Chapter 28: Killers Need Teddy Bears Too
…continued from 6 June 2026...
FIRST TIME HERE? NO PROBLEM – START AT THE BEGINNING – WARNING YOU WILL BECOME ADDICTED TO THE STORY.
Johan put down the phone after speaking with Shawn. He felt cautiously optimistic that the first parts of the plan were being played out nicely. He was pleased that the news and online cycles of the incidents were being sustained for weeks, largely thanx to Shawn’s paid trolls who kept the comments and vitriol flowing. The fact that the two incidents followed a week after each other, made sure that the coverage was sustained.
He took a breath thinking about Whitey’s part in the next instalment of the plan. He was so unpredictable.
Whitey seldom went out in public with Themba, and when he did, he always had an entourage. He usually agreed to go out with Themba if they’d had a particularly bad fight after which Themba would dig in his heels and refuse to talk to Whitey for days.
Their last fight and its aftermath of sullen sulky silence had lasted almost 8 days and Whitey realised if he did not make up for it, he might just lose Themba.
Because despite his violent nature and the sometime violent nature of their copulation, Whitey loved Themba in his own way and could not imagine a life without him.
Themba was his teddy bear, that he held on to tight at night when he was plagued by dreams of the abuse he suffered in the orphanage. The taunts, the beatings, the insults, he could handle those. But as he grew older, he realised that there were worse horrors waiting.
The living conditions in the orphanage was just atrocious. It was run by a community member and staff of an extremely impoverished neighbourhood in the Eastern Cape. The paltry amount of funding the orphanage received from the local government went straight into the pocket of the corrupt owner and his wife.
The kids in the orphanage barely had food to eat and had nothing but hand-me-down rags to wear. Most of them ran away when they were old enough to, and took their chances on the streets, begging for money.
Continued tomorrow 8 June 2026, before 12pm
Reader Reviews (1)
Marshal B Roaman
28 August 2026In Today’s Author Insights, I ask DO WE REALLY UNDERSTAND THE ROOTS OF COLOURED GENERATIONAL TRAUMA? There are stories happening in our communities that most of us never see. Children removed from homes because of neglect, abandonment or abuse. Children who enter a system they never asked to be part of, while social workers and child placement organisations work tirelessly to find them somewhere safe to call home. And let's acknowledge them. These people are often desperately understaffed, overworked and dealing with circumstances that would break many of us, yet they keep showing up for our children. Whitey's (fictional) journey through the system in Cape Dominion touches on just a small part of that reality. But there is another side worth understanding. Sometimes the difficult, angry or dysfunctional behaviour we see in children, and later in adults, has roots in childhood trauma, abandonment and repeated disruption. It doesn't excuse harmful behaviour, but perhaps understanding where some of it comes from can help us respond with a little more empathy. Let's remember the children behind the statistics and the people working quietly to give them another chance. Sometimes compassion begins with simply trying to understand.