Prologue

These are the first three pages of the Prologue. If any of you are familiar with the posting I put up of "The House of Kinnebrew" just know that these three pages are part of the fifth draft of "The House", which is now "Holy Be N

 

Monday, April 14^th  

     Ladies and gentlemen, be warned. This is not your typical church tale. Many of you will find my relay of the events that took place between March 14^th and April 13^th of this year unsettling to say the least; especially those fastidious individuals who call themselves, “spirit-filled, saved, and sanctified”. Therefore, it is important that you know up front that my story is one of deceit, manipulation, and murder. These are the reasons why I write my words from a 4x8 cell in the Milton City jail.

     However, this was to be expected.

     I have been told my road to glory is paved with the condemnation of the righteousness.

    As far as I know, I am still a reporter for The Five Points Bulletin, I work for Milton’s only Christian newspaper whose office sits in-between a bookstore of banned books and a tattoo parlor in a trendy, paganish part of town known as Moreland Point. We are rogue reporters I guess you can say. And we are the biggest threat to the evangelicals we work for. But we did not start out this way. We started out writing flattering, nice and tight, boring pieces on the church clergy and their church activities, but this was only for the first two issues. The Christians of Milton are not as interesting as the sinners of Milton. There are no sexual deviants, no late night carousing ending with vehicles careening into homosexuals, no illegitimate children, no teenage w****s befriending terminally ill wives so they could steal their husbands, and no murder, so I thought. But when the first lady of New Kingdom Baptist church called me at my office on the afternoon of March 14^th to tell me that someone was trying to kill her, well, I began to think otherwise.

      I don’t know why Patricia Kinnebrew called me. The forty-three year old mother of two (sometimes four, depending on who’s asking) evangelist threatened me with a restraining order the last time we spoke. I approached her one Sunday morning after service and asked for a comment regarding the two million dollar beach house her and her husband, Pastor Charles Kinnebrew had recently purchased off the coast of Georgia with the “love offerings” received from their twenty-four thousand member congregation. Mrs. Kinnebrew became very angry and told me that asking such questions of God’s people was blasphemous. I could not recall exactly where that was written in the bible. So I told her this and when I did, she had me escorted out the church by two large men dressed in matching gray pin striped suits who looked as though they were men of violence before they were men of God. Being thrown out of the second largest mega church in the country might be unnerving to some, but we are use to that at The Bulletin. The wealthy first families of the prominent churches in Milton do not appreciate being questioned about their spending habits by the likes of us.

     I did consider telling Patricia Kinnebrew to find someone else to help her with her investigation that afternoon when she called, like the police for example. But an hour before speaking with her, my roommate received a message from a stranger waiting outside her job to tell her that there was a black envelope addressed to me sitting in the top drawer in Pastor and Mrs. Kinnebrew’s kitchen. I asked Layla if she knew the stranger with the message.

     “He is one of many who expose our lies. Ask my mother, she should know him too,” she said with a bit of panic in her voice before abruptly hanging up the phone. I never knew Layla Stephenson to be scared of anyone, but she was scared of this man and scary men sitting on the hood of my roommate’s eighty five thousand dollar luxury SUV at her job to tell her there was something for me at the home of the woman who called to tell me someone was trying to kill her was worth the fifty minute drive in rush hour traffic to the Castle Mayer subdivision in the southeast suburbs of Cross County, Georgia.

     I was familiar with the multi-million dollar golf community of Castle Mayer where four of the most influential church leaders and their families called home and where their adult children liked to call, “Goodieville”. There was Dr. Edward and Natalie Douglas of the Temple of Faith, Pastor Charles and Patricia Kinnebrew of New Kingdom Baptist, Pastor William and Angela Stephenson of The Fellowship of the Trinity, and Pastor Trevor and Wanda Gordon of Antioch Baptist; all four patriarchs headed up congregations larger than the number of people in a small mid-western town. On the evening of March 14^th, I did not expect to learn that three of the four “first” couples had received packages and letters over the past two years like the one waiting for me in the kitchen drawer at the Kinnebrew home, nor did I expect the voice of my ex-fiancé’s mother to come over the microphone when I rung the house at the subdivision’s front gate.

     “Naomi, you’re late,” said Natalie Douglas in a haughty tone that one would expect from a woman who once told her husband’s congregation that being good stewards and giving substantial amounts in tithes in offerings would one day mean they could get their hair and nails done every Friday like she did.

     “I am here to see Patricia Kinnebrew, Mrs. Douglas,” I said with as much sickly sweetness I could muster before mumbling, “And not to see you,” under my breath.

     “I know you are not here to see me, but you are still late,” she replied smartly. A loud beep sounded, the iron gates opened and I made my way to 4561 Kensington Lane chastising myself for forgetting that my former future mother in-law could hear just as well as all the other predatory canines she belonged to in the animal kingdom.

      If you are ever so “lucky” to get past the front gate at Cross County’s most prestigious subdivision, you will see the eighteen hole golf course where the pastors work on their golf game, the four canvas tennis courts where the pastor’s wives, or “first ladies” as they are commonly referred to, host their annual gospel tennis challenge, and the two story clubhouse with the Olympic size swimming pool where Raven Kinnebrew almost drowned on her ninth birthday when everyone became distracted by her father shoving the president of the Milton Gay Alliance into the concession stand. Kyle Freeman was a former member of Pastor Kinnebrew’s church who left after receiving a letter from the church’s Office of Stewardship alerting him of the $7500 he owed in back tithing. Mr. Freeman may have been lax with his tithing, but he was passionate about his cause because he called me a week after the incident wanting to talk about a group of people in Milton who called themselves The Excommunicated and asked if I would come downtown to his loft to discuss seventeenth-century British literature. I explained to Mr. Freeman that I was not familiar with The Excommunicated or the use of metaphysical conceit in religious poetry and I hung up the phone when he asked me about the woman who told the Kinnebrew children to tell their father what kind of underwear she liked to wear.

       I was thinking about how I could get in contact with Kyle Freeman when I finally arrived at the Kinnebrew mansion, But when I pulled my 1969 black Shelby Mustang into the circular driveway behind three late model luxury vehicles, my thoughts fell on how I was going to make it through the evening sitting among the four women I despised more than anyone this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. It was too early to be angry with my hostess, but I had specifically told Mrs. Kinnebrew that I would see her only under the condition that she was alone. Now, Natalie Douglas, Wanda Gordon, and Angela Stephenson were there awaiting my arrival and spending those passing moments discussing who they did not like, care for, agree with , appreciate, or want around because of what that person said, worn, thought, when that person was here, there, near, far, close, and how it was done when they did it. Unfortunately for the ladies, this compulsion to be in a constant state of gossipy criticism loosely clothed in a shroud of moral right is what made The Excommunicated come after all of them in the first place. I never would have imagined Patricia Kinnebrew sitting in her home surrounded by other victims of this group of vengeful ex-evangelicals fearful that some nut job was out there plotting her demise. But that’s exactly what the women told me when I arrived and why all of them had gathered at the Kinnebrew home to find out how the leader of this group, the Master of Rebels, had come to know me.

Reviews

[A LaDy NaMeD D]

This was an interesting prologue and i kinda can't wait for you to get this published so i can buy the story. It kept my attention, it was descriptive. It's a really great fifth draft. I can't find anything wrong with it, or anything i would change.