My name is Michael Sheppard and I am the definition of purgatory.
I’m the kid at sports day who would never win an actual prize or the consolation prize.
Tragically average.
I could take a bullet to the head in a mass school shooting and they’d probably forget to say something good about me. Or even forget I was shot. The one time I finally deserve a second of acknowledgement and they’d probably call me Mark Sherper.
No one ever tried to unlock some hidden potential.
They just let me be.
I was eight years old at your standard production line middle school when I came to meet my two best friends. A freckled kid called Billy, and a blonde girl with pigtails called Dawn.
Dawn went on to become a bit more popular.
She got a pair of tits pretty early.
But she never replaced me.
And Billy was Billy. Freckled and beige.
So we were the kids at school that you don’t quite remember, the ones who always blended into the furniture, not big enough losers to bully, but then at least we would probably have been remembered.
I was always fascinated how something can be formed from a whole load of nothing. And that’s what we were: empty space with a minuscule dot of importance. But we had each other.
When I think back to that day at the reservoir, Billy was as he had always been. Brash. Carefree. Simple. Whilst Dawn was looking the more serene that day than any recollection I had of our eight years of friendship.
Seeing her like that, well, she always fascinated me. She always meant a hell of a lot to me. I got adopted by a family of religious nuts and spent the first 8 years of my life soaking up all their crazy notions. That pious shit, well, it made me cynical. I learnt to cast off most of it, yet one thing did stick with me though.
Deliverance.
The notion entranced me. Making your way to somewhere better, somewhere you don’t belong to, by clinging onto the ankles of someone superior to you. Someone prettier, someone more interesting, someone more captivating. Someone who you will never forget every detail of how they look. Someone like Dawn.
I guess when you feel like you don’t really amount to much, you need to hold on to someone like that.
It’s always been that way. Think about it.
Do you think anyone would have given a fuck about Jesus if he was ugly?
No. He had Hollywood training regime abs. His hair that looked like something out of a shampoo commercial. The perfect teeth of a pop-star.
Everybody loves a martyr.
As long as they’re beautiful.
Well Dawn was something like that to me. She showed me the first kindness anyone had ever shown me. I remember the first time she saw me freak out after I got a question wrong.
“You’re weird” She said to me.
And like that, we were friends.
We hung out most days after class; she showed me how to live like a normal kid. She showed me how to get into trouble. One day after class we stole a couple of those long rulers we used in science class, we took them to this field and we would have these little sword fights.
Once, she hit me across the hand and it reminded me of how Samuel – my religious nut of a foster father – used to strike me whenever I got my passages wrong. I used to cower from him, but when she did it, I couldn’t help but laugh. She was a fierce heretical warrior queen, and I was fascinated. We’d fool around for hours, and then watch the evening creep in, tired, bruised and breathless.
Another time, we found a huge mound of stones and pebbles that had been laid aside for some construction project or something. She stood at the top of the hill, and I’d try and charge up to take her side. We’d be locked in a struggle at the top of this mountain, and then I’d lose my footing and tumble down to earth in a cloud of dust and laughter.
She’d pick the gravel out of my arms, and we would do it again.
She showed me kindness, laughter and peace.
If I was going to experience any form of deliverance, I wasn’t getting there on my own merit.
Dawn would have to be the one to take me that one step closer to something better.
My lady of the lake.
My sister of ruin.
And in time,
when she was propped up against that tree, motionless and bleeding,
my martyr.
The Sounds Inside 