Prompt: one sunny spring day, a new pastor, Paul, arrived at Elmdale Park Church. The next day, the murders began.
The murders had really started at Paul’s first church, Family Life. As an associate pastor, Paul’s responsibility was congregational care. The morning after his visit to an elderly parishioner, she was found dead in her senior living apartment. The police had cleared him of all wrong doing, but he never visited another member at their home.
By the time he was made a senior pastor at The River Church, he gave the untimely death little thought. But on a dark and stormy Thursday night he visited Norma, a beloved member of the church recovering from a nasty pneumonia. The next morning, she was found dead. No one questioned the pastor’s involvement. But Paul was spooked and stopped all visitations. Dissatisfied with his lack of personal care, the church asked him to leave, which is how he found himself at Elmdale.
This time, the deaths started immediately, before he even knew a single soul. In order to end this personal reign of terror, he and a skeptical detective concocted a simple plan: he would visit the home of an elderly neighbor, but when the meeting was over, the elder would disguise himself as the pastor and drive away. After watching the house throughout the night and not receiving any reports of disturbances, the detective knocked on the door. Hearing no answer, he broke the door down and found the pastor, on the couch, dead. There was never another untimely death at Elmdale Park Church. (243 words)
