The Pilgrim Girl - The Story of a Submission – 1
April 24, 2080:
Christa Weber followed the sign for the old pilgrimway of Murscheid. It was the end of April and the sun was shining. The year 2080 was to be a very sunny year, meteorologists had predicted.
Soon she reached the path. A narrow pass led through the forest, bounded on the right and left by trees. The crowns arched over the way. It looked as if the wide path led through a living, green cathedral.
This way never seen a hover car driving by, one could see that immediately. This road looked like Christa was in 1980 instead of 2080. Here it looked like a hundred years ago. Christa felt awe. Even the way to the finish was awesome.
She strode forward with wide strides. She wore blue jeans and a mint green T-shirt that matched the green color of her eyes. Her black hair was just shoulder length. There were a few stray freckles in her fair-skinned face. On her feet she wore flat sandals with thin straps. They looked a bit like the shoes of the Romans, who once used to march through the forests of Germania. Christa carried a small backpack on her back.
She had just turned eighteen and spent an extended four-week vacation before she would start studying. She stayed in a small guesthouse in a nearby village and traveled daily to visit Catholic churches.
Christa collected churches. She photographed them from outside and inside. Her special interest was in the crucifixes. She photographed them all, including those she found along the wayside and at roadcrossings.
Christa looked around. She was all alone on the pilgrim path. She was not surprised. She had read that the old path of Murscheid was hardly known to pilgrims, nor was the monastery. Almost no one used this path since the time of the Kaiser. It was a miracle that the road was not overgrown.
Perhaps, Christa thought, there are people who keep the path open, cutting back hedges and shrubs from time to time.
She picked up the map and looked at her route. Half a kilometer to the first destination of the day - the monastery church of Obermurscheid. The monastery was hardly known. Most guides did not mention it. Christa had read about it by chance on the Internet. She had seen pictures and these had done it to her.
On the one hand, the church was built in Romanesque style of sandstone, which she found interesting and on the other hand, she had seen a photo of the life-size crucifix in the monastery church. The lifelike portrayal immediately captivated her. This crucifix had to be incorporated into her photo collection. For that reason alone, the visit to the monastery in Obermurscheid was worthwhile.
Christa stopped. She looked around again. There was nobody to see. She was alone on the old, forgotten pilgrim path.
"Actually, I could already do it here ..." she murmured. "It would be nice to walk the rest of the way like this." Once again she looked around. No one to see. Should she dare? Why not? Finally she followed a pilgrim path. There were people who made this pilgrimage that way.
Christa took all her courage and took off her backpack. Then she bent down and opened the buckles of her sandals. She stepped out of the flat sandals and put her bare feet on the soft forest floor. Then she put her shoes in her backpack and took it back on. Finished!
She started walking, full of joy and with a pounding heart. She enjoyed the cool, soft forest floor under her bare soles.
I should do that more often, she mused. It feels so nice!
But as always, walking barefoot, she felt she was doing something forbidden. That made her nervous and gave her a kick on the other hand. To do forbidden things was exciting.
She was always a little scared of getting caught, even though it was not forbidden to walk around without shoes - at least in the woods. But in the church ... Christa was not sure.
But the churches had done that to her.
The pilgrim's path made a turn. An old signpost pointed to the left. "Kloster Obermurscheid" (Monastery of Obermurscheid) was written on it. Christa turned left. After a hundred meters she stood in front of the monastery. It stood on a vast meadow, a collection of medieval sandstone buildings, of which the church was the largest. Everything was surrounded by a high sandstone wall. That was Christas destination.
Slowly and without haste, she strode toward it. The two wings of a wrought-iron gate in the wall stood wide open. She used a path filled with small gravelstones. She felt the small, angular stones under her bare soles as she strode toward the portal of the monastery church. The huge wooden doors loomed up in front of her.
Christa had to think back to the time when she was just twelve years old. At that time, she had begun collecting Catholic churches in her own special way. She had discovered an old black-and-white photo in a book about pilgrimages she had borrowed from the library, showing a young girl kneeling barefoot in front of a crucifix in a pilgrimage church. The picture had done to her immediately, Christa could not say why. It made a string in her sound.
Christa had always liked to walk barefoot, but this photo in the Pilgrim Book made a difference inside her. She wanted to experience something similar, like the young girl in the picture. She wanted to kneel in front of the crucifix in a church - barefoot! This thought never left her. As soon as she got up in the morning, her mind circled around it.
After all, one day she took her bicycle and drove some kilometers away from her hometown to a place where nobody knew her and she dared to do it. She had parked the bike on the wheel stand of the cemetery and had gone to the Catholic church of the place. She had taken off her shoes and socks outside the front door. She had a strong palpitation when she did that. It was as if she were doing something forbidden.
Actually, it could not be anything forbidden. In the book on pilgrimages, she had read that there were people who made a pilgrimage barefoot. To take of the footwear, she read, meant a gesture of piety and reverence. And it was a sign of penitence and humility.
So Christa did enter the church bare-footed, full of humility and subservience. She had felt the cold, smooth floor under her bare soles and an excitement had come over her that she had never felt before. To walk barefoot through this great church exited her. She had walked on bare soles to the big crucifix and had knelt down and prayed.
Her fantasies that she had had for some time had gone through her mind.
From that time on she played her little game again and again, until today.
Christa opened the portal. She entered the church. She felt exactly as she did six years ago. She was a little nervous and anxious and she was excited. The sunlight was thrown from the high windows in all colors over the dark wooden benches. The checkered stone floor also glowed brightly.
Christa entered. She felt the cool, smooth floor under her bare soles. She stopped to let everything take effect.
I'm here, she thought. I, Christa Weber, eighteen years old, stand barefoot in this monastery church. I'll walk on bare ground with my bare feet. I will look at the crucifix and take pictures. I do not wear shoes.
She started walking. She would photograph the church, the entire interior. Most important to her was the crucifix. She collected crucifixes. On her laptop she had hundreds of shots of various crucifixion groups. She liked the lifelike depictions best.
As she walked barefoot through the dim nave, Christa let her imagination run free. In her mind cinema, she was a poor child who had no shoes, an orphan who came to church to pray, to show God her penitence and her humility. She felt submissive.
A new little movie began in Christas head cinema. Now she was the girl who was picked. During the mass a few girls always had to depict living crucifixes on the right and on the left. There was a plan, and according to this plan, some girls from the orphanage came every Sunday to be tied to large wooden crosses on the wall of the church. They had to endure on the cross during the whole mass and not only that! There were two masses in a row because the church could not accommodate all the people of the place at once. So the chosen girls had to stand on the cross during two masses.
That was one of Christa's favorite fantasies, even today. Even more than ever. She always thought up new kinds of possible bondage and reveled in her fantasies of being crucified. Preferably naked - totally naked. This gave the idea of her personal crucifixion the right spice. How I would like to experience that, Christa thought.
