The Bishop Tripped, Episode 3

©2011, Randall A. Beeler

This installment of the Comedy is part of an original novel I am writing, called The Bishop Tripped: the story of a man, who, disillusioned, seeks to escape his life, only to be mistaken for a bishop--all the way to the miter, crozier, and diocesan bureaucracy.

None of this writing is edited. It is written as it happens, with every post I blog. No premeditation, other than a story trajectory in my imagination and the characters who will take it and run with it.

To start at the beginning of the story, either scroll down to or click on Episode 1.

So, live and as it happens, here is the next installment of The Bishop Tripped …

He couldn't face Mara. So he left for work in the pre-dawn hours.

They'd set up a home for a family, living farther out of the Metroplex so that they could afford a house on his salary alone.

But the kids hadn't come. They'd tried so many doctors, with nothing precluded as to the cause of infertility. The possibilities abounded--it could be her, after all, her mother'd had a history of endometreosis. Endless sperms counts proved inconclusive--sometimes up, sometimes down. They'd even tried the most reliable method, Creighton, tracking her cycle. Nothing. No answers.

He worked hard, and she deserved better. The more that she didn't hold him guilty, that she just took it and received just his presence as a gift, the more he hated himself and stared back at her with recrimination. He could've taken blame and abandonment from her. Things hadn't worked out the way they'd planned them. But she stayed like it was … natural, like it was her duty. And that he couldn't abide. Duty, not love.

So, he'd made himself a ghost to her long before he was gone.