well, I'm no good at fiction, but I'm intrigued by the idea. So I started it off:
John Englehard, paunchy and balding, wearing a slightly out-dated suit, gestured abruptly at his wife to enter the Kingdom Hall through the door he had just opened. He turned to get a vacuum cleaner out of the car - it was their study group's turn to clean the hall. Englehard was importantly directing the rest of the group to gather the cleaning supplies and head into the kingdom hall when his wife, moaning weakly, staggered to the door. She pointed into the dark lobby with a frightened look on her face and passed out cold. Englehard and his study group crowded into the doorway to see what was wrong. They gingerly stepped over Sister Englehard and tiptoed carefully into the hall. As each one saw the body on the floor, he or she gasped and stopped - causing the people behind them to trip and fall over the unconscious woman in the doorway.
What they saw was unheard of in the insular world of Jehovah's Witnesses. It was a dead body in the lobby of the kingdom hall. The brothers and elder Englehard moved forward to look more closely. The sisters huddled, and moved back to the doorway. When one of them again tripped on Sister Englehard, they finally turned their attention to her. Sister Moody, a motherly older woman, sat down and cradled Sister Englehard in her arms, while saying, "shouldn't someone call the police?"
That was the last sensible question asked over the next three hours, during which time Englehard called the rest of the body of elders and hysterically demanded that they rush to the Kingdom Hall. As each elder arrived, he looked at the body and asked the same question, "who is it? Does anyone know who it is?" Then, "what should we do? It will bring such reproach on Jehovah." Later, when Detective Howard finally arrived at the scene, he was amazed that no one had thought to call the police for so long, even though the dead man had obviously been murdered.
Note - so I guess what would come next would be police procedures, the first cops to arrive on the scene, obfuscation by the body of elders, the detective and the crime scene investigators arrive and cordon off the area and try to make sense out of it, with mounting frustration as the elders waffle instead of answering questions directly. When the cops finally leave, frustrated and annoyed, the elders congratulate themselves for being so helpful. "I wonder if they have ever seen any group as helpful and honest as Jehovah's Witnesses?" apparently totally unaware that every one of them had a secret and was telling lies.
Next!
