Betrayed Ch. 03

We waited, and waited for a response from him. Finally the front door opened and Celia came out. He stood at the door watching as she slowly walked towards us and, just as she reached half distance to the front fence she ran. The instant that she broke into her run his hand came around from behind his back and he raised the shot gun and fired. Celia sprawled face down on the path, her back covered in blood. As she fell he raised the barrel of the gun to his chin but before he could pull the trigger one of the marksmen fired. The bullet took him in the shoulder and spun him around, he dropped the gun and before he could pick it up again several policemen sprinted to where he stood and tackled him to the ground.

An ambulance crew ran to Celia and examined her. "There's a lot of bleeding but it is superficial, she's one lucky lady. Once we get all of the shot out of her and clean her up she'll be fine. She'll have to stay in hospital under observation for a day or two before they release her."

"When will we be able to speak to her?" The policeman asked him.

"That's not for me to say, as soon as the doctor's say it's okay, but my guess is some time after they operate."

"Not exactly the outcome we wanted, but a satisfactory one as it turned out. What was that about facing ridicule and loving people?"

"I'm afraid that I got a little personal there, I was speaking from my own experiences that, with the help of my new 'bestie' and future husband Andrew here I've managed to overcome. I was just hoping that he could see that he isn't alone in his fight against what people will think of him in the situation that he finds himself in."

"What is his situation? We know that he's a pastor in a church and has had a few problems, something to do with a porn video being shown in church and the church forgiving him, but something has happened since then hasn't it?"

"Yes. The problem is that he lied to me and the church when he told us that what they saw on the video was an isolated incident that happened a long time ago and that he'd sought forgiveness from God and my mother and had been given it. It now appears that this was not the one off event, but that he had been having an ongoing affair with the lady in question ever since."

"You don't mean with the porn star?"

"Yes and no. Soon after they had begun the affair she gave up the porn industry. The affair which would have gone on simmering under the surface of his life, came to a head when, following his being forgiven by the church, he dumped her, hoping that by doing that he could prevent anyone finding out about it. She didn't take too kindly to this so she went public with the ongoing affair, she filled out a Stat Dec telling all, and threatened to go to the press with it. I guess that he lost the plot about then and took it out on my mother first, she's in hospital and will be filing charges, I'll see to that. Then he confronted Celia, that's the other woman. I don't know what he hoped to achieve but I think we may have stopped a murder/suicide. I think that he needs psychiatric help."

"We will have him examined before we proceed, he may well be charged under the Mental Health Act as criminally incompetent."

"I just hope that everyone concerned can emerge from this nightmare in one piece."

"We can hope. We will need you to come down to the station and give us a statement. I don't envy you having to go through this in detail but if we are to get to the bottom of all of this we need as much information as we can."

Andrew had been standing by me the whole time and he now took me in his arms, he didn't say anything, just held me tightly and brushed my cheek with his lips. I clutched him to me, I could feel the need to cry welling up inside me. "Just let it go, I've got you." I let it go.

The negotiator stood watching us and when I eventually stopped sobbing he placed a hand on my shoulder. "You are a very lucky young woman to have someone who loves you enough to stand by you in your time of need."

"I know, and I think that he'll be doing a lot of standing by, I need to speak to the church and prepare them for this latest drama."

"Good luck with that."

Luck wasn't all I needed, a hide like a rhinoceros would have come in handy. To say that the Elders were furious was just the start. "What the hell is going on here? First we have you fixing it so that we all saw Pastor Williams caught 'in flagrante delecto' with some whore, then we have you apologising to all and sundry for showing it and confessing to having made a huge mistake and begging us to forgive him, which we did." The mood in the church office then went from disbelief to aggressively unsympathetic to my situation. "We, on your recommendation," the emphasis was on 'my recommendation' as if they had nothing to do with their decision, "allowed him the opportunity to redeem himself, which we did. We allowed him to return to this church in a slightly diminished capacity and now you come here and tell us that not only has he lied to us but that he has assaulted your mother and tried to kill his whore. Did either of you stop to think of the ramifications that your actions will have on this church? We will be lucky to survive this!"

"How do you think I feel? I trusted him because he has always told me that I could. He betrayed that trust, but you care nothing for the damage that this has done to me."

"You convinced us to give him a second chance. It was your fault that we have been embarrassed by this, humiliated by this turn of events."

"Can't you understand that he has deceived me as well? I didn't know that he had maintained the affair with Celia for the best part of twenty years. I knew little of my father, because of his devotion to his work, to this church, he has distanced himself from me."

"We have now found ourselves in damage control. We have to find a way to minimise the fallout from this disaster. Would it be asking too much for you to have no further contact with this church?"

"That's great! Not once have you asked how Mum is, let alone me or Celia or Father, it is all about you, but then that is all this church is about, yourselves and how that you could acquire more wealth and power. A scandal like this would have a negative impact on your bottom line."

I gave up on them and went home to a warm reception. "You have no idea what I've been through today, talk about a roller coaster. To top it all off there was the meeting with the Elders. They couldn't give a stuff about how any of us felt, it was all about them and their finances."

"And you're surprised at that attitude? It comes as no surprise to me. Let's try to forget all about this for tonight."

"I don't think that I can, forget it that is."

"We'll see about that." He kissed me."I love you, I love your lips," he kissed them, "Your eyes," he kissed them too, "Your ears," and those, "your breasts," you guessed it, those as well, "Your glorious pussy," he really went to town on that, first he kissed it and then his tongue explored inside it, and then his cock enjoyed it. And I enjoyed his cock and for a while I forgot all about my problems.

We had only been at work for about an hour when I got a phone call. "Ruth, it's Pastor Lincoln, the Elders would like apologise for our behaviour yesterday and we'd like to speak to you. Could you call by the office at two o'clock this afternoon?"

"Sure, I'll be there." I went into Andrew's office. "The church Elders want to meet with me this afternoon, I would like you to be there, would you?"

"Of course, I want to be there in case they decide to browbeat you into taking full responsibility, publicly if possible, for what has happened. The way I see it is if you confess to having been betrayed by your father they are absolved from responsibility and can carry on regardless. They may lose some of their membership but it will probably return to its present level in a short space of time, at least that's what they are hoping for."

The next call was from the police. "Miss Williams, could you please come down to the station, we need a statement from you to verify what you told us yesterday. Shall we say in one hour?"

"I have a few urgent things to tidy up here that may make me a few minutes late, but I'll get there as soon as I can." I wasn't going to let them browbeat me either, but, on the other hand I didn't want them all trooping into the store, bad for image.

"Why don't you go now, I can't see any problems with you finishing up later."

"Thank you for that, but I didn't want them to push me around either. If you don't mind I'll call by the hospital and see how Mum's getting on."

He kissed me with as much passion as he had last night, and this morning, and I was in danger of forgetting all about Mum. "Go, get out of here and call me as soon as you've seen your mother, I want to know how she's doing as well."

"Thank you my wonderful man." I kissed him and he held me for a little longer than expected, it was almost as if he was as scared about Mum as I was.

I had every reason to be scared. The nurses told me nothing but I caught sight of the doctor coming out of her room. "Doctor, I'm Ruth Williams, your patient's daughter. I was wondering if you could tell me how she's going. Just how bad is it?"

"It's not good. She has been very badly beaten, the face is the least of our worries." I had seen her face, what could be worse than that? "She has three broken ribs so breathing is a problem, she has bruising around her kidneys and that is affecting her urinary tract, she's having trouble peeing. Her assailant, I understand that it was your father, he must have used a weapon of some sort because she has a broken arm and a skull fracture. She is lucky to be alive, if you hadn't found her when you did and called the ambulance straight away I'd hate to think what the outcome would be. Her prognosis is not good, but it is not hopeless."

"Can I see her?"

"You can see her, but she doesn't know where she is, we fear she might have some short term memory loss."

"Maybe that's not such a bad thing." I was allowed into her room and what I saw made me even more determined to see that my father was charged with assault at the very least, attempted murder would be more appropriate."

I stopped by Celia's room while I was there. She was laying face down, her back covered with dressings. "Hi Celia, how are you feeling?"

"I've had better days. I've been thinking and have come to the conclusion that this is all my fault. If I hadn't fallen in love with your father and wanted to continue the relationship this would never have happened."

"I assume that he was an eager participant, you didn't have to force him, did you?"

"No, there was some hesitation on his part but that didn't last long, I can be quite persuasive when I want to be. Then, when this all blew up, that was my fault as well, I should have been patient for a while longer and not allowed Rob to find out about the video. When it hit the fan, instead of letting it settle down and resuming our affair later, I did something silly and now your mother and I are paying for my stupidity."

"Don't even think that, you weren't to know how he'd react. This is not your fault."

"You are an amazing woman Ruth, you didn't like your father all that much but you put your reputation on the line to save him and his precious job. But he betrayed you. I did something stupid because I didn't like him very much at that time and caused all of this, but still you don't blame me. You are the most Christian person I've ever met."

"Thank you for that, I'll keep it in mind this afternoon when I'm in my meeting with a bunch of Christians at the church."

"Ouch! I feel sorry for you."

"You get better soon, Andrew and I need you to be at our wedding. Gotta dash, I have to give my statement to the police."

"Whoa there girl! What's this I'm hearing, you and baby brother are thinking of tying the knot, I don't believe that, he's never been the type for long term commitment."

"He is now." I left her to ponder over that snippet of news and headed for the police.

"You may as well be prepared for the bad news. If your father is deemed to competent to stand trial he will be charged with two counts of attempted murder. If he's deemed to be incompetent to stand trial because of his mental illness, than we will press for him to be detained in a mental health facility indefinitely. Your statement will go a long way towards making that decision. We will want to ascertain if he knew what he was doing at the time and that his acts were premeditated or if he was unaware of his actions. Now what can you tell us about your father's actions over the past few weeks."

"Before I make a formal statement, I would like to fill you in on the events of the past few weeks. When I've done that you can decide what will constitute an official statement."

"I have a better idea. We will record all you have to say, the Psychiatrist will be interested in it and will be able to use that as a guide to his determinations. We will filter out what is irrelevant for our purposes and set them out as your formal statement and you can come back in and sign it."

"I guess that will have to do. A few weeks ago my boss, Andrew Hudson, suggested that I should have a make-over. He said that my look at the time was retarding my development as a person. I had to agree with him, so he sent me to the beauty shop in the store. While not totally happy with the outcome, I thought that it was a bit over the top, I was impressed with the new me. My father was not and called me a whole lot of nasty names. I believe that he was scared of losing control over me. Anyhow, I stood up to him and he took it out on me at church the following Sunday. His public humiliation of me was the last straw so I left home and moved into my own apartment. Andrew helped me to move and we, as they say in the classics, became lovers."

"It was later in that week, on the Thursday, that one of the men at work gave me a DVD that showed my father having sex with another woman. The other woman I recognised as Andrew's sister Celia and there was a third person involved that I believed to be Andrew himself. I saw red and resolved to get revenge on all who had humiliated me, so I arranged for the video to be shown on the big screens at church the following Sunday, right when he was on stage giving his talk. The resultant hue and cry was impressive. Father took out his frustrations on Mother because he didn't know where I was living and she came to me to get away from him. I encouraged her to go to the police but she refused."

"Father rang Andrew trying to find Mother and Andrew rang me. He was understandably upset when I accused him of being in the video and pointed out that the male person that I thought was him was a cousin who was in the industry and who had encouraged Celia to make porn videos as a way of making more money. During that week we met with my father who assured us all that this was a once only mistake and that he had remained faithful to my mother from then until now. I spoke to the church Elders who allowed me to address the church the following Sunday, that was Sunday two weeks ago. I put my reputation on the line and pleaded with the church to give my father a second chance, and they did. That, I thought would be the end of it, but I was wrong. He was brilliant last Sunday, back to his fiery best and all seemed to have been resolved, but we didn't reckon on his scorned lover. Yes, they'd remained lovers all of that time. It was because she was getting frustrated in her role as his mistress and his failure to act on his promise to leave my mother for her that she manipulated Rob at work into showing me the video. She knew that I would over-react and she was right. After him being reinstated she threatened to go public with their ongoing affair and that was what instigated this whole mess. She, by the way, is blaming herself for what happened yesterday."

"What a mess. Okay I'll get a transcript to the shrink and see what he can make of it."

"Would it be possible for me to see my father?"

"You may be able to see him but you will not be able to speak to him. Believe me it is not a pretty sight." He rang the Psychiatrist and arranged for me to see my father.

He was right, it wasn't a pretty sight. My father was restrained in a straight jacket and was in a padded room. "We had to restrain him like that because he was trying to harm himself. He has been ranting non-stop, apart from a couple of hours when he just collapsed and slept on the floor, ever since he got here. We can't make sense of what he's been saying, he just seems to be quoting dis-connected passages of scripture. The only reason that we know that it is scripture is that he gives us the reference, but when we check in the Bible, what he's quoting is nothing like what is written in the Bible."

"What he's doing is 'preaching by concordance'."

"What do you mean?"

"It's a fairly widespread practice in certain churches by which you use a Concordance to list all passages of scripture that contain the word that you are using as a basis for your talk. It matters not if these cited texts have no contextual relevance to your message, you throw them out as fast as you can so that people can't keep up with you. It sounds great but means absolutely nothing. If you listen closely you will hear one word used in all cited scriptures and if you can get a transcript of his ranting you will find that there is probably no connection between them. An example is the scriptures cited for the justification of speaking in tongues. When these are taken in the context of the whole passage, or in the case of Paul's letter to the Corinthians in which he devotes four whole chapters to the subject, you will find that not one of them actually supports the practice."

"You don't sound much like a Pastor's daughter."

"How is one of them supposed to sound?"

"You are supposed to support him."

"A couple of months ago I would have, but not now."

"I can tell you that, based on current observations, your father is not competent to stand trial. We will have to wait and see what happens over the next days, or even weeks."

I left and went in fear and trepidation, to the church. I was shown into the office and confronted by the same table with the assembled Elders. "Thank you for coming Ruth. I must apologise on behalf of all of us here today, for our outbursts of yesterday. We were taken completely by surprise and had little time to compose ourselves before our last meeting. We have had a chance to sit down and think this through and have come up with a proposal that is in the best interests of all parties and which leaves the way open for your father to return to the ministry when he has recovered from this minor setback. All that we need you to do is to sign it as agreeing to what we've said and we can move on."

"When you say move on, what do you have in mind?"

"We were very impressed with your performance the other week and we are going to offer you the position of Associate Pastor in this church. We like your style, it grabbed the crowd. At first you will probably only be asked to give your talk about once a month, but as you gain in confidence and the people get to know you that will increase. It could quite easily be that you will not be seen as keeping your father's seat warm for him, but becoming a regular preacher in your own right. What do you say?"

"I'll have to think about that, it's a major step for me to take. Now can I read your statement." I held out my hand for it. What a load of hypocritical sanctimonious bullshit (pardon the French)!

'The leadership of the Hope Evangelical Christian Church announces the temporary stepping down of our Senior Pastor, Pastor William Williams, due to ill-health. Pastor Williams has been under a great deal of strain due to the increasing demands on his time with his pastoral and spiritual duties. The impact of this has caused him to be involved in a minor incident that occurred when his wife tried to restrain him while he was undergoing what his doctor's have called 'a minor psychotic episode'.'