Author’s Note- With the file issues for “The Big Tour” seeming to be unfixable at this time, I have resolved to carry on in the Halloween spirit, and continue bringing you fine folks more of the tales from that most dreadful of Midwestern realms, Amelia City/County. This tale, “Empty Prayer”, was first self-produced back in 2015, shortly after the publication of “In Amelia We Do Not Trust”. It was initially intended to be included in that collection, but I found the collection to already be at an ideal length, and held off publication of this work until about six months after the release of that second anthology in the Amelia City legendarium.
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Part 1
In a cozy living room in the little town of Rabins, Wisconsin, Theodore Jenkins perused his daily paper at the blessed crack of dawn. He greeted the sunrise with a quick thought to the trials of Job, marveling as he always did when thinking of that man's plight and his resilience in the face of so much doom. He only hoped that he and his family, and the broader congregation, could some day be so devout to the Lord.
"Lord Jesus," he said quietly, scanning through the headlines, "guide me with your light. Let me see where we must go." What he sought was on page eight of the regional section of the paper, and seeing it filled him with splendor.
Ted Jenkins smiled, a merciless expression that seldom reached his eyes. Sixty-seven years old, but living a pure lifestyle that kept him healthy and right with God, he held the reins of the True Power Baptist Church with an iron grip. His family, including his wife, their three sons and two daughters, their spouses and seventeen total grandchildren were the principal members of the church, but they had over the last few years seen several other families join their fold.
The Lord provided the faithful to the proper fellowships, or so Ted Jenkins thought. His grizzled white beard, bushy and wild, would have to be trimmed. A trip was in order, and they only had a little over a week to get where God had shown him, via the newspaper, they were to go.
"Barbara," he called out, standing from the leather recliner where he spent most of his mornings. His old gray bathrobe hung open, exposing his long johns to his wife's view as she came in from the kitchen. She was a lovely-looking woman, still quite pretty at fifty-nine. Yet if one looked long enough, one could see that she could be positively stunning for a woman of her years if she just applied a little makeup. Not that she ever would- vanity was one of Satan's favorite tools, and she refused its call.
"Yes, Ted?"
"Get Beverly and Tripp on the phone after breakfast," he said, tying his robe shut. "I've seen a sign from the Almighty today, in the paper. We're needed, dear."
"Oh my, a protest, Ted? Is that it," she asked excitedly, clapping her hands to her bosom. "It's been months since we did one."
"Yes, a protest, Barb," he said, flashing teeth in his wolf's smile.
"Praise Jesus," she hollered, throwing her head back and wrapping him up in an embrace. She held him then at arm's length, her brilliant green eyes dancing with joy. "Where is it? Is it far?"
"Not far at all, dear. Just a few hours west. They're planning a great big funeral in honor of some queer cop who got shot in the line of duty, making a great big fuss about him being one of the first openly gay officers in their city. He's on life support now, but they're going to take him off in a few days."
"Where is it," she asked again, practically jumping up and down like a kid on Christmas morning.
"Amelia City."
**
Beverly and Tripp Howland, daughter and son-in-law to Ted Jenkins, were the go-to members of the family whenever there was news to share. Ted didn't understand or want to understand social networking sites, and he didn't bother with a cellular phone. Barbara had one, and that usually was enough.
Beverly got in touch with everybody within an hour, and by noon the whole congregation was seated in the tiny church in which they held their services on Sunday mornings and Wednesday and Friday evenings. They buzzed with the fevered excitement usually reserved for the newly converted or obsessive, their eyes bright and movements jerky.
A door to the side of the little stage at the front of the church opened, and they all fell silent at once. Theodore Jenkins, preaching the word of God since the age of nine, strode through to applause from his flock, all of them looking adoringly upon their leader.
They practically worshipped him, and he thrived on their attentions. If he didn't keep himself in check, he would soon have an awkward start to his sermon; as an exhibitionist, he became aroused by the thought of others watching him. He'd discovered this about himself as a fourteen-year-old child minister. While his wife found it fascinating and reassuring (she too liked to be watched), he didn't want the rest of his family or the other congregants knowing.
Ted strode quickly behind the lecturn at the center of the front of the stage. He raised his hands high at his sides to quiet them, and thought just in the nick of time as the front of his pants became uncomfortable.
"A blessed good morning to you all, family, a blessed day indeed," he said, 'blessed' coming out in two syllables, rhyming with 'less said'. "I've had you all gathered to celebrate, and to tell you that we have been granted a sign from the Lord!"
Several hushed 'praise Jesus'es met these words. Ted carried on, feeling the divine inspiration come to him. The right words came to his mind, as if whispered down from Above, and his erection vanished like a magic trick.
"To the west, in Amelia City, the Lord calls us, yes. Seated in Amelia County, where all of the local law enforcement authorities are gathering together in order to send off one of their own. He lies brain dead in a coma, and they will be taking him off of life support in a few days. Hear me, people! We are not going to beg that this man's life be allowed to continue, no," he shouted, banging the lecturn. "For he was a faggot, a sodomite, and the longer he lingers here, the longer the Lord's divine wrath is delayed!" Ted thumped the lecturn again, grabbed the red leatherbound copy of the King James Bible he kept there, and strode to the very edge of the stage, holding it like the owner of a dog would a chewed slipper when scolding it.
"What does it say right in here, my children?! What does it say in Leviticus? 'If a man lies with another man as he would a woman, then their blood shall be upon them, for they are an abomination'," he fairly screamed, stomping back to the lecturn. "The Lord does not tolerate the sodomites! As instruments of His will, we must spread the word of our Lord and savior, and remind the sinners of the world that the queers are bound for the lake of fire!"
Here he allowed his faithful their chance to jump up and hoot and holler in agreement and praise. Normally he enjoyed such a sight, but there was someone in the church this day whom he did not recognize, an outsider. Seated in the pew farthest back, near the front doors of the little church, he spied a peculiar fellow watching them all.
The outsider was bald atop his head, with long, thick black hair in a ring around the sides and back, spread out in a fan over his shoulders. His face was covered in a thick black mustache and beard which matched his hair, creating a perfect ring around his neck. A voluminous dark blue cloak was wrapped around him, studded with loops through which gleaming metal chains had been drawn.
All of this was strange enough, but as his flock continued to caper about, it was the outsider's eyes which tugged at Ted Jenkins's attention- they were purest black. It's just a pair of those tinted contact lenses, he thought to himself. Don't give yourself the heebie-jeebies over a weirdo with a Halloween obsession!
"Now," he said, waiting as the others sat back down and quieted. "Now, the city of Amelia has already planned a great big send-off funeral for this heathen. We will be there, my brothers and sisters, to let them know the true word of God on the matter! We will bring to them the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God smote when the peoples there refused His Holy Law! I know that not all of you can come with us," he said, bringing his tone down, striding across the stage while still looking out at the congregation. "Matthew, my son, will you be there with us?"
"I'm sorry, father," said Matthew Jenkins, the oldest and certainly biggest of the Jenkins boys. He was as broad as a professional linebacker, and still dressed in his uniform from the county prison where he served as a guard. "I ain't got anymore time off slated right now. April and I used most of it up on our trip out to Los Angeles to see her sister." His wife, a toothpick of a woman, looked up and patted her husband on the hip reassuringly.
"That's all right, Matthew," said Ted gently, returning to and leaning on the lectern. He took his glasses off and held them in one hand, smiling gently out at his boy. Unlike that morning, reading the paper, this smile lit up all of him, eyes included, for he loved his family with all of his heart. "You got to stay out of trouble with your employers, do right by April and Jenny by bringing in the money. Todd doin' okay at that school you sent him off to?"
"Yeah, but he worries about all the temptations," said Matthew worriedly, looking down to April. "Says he don't want to do something that'll make God mad."
"Well, your Todd's always been a good boy," Ted said, putting his glasses back on. "He'll be in our prayers." Ted looked past the flock as murmurs of reassurance went up for Matthew and April. The outsider was slipping silently out through the front doors, utterly unnoticed by anyone but the patriarch of the Jenkins family.
Ted went on to speak to his congregation for another twenty minutes, confirming a loose game plan for the coming days ahead. When they were finished, Ted led them all out the front doors. He stopped at the top of the short set of steps leading to the sidewalk, as did everyone behind him, fanning out to stare down at the outsider he'd seen in the back of the church.
The odd, cloaked figure stood to one side of the walkway at the bottom of the steps, on the church lawn. He had one hand on his hip, revealing some sort of black leather armor getup underneath the cloak. In the daylight, his skin stood out pale as a sheet, his long-fingered hands covered in rings. More chains were wrapped around his torso and his waist, and Ted, along with the others, could see that the man wore shackles and chains, unattached to one another, around his visible wrist and ankles.
The weird visitor gave them a cold smile. "Your prayers are as empty of power as your heads are of thought," he intoned in a rumbling baritone. "And as for the name of your church, well, I can hardly think of a bigger lie. 'True Power', really? The only power here is that of your hatred."
Before anybody could respond or react to this man's words, he began to turn away with an audible rattle of his chains. Ted darted nimbly down half of the steps and called out, "Hey!" The outsider turned back towards him, eyes narrowed beneath his bushy black eyebrows. Closer to him now, Ted could smell him, and the outsider's aroma was that of hot tar, a thick, cloying smell that didn't seem right on a person. "How dare you come to our church and intrude on the Lord's soil with such blasphemy in your mouth! Who are you, stranger?"
"Very fitting, you calling me that," replied the outsider with a demon's hostile smile. "I am named Marek."
"I could have you arrested for trespassing," Ted Jenkins snarled, coming down two more steps. He could feel the eyes of his faithful upon him, their need for him to be strong like a ray of heat between his shoulder blades.
"Ironic, considering how many times you were arrested on the same charge in the last four years."
"Is that what this is about," Ted said, straightening his stance. "Are you some heathen come to tell us how wrong our protests have been?"
"Hardly," Marek replied, now sounding bored. He brought his hand to his side, which let the cloak flap closed. This close, Ted could see an insignia stitched over the left side of the man's chest on it- a set of four claws, lighter blue than the rest of the cloak's fabric, joined along their rounded tops by a black line. "But I do come to warn you. There will soon be a funeral in Amelia City, where I am from. It is precisely the sort of thing you and your deranged followers would go to protest. Do not. This is your only warning," Marek boomed. "I extend you this courtesy but once, preacher."
"Get out of here, heathen," Ted snarled. "Go back to where you came from, fag-lover!" As the outsider passed through the opening in the fence around the property, Ted's followers followed suit and began hurling shouts at the cloaked figure's back.
Ted felt his heart lurching in his chest. In all of his years as a man of God, he had never been as afraid as when the stranger named Marek spoke his final words. When those words reached Ted's ears, he understood, peering into those black eyes, that here had come a man of purest evil.
And that man had been able to enter his church, unnoticed by his family.
**
There are signs, and sometimes they go unheeded. Cody Jenkins, the middle son of Ted and Barbara, was precisely the sort of person who would be guilty of this. Owner and keeper of one of the giant RVs the True Power Baptist Church used to make its long trips, he thought nothing of the discarded chains that had been left laying out on the floor of the large garage bay in which the vehicle was kept.
Assuming he must have left them out when he brought his children's bikes down off of the garage wall, Cody kicked the chains aside through the dust, failing to notice that the lengths of metal links themselves were shiny and new. Whistling to himself, he opened the door of the RV and climbed up inside.
Father had been very clear with him- get the RV started, tune it up to make sure it was ready for their departure the next day, and get packed for the trip. The behemoth turned over without a problem, as Cody had been much better in the last two years about keeping it maintained. He rubbed his clean shaven cheeks and took a sip of coffee from his travel mug, enjoying the cinammon scent wafting up from the drinking slot.
Cody loved his family, both the one he'd been born to, and the one he'd begun himself with his wife Judy. But he knew his own mind, and that of his wife well enough to know that this was the last trip for them and their boys. After this, their part of the Jenkins family would prepare themselves to break off from both the family church and the town of Rabins.
Judy, a faithful and dutiful wife for eleven years, never said anything untoward around the rest of Cody's family, but in the privacy of their home, she voiced her discomfort at the extreme views of his father's doctrine. She'd said nothing in the first three years of their marriage about it, but after their second son was born, she voiced her concerns.
It had taken years of small, subtle probes, questions and observations, but she had finally driven home to Cody how outlandish his father's antics were. Judy never hollered or got angry with him when he sided with his father or dismissed her out of hand. In the long run, she had relied always on the fact that while Cody was slow to thought, he was also deep of the same.
At the moment, Judy was back at the house packing bags for the trip with Kyle and Jacob, helping the boys pick out clothes. It was proving difficult because they'd had to bring all of their boxes out of the RV and back into the house, so none of the others would suspect that they were moving in a little over a month.
Drilling the boys to not discuss the move had been more difficult, though, and that had been weeks ago, when Cody confirmed that he had a job. When all was said and done, they were bound for Cincinnati.
Cody looked at himself in what he called 'the control mirror'. Propped against the paneling between the front seats, he could see everything behind him straight to the back of the RV. Tipping it to one side, he was able to look at himself. At thirty-eight, he had gray streaming in through his hair on both sides, a face that had been referred to as 'classically handsome', and eyes the green of wet grass in a stormy autumn. His teeth were all perfectly straight and white, the result of Judy's long time concerns and expertise as a dental assistant.
His red and yellow checkerboard button shirt hung loose on a frame that had lost forty pounds over the last year, the most stressful time of Cody's life. It had been a year since he and Judy had decided to break ties with his family as soon as they feasably could. Keeping the secret and having to pretend to still believe in his father's hateful, fire-and-brimstone dogma had worn on him.
He considered how Judy had changed as well as he checked the RV's plumbing system. Where he had wasted away a little at a time, she flourished and seemed to blossom. She only gained a few pounds, but her disposition became far more relaxed and upbeat. At home, she never discussed church or her father-in-law's sermons. She seemed to grow happier with every passing month.
Other men, more selfish men, might have taken their opposing reactions to the stress and strains of the last year as a sign that they should go back to the way things had been. Cody Jenkins was not a selfish man, though, or a stupid one. He knew such a reversal of course was impossible- his thinking had changed too drastically.
Which would not prevent him from holding up one of the signs tucked under the bed in the back of the RV, all of them anti-homosexual sentiments. He already knew which one his father would want him to hold, a huge neon yellow posterboard which proclaimed 'Fags Are Of The Devil!'
Finished checking the plumbing, Cody headed back to the front and killed the engine. He found himself thinking about the strange man who had been at the church the day before. "Marek," he said aloud. "I wish they'd listened to you," he said, referring to the outsider's warning against going to protest the funeral.
**
Kelly Garner, nee Jenkins, third daughter of Ted and Barbara, handed her oldest three juice boxes with a trembling hand. "Now you all get just the one, Bobby, and quiet down your racket. Your daddy's trying to get some rest and I need to concentrate." A heavyset woman in her mid-thirties, Kelly was often referred to in the online community that harassed her family's church as 'the second-loudest mouth of the clan'.
Kelly's job in her father's ministry was to be the research specialist. She found out what permits to apply for, who to talk to, who their opposition would be, and dug up dirt on all of their loudest detractors. The Jenkins family and True Power Baptist Church were not litigious, but they'd fight fire with fire.
Having a degree in computer science from Wisconsin State University helped immensely. Working with Kipler's Incorporated, a data gathering company based out of Madison, helped even more. She had almost instant access at all times as a telecommuting employee to a gold mine of data, and she often went into the company's database to scour for stains on their opponent's histories.
"Momma, we gonna have to hold up them signs again," Bobby asked before leaving the kitchen, where she conducted most of her work.
"Yes you will, sugar pie. No go on, give those to Walter and Tina. I'll fix us up some lunch in about half an hour." Bobby ran off then, hollering for his younger brother and sister. Kelly turned her attention back to her laptop and brought up several search programs.
She typed 'Merik' into the first box, then clicked on another box, activating the computer's microphone. "Mare-rick", she said slowly, carefully pronouncing the name the stranger had given the day before. With a few clicks, the system began looking for records in the Amelia County area that even closely matched, including various spellings.
While the program scanned the database of her employers, Kelly drank her coffee and read through the newspaper. Butch would be up soon, and he'd be hungrier than a bear. He usually was the day after working his one 12-hour shift of the week at Comcast. He hadn't been present for the meeting the day before, as he'd been out doing installations.
At least, that was what Kelly believed. Butch had been balls-deep inside of Tracy Kole at the time, one of the customer service women working out of the office he reported to. They'd been in the back of his work van, parked out in front of a residence he'd finished installation on at eleven-thirty. This news would have likely thrown Kelly into a fit of pique strong enough to cause her to hyperventilate or faint outright. The fact that it had been going on for six months would, added to the initial fact, probably kill her.
Her computer 'ding'ed, and Kelly looked up from the paper. She squinted at the first result, for one Warwick Marrick of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kipler's had a batch file for him, a seventy-eight year old African-American, registered Democrat, made a lot of purchases of music on iTunes. Mostly, she read, jazz and oldies from the 1930's, 40's and 50's.
She brought up the search parameters box and checked the ethnicity box, then selected 'non-Hispanic white/Caucasian'. "Silly of me not to think of that," she said, getting up out of her creaking chair. It was time to start lunch.
The midday meal for the Garners turned out to be turkey melts and potato salad, and Butch, having awoken to the smell of pan-seared turkey breast, had the lion's share. A bulky man himself due to years of playing sports, he had begun turning chubby back when they had Bobby. He was still in reasonably good shape, but his overindulgences were slowly catching up to him.
"Mr. Dinnet says I got two whole weeks if I want 'em off," he told Kelly as the kids finished up and ran off to play. His southern twang was thick, his 'want' sounding like 'won't'. Kelly found his accent charming still after all these years together.
"Well we won't have to take them all, but having those days will be good," she replied. "I can still work from the road, so nothing gets hit by the trip." Butch grinned and had another forkful of potato salad, looking up sharply when her laptop chimed in again.
"Whatchoo doin' now, Kelly?"
"Trying to find out what I can about that weirdo from yesterday. Remember what I told you about him?"
"Yeah," said Butch, now looking off in the direction of the living room, where the kids were. "Guy sounded like one of them leather freaks from what you said." Kelly blinked at him, clearly unaware of what he was talking about. "There's these people who are into wearing ropes and handcuffs and such, leather corsets and boots and whole bodysuits."
"Why in the Lord's name would they do that?"
"It's a sex thing," said Butch, taking a drink of his own coffee. "I don't get it myself. Anyhow, I'm gonna catch a shower, then make sure the kids get their stuff packed up." Butch finished his coffee and left the kitchen, which allowed Kelly to let out a ripping fart she'd been holding at bay since he finished his sandwich. She tried her best to be prim when Butch was around, which sometimes tried her patience, but always she thought of what the Bible and her daddy told her about being a good wife. A good wife, her father had told her and her sisters since they were little, behaves like a lady in the presence of her husband.
It was nearly one o'clock before her search programs turned up anything worth looking into. The source data came from several Facebook posts by someone named Harlan Bettis approximately a year earlier. The first one started with a grainy picture, likely taken with a cellular phone, of the outsider from several dozen yards away, looking over his shoulder back at the owner of the phone. Following it was this text-
'Saw this dude hanging out by Barney's Lanes late last night. Guy was creepy, and when he realized I'd taken this picture of him, he went apeshit and tried chasing me down, yelling at me to give him the phone. But I run like a motherfucker when I'm scared, and this guy terrified me. Came back later and found some kind of envelope, I think he dropped it. The name Marek was written on it. If you see this guy, don't take his picture.'
Kelly squinted at the picture, but it was too blurry to really be completely positive it was the same man. She continued on to the next result, which was another Facebook status from the same person, one week later.
'That weird dude I took the picture of last week was hanging around out in the parking lot when I went to leave work today. Talk about fucking creepy! I saw him through Dale's office window, watched him for fifteen minutes past quitting time. He left with some chick then, and I raced to my goddamn car. Whoever this Marek guy is, he doesn't have a Facebook. I checked. If he does have one under another name and he's reading this, dude, you creepy 4reelz.'
Kelly rolled her eyes at the netspeak jargon, of which she'd never been a fan. She pressed on to the third post from young Harlan Bettis, which featured a disturbing pencil sketching on a yellow steno pad sheet, a wiry thing made of hasty strokes. The entry was dated four days after the previous related post. The sketch was of Mareck, his hair-ringed mouth open wide in a scream, chains wavering out all around him like tentacles. The associated text followed-
'For three nights in a row now I have had nightmares about this Marek guy. In them, he's chasing me through the streets downtown at night, and even though there's people all around, it's as if they don't see either of us, or hear me screaming for help. He's got these chains that flail out after me, smashing the street and sidewalks apart, crushing cars and people, turning them into steaming puddles of meat and blood. Even then, nobody notices, because that's how nightmares go.'
Kelly felt the hand of dread wrapping its knuckles along her spine. Though her programs were turning up other results still, two more remained from this one source. She opened the next one, and steeled herself for more bad omens.
Another sketch to start this status update, this time of an obscure claw symbol. The text- 'I knew I'd seen this sign before! It was on that Marek guy's cloak, and the thing is, I've seen it other places around the city. I'll bet that's why the dude didn't want his picture taken, he's just some weird old tagger!'
You're very, very wrong, she thought to herself. The last status update mentioning Marek was short and sweet- 'Going to forget about this Marek guy. I don't have time to waste worrying about some middle-aged vandal.' On a hunch, Kelly did a separate search for Harlan Bettis, which led her to an Amelia City Journal story.
Harlan Bettis had been found dead three weeks after his last post about Marek. A hiker in the woods north of the city came upon the bloody stump of a leg and called police, who discovered the rest of his dismembered body in a clearing nearby. The paper offered almost no other details, but Kelly felt that hand of dread bury its fingers deep in her hair.
She decided she didn't need to search for more information. She would simply forward a message to the rest of the family to be careful never to be caught alone with the man nearby. Her father was a fearless man most of the time, but the Lord gave men fear for a reason- to help keep them alive.
**
As noted before, sometimes, signs are ignored. This is especially true of those who either aren't looking for them, or don't want to see any that call their plans into question. In the case of Theodore Jenkins, it was the former, because he'd already gotten his sign from God, and he interpreted that sign to mean he needed to lead a protest in Amelia City.
The sign in question was still before him, but he wasn't paying attention, and the universe has little time to waste on those not willing to keep their eyes open to all the possibilities. He'd wanted to get some background on the police officer whose funeral they were going to demonstrate against. He wasn't exactly tech savvy, but the local library got papers from all over the Midwest, including the Amelia City Journal. Computers, he'd often said, were too easily made into tools of the devil.
He'd found the story about the initial shooting in the newspaper archives room. While small, the Rabins Library had enough space in this room to house three months of papers from the seven major publications it carried. The shooting had taken place a month and a half earlier, in a part of downtown Amelia City referred to by locals as Shadow's Run.
Officer Clay Forsythe had been responding to a call of shots fired in an apartment building on Harrow Street. Neighbors were lining the sidewalk in front of the building that night when he got there, and they told Forsythe and his partner, officer Jim Hark, that they'd all heard a great deal of screaming and commotion coming from apartment 417 starting at 8:30 p.m. Several minutes later, gunshots followed, coupled with a lot of banging and crashing.
The two entered the building, and according to Hark, when they got out of the stairwell on the fourth floor, he was immediately ambushed by a man in a long, dirty coat, wearing all black and some kind of mask to hide his features. He heard Forsythe shouting at the suspect for a moment before he was rendered unconscious.
He'd been out for two or three minutes when he came to, discovering his partner on the floor with a bullet wound to the head but still breathing. EMS personnel had arrived on scene a minute later, as the occupant of 417 was out on the sidewalk, dead. Witnesses said they'd seen his mangled body thrown from his apartment window, his Glock 9 mm in hand when he fell.
What Theodore Jenkins should have seen but did not was in the photo taken at the scene when paramedics were loading Forsythe into an ambulance. In the background of the photo, standing among the witnesses, was Marek, a wicked smile plastered to his bearded face.
Ted found another story about the incident in the same paper dated a few weeks later. Neighbors and friends had come forward to talk about Harry Benoit, the man who'd lived in 417. They all claimed that he'd been acting strangely in the weeks leading up to the incident. One friend, a coworker of Benoit's at First National Insurance, said that he'd been 'talking to himself about a demon in chains following him' and being 'attacked by toad monsters'.
Of the two ammo clips Benoit had fired, only two bullets had hit officer Forsythe. Authorities speculated that a burglar had broken into Benoit's residence and an altercation began. When authorities arrived, the suspect was in the process of fleeing, disabling officer Hark and using officer Forsythe as a human shield when Benoit pursued. They further speculated that the suspect murdered and threw Benoit out of his apartment window after the officers were downed.
Whoever he was, the suspect was still at large and considered extremely dangerous. Ted considered for a moment that the funeral and their protest would be taking place only six blocks from where the assault had taken place. He would have the family keep a close eye out for anyone suspicious, just to be safe.
Some might reconsider going, but not Ted. The idea that some psychotic might be on the loose would not deter him. He would rely on the Lord's protection, as ever he did.
Can you give me a hallelujah?
Reverend Jenkins and company remind me all too well of many other religious groups, such as the infamous gang at Westboro Baptist, who hypocritically preach the word of the Lord while ignoring the demands for mercy and sympathy for others He insisted on.
When I was researching the history of television animation in America, I found in the 1980s that there were several religious organizations who conducted what was largely a smear campaign against the animation studios active at that time, accusing them of being agents of Satan and child molesters with absolutely no evidence or proof. As a historian, I find it appalling that I have to show proof of my research and activity when writing via footnotes and bibliographies and such, and these people do not.- and yet they get taken seriously, still.
So I really don't have any love for their kind of activity.