Children Of The Shepard (Part 1)
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The desperate barking of the dog and the terrified cries of the flock
It was enough to send a heart racing, the intoxicated blood pumping through the already weak body. He rushed to the exit of the house, the table that stood in the way was pushed aside with the brute force of a drunken man, glass bottles shattered on the floor, sending sharp shards under his bare feet and burrowing under the skin.
It was not a time to care about the pain or the blood soaking the carpet. In the blink of an eye, a thick brown coat wrapped around his body, and a steel shovel landed in his hands, the nearest weapon he was able to grab. The door was met with a heavy push, and it swung open as his body staggered to the wet dirt.
Shovel hit the cold floor as he tried to stand still with the support of the tool. There was no time to waste. Bloodied feet pushed forward into the harsh darkness, dragging the body to the source of the sound. He tried to keep his balance, his heavy body swinging from left to right as he made his way up the small hill. The sheep should be near. Their cries were getting louder, and so were the thoughts in his head.
Visions of twisted, pulled-out guts, blood splattered across the white fur of his beloved animals. It all felt like a punch in the gut; the remains of the supper demanded to be let out.
Let go. Lie down and rest. It's all over. Said the voice deep in his head. And he was willing to succumb to it. To it, sweet temptations, but one more step forward, and there it was, a big white moving blob made of his precious animals.
Hugged together so tightly to the wall of the wooden fence, they looked like their bodies had melted together, twisted in one another. His legs stumbled down into the field of green grass, standing in front of the terrified flock. He looked up ahead in the direction of the other end of the railing. Behind it was a space with a few lonely pine trees. Even tho the vision was blurry and the only source of light was the stars on the night sky, in the darkness, he could make out two things very clearly.
The white, dead body of one of the sheep. And two glowing yellow eyes staring back at him from the void, eyes of the murderer. White teeth shone from beneath the black fur, dripping with thick, red blood and mocking him. The beast growled from the darkness, but stood on its ground as the fur on its neck rose.
And so did the Shepard. His body curled up in a defensive position, shovel turning into a weapon of last resort.
And then the Devil attacked and jumped to the front above the body of the victim. Shepard tried to stand his ground, show that there was no fear in his heart, but when the animal attacked, he stumbled back. Not enough to fall to the floor, but just enough to get a bit of distance from the predator. But it still pursued in its hunt, in the blink of an eye it pounced on the drunken man, sinnking it's teeth in his shoulder.
Tearing through the fabric of the coat with ease. He screamed, and the sheep did so with him. Arm swung in an instinct, and the closed fist slammed into the right side of Wolf's muzzle.
The animal whined in pain and shock, and blood and teeth spilled out. But it won't let go without a fight. The next target was the neck, but before its jaws could bite his body again, the same fist hit it again and again.
Once to the neck and once to the side. Ribs crunched as the animal fell to the ground, trying to crawl away. But the bloodied and bruised shepherd won't let it get away.
He stood up, and at this moment felt as sober as the day he was born. Hands hold the weapon tight. And before the animal could even realise, the metal edge of the shovel found its place in its head with one brutal swing.
"Goodbye, Devil," His raspy voice said softly with sadness.
But he had to kill it. It was either him or it. It or his sheep. Shepard walked over to the massacred body of his beloved animal and fell to his knees. Grass was shining with blood, pouring from its guts. He ignored it and picked her body up, comforting the dead animal in his arms, tears running down his cheeks like a flood.
Sun raised from above the hill, bathing the poor village in warm rays as if it didn't witness the massacre of the previous day, like the full moon didn't tell her about everything it saw the night before.
It was a morning full of sadness, yet everything was slowly crawling back to its previous state.
The bloody shovel went back to its original purpose, moving the piles of wet dirt down the hollow pit, covering the red and white limp body with the black mud. It was almost as if he lost his child, one of many, but even the weakest of them meant everything to him and yet nothing. Something that brought food to his mouth, and yet something that could be traded away so easily for a sack of cabbage or potatoes. But yet he couldn't help but feel a great deal of sadness rooted deep in his heart.
"You wanted to sacrifice yourself for that mindless creation? I thought you knew better than that." The female voice in slight disappointed, as the soft hands of its owner put wet cotton filled with a weird mixture of oils and herbs against the bloodied and tarnished wound of the Shepard.
In response, he just groaned and twisted in his seat slightly as the mixture filled his wound with the feeling of sharp pain delivered in short waves.
"If you can't accept what has been planned for all of us, how can you be a good worshipper of our Lord, my dear Shepherd?" The woman asked yet another question as she was finishing off her work, putting a bandage over the bloodied shoulder.
"You can't understand that, and I'm not expecting you to. You never had children on your own, nothing to call your own." And he was right with every word that left his dry lips.
Anna appeared in the village as suddenly as comes and goes a summer rain, bringing nothing with her, as if she was born yesterday from the nameless mother, knowing only her own name and the knowledge of herbs and medicine. And yet no one ever dared to question her previous life, as it wasn't important; what was important was here and now.
She stayed silent as the Shepard stood up from his seat and left, paying for her service with a look of approval before the wooden door to her cabin closed.
The next month was filled with routine. The same work was done over and over again. The sun came up and down, and despite the sadness that spread like a plague inside the shepherd, he kept working. The whole village already found out about the tragedy of Shepard, but none of them understood it. Most laughed at him for crying over something as small as a farm animal. He could always go to the town a few hours down the road and get himself a replacement. But he refused to.
It was the first warm evening in a few weeks, indicating the start of summer. Shepard's throat was filled with the burning sensation of the sweet cold beer coming down it as he chugged down another mug. A drunken man sat beside him, almost tumoring down to the wooden floor as he did so.
He began to mumble something under his breath, but the shepherd could loosely make out a sentence out of the drunken gibberish.
"God have mercy on the soul of your child." Shepard raised his bushy eyebrows, and his sunken brown eyes moved to face him.
"I don't know how you know about my daughter, but please shut your mouth,"
He answered harshly, recent weeks had been hard even without a drunken beggar reminding him of the part of him that he had lost a long time ago.
"It was a great deal of a tragedy. May please God be merciful,"
Shepards' already thin lips turned into a barely visible slit under his wet black moustache, as his fists clutched, the skin of his hands turning red from the pressure. In the heat of the moment, he was ready to clutch his dry fingers around the neck of this pathetic drunk and keep it this way until his face turns the colour of sky right before a storm and those yellow eyes jump out of his sunken sockets.
So he rose from his chair, wooden seat under his body creaking from relief, before he pulled out two bronze coins from the pocket of his jacket and threw them on the table before leaving the tavern into the Dead of night, light of candles being replaced with the light of the moon.
His feet sunken into the wet ground of the dirt path outside of the tavern, cold evening air wrapping itself like a scarf around him as his big silhouette made its way further down the road, heading towards the wilderness of the forest. Milky light of the full moon illuminates the way ahead, peeking from behind the bare branches looming above his head.
On his side, in contrast to the night sky, his sight could make out black silhouettes of the nearby houses built just on the edge of the wild. Hollow husks populated by human warmth, designed to keep it inside and keep it safe. Not so different from his own, not so different from his own hollow husk of a home, his family once occupied, that failed to keep the warmth inside, to keep it alive.
He couldn't pull his eyes away, wondering if their life was in any way close to his. Did their children like to play in the mud? Go fishing? Help out in the garden? Just like he did. Are they the key that turned the hollow shells into warm homes?
As he proceeded forward, step after step, the distant building hid behind a thick wall of trees and bushes, obscuring his view, forcing the shepherd to walk forward and focus on the dark path lying ahead. Step after step, he walked deeper into the darkness of the well-known dirt path, drowning in it as the moonlight flashed from time to time for a quick glimpse of time.
Each time it did, revealing wet mud that formed by the rain last night, before it flashed one more time, revealing a small figure standing in the middle of the road, its small body obscured by a white pelt of curly white fur, wrapped around its body like a dirty cocoon, leaving a small opening around its face. Only part of their body that wasn't obscured by the darkness or the pelt was a thin blue line just under the small nose, that barely resembled a pair of lips, cracked and pale.
His hand instinctively pulled forward to grab the child, to pull the dirty rag off of it, to bring it to the safety and warmth of a home. But the petite figure just moved back into the shadows, dogging Shepards' touch, dragging the filthy pelt along with it.
“Come on, child. It's dangerous out there.”
He said somewhat roughly but with a hint of fatherly tone hidden under the wave of the raspy, deep voice, before his arm extended yet again, and ended with the same outcome. Child moved back yet again, keeping the space between the mountain of a man and them.
His dry lips smacked against each other in frustration, before he made an action of last resort, massive body moved forward trying to grab them by the pelt but before he could even feel the dry curled fur between his fingers the child jumped to the side and made it's escape into the wilderness slipping into the darkness, with Shepard soon to follow and start a chase after the child.
Branches above their heads blocked out the light of the moon, drowning them in the pitch darkness of the forest, with only the dirty white pelt ahead somehow sticking out from it, almost like the moon in the night sky.
His legs began to sting, indicating that he should give up on the chase that was lost from the start.
Years of hard labor should have prepared him for such a scenario; he should have won, his legs are longer, stronger, built for such an instance, yet somehow the child was much faster. Despite the weight of the pelt pulling the child's body back, dragging behind it on wet grass, pulling its little head backwards to the point at which it should snap like a twig, it just kept on running like a wounded deer desperate to survive.
Air hissed as it exited his lungs with each deep, exhausted breath, but he was not ready to give up just yet, his body sending a million overwhelming signals of distress as it began to show signs of his age, cracking the facade of a strong man he had built up over time. And like if the child heard the begs of his body that it should not be able to hear, it dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, cutting the chase as suddenly as it started.
When the limp body fell, the old man's body got a sudden Burst of energy, forcing him to spring towards the child in a desperate plea to see them all in one piece, without any marks or scratches, despite how hard they fell into the cold, wet ground.
He was fully expecting a cry, a whimper at least. But nothing came; it was silent, and the only sensor his brain could register was the sweet, heavy odor of something rotting. Knees buckled up under him, the palm of his hand finally touching the whiteness he chased after. Up close, it looked more like a mix of rust and mud, harsh and sticky under his fingers.
The innocence is gone fully, leaving a gruesome scene hidden away under a false sense of child-like wonder. He gently tugged on it, pulling it towards himself, revealing a round, white face, drained of color. It was a boy.
Or what remained of him. His eyes were like two round charcoals devoted to the flame that once ate them up, dry and crookedly pointed into the night sky. Small pointy nose hidden away between swollen once rose cheeks, now in the color of sky during a storm, blue and purple with red thunders of scratches crossing over them. Tongue like a rotten fish, ready to explode under as much as the slightest of pressure.
It was much too far from what he could handle; dirty fur was slowly laid back on his face like a father covering up his son so he could keep being warm during a cold winter morning. And with this last ditch of honor, he could offer his last fatherly act.
He puked.