Chapter 84: A Knife in the Back

Jessie Harper felt very nervous sitting in her church’s board room as she waited for the elders of the Redsands First Congregational Church to come in. She was sitting there with her boyfriend, Bjorn Erikson and the church’s choirmaster, Sonika Jharm. All three were waiting for the elders of the church, the Head Deacon, the Area Elder and Jessie’s step-father, the Reverend Bryce Unsworth, and her mother, Glenda Unsworth, to file in so they could discuss the events of last Saturday night. Those events involved four people coming into the church with Sonika Jharm to have a look around the function hall where Bryce and Glenda’s wedding reception had been held on the previous Saturday night.

What was of concern here was the fact that one of those four people had been totally naked - a direct violation of a current total nudity ban put in place by the church’s hierarchy in Springfield and in direct response to what had transpired after that wedding reception in the week just gone. Those four people had been Jessie Harper, Kate Terrence, Bjorn Erikson and Jamahl Sable. Jamahl had been on a ‘detective mission’ to try and work out how the place had been all trashed up so badly after the wedding reception. That trashing had been blamed on the wedding guests and the rising tide of Lifestyle Nudism sweeping into the church - a tide that was now being steadfastly resisted by a very strong and vocal anti-nudity group. However, right now, the elders of this church were only concerned with the fact that one person in that group invited in by Sonika Jharm had been a Nudist of some description. Video surveillance footage had seen his naked body repeatedly walk past a glass door along with the others as they moved about the room.

As for the trashing ... Jessie Harper and everyone else at that event had strenuously denied leaving the place the way the cleaners had found it the next morning ... littered with used condoms, empty drink bottles, bits of discarded clothing and puddles of urine on the floor and a hole punched into one of the walls. Unfortunately, all the facts seemed to point at the wedding guests and the great little party they had had once Bryce and Glenda Unsworth had left. The anti-nudity brigade had lost no time in informing the church’s head office of this disgusting mess. This resulted in the sudden banning of all public nudity and its associated activities in relation to anything to do with the church.

That nudity ban was why the church’s elder-ship board wanted to know why Sonika Jharm had allowed a Nudist into the building accompanied by Jessie Harper and Bjorn Erikson. What they weren’t interested in at this stage is what the naked Jamahl Sable had discovered as a result of his keen, prying eyes. The main reason for their disinterest was based on the fact that they just knew nothing about it. Bryce, Glenda, Jessie, Bjorn and Sonika had held this ‘little secret’ very closely to their chests. Bryce and Glenda themselves had also discovered something else of real interest just the other day about one of the church’s longest serving deacons. This discovery had the potential to have a real impact on how these proceedings panned out ... and they were holding that discovery very close to their chests as well.