Photo by Roger Starnes Sr on Unsplash
Haze hung over the broken black bones of the building, a noxious smell of wood and paint and gasoline. Tim dropped his bike beside the standing white sign declaring what the Sunday sermon would have been for the Second Baptist Church of Sneads Ferry tomorrow and approached where the congregation members sorted through the debris. Several shot dark, distrustful looks his way.
His light skin stood in direct contrast to most of theirs. The few white members were well known to the majority, having married in and been part of the church community for years. Those faces had streaks of soot.
Anger bubbled in his stomach, churning the breakfast he had eaten after working the morning window at his fast food job. Today, he had a split shift with morning and evening, giving him four hours to discover what Mr. Henderson had meant last night at the club. He had been right, the news covered it. It had cycled several times on the big television set up in the restaurant. Although the youth minister had been wrong about what the top story of the day would be. Judge Everett dying of a heart attack knocked this down to second place. White death always beats Black disaster. Even it if is a singular ninety-year old natural death.
“Timmy, what are you doing here?” Kiara asked. “You are going to get into trouble.”
He looked down at her, getting angrier at the shortness of her curls framing her face, realizing for the first time how much taller than her he was. His hurdler legs kept growing and he was basically all arms and legs at age seventeen. “I decided I don’t care anymore. How can I help?”
Her small laugh hurt his soul. “Got a dumpster on speed dial?”
“Actually…” Vinny had assigned Tim to deal with the vendors as part of his training to become a shift manager. “Let me see.” He pulled his phone from his shoulder bag.
A confused look crossed over Kiara’s face as he talked to someone in a broken mix of high school Spanish and English. Two adults closed on them. One looked like an older version of Kiara, only with full braids and beads clacking as she walked. The other a middle-age man with a belly but wide shoulders and taller than Tim, black and white sprinkled his tight curls.
Tim pulled the phone away from his mouth to ask, “He is willing to deliver and pick it back up for half price, if the dumpster can be picked up tomorrow by four p.m. so he can get it to his customer on Monday. He can get it here within an hour.”
“How much?” Kiara’s mother asked.
Tim recited the price he had been quoted. “Someone official will need to sign the contract when he drops it off.”
The man nodded down at the woman. “We can cover the cost if the church can’t,” he rumbled.
“Do it,” she told Tim before turning back to the man. “Nat, let the pastor know and get an area cleared.”
Nat wiped a soot streak on the side of the woman’s face, then kissed the cleaned area before walking off.
When Tim finished the call, giving the address for the delivery, he dropped the phone back into his bag.
“So, this is your White boy,” the woman said to Kiara.
“Mom,” Kiara rolled her eyes. “He isn’t my White boy.”
“You saved him, you got a responsibility.” The woman stated firmly before extending her hand out to Tim. “Beca Dixon.”
“Tim Boyd.” He shook her hand, then waved at the shell which should have been filled with music and laughter tomorrow. “Sorry about this.”
“Did you do it?” Beca asked point blank, her voice hard.
“No, but I know who did.”
“Going to report them to the police?”
He hemmed and hawed a moment. “That would not be effective.”
“Then why are you here?” Kiara shot at him like an accusation.
“To be as effective as I can.”
“Well, you can—” Kiara stopped midword, when her mother put a hand on her shoulder.
“He is still a child, like you, and he is sticking his neck way out just being here.”
Kiara black eyes flicked from her mother to Tim and back to her mother. “Fine.”
“What can I do to help?” Tim asked again.
“Once we got the dumpster,” Beca nodded to the people moving their cars, some of them driving off, likely to get demolition tools, “we will need help loading it up quick.”
“Would the youth group from First Baptist be helpful?”
“Do you think you can get them here?” Beca cocked her head, sending beads clicking.
“In a heartbeat.” He started pawing through his bag to dig out his phone again which was not exactly where it had just dumped it randomly. “Most of us listened to our Sunday School lessons.” Holding his phone triumphally, he paused, “Speaking of lessons, um, Kiara, I…”
“Spit it out,” the teenager snapped.
“That thing, you did, um, I might have done…something…like it last night.”
Kiara blinked twice, then studied his face. “Really?” She drew out the word, half-way between disbelieving and consideration.
Beca snapped her fingers to get their attention. “This can wait.” She pointed to where Nat was walking back with a younger, slimmer man who wore a shroud of authority even while in soot-covered overalls and wearing large muddy gloves and boots. “That isn’t something which should be discussed on these grounds, but we will discuss it as soon as possible. In the meantime, start calling your youth group and see who can came by today.”
(words 944; first published 7/5/2026)
Ordinary Monsters series
One) Monsters in the closet (5/10/2026)
Two) Monsters in the school (5/24/2026)
Three) Monsters in the Restaurant (6/28/2026)
Four) Monsters at the Church (7/5/2026)
Five) Monster in the Club (TBD)
