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Pastor Bob

Pastor Bob

A violent and sadistic man evades capture by masquerading as a Pastor in a rural Southern town. Only a young, gifted girl can see the sin etched on his soul but is it worth her life?

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Fantasy / Sci-fi


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Tabatha Stirling (United Kingdom)


Pastor Bob
By Tabatha Stirling

Pastor Bob Schwarz of Alexandria, Louisiana was a God-fearing, big-hearted fellow. Definitely, a man you could trust, whom you could put your money on. He had arrived to serve the Lord two years previously after the resident Pastor had met with a bizarre accident. Reverend Fogerty had not been a popular man, his liberal views were piss in the wind for Alexandrian folk and his cause of death, a throttling incident with a snakehead whip was secretly thought of as rather outlandish. Men of the cloth were supposed to die dryly, quietly and without fuss.

Pastor Bob knew everybody in his congregation by name. He could even give you your daughter’s dress size if you asked. Bob knew everybody in his street, devout and heathen, and was amicable to both sides of the evangelical fence. He was a raw-boned, hard-edged man, and if you didn’t know he was a Pastor you might think he’d handle himself well in a fight down at Miss Louisa’s on a Saturday night, trading fists with biker boys and heavy-knuckled trashcans in the blackened alley behind the bar, as the moon soaked up the blood from the concrete floor.
Bob had a voice that was like grain, smooth-smashed by a Nebraskan wind. It reached the nooks and hollows of a person and made for wonderful listening. His sermons were always short and to the point and his flock were grateful that he didn’t witter on, even though his subject matter often dwelled on Bathsheba, Delilah and Lot, women of wicked natures and great sins. But the way he told it, well, those whores deserved everything that came to them.
Yes. Pastor Bob was a very popular man and shepherd of his flock. Always first with the homemade brownies for a bereaved parishioner or working down the soup kitchens on the weekend even with his poor wife, Belle, being so disabled and never seen without a heavy black veil over her face. Nobody ever liked to ask about her after Regina Chaisson had inquired tipsily at a Parish fundraiser if Mrs Schwartz would be attending Church in the near future. The Pastor had coloured like a flame bug in the sun’s eye and become so silent it was painful.
Only one person in the whole parish didn’t buy the whole ‘Pastor Bob, good ole boy’ notion and that was Gracie Watts. Gracie was a strange looking child, who lived with her parents on Southswitch Bend, gravel spattered enclave of plain and embarrassed looking houses. The folks that lived in Southswitch were liberal thinkers, only in so much as pretending that they didn’t really mind their snow-white children sitting next to the black ones at school. A play date would be out of the question, of course, but they felt smug about their progressive ways.
Gracie was twelve and looked young for her age, her hair blew out about her head in skinny, alabaster strands and her eyes were a curious shade of teak and diesel.
But Gracie’s gaze could penetrate even the thickest skin with a knowing beyond her years because she could see the sin in people, and had done since she hit her head on a crooked, dust-pink stone that cursed her scalp with blood and her heart with a gift, as sharp and painful as Creeping Juniper.
Her parents were conservative sorts with a moderate real estate business on the banks of the Red River and suspicious of anything fey, so Gracie kept her experiences to herself.
She knew that bad people who had done bad things were smudged at the edges like spoiled fruit. That the blood in their veins was black, not red, and stood out from their awkward skins like branches in twilight. Old Man Maybury from the Two Cents store beat his wife and kicked his dog. Gracie knew this because she could see the sin etched on his heart.
Miss Regina kissed men who were not her husband and spent hours at the Super 8 Motel, off Route 49, sweating and hollering like a Mulefoot pig being dragged to the County Fair.
But the worst of them all was Pastor Bob, and when Gracie saw him for the first time her blood dropped two degrees and she fainted into her father’s arms.
Pastor Bob’s sins were not carved on his heart because they were beyond counting. No, his were inked onto his skin by some fiendish hand and at Church, Gracie found she had to lower her eyes at all times to avoid his greasy eyes and the taste of vomit that made her mouth twitch.
Once she had followed him after the service had ended, past the Hall and into the graveyard. There Gracie watched the Pastor pace up and down, his fists clenching in and out muttering foul and terrible things about women in the Congregation and other’s that she didn’t know. His eyes raged and a demented froth had formed at the side of his mouth as he spat their names and pulled at his hair.
Gracie had been so frightened that she had held her breath until her chest ached. But a large stone, disturbed by the vibrations in the earth, dislodged beneath her shaking feet and had rolled languidly towards the crazed man, hitting every bottle and concrete slab in its path.
Pastor Bob had looked up and seen Gracie standing there, trembling like a Spike rush in November, and moved in so quickly and closely that Gracie could smell the sweet, consecrated wine that laced his breath. His eyes were almost dead – just a small, mocking flare remained and Gracie knew that if God gave her another chance she would never follow Pastor Bob again or pray for him at night. She would never even think of him.
Pastor Bob Schwartz had dedicated his life to Jesus eight years previously. Before that, he had been known as Robert Black, or the Sewing Kit Killer by the media, because he had stitched up his victim’s mouth and eyes. There was no profound psychological reason for this; he just experienced a deep joy watching women suffer. He had terrorised the women of the Deep South for a decade before finding God after a near miss with a persistent Texas Ranger, whose body now fertilised a cornfield just outside Round Top.

Only his wife Belle knew about his past and she was incapable of telling anyone, being both blind and dumb. Belle was Robert Black’s eleventh victim, and his last. The one he kept alive because a man is entitled to something to keep him warm at night and, surely Jesus would allow him a small trophy of his colourful past? Something to remind him of his more boisterous, bloody days when he had ruled the South like a demon king.
And Pastor Bob would smile and wave at a passing parishioner, mouthing ‘God Bless’ at them while his ‘wife’, bound and mute, screamed silently from her wheelchair in the corner of the dust-free parlour.

END.


Competition: Friendly feedback, Round 1

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Read Reviews

Review 1:


Compelling hook?

Fresh?

Strong characters?

Entertaining?

Attention to mechanics
  • You demonstrate a professional quality of writing throughout the story.
Narration and dialogue: Balance
  • Your story struck a good balance between narration and authentic dialogue.
Character conflict
  • Your characters drew me into their world from the very beginning. Their goals and conflicts were clearly conveyed.
Plot and pace
  • Maintaining the right pace and sustaining the reader’s interest is a challenging balancing act. The story had a clear and coherent progression with a structured plot.

Review 2:


Compelling hook?

Fresh?

Strong characters?

Entertaining?

Attention to mechanics
  • The grammar, typography, sentence structure and punctuation would benefit from a further round of editing to avoid distracting from the quality of the story.
Narration and dialogue: Balance
  • There needs to be more balance between narration and dialogue. Avoid overdoing the narrative and remember that dialogue can diffuse long claustrophobic text.
Narration and dialogue: Authentic voice
  • The protagonist didn’t always respond believably against the backdrop of the story. Ask yourself if people would really answer to a situation in that way. Think about whether the characters’ voices could be more convincing for their age, background, gender, time period, genre, gender and ethnicity. Dialogue should be natural and consistent throughout the story.
Characterization
  • Make sure your characters are multidimensional. Do they have strengths and weaknesses? Mere mortals make the most interesting stories because they are like you and me and we are able to empathize with their journey. That’s how the connection with a character is formed.
Main character
  • Connect us to your main protagonist with a deeper characterization. Could your protagonist have a few more distinguishing character traits?
Character conflict
  • The reader’s experience of the story is heightened when the characters’ goals, conflicts and purpose are clear. Perhaps giving this aspect of the story further attention could be worthwhile.
Plot and pace
  • Maintaining the right pace and sustaining the reader’s interest is a difficult balancing act. Are you sure all the material is relevant to the plot, setting and atmosphere? Make sure each sentence makes sense to the reader, and each paragraph moves their experience forward.
Suspense and conflict
  • The joy of reading often lies in the element of suspense prompted by internal or external conflicts. Think about the conflict and tension in your story. How effectively has it been introduced?
Technique and tight writing
  • The writing was tight and economical and each word had purpose. This enabled the plot to unravel clearly. Your writing exhibits technical proficiency.
Point of view
  • Point of view helps the reader identify whose perspective we are engaging with, i.e. who is narrating the story. It can sometimes be helpful to double check that the point of view in the story is successfully handled. Ensure you consistently use the same point of view and tense throughout.
Style and originality
  • I loved your fresh approach. Creating a unique writing style while maintaining quality of prose requires both skill and practice.
Atmosphere and description
  • A writer’s ability to create mood and atmosphere through evocative description is vital to the reader’s experience. It’s a real skill to craft out how the characters react to the setting and atmosphere and perhaps your story could go further in its description. The reader wants to experience the same sensory and poignant journey as the characters.
Authentic and vivid setting
  • The scene needs to be vivid and realistic in order to hold the reader’s attention. Being concise and plausible at the same time is tricky. Giving this further attention could perhaps be worthwhile.
Opening line, paragraph and hook
  • Great stories, nowadays, start with a powerful opening line and compelling hook in order to keep the reader engaged. Have you baited the reader enough?
General comments from your fellow writer 2:
There was a lot happening in this story! It read like stories within a story so you clearly have plenty of creative ideas, which is great. The main character is certainly an interesting one and worth keeping. My suggestion would be to betray some traces of evil early on or make him more convincingly good. I am not persuaded he is really likable or clever enough to dupe the majority of his flock as he is now. Also, there was a lot of telling in the story. There is nothing wrong with it given the type of narration you adopted but it felt like you were telling the reader what they needed to think rather than allowing them to make an independent choice. The ending is not particularly original and could use a more sophisticated twist. Nevertheless your writing is good. You used some very clever metaphors. Well done.

Review 3:


Compelling hook?

Fresh?

Strong characters?

Entertaining?

Attention to mechanics
  • You demonstrate a professional quality of writing throughout the story.
Narration and dialogue: Balance
  • There needs to be more balance between narration and dialogue. Avoid overdoing the narrative and remember that dialogue can diffuse long claustrophobic text.
Characterization
  • Your characters were multidimensional. I found them believable and engaging and they genuinely responded to the events of the story.
Character conflict
  • Your characters drew me into their world from the very beginning. Their goals and conflicts were clearly conveyed.
Plot and pace
  • Maintaining the right pace and sustaining the reader’s interest is a challenging balancing act. The story had a clear and coherent progression with a structured plot.
Suspense and conflict
  • The joy of reading often lies in the element of suspense prompted by internal or external conflicts. The build-up was intriguing and I felt the tension mounting with each word.
Technique and tight writing
  • The writing was tight and economical and each word had purpose. This enabled the plot to unravel clearly. Your writing exhibits technical proficiency.
Point of view
  • The story successfully solicited the reader’s empathy through the clever use of the narrator's point of view. You show great deftness in handling point of view.
Style and originality
  • I loved your fresh approach. Creating a unique writing style while maintaining quality of prose requires both skill and practice.
Atmosphere and description
  • Your story was a feast for the senses. The atmosphere wrapped itself around me and transported me onto the page alongside your characters.
Authentic and vivid setting
  • The setting was realistic and vivid. The characters’ mood and emotions were conveyed successfully through the believable setting.
Opening line, paragraph and hook
  • Great stories, nowadays, start with a powerful opening line and compelling hook in order to keep the reader engaged. Have you baited the reader enough?
General comments from your fellow writer 3:
Fantastic story. I would have enjoyed some dialogue from the characters, but that's just me, it was an awesome story on it's own rights. Great job.