipples of those sugary breasts brushing gently against her face. Mary opened her mouth and took Jessie’s left nipple inside. She sucked on it for several seconds, then looked up at the face of her naked lover.

The face shifted back and forth between being Jessie’s and being her mother’s. Still, Mary wasn’t shocked: she just enjoyed her ‘dream.’

Jessie moved back down to bring her face level with Mary’s again; as she moved down, she brushed her breasts against Mary’s chin, neck, and chest.

They resumed kissing, but this time with Jessie sliding her tongue deep inside Mary’s mouth. Jessie put Mary’s right hand between her legs, soaking her fingers. She also put her hand under Mary’s nightgown and slid her fingers under her panties to touch her in the same, wet place. As she stroked Mary’s vaginal opening and hymen, Jessie did more Latin chanting, but this time it was nothing from the Vulgate Bible or anything Mary recognized as being even remotely Catholic. In fact, Mary felt herself to be in such a dream-state that she couldn’t make out the meaning of this Latin at all; she only knew that it was Latin.

She didn’t want to listen to or interpret any Latin, anyway. These were the best sensations she’d ever felt in her entire life! After another minute or so of this delectable touching, she let out a high-pitched sigh with Jessie, and they both climaxed. In Mary’s dream-state, she had a vision of a river flowing from between her legs.

**********

She woke up just as the sun was beginning to peek through the window. She saw Jessie in an almost unrecognizable form: she was fully dressed, in a nun habit!

Jessie looked over at her with an unexpectedly innocent smile. “Oh, you’re awake!” she said. “Good morning, Sister Mary. You must be hungry. Hurry up and get dressed if you don’t want to miss breakfast in the dining hall.”

“Oh, yes,” Mary said as she got out of bed. Nowhere on her body did she feel any traces of the sensations she’d felt the night before, though she remembered them all vividly. It was just a dream, she thought.

As she changed into her habit, Mary found herself always wanting to look at Jessie’s pretty face. Oddly, now that her cellmate was finally decent, this was when Mary found she couldn’t stop staring at her.

Jessie didn’t exactly look like Mary’s pretty mother, though her eyes and voice bore an uncanny resemblance to those of her mother. The humble, pious attitude that Jessie was demonstrating now, in radical contrast to her vampish ways the night before, also reminded Mary of her beloved, almost saintlike mother.

The fact that Mary had…dreamed?…of receiving such sensual pleasure from naked Jessie only cemented her feelings for her cellmate all the more.

Was she falling in love with Jessie?

Oh, nonsense!

That couldn’t be!

Mary was wedded to Christ!

Jessie took Mary to the dining hall, where they sat across from each other and ate breakfast together. As they talked about the daily routine of the convent, Mary couldn’t stop looking deep in Jessie’s eyes, sighing at the sound of her voice, and grinning at her beauty, knowing what anatomical delicacies were hiding underneath her habit.

She imagined the bread she was biting into was Jessie’s flesh.

“After breakfast, I’ll need to take a shower,” Mary said.

“Be quick about it,” Jessie said. “We have to go to deliver crates of food to an orphanage on the other side of town.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Mary said, then drank from a glass of milk while looking down at Jessie’s chest, and remembering the relevant part of her…dream?

**********

She hurried over to the shower, went in, got naked, and ran the water over her body as she lathered the soap in her hands. As she rubbed the lather on her upper body, she looked at herself in a tall mirror on the other side of the room. She frowned at what she saw.

Small breasts, pale skin, a bit of flab on my belly, and an excess of pubic hair, she thought. I wish my body could be as attractive as Jessie’s is. I’m sure that would please her more.

After rinsing off her upper body, she rubbed some lather between her legs. She yelped in shock at what she felt down there…or rather, what she didn’t feel down there.

My hymen is gone! she thought with a gasp. My virtue! My virginity…is gone? That can’t be!

How could she have lost it? How could it have disappeared? Nothing happened the night before. She’d only had an erotic dream…didn’t she?

And even if Jessie had really seduced her, if she had punctured her hymen, why wasn’t Mary at all sore?

**********

After her shower, she quickly rejoined Jessie to help with delivering the food to the orphanage, always trying to stop herself from staring at her beautiful cellmate…but rarely succeeding. The bright, hot sun reminded Mary of God looking down on her from heaven. At least the act of charity to the orphans had a somewhat mitigating effect on her guilt.

She was touched by the devotion she saw in Jessie as she gave to the orphans, working so hard to be of help to them in all ways possible. Jessie’s actions so reminded Mary of her mother’s charity. The love was swelling in Mary’s heart.

When they returned to the convent, Mary went into the church to pray at a pew.

When she bowed and did the Sign of the Cross before the altar, she looked over at an icon of the Virgin Mary. On the face of the Blessed Virgin, she imagined she saw the face of her mother, what seemed a disapproving face, and Mary felt a pang of shame.

She hurried over to a pew, knelt there, and put her hands together. She remembered St. Paul’s words in his Epistle to the Romans: “God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.” She shuddered at the memory of that verse, one she’d always successfully used before to control herself.

God, help me, she prayed in her thoughts. Deliver me from the Evil One. Help me to love Jessie in an honourable, decent, Christian way. A tear ran down her cheek.

She looked up from hearing the sound of shoes tapping on the floor of the aisle to her immediate right. Father Funn was walking by. She got up and went over to him.

“Father?” she said from just behind his left shoulder.

He looked behind himself. “Yes, Sister Mary?”

“I know this is abrupt, but do you have time to receive my confession?”

“Why, yes, I have a few minutes,” he said. “Come this way.” He gestured to an exit leading to the confessional booths.

They went over and got in.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Mary said with a trembling voice.

“Be at peace, Mary,” he said soothingly. “The Lord is always willing to take back any lost sheep who have strayed from the flock.”

“I have had…,” she began, “…impure thoughts.”

“What kind of impure thoughts?” he asked with…a smirk on his face?

“Lewd ones. Lustful ones. Unnatural ones. Shameful ones.” She began sobbing. “And I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself from thinking them again.”

“With God, all things are possible,” he reassured her. “Remember that the Lord helps those who help themselves.”

“Yes, Father! Thank you!”

“I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he said, doing the Sign of the Cross with her.

She left the confessional so determined not to have sexual feelings about Jessie, that she would prove it every time she was around her, as a test of that determination. She went back to the pews to pray.

***********

That evening, after hours of prayer at the pew, she returned to her cell.

I will not have romantic thoughts about Jessie, she insisted in her thoughts as she approached Jessie, who was outside, tending a garden just beside the cell. Among the flowers and herbs she grew there to make her tea were a number of rather large mushrooms. The sun was sinking low, leaving darkness all over the convent.

Mary came up beside her cellmate. “Good evening, Sister Jessie.”

Jessie looked over at her and gave her such a disarming smile that Mary, shivering with pleasure, already lost half of her resolve not to think of Jessie in a sexual way. “Good evening, Sister Mary. I’m about to make us some tea. Would you like to watch how I make it?”

“Oh, yes, very much!” Mary sighed, then thought, Now, I can see if she is drugging the tea…which, surely, she isn’t! “You said last night that you mix mushrooms in the tea. What kind of mushrooms are they? I had such a wild dream last night, not the kind of thing I would ever describe, for modestly’s sake!” She tittered a little. “Those aren’t those ‘magic mushrooms,’ are they?”

Jessie let out a loud laugh. “Oh, no! Of course not! That must have been a wild dream that you had! No, these mushrooms only have a medicinal effect on the consumer. Whatever ‘wildness’ you experienced in your dream was something already inside you, I assure you.”

Though Mary felt reassured that there was nothing psychedelic about those mushrooms (and, surely, Jessie was telling her the truth about that!), she found it disturbing to think that that whole dream’s contents were just ‘something already inside her.’ Mary had always hated the unbridled sin of her unconscious mind, something she could never control.

Jessie finished collecting the ingredients for the tea, and she took them into the cell, Mary following closely behind her.

“Oh, I’m so glad it isn’t as hot today as it was yesterday,” Jessie said as she stood in front of the kettle, getting the tea ready. “These summer days have been killer. But I can tolerate keeping this habit on, at least for the moment.”

Mary let out a sigh of relief…yet of disappointment, too.

“I must say, Sister Jessie, that I admire how loving and caring you were to the orphans today,” she said. “The smiles you put on all the kids’ faces as you talked to them. Your charity is truly an inspiration.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Jessie said. “I’m just doing the Lord’s work. It isn’t me; it’s the Holy Spirit working through me.”

“Your humility and charity remind me of those of my mother, as I saw in her when I was a child,” Mary said, looking over at Jessie with such yearning.

“Your mother must be a remarkable woman. I’m flattered to be thought so similar to her.”

“You are, Sister Jessie, in so many ways,” Mary sighed.

“That’s very sweet of you to say–thank you.” Jessie, having finished making the tea, brought two small cups over. “Here you are, honey.” She handed Mary a pink china cup, while keeping a yellow one for herself.

“Thank you.” Mary was relieved to see that yellow cup this time, to see Jessie sipping from it. Mary thus felt encouraged to drink from hers.

(What she didn’t realize was that Jessie had made mushrooms for Mary’s tea, and no mushrooms–and different herbs–for her own.)

“OK, I’m getting little too hot now,” Jessie said, and she undid her guimpe and tunic, which for her, unusually, had front zippers. When unzipping and pulling them wide apart, she revealed a black, lace brassiere holding those creamy breasts in shape, the sight of which made Mary salivate and pant audibly. Jessie looked over at Mary, whose eyes immediately looked away. Jessie smirked.

Mary drank a gulp of tea. She looked out the window to see the growing darkness and the sun almost fully set. She yawned. “I don’t know why I feel so sleepy. Apart from moving the crates of food, I didn’t do much–just a lot of praying.”

“That’s fine,” Jessie said, continuing to undress and now just in her bra and panties. “Let’s just go to bed.”

Mary took no more than split-second, furtive looks at Jessie, who was now removing her bra. “Yes,” she yawned, “I suppose I should…take this…hot thing…off, too.”

Smiling Jessie removed her panties, turned off the light, and got into bed. Mary, too tired to reach for her nightgown, just stripped down to her underwear and got into bed. She lay on her back, closed her eyes, and let out a long sigh.

“Good night, Sister Jessie.”

“Good night, honey.”

Mama used to call me ‘honey,’ Mary thought.

That soothing, undulating feeling was beginning to flow all through Mary’s body again. She could hear Jessie whispering something in Latin again, though again, she felt too drowsy to make out the meaning of the words; she could only distinguish the pronunciation as distinctly Latin.

She felt Jessie’s hand on her right thigh.

A shiver of pleasure…and fear…rode up and down all those waves she felt permeating her body.

Still, Mary felt too much in a stupor to resist.

Jessie’s hand was playing with the elastic on Mary’s panties.

“Jessie,” Mary said in a slurred voice. “When I…showered today, I noticed…that my hymen…was missing.”

“Really?” Jessie whispered, then kissed Mary on her right cheek.

“Did you have…anything to do…with that?”

Jessie’s finger slid under the panties and began playing with Mary’s pubic hair. “I’m liberating you…from your theological prison cell.” She gave Mary a peck on the lips.

“Are you?” Mary sighed. “Ooh!”

“Purity and innocence…are lies…Not even Adam and Eve…were innocent…in the beginning.” Jessie was giving Mary kisses on her lips, cheeks, and neck as she continued whispering.

“That can’t…be true. Ah!“

“Oh, it must have been. If they were truly, utterly good, neither would have…given in…to temptation…and eaten…the forbidden fruit…There was never…a Fall, so Christ’s death…as redemption…was meaningless. There was never…primordial grace, and so there’s no grace…for us to return to…through Christ’s death. Let’s sin bravely.”

Mary opened her eyes and, her eyes adjusted to the dark and with plenty of moonlight and starlight shining through the open window, she could make out the silhouette of Jessie standing up on the bed, with her back and ass to her, her legs spread apart on either side of Mary. She wasn’t nude, though: Mary looked up and saw Jessie wearing a white coif and black veil on her head, but a tight-fitting, shiny black leather outfit was covering her from her neck to her feet, which were in black high heels. The outfit showed off Jessie’s curvy figure and round buttocks most flatteringly.

Jessie looked down at Mary over her left shoulder and asked, “Do you like it, Mary?”

“Sister Jessie,” Mary said in sighs, trying to regain at least some self-control, in spite of how stoned and turned on she was, “dressing like that…is so disrespectful…to your vows…as a nun. Remove the coif…and veil…at least.”

“Mary, what coif? What veil? I’m naked, head to toe.”

“But,…that skin-tight…black outfit…you have on.”

“I’m not wearing any outfit, Mary. I’m displaying my body, for your viewing pleasure. I know your secret desires, Mary. Don’t be afraid to express them.”

“How do you know them?”

“I have my ways. Let me help you liberate yourself, Mary.” Jessie bent down, bending her knees and lowering her back, so Mary could see what she had hiding between her legs and buttocks. Now Mary no longer saw the black clothing or the nun’s headdress. She saw naked Jessie’s delectable secrets, which were coming closer and closer to her face.

Jessie, on all fours now and facing Mary’s feet, pulled off her panties and spread her legs out wide. Both of them began tasting each other. Though Jessie was pure of any urinary or fecal smell–in fact, her vulva and anus smelled fragrant from a fresh shower–Mary was worried, after having used the toilet just before returning to their cell, that her own body odour would be most unflattering.

Yet Jessie was licking, kissing, and sucking without complaint.

(Actually, her magical, Latin incantations, herbs, and mushrooms all served to obliterate any and all unpleasant smells. Mary would learn the next day that Jessie’s magic would make even more, shocking changes to her body.)

In any case, Mary soon forgot her worries about her body odour, for she was too busy enjoying giving and receiving physical love. She no longer regretted the loss of her hymen, for Jessie’s long tongue was now free to probe deep, deep inside, tickling Mary’s vaginal walls with its tireless flickering.

It felt so good, so physically good, that she realized something.

This is no dream! she thought. This is really happening!

Both women’s sighs were rising in pitch and volume as they approached climax. Mary had a vision of two dams bursting, with rushing water coursing out between two pairs of legs. Mary’s was a river; Jessie’s, a waterfall.

…and Father Funn just happened to be passing by their cell window at that very moment.

***********

The next morning, Mary woke up with her panties back on, as if never taken off. There were no vaginal secretions as she had felt the night before, which she found inexplicable. With the sun peeking through the window, Jessie was fully dressed in her habit.

Mary saw her smiling face…O, that lovely face!

The two exchanged good morning wishes.

“Sister Jessie,” Mary asked. “What…did we…do last night?”

“We’ll discuss it tonight, Sister Mary,” Jessie said, moving about the cell in a hurry to get ready to go. “Get dressed. We have a busy morning. There’s a soup kitchen downtown where we volunteer every week on this day, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the homeless. We’ll be leaving about a half hour after breakfast. You’ll want to hurry if you hope to squeeze in a shower before we go.”

************

Though they ate facing each other in the dining hall, they said little to each other, Mary fearing that the other nuns would overhear their conversation and pick up hints as to what they were doing every night. She saw Father Funn walk by their table with a smirk that made her even more paranoid.

************

After breakfast, she hurried over to the shower with a change of underwear. She had put on her habit so quickly after getting out of bed that she didn’t take a minute to notice anything different about her body. But now that she was naked and in the shower, she saw herself in that mirror; the changes couldn’t be ignored.

Larger, firmer breasts.

No flab.

No pubic hair.

No paleness of her skin.

Perfect curves.

There was no other way to explain these changes.

Jessie was a witch.

Her tea and incantations were part of her spells.

Any pleasure Mary took in the changes in her body were overridden by the horror she felt in knowing what Jessie really was.

She’d bewitched Mary.

She’d defiled her.

She’d debauched her.

She’d led her astray.

She’d made her break her vows of chastity.

Mary remembered, with a shudder, Exodus 22:18.

************

After her shower, she joined Jessie and the other nuns to go to the soup kitchen to serve meals to the homeless there. Again, these acts of charity helped to soothe and ease her guilt…to an extent. That blazing, blindingly bright, hot sun outside reminded her of God’s judgement.

As she served the homeless with a smile, she saw the same loving smile on Jessie’s mesmerizingly pretty face. Mary saw no trace of phoniness in the sorceress’s smile: it looked perfectly sincere, like that of a genuine servant of Christ.

She recalled Paul’s words: “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.”

Still, Mary couldn’t understand how Jessie could fake being a Christian so skillfully. Her charity looked so authentic, and it made Mary feel all the more in love with her.

It was also challenging her faith in God; for how could He allow this to happen?

Inwardly, she shook with shame at her sinful love. She remembered Paul’s words: “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.”

Speaking of doing what she hated, she slipped a knife under the sleeve of her habit just before the nuns all finished and left the soup kitchen to return to the convent.

*************

That evening, as the sun was setting and darkness was about the envelope the convent, as soon as they’d returned, she went to Father Funn to give her confession again. In the booth, she was weeping; he had that enigmatic smirk on his face again.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she sobbed.

“Be at peace, Mary,” he said calmly. “The Lord is always willing to take back any sheep who have strayed from the flock.”

Mary remembered that these had been his exact words from last time: they sounded like a meaningless formula now!

“I have had…more impure thoughts,” she sobbed.

She couldn’t bring herself to complete her confession and admit to the sexual contact with Jessie…not only out of her personal shame, but also because she didn’t want to expose the shame of the woman she loved.

“Have you any more confessions to make?” he asked after noting her awkward several seconds of silence.

“N-no,” she said, bowing her head in shame over her cowardice in not fully confessing.

“Very well,” he said in a voice that sounded almost bored. “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Both of them did the Sign of the Cross–so formulaic.

She stepped out of the booth and slowly walked back to her cell, frowning. I feel no peace from that at all, she thought. Surely Father Funn suspected that my confession wasn’t complete. God wouldn’t have…couldn’t have allowed such absolution…if He truly existed.

It was getting darker and darker outside.

She fondled that knife in her sleeve.

**************

She walked into her cell and saw Jessie standing naked by the window, outside of which was the black of night. Jessie was facing Mary, with her usual insouciant display.

Mary began shaking, and clasped the knife, keeping it hidden in her sleeve. “Are you making more tea?” she asked with a frown.

“I don’t think I need to,” Jessie said with a smile. “Not the kind I was making for you before, to free your mind.”

“Those mushrooms really are magic mushrooms, aren’t they? You literally do magic with them, don’t you?”

“They, as well as my other herbs and my incantations, don’t do anything more than bring out what’s already inside you, Mary.”

“You’re a witch masquerading as a nun.” Her eyes tearing up, Mary let the knife slip down so Jessie could see the blade pointing at her chest.

“You aren’t going to stab me, Mary.” Jessie took a step toward Mary.

“‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ from Exodus.”

“‘Thou shalt not kill,’ also from Exodus.”

“‘The devil can cite scripture for his purpose,’ from The Merchant of Venice,” Mary said with a shaky voice, the hand holding the knife shaking even more.

“I’m not a witch, Mary,” Jessie said, taking another step closer to Mary. “I’m a sorceress.”

“What’s the difference? the Bible makes no distinction.”

“A witch uses her magic to harm. A sorceress uses it for good.” Jessie came closer to Mary. “My spells are liberating you.”

“Liberating me from what? I love my religion.”

“You didn’t become a nun out of love for Christ or the Virgin Mary. You became one to please your mother.”

“Your witchcraft makes you read people’s minds,” Mary said, weeping.

“So, you admit it’s true?” Jessie asked, stepping forward and now with Mary’s knife mere millimetres from her breast.

“You read my mind…when I saw myself…in the bathroom mirror yesterday,…and you know…that I didn’t like…how my body looked,…and you used your magic…to change my appearance,” Mary said in sobs.

“Don’t you like how it looks now? You wanted your body to please me more. It didn’t have to be changed. I liked your body as it was, with all of its supposed imperfections. I can change it back, if you wish.”

“N-no.” Mary kept sobbing. “But you seduced me…made me fornicate with you. You robbed me…of my faith in God.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Her face contorting with rage, Mary brought up the knife, ready to stab Jessie in the chest.

“You won’t kill me, Mary. You’re in love with me.”

Mary stood dazed for several seconds.

“Y-yes, I am.” Mary lowered her head, brought her arm down, and let the knife fall to the floor. Now she was sobbing loudly. Jessie put her arms around her.

“No!” Mary said. “Let me take this off first. If I’m going to sin with you, at least let me not dishonour the habit.”

Jessie helped her remove the tunic and guimpe, revealing–to Mary’s shock–a black corset with red lacing, and knee-high black boots with high heels, with red crosses on the knees.

“How did these get here?” Mary asked with a gasp, then she looked at Jessie, realizing how foolish her question was.

Jessie smirked lewdly as she looked at Mary. “I like it.”

“Well, I don’t. It’s tasteless. Help me take it all off. I’d rather be as nude as you; it would feel less indecent.”

“Very well; as you wish,” Jessie said, still smiling at the sight.

Mary, now nude, turned off the light, and they got into bed.

Jessie lay on her back, and Mary got on top of her. They exchanged kisses on each other’s lips, cheeks, and necks. Mary cupped Jessie’s breasts in her hands, giving them slight, gentle squeezes. Jessie fondled Mary’s bottom, giving the cheeks stronger squeezes.

They were rubbing their crotches against each other, then they put their legs in a scissor-position, rubbing their vulvas against each other and feeling their clits getting harder, and their labia swelling, moistening all over.

They were so focused on their pleasure that they paid no attention to how voices can carry. Their sighs, moans, and squeals were getting higher and higher-pitched, and louder and louder. The squeaking of the bed was getting louder and faster in rhythm, too. The wide-open window was no help in keeping the crescendo of their sin a secret.

A few members of the convent passed by their cell and heard the approaching climax. One nun peeked in the window, but saw only grinding silhouettes in the dark. The other passers-by were on the other side, listening at the door.

Finally, Father Funn rammed into the door, breaking it open. The other nuns came in after, one of them turning on the light and exposing the nakedness of the lovers, who never bothered pulling the blankets on themselves, it being such a hot summer night.

Their viewers were in bathrobes and slippers. Mary tried to pull the blanket over her body, but Funn stopped her.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “Both of you will come with us as you are. There will be no hiding of the truth.”

Mary walked out of the cell in tears, her hands covering her breasts and crotch. Jessie, walking beside her with her arms at her sides, made no attempt to cover her nakedness; she kept a lewd smirk on her face that Mary couldn’t understand. Funn walked behind both of them, his eyes never straying away from the sight of their tasty buttocks.

Mary and Jessie were taken to the open-air court area in the middle of the convent. All the other nuns were assembled there, in their bathrobes and slippers. All were looking at the naked duo with expressionless faces that weeping Mary could barely make out in the dark, with only moonlight and starlight to keep the black from being absolute. Not knowing what they were thinking, while imagining they could only be judging and condemning her sin with Jessie, was torturing Mary. Jessie, on the other hand, just kept smirking.

A bench was in the middle of the large courtyard, with two paddles lying at its sides. Mary and Jessie were taken there.

“Kneel before the bench,” Funn said. “Put your heads on the seat. Don’t move.” He picked up the paddles and gave one to one of the nuns. “Cooperate, you two, and this will be over with in a few minutes.”

He and the nun called out numbers with every whack they gave Mary’s and Jessie’s buttocks. Both girls screamed with each strike: Mary, bawling; Jessie, grinning.

“Jesus, help me!” Mary wept between screams. “Beat the sin…Oww!…out of me!…Oww!“

“Oww!” Jessie screamed. “You’re making my…Oww!…bum all red!…Oww!“

Out of the corner of Mary’s teary eye, she saw something odd.

The nuns all removed their bathrobes and kicked off their slippers. They were now as naked as she and Jessie were.

“Twenty!” Funn and the other paddler called out.

“We’re finished,” he said. He and the nun put down their paddles, then removed their bathrobes and slippers, too.

Mary and Jessie looked behind them, and all around the courtyard. Mary’s eyes and mouth were agape. Jessie was still grinning lewdly.

Everyone there was naked.

Funn was fully erect. Mary looked away with a blush, and back at Jessie.

“They’re all the same as you, Jessie?” Mary asked.

“…and you, now, Mary,” Jessie answered.

“Nuns by day, nudists by night?” Mary asked.

“Think of it as a dialectic of asceticism and eroticism,” Jessie explained. “We worship the Lord by day, and the Lady by night.”

“Lady? This indecency is worshipping the Blessed Virgin?”

“Look up in the night sky and see the Lady in her half-moon phase,” Jessie explained. “Half lit up, half dark. There is the Goddess, known by many names: Luna, Selena, Mary, Nut, Ishtar, Inanna, and so on. And in the daytime, there is the Lord, also known by many names: Sol Invictus, Helios, Jesus, Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, etc.”

“You’re all pagans? This is blasphemy!”

“Is the largely unpunished sexual abuse of children by priests, of nuns, any less blasphemous to the Church?” Jessie challenged. “At least we’re honest with our sexuality here.”

“As for your question of paganism, I think I can explain, Mary,” Father Funn said. “We here are a dialectical mix of pagan and Christian, to be exact. When we do our daily charity, we are sincerely Christian, but also because the world–being as prejudiced as it is against paganism–would only accept charity from the Church. But enough of this! Let’s get on with tonight’s ritual! Our weekly orgy must be done, to raise power and spread the energy of real love, grounded in the body, throughout the world, to save it from war, greed, and hate!”

“But people outside will hear, and suspect us,” Mary said.

“Not with our magic, which has, if you will, soundproofed the area,” said the nun next to the priest (Mary noticed a genuine tattoo on her upper leg; it said…Motorhead? She must have been the nun Mary saw on her first day here!). “Nobody outside will hear a thing; don’t worry.”

“But an orgy?” Mary said. “I don’t want to be involved in an orgy.” She looked over at Jessie. “I love you, and you alone. I don’t want to make love with anyone else. What I’m doing with you is fornication enough!”

“Very well,” Jessie said with a smile as she got on top of Mary. “You and I will have only each other.”

They resumed their tribadism there on the grass. Funn entered the tattooed nun. Though Mary and Jessie looked only in each other’s eyes, they heard a surrounding sea of moans and sighs. All the other nuns paired up, engaging in the licking, kissing, and fingering of vulvas, or with lips wrapped around nipples.

The group sex had a ritualized rhythm, with synchronized grinding and groaning. Everyone’s sighs and squeals rose together in pitch and volume, getting faster and faster, and resulting in a collective orgasmic scream.

As everyone lay back on the grass, panting with satisfaction, Mary looked up at the stars with a grin.

Whether the Queen of Heaven was Mary or the moon-goddess no longer mattered to her.

Jessie was right.

Mary was now free.

*************

The next morning, the nuns arrived in a van at a homeless shelter near downtown, delivering used clothes there. As they all cheerfully took the boxes of clothes off the van and gave them to the volunteer workers at the shelter, Mary found herself looking at Jessie’s pretty face as often as she could.

That mix of the sensual and the saintly that she saw in Jessie, knowing what delights her habit was hiding, made Mary all the more in love with her. She looked up at the shining, hot sun–the Lord, the Son, Helios, Tammuz, whichever–and smiled, waiting for the glowing Lady to peek out of the darkness that night.

She licked her lips, wanting more of that tea.