Special Feature: The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker
by Leanna Renee Hieber

Deleted scene from The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker 

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

Percy felt the aged wooden scent of the confessional booth overwhelm her as she took a deep breath to calm herself.  Safely confined within darkness that had been ear to hundreds of pleas and thousands of sins, her body eased. She had not confessed since her final convent days and her heart pounded with complex guilt and giddy excitement.

“And of what sin are you guilty, my child?” The Father’s voice was warm, yet clarity in every syllable made Percy feel unable to hide, even behind her shawl, even within the darkness behind the ornately carved wooden screen.

“I fancy someone.”

Percy was fond of pressing her back fully against the cool mahogany wall as she closed her eyes. She focused on the acoustics, the tremulous, immediate sound two voices made in close and intimate revelation.  On her more sombre days at the convent, Percy would imagine that, when pressing back against the wood she was in fact pressing the floor of her own coffin and when she stepped outside, there she would be at the gate of Heaven, all her deeds revealed and every maddening question answered.

“I fancy someone I’d best not,” Percy added softly.

“How would you describe your thoughts towards this person?”

Lids pressed shut, her mind’s eye was locked in her Professor’s gaze. The moonlit foyer where they waltzed alone would not leave her mind.  “Warm.  All-consuming.”

“Do you lust, child?”

“I would like to think mine is a sin of a more refined... perhaps unique nature.”

“Are you intimate with this person?”

“N-no.”

“And does this someone know of your affection?”

“Surely he... I... I don’t know.”

“Can you speak to him?”

“Of my sentiments? I dare not.”

“Do you covet? Is this man bound to another-“

“No. He has no wife...”

“Chaste love, my child, itself is no sin, if performed under the watching eyes of the Lord. Loving, Godly courtship, leading to the sacred rite of marriage is encouraged-“

Percy felt sick to her stomach.  “He is under the employ of an institution, Father. I am bound by more laws than those of the Lord.  No matter, this schoolgirl fancy. Even if he and I were acquainted under alternate circumstances, he’d hardly care for an oddity such as myself.”  Percy’s fingers wove together in nervous melancholy.

“Children of God have no flaws once they have confessed their sins and have made themselves whole in the Lord.”

“This child of God struggles with that truth, and does not feel whole.”

“To bemoan your state and not give thanks to God for his gift of life, however wretched or different, is yet another sin.  Turn your impossible affection inward; save some of it for your own heart.”

Percy pressed harder against the wood at her back, squeezing her eyes closed as if she could force the image of Professor Rychman’s close, striking face from her thoughts.  A vision came instead.

Spirits hovered before her, smiling, in a formal, processional line.  Someone moved beside her.  She turned to see who had taken her hand.  Ah, her Professor...

“Why so suddenly silent, my child?”

Percy was jarred from her vision and her eyes adjusted to the dim light beyond the screen of iron coils that cast an intricate pattern upon her ghostly-white hands.

“Oh, forgive me Father, I was... remembering a dream.”

“Does the dream bear significance?”

“The Prof- He was there beside me. Spirits too. I sense a powerful connection, a greater purpose to our acquaintance, which makes divesting emotion very difficult.”

“Perhaps God has a specific plan for him in your life.”

The word ‘perhaps’ rang hollow in Percy’s mind.  She was weary of that word. “Something brews in the air, Father. I do not know whether to welcome it or to be frightened.”

“Your sense of impending events, do they include the individual in question?”

“I find myself hoping that they do.”

“Be careful of your hope. Pray only for purity to come to you, my child. Pray only for goodness, truth and righteousness. Often prayers for our deepest wishes are not in God’s plan. Trust God’s will, and there will be blessing in that brewing air. For the two of you.”

“Perhaps.”

Percy was beginning to truly despise that word.  She didn’t want perhaps.  She wanted yes.  For the two of them.

The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker