40 night in the woods - going to church, meeting mom at work, pastor kate and bruce

Dear Readers,

Now that I had access to the church, I wanted to check it out. Great chance to as well on this beautiful sunset autumn evening. The tune that played was a more mellow version of the town theme.

I went into the church. The tune changed to gentle acoustic plucking and very mild, gentle instrumentation.

Mom was here at the desk, reading her book. We said hi and I said I wasn't here in a long time. She said she knew and that it was nice that I was in the building at least. She asked if I met the new pastor yet and I said nope. She said that she likes going for walks, so I might bump into her soon.

I asked mom how church was workin'. She said it was good; she was answering the phone and entering data into a special church admin app thing. She said she was watching tutorial videos and then got distracted by true crime videos. I teased her about slacking off at work and she said god will forgive her.

I told her about the dudes in the tunnel, that someone tried to paint the graffiti message all over their mural. I had to explain to her what the dudes were. She said it was terrible and I concurred, though neither of us seemed to be too bothered by it. She had to get back to work then.

I continued further into a darker corridor that didn't go anywhere. The doors didn't open. None of the doors did apart from the way back out.

I left the church and continued into the graveyard where I came across a big statue of some kind of popish figure, covered with overgrowth. I doodled it with some fire breath. It had some 8 pointed star symbol on its chest.

There was a sign next to the statue, displaying the church's services and schedule. The pastor's name was KW Young.

Further along were two people talking. A lady was speaking to a guy who seemed to be down and out. She was telling him that she was looking for something to help him and offered blankets. Their speech bubbles changed to stars and a hot dog. The guy was smoking a lot.

I went up to the lady and said hey. She recognised me as Candy Borowski's daughter. I asked who she was and she introduced herself as Kate or Pastor K. She was the new pastor. New to me at least, as she was here about 16 months. She introduced me to the guy she was talking to, whose name was Bruce.

I asked him if he lived in the woods. He paused briefly before saying yup. I then noticed the shanty set up he had going on behind him. Kate said they were working on some kind of solution before winter comes. She was very positive about it, saying god was a doer. Bruce said something about it being a lot of trouble to go to, but she said that loving your neighbour wasn't always easy and he was the actual neighbour of the church here. He said he appreciated it. She said we all needed help sometimes and that there was no shame in hard times. I excused myself, saying it was nice meeting them both. I said bye to them both. Bruce called me by the wrong name at first but I gave him my actual one. Bruce and Pastor Kate!

I doodled them both. Opposite the popish statue I drew Pastor Kate with a shiny halo above her head along with clouds and a big circle around her. I wrote "PASTOR K" and made the K all shiny as well. She seemed truly wonderful and kindhearted. I liked how she seemed to want to seem cool with the kids by shortening her name to K., even though it was more syllables to say pastor as well. On the next page I doodled Bruce with his tired, weathered face. I wrote "Bruce" underneath in gentle, cursive handwriting. This got me all choked up... He shifts his eyes around a bit as well. He still has life in him and he speaks like someone easy going, but at the same time he's very much in survival mode.

I continued past them. Even though I shouldn't, I tried jumping up on Bruce's roof. I couldn't.

I looked at the water tower. I always wanted to climb it but then there was a kid who died trying to do that. I told myself I'd get to it. I imagined I'd be able to see clear to Briddle from up there. Further on the music stopped at a cliff and it was just all ambient wind then. I headed back.