The Game of Shepherd and Dawse

by William Shepherd

  The Dawse community contained nothing that resembled Shepherd Wood. There were huts of sorts, but they were hardly more than makeshift shelters. There were no fires burning and there was filth and mess in just about every corner. There was no evidence of sanitation, as the creatures just seemed to let go where they stood and then walk away.

  The creatures were human all right, in the way they stood and walked and in the general shape of their frame, but they looked nothing like the very pleasing-to-the-eye Shepherd tribe. These people were about as ugly as one can get. Years of inbreeding and incestuous sex had seen to that. Almost every member of the Dawsey tribe had some sort of deformity: some had massive noses, some had strange shaped heads, some had elongated fingers and some had stumpy little arms. Yes, just about every kind of human deformity could be found on this Dawsey dale.

  The other odd attribute these ugly creatures had was that they all had (without exception) very beautiful blue eyes. This was something that seemed quite strange to the hunting party, observing them for the first time, because everyone in the Shepherd tribe had brown eyes. They also had, and again without exception, jet black hair. This was another oddity to the onlookers, as everyone in the Shepherd tribe had blond hair.

  In the distance Teewok could see two young creatures who had decided to pick up some of the recently deposited faeces and start chucking it at each other. It wasn't long before the larger of the two felt a big splat land on the side of his face. This so annoyed annoyed the creature that he proceeded to batter the smaller being, raining down blow after blow and kick after kick until the tiny creature stopped moving. The larger one then walked away, without even trying to wipe of the faeces of his face and showed absolutely no emotion over his actions whatsoever. No one else seemed to bat an eyelid at this either. When the tiny beaten creature came to – with blood and dirt all over his face – he lifted his head, quickly looked about, got up and darted away. The Shepherds noted this tiny Dawse had survived a harsh beating the likes that most adults of their own tribe would have died from. Yet through all this, the beaten creature had not shed one tear and neither had the one inflicting the pain.

  Among the many strange things in this place was the fact that the adult males were all very fat and the adult females were all painfully thin. Teewok could see the males were in control and that it was hard for the females to get at any of the food that may have been about, while the creature children ate only after the males and females had had their fill. The food on offer at this particular time seemed to be a semi-rotting carcass that had been dragged into the settlement. It was impossible to say whether the animal had been killed or whether the Dawse had come across a dead creature and dragged it in.

  Many of the fat-looking children running about actually turned out to be pregnant and a number of the adult females were pregnant too. About 10 metres from the rotting carcass, a younger member of the tribe had been pushed over a rock while she was being taken from behind by one of the males. She had been given a raw piece of meat to chew on, so she wasn’t taking too much notice of what was actually happening to her. One of the older emaciated women tried to get close to the abusing male, in competition for his affections, drawn by the smell of the meat the younger one was working on. The male didn’t look at her or even acknowledge her until she came too close. Then he lashed out with a clenched fist that sent her flying. She stumbled back and fell, hitting her head on the rock. After this she just lay motionless. It seemed that even if she was dead, no one was paying her any attention.

  This wasn’t the only lifeless body, as there were quite a few scattered about, all at different stages of decay and the place absolutely stank. The inhabitants seemed to group into families, if you could call them that. Each emaciated woman had an abuser male and each child had a set of abuser parents. There were no visible old people in this village, as the oldest seemed to be no more than 35 summers strong. This was a place of survival of the fattest and it seemed that once one of them could no longer dominate the others, they went hungry and died or were killed. However, more had survived than the Shepherds wanted to know about and wherever they looked, they could see the ghastly creatures. We now know in fact that half the world was populated by Dawse and the other half by caring Shepherds.

  One reason for the lasting survival of the Dawse was their insatiable appetite for sex. When they weren't sleeping, eating, fighting or killing – they were having sex. Old pushed themselves onto young, male attacked male, and then female - you name it, they did it - and if they were not doing it with other members of the tribe they were doing it with themselves. The death rate on this Dawsey dale was huge but then again so was the birth rate, so this kept a fairly even balance. You would have thought that most of them would have been wiped out through disease, but they had become immune to all sorts of diseases. Had the Shepherd tribe lived in this environment they would have been wiped out within a month's time through disease alone.

  The thing that had really sent Teewok into a trance was the sight of an older looking girl squatting as though she were about to relieve herself when all of a sudden, a baby fell a baby onto the ground still attached by its umbilical cord. Seemingly confused, the female simply gnawed the cord in two and left the just-born child where it lay. She never thought to look back at it, though she did look straight in Teewok's direction.

  Teewok suddenly felt hands on his ankles pulling him backwards and when he turned around, he was relieved to see Rivereye and Makeshaw looking down at him. He had been so transfixed on what his eyes were seeing that he hadn’t heard them saying they had seen enough and that it was time to go. Teewok didn’t need telling twice.

  No one in the tracker party spoke until they had put a few miles between themselves and what they had just seen. It was Teewok who broke the silence.

  “A bit of an awful place, eh“? Said Teewok. His overwhelming understatement made the others smile.

  “I didn’t like the look of that mudslide, Makeshaw”, said Rivereye.

  “Neither did I”, replied Makeshaw.

  They could see it was the mudslide which had allowed the Dawse access to Shepherd Wood.

  “Well, it is what it is”, Rivereye sighed in an almost philosophical tone of voice. “We have no option but to deal with it the best we can”.

  And with that they made their way back to the safety of the Shepherd settlement with relative calm.

  It was 7.30 in the evening and Angela wouldn’t be back for another half hour. Joe decided to finish there, as he wouldn’t have time to start another chapter and he always liked to give Charlie a bit of time in case he wanted to ask any questions. This was good because tonight Charlie had a lot of questions. Dawsey Dale had really intrigued him. The beasts reminded him of the Neanderthals he had been taught about in his second year of junior school. Joe did a very good job of answering Charlie’s questions, in fact he answered them in such a fluent way that one would think Dawsey Dale was actually a real place.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NETTIE

  “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

  ‘Spotty Nettie’ was the cruel nickname young Nettie’s classmates had bestowed upon her at the tender age of eight. In truth, Nettie didn’t have many friends – unlike most children in her school. She was ‘Miss Un-popular’, in the very classic sense. Not that it was her fault; she was just a child, and children are only as adorable as we make them.

  Nettie had not had the easiest of lives. Her father had walked out on her when she was just two years old, leaving her mother to raise her alone. It wouldn’t be the first time her father would walk out on her, nor the last. It was as though he were on a one-man mission to sow as much ill will into the world as he possibly could. His timing for coming back into his children's lives would be just as cruel as the times when he made his über quick exits. This loser had seven children in total and seven families he heaped his misery upon, repeatedly.

  He would turn up periodically with his b
ag of penny sweets, though never more than 12 pence worth. He would make a bit of a fuss, then off again he went. It was always about him, this man, and what was convenient in his life at the moment. These impromptu visits would always cause great disharmony within each family – both during the visit itself and for some months to come. Then, just when the family had settled back, as if on cue, he would show his face again. He truly was a one-man, family-wrecking machine.

  His children all thought he was something special because he was the ‘nice man’ with the penny sweets. It wouldn’t be until years later that the children would see him for the pathetic loser and homewrecker he truly was.

  Nettie was no different than any other fatherless child. She so yearned for a father and the love that should come with him that she thought her sperm donor was amazing. He was the cheerful, happy guy with the bag of sweets who ruffled her hair and gave her a wink. This attention was like a drug to her and Nettie never stopped talking about him once he left. Nettie’s mother, Tracey, resented Nettie’s father and resented the fact that she had been burdened with Nettie since her birth, so whenever the father would pay them a visit, Nettie could be sure there would be a fresh dose of resentment and cruelty from her mother. The irony of it all was that Nettie always looked forward to her father turning up, despite the fact it would always portend the horrible dark days sure to follow.

  Any lesser child would have grown into a nasty and vicious character, but Nettie soul’s purpose was to be a blocker – that is, someone who blocks the spread of negativity, almost like a sponge. This was not a purpose that Nettie was consciously aware of because it was what her soul had agreed to do before she embarked on her journey as a human being on this particular planet. This is something Nettie didn’t know it at the time and would never know - how truly amazing she had been - until after she left the planet.

  She was known at school as Spotty Nettie because of all the little spots around her mouth. She perpetually had these spots because her mother had a fascination with wiping Nettie's mouth with a dishrag after their evening meal. Her mother didn’t have too much in the way of brains and she never stopped to think that the bleach she used on the cloth when she cleaned was giving poor Nettie a rash. Another reason for her unpopularity was that Nettie incessantly smelled of pee. This was because whenever her mother knocked her about, Nettie would end up wetting the bed. Adding insult to injury, Nettie also wore big thick glasses with cheap nasty frames because her mother couldn’t be bothered to buy her any decent ones. From head to toe, Nettie was the personification of ‘victim’ waiting for the next would-be bully to aim their insults her way.

  To the untrained eye, all of this together made for a rather unattractive child. This meant Nettie never received the attention she so craved and when she did things to try and gain attention, she ended up with the opposite effect. Yet – for the more observant observer – she was the most scrumptious, adorable, cute little child that one could ever wish to meet, under all her external mess. Some around her were able to see through this – the first being Zoe Elkins. Zoe had her own problems, as she always had a blocked nose due to a sinus problem, but because of this she couldn’t smell the pee on Nettie’s clothes and became her first friend.

  Nettie’s other friend was young Charlie. Not that Charlie knew of this friendship, but Nettie considered him a good friend because of the occasions when he waved up at her bedroom window on his way home from school, after Nettie’s mother chased her into her bedroom for some imagined sin.

  Nettie’s other friend was Mrs Dot, her school teacher. Mrs Dot was the first teacher who didn’t use Nettie as the class punching bag and for this, Nettie was eternally grateful.

  Mrs Dot absolutely loved children. The more challenged the child, the more she loved them. Mrs Dot couldn’t have children of her own, but rather than becoming bitter about it she decided to go into teaching. At school, she showered her abundance of motherly love over all those who needed it. And there were many who needed it.

  Even though little Nettie often found herself being the emotional dustbin to those around her, she remained a gentle and kind soul. She never returned the negativity she received from others. When people were being spiteful toward Nettie, she would always do her best to let it go. Despite these burdens, she would be the first to feel sorry for others when they were unhappy. You could say that she didn’t have a nasty bone in her body. Nettie just did the best she could with the lot life had given her. She possessed an inner strength that most spoiled children would never have.

  Sadly, Nettie didn’t appear to be too bright. By the age of 10, she’d been long discarded by most of her teachers and consigned to the rubbish heap of British education. The yearly report that was sent out to each parent on their child’s performance was always the same for Nettie and it had become a time of year she’d learned to dread. Now the bed wetting would get worse, which meant more punishment and abuse from her mother, which in turn meant more bed wetting.

  Up to the point when Nettie got Mrs Dot as a teacher, her yearly reports would be a merry-go-round of negativity. This was the time of year that the less-well-liked children would be on the receiving end of all the pent up anger and negativity of their teacher. It may have been because a teacher was stressed out with work, or fed up with family life, or that he or she just didn’t like that particular child. But the effects were always the same. The power of the pen didn’t just become mightier than the sword, it became the sword and once the teacher had finished their negativity dump, it would be the turn of the parents. A golden opportunity for some.

  Nettie’s report would always have the same flavour:

  •Must try harder

  •Could do better

  •Feel I am wasting my time with this child

  •Spends too much time day-dreaming

  One glance would tell any casual reader what the teacher was urging the parents to do. Nettie was a day dreamer, there was no denying that. Day dreaming was Nettie’s solace. It was the one place she could go and be whomever she wanted to be. It was the one place where everyone liked her, and where she had a loving father and a loving mother. It was the one place Nettie thought of as home – a sweet little home with lots of fairies.

  Today was that very dreaded day of year that Nettie had been trying to shove to the back of her head, the day of the yearly report. Everyone thought it was hilarious how little Nettie would always be the first out of the school gates and how she would run like a maniac with a frightened look on her face. She had quite gangly legs that weren’t really made for running – let alone trying to run with the huge second hand, jumble sale school bag that was far too big for her. She did look a sight.

  “Go on, Nettie, run for your life”! Some cried after her.

  NETTIE

  This would be the cruel taunt that would echo behind her. Not that she took any notice of it, as she was more concerned with getting home. What the school children didn’t realize was that she really was running for her life. Her mother had set a strict time limit on the time it should take her to get home from school. Class finished at half past three and she had to be home by 3.33. Most of the time she made it. On occasion she didn’t – if some of the boys had been cruel and refused to let her pass or if they had been kept behind in class for a minute or two, then she would be late. It was on these occasions when her mother would really go to town on Nettie and unleash any pent up anger or negativity she herself had acquired during the day.

  Straight up to her room, no evening meal and an early night would be the order of the day when poor little Nettie had just missed the clock. Two seconds or not, the time was the time, as far as Tracey was concerned. Her only consolation on such days would be when Charlie would walk past and smile and wave to her, as she stared longingly out of her bedroom window at the other children and the great life they all appeared to have. Her mother knew that it would be a close call every time and she was actually disappointed when Nettie did make it. The real irony was th
at everyone at school thought Nettie loved going home and that that was why she made such a mad dash as soon as class had ended.

  “Come on, Nettie. I’ll run with you, if you like”, Charlie called out. He had some exciting news for Joe and couldn’t wait to tell him.

  “Ok, Charlie. I’ll race you”! Nettie smiled, pleased for once that she wasn’t the only child running like a maniac. All that running over the years had made her quite a speedy little racer and Charlie could only just keep up. They got to Nettie’s house and each caught their breath for a moment. It was the first time that Nettie had really enjoyed running.

  “Thanks, Charlie”, Nettie called as she sped into her house. “See you tomorrow”! Charlie slowly made his way up to Joe, who was sitting in his usual chair, in his usual spot outside his house.