Pacta, Interlude: Fifteen; After
So I got over some issues I had with stuff I've already written and decided to post it. Some of Damma's background story, from when the boys were young. Nothing very supernatural about it, unless you count eighties' hair. 1838 words in total.
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Fifteen
Damma and Radmilo and Dragan are at a party on a playground. Damma’s fifteen years old with an Axl Rose bandana and a worn jean jacket, and he’s got a packet of stolen Blend in his pocket. Radmilo is there more to make sure Dragan doesn’t get in trouble than because he wants to - or at least that’s what he’ll tell their mother if she finds out. Radmilo’s clean-cut, his clothes second-hand but whole and tidy. He has one of Damma’s cigarettes in the corner of his mouth and a hand on Dragan’s forehead, telling his little brother over and over that no, he can’t have one, and if Rado ever catches him smoking he’ll twist his neck off.
When Rado’s off for a piss, Damma passes a cigarette to Dragan.
Dragan is theoretically dressed in the same getup as Rado, bought by their mother in the same store with the same care and attention to wear and tear. But Dragan, two years younger and a full head shorter than Rado, gets into at least twice as many fights, some of which he wins and some of which he doesn’t. His jeans are stained and torn at the knees, his rolled-up shirtsleeves none better. The sweatband around his head, which Damma knows he stole off an eighth-grader because Dragan’s mother refused to buy him ’gangster clothes’, barely holds his hair out of his face. He looks like some weird blend of street fighter, tennis player and momma’s boy, and he talks much too loud.
They guard their stolen beer. The playground is full of kids like them, and kids from other ’burbs; some are a little older, and these are the ones Damma worries most over. They wouldn’t come if it wasn’t to bully booze and smokes off younger kids - Damma knows, both from experience and because that’s what he does, when he can. He longs for the day that he’s eighteen, and can buy his own beer and smokes, and drive an old yank car full of girls. Then he’ll move to America and be in a band.
His hair isn’t really long enough for the bandana; it took him a while to tie it so that his hair was held back but not tucked away. Dad keeps yelling at him to cut his hair. If he didn’t want to drink it himself, Damma would have pissed in his beer. He fiddles with the bandana, pulling it down a little in front. A pair of girls pass by, all puffed-up blonde hair and chewing-gum smiles. They glance at him and giggle to each other, and Damma hopes it’s a good sign.
It’s almost summer, the end of nine long years of school waving at him from a distance, like a girl in a music video. The air is still chill at nights, but Damma can almost smell hot dust and asphalt, ice-cream and green grass.
Dragan smokes like a kid, little puffs that he doesn’t inhale. Damma looks around for Rado, sees no sign of him, and nudges Dragan.
”You gotta pull it down. Look.” He takes a drag off his own cigarette and an exaggerated breath to pull the smoke down his lungs.
Dragan tries, and starts coughing, deep and hacking. Damma slaps him on the back, laughing. When he can breathe, Dragan tries again. His eyes are still watered, but he blows out a long plume of smoke, trying not to look too pleased with himself. Damma leans against the fence and tries to look cool, like Slash. He wants to be like Axl, but girls seem to like Slash. He wishes he had black hair, like Dragan. Dragan would make a good Slash. Maybe when he has a band Dragan can be in it.
The girls come back, or at least Damma thinks they’re the same. They have matching pink sweaters with the name of their school on the breast; they’re not from here. They smile at Damma, Vaseline making their lips pale and glossy.
”Good party,” one says, and Damma nods. ”Can we have a cigarette?”
He holds out his pack, and they take one each. They lean in at the same time to light up on Damma’s offered match, the smell of gum and hairspray strong. They smile thanks. One of them has braces, and Damma thinks Rado can have her. The other has a dimple, which is pretty cute.
They talk a bit about music and movies. They both like pop, Roxette and Samantha Fox, and just shake their heads when Damma suggests how much better Guns’n’Roses are. They think that Slash is cute, though. Damma almost rolls his eyes and tries to explain how cool Axl is.
Rado comes back, a new cigarette in his mouth and a beer in hand that Damma thinks his dad never bought. He smiles and up-nods at the girls, who blush, and glances to Damma’s side.
”Where’s Dragan?”
Damma turns, looks around. ”He was here just now.”
The girls forgotten, Rado starts calling for Dragan, drifting in wider circles from their claimed little corner.
”He went that way, didn’t he?” The dimple girl points toward the monkey bars. There are a lot of people there, and now Damma thinks he can hear voices over the music. There’s a fight there. And he sees Rado heading that way, pushing his way past people.
”Hell!” It’s a shame about the beer, but it can’t be helped.
He catches up with Rado in time to see Dragan take a left jab to the face and stumble backwards, the guy - Damma recognizes him as Oskar, an ninth grader from a neighbouring school - following up with a legsweep that brings Dragan down to kicking height. Dragan curls up against Oskar’s shoes and the crowd wavers, unsure. Then Rado thunders into Oskar like in a movie, raining punches as he straddles the guy’s thighs. Damma hoists Dragan up by his shirt. There’s blood on his face and the mark of a sneaker sole on the chest of his shirt. He blinks furiously, scowling and wiping his nose.
”Rado!”
If Rado hears him, it doesn’t show. Damma knows it isn’t long before Oskar’s friends realize he’s not going to get a chance to hit back, and he leaves Dragan to haul Rado off, grabbing the collar of his jacket and shouting his name again. Rado gives this time, letting Damma drag him away. They grab Dragan on the way and push through the crowd. There’s a brief exchange in Serbian that stills the burning fury on Rado’s face a notch to hard anger.
Then there’s a shout from behind them, promising death and castration and coma, and they start running. Rado shoves enyone in their way aside, still holding Dragan’s arm. Dragan’s shouting that he gets worse from his mom and that they’re all sissies. Damma runs after them, knowing he’ll be the first to go if Oskar’s friends catch up. The bubble gum girls call after them, confused, and there are angry yells from those Rado pushes, but it all blends in with Iron Maiden pouring out of a player. They clear the playground, turn down the road and run until all they can hear is the stomping of their own shoes.
They pause and gasp for breath around the corner of a building, and Damma can’t help but laugh. Soon they’re all laughing; Rado, whose anger dissolves quickly but who never forgives, Dragan, whose face is already swelling, and Damma, who thinks he could have had beer and bubble-gum girls but is so happy to be here. Dragan stops first.
”Should’ve crushed them,” he says. ”Devils never leave us alone.”
Rado pulls Dragan into a loose stranglehold. ”Next time I let you mind yourself, yeah?”
Dragan squirms out of Rado’s grip, brushes himself off ineffectively and says nothing. Rado catches his chin, turns his head this way and that, checks the back of his skull.
”You sure you’re okay?” Dragan nods, says something in Serbian, and Rado leaves it be, patting Dragan gently on the cheek. His knuckles are bruised and bloodied.
Damma pulls out a cigarette, offers one to Rado. They light up and stand in silence for a while, the three of them united against the world.
”Hey, give me a cig.”
Rado slaps Dragan upside the head in reply.
After
After, Dragan sits on the railing, cigarette clenched between his teeth. He looks a lot like Rado then, face hard and eyes dark. He doesn’t kick his feet or fix his hair or any of those things. When he talks, his voice is low and flat.
”I knew we should kill the bitches.”
Damma leans on the railing and silently agrees, wishes he could go back, bigger and better, like Rambo, with a knife - or a gun. Splatter Oskar’s brains all over the sand before he so much as looked at Rado, get all his buddies too. There’s no way he can say it, there’s an old feeling much too similar to this one and he doesn’t want to think about that. In his mind, he sets a little notch by another name.
”I said to him. He was too nice.”
Damma nods, thinks about Rado smiling, his bruised fists, the way he was always calm, how he had the best grades in their class, how he always got them out of trouble.
Dragan turns to him, and it’s like being put under a blazing interrogation lamp. ”I have to fix this.”
Dragan’s hair is combed back, his suit borrowed from a neighbour or uncle or something and too big for him. The tie-knot is lumpy against his throat. He’s wearing his sneakers, and Damma imagines what a fight that must have caused with his mom. They always fight, Dragan and her. Rado always stepped in to explain, to find some common ground, to take one side and bring the other around. Now Dragan’s on his own. Damma saw Sofija in church, her eyes red and puffy, clinging to their mother’s hand. He thinks Dragan should look smaller without Rado, in this suit, his eyes still red.
Dragan looks like he could personally kill everyone in the whole world.
He spits out the end of his cigarette, and Damma offers him a new one. They smoke in silence.
”Rado made a mistake. He let them up. He tried to be good.” Again, the look that makes Damma aware he’s a little afraid of Dragan. ”I’m gonna kill every devil.”
Damma nods again, knows he’s answering an unspoken question. Rado was his friend. He couldn’t do anything for his mom, but he can do this. ”Yeah,” he says.
Dragan looks satisfied, and the rock-hard mask of his face crumbles a little, his chin trembling. They watch the cars pass by as afternoon turns into evening and the cigarettes in Damma’s pack slowly run out. Damma pretends not to notice that Dragan’s knuckles turn white against the railing.
----
Fifteen
Damma and Radmilo and Dragan are at a party on a playground. Damma’s fifteen years old with an Axl Rose bandana and a worn jean jacket, and he’s got a packet of stolen Blend in his pocket. Radmilo is there more to make sure Dragan doesn’t get in trouble than because he wants to - or at least that’s what he’ll tell their mother if she finds out. Radmilo’s clean-cut, his clothes second-hand but whole and tidy. He has one of Damma’s cigarettes in the corner of his mouth and a hand on Dragan’s forehead, telling his little brother over and over that no, he can’t have one, and if Rado ever catches him smoking he’ll twist his neck off.
When Rado’s off for a piss, Damma passes a cigarette to Dragan.
Dragan is theoretically dressed in the same getup as Rado, bought by their mother in the same store with the same care and attention to wear and tear. But Dragan, two years younger and a full head shorter than Rado, gets into at least twice as many fights, some of which he wins and some of which he doesn’t. His jeans are stained and torn at the knees, his rolled-up shirtsleeves none better. The sweatband around his head, which Damma knows he stole off an eighth-grader because Dragan’s mother refused to buy him ’gangster clothes’, barely holds his hair out of his face. He looks like some weird blend of street fighter, tennis player and momma’s boy, and he talks much too loud.
They guard their stolen beer. The playground is full of kids like them, and kids from other ’burbs; some are a little older, and these are the ones Damma worries most over. They wouldn’t come if it wasn’t to bully booze and smokes off younger kids - Damma knows, both from experience and because that’s what he does, when he can. He longs for the day that he’s eighteen, and can buy his own beer and smokes, and drive an old yank car full of girls. Then he’ll move to America and be in a band.
His hair isn’t really long enough for the bandana; it took him a while to tie it so that his hair was held back but not tucked away. Dad keeps yelling at him to cut his hair. If he didn’t want to drink it himself, Damma would have pissed in his beer. He fiddles with the bandana, pulling it down a little in front. A pair of girls pass by, all puffed-up blonde hair and chewing-gum smiles. They glance at him and giggle to each other, and Damma hopes it’s a good sign.
It’s almost summer, the end of nine long years of school waving at him from a distance, like a girl in a music video. The air is still chill at nights, but Damma can almost smell hot dust and asphalt, ice-cream and green grass.
Dragan smokes like a kid, little puffs that he doesn’t inhale. Damma looks around for Rado, sees no sign of him, and nudges Dragan.
”You gotta pull it down. Look.” He takes a drag off his own cigarette and an exaggerated breath to pull the smoke down his lungs.
Dragan tries, and starts coughing, deep and hacking. Damma slaps him on the back, laughing. When he can breathe, Dragan tries again. His eyes are still watered, but he blows out a long plume of smoke, trying not to look too pleased with himself. Damma leans against the fence and tries to look cool, like Slash. He wants to be like Axl, but girls seem to like Slash. He wishes he had black hair, like Dragan. Dragan would make a good Slash. Maybe when he has a band Dragan can be in it.
The girls come back, or at least Damma thinks they’re the same. They have matching pink sweaters with the name of their school on the breast; they’re not from here. They smile at Damma, Vaseline making their lips pale and glossy.
”Good party,” one says, and Damma nods. ”Can we have a cigarette?”
He holds out his pack, and they take one each. They lean in at the same time to light up on Damma’s offered match, the smell of gum and hairspray strong. They smile thanks. One of them has braces, and Damma thinks Rado can have her. The other has a dimple, which is pretty cute.
They talk a bit about music and movies. They both like pop, Roxette and Samantha Fox, and just shake their heads when Damma suggests how much better Guns’n’Roses are. They think that Slash is cute, though. Damma almost rolls his eyes and tries to explain how cool Axl is.
Rado comes back, a new cigarette in his mouth and a beer in hand that Damma thinks his dad never bought. He smiles and up-nods at the girls, who blush, and glances to Damma’s side.
”Where’s Dragan?”
Damma turns, looks around. ”He was here just now.”
The girls forgotten, Rado starts calling for Dragan, drifting in wider circles from their claimed little corner.
”He went that way, didn’t he?” The dimple girl points toward the monkey bars. There are a lot of people there, and now Damma thinks he can hear voices over the music. There’s a fight there. And he sees Rado heading that way, pushing his way past people.
”Hell!” It’s a shame about the beer, but it can’t be helped.
He catches up with Rado in time to see Dragan take a left jab to the face and stumble backwards, the guy - Damma recognizes him as Oskar, an ninth grader from a neighbouring school - following up with a legsweep that brings Dragan down to kicking height. Dragan curls up against Oskar’s shoes and the crowd wavers, unsure. Then Rado thunders into Oskar like in a movie, raining punches as he straddles the guy’s thighs. Damma hoists Dragan up by his shirt. There’s blood on his face and the mark of a sneaker sole on the chest of his shirt. He blinks furiously, scowling and wiping his nose.
”Rado!”
If Rado hears him, it doesn’t show. Damma knows it isn’t long before Oskar’s friends realize he’s not going to get a chance to hit back, and he leaves Dragan to haul Rado off, grabbing the collar of his jacket and shouting his name again. Rado gives this time, letting Damma drag him away. They grab Dragan on the way and push through the crowd. There’s a brief exchange in Serbian that stills the burning fury on Rado’s face a notch to hard anger.
Then there’s a shout from behind them, promising death and castration and coma, and they start running. Rado shoves enyone in their way aside, still holding Dragan’s arm. Dragan’s shouting that he gets worse from his mom and that they’re all sissies. Damma runs after them, knowing he’ll be the first to go if Oskar’s friends catch up. The bubble gum girls call after them, confused, and there are angry yells from those Rado pushes, but it all blends in with Iron Maiden pouring out of a player. They clear the playground, turn down the road and run until all they can hear is the stomping of their own shoes.
They pause and gasp for breath around the corner of a building, and Damma can’t help but laugh. Soon they’re all laughing; Rado, whose anger dissolves quickly but who never forgives, Dragan, whose face is already swelling, and Damma, who thinks he could have had beer and bubble-gum girls but is so happy to be here. Dragan stops first.
”Should’ve crushed them,” he says. ”Devils never leave us alone.”
Rado pulls Dragan into a loose stranglehold. ”Next time I let you mind yourself, yeah?”
Dragan squirms out of Rado’s grip, brushes himself off ineffectively and says nothing. Rado catches his chin, turns his head this way and that, checks the back of his skull.
”You sure you’re okay?” Dragan nods, says something in Serbian, and Rado leaves it be, patting Dragan gently on the cheek. His knuckles are bruised and bloodied.
Damma pulls out a cigarette, offers one to Rado. They light up and stand in silence for a while, the three of them united against the world.
”Hey, give me a cig.”
Rado slaps Dragan upside the head in reply.
After
After, Dragan sits on the railing, cigarette clenched between his teeth. He looks a lot like Rado then, face hard and eyes dark. He doesn’t kick his feet or fix his hair or any of those things. When he talks, his voice is low and flat.
”I knew we should kill the bitches.”
Damma leans on the railing and silently agrees, wishes he could go back, bigger and better, like Rambo, with a knife - or a gun. Splatter Oskar’s brains all over the sand before he so much as looked at Rado, get all his buddies too. There’s no way he can say it, there’s an old feeling much too similar to this one and he doesn’t want to think about that. In his mind, he sets a little notch by another name.
”I said to him. He was too nice.”
Damma nods, thinks about Rado smiling, his bruised fists, the way he was always calm, how he had the best grades in their class, how he always got them out of trouble.
Dragan turns to him, and it’s like being put under a blazing interrogation lamp. ”I have to fix this.”
Dragan’s hair is combed back, his suit borrowed from a neighbour or uncle or something and too big for him. The tie-knot is lumpy against his throat. He’s wearing his sneakers, and Damma imagines what a fight that must have caused with his mom. They always fight, Dragan and her. Rado always stepped in to explain, to find some common ground, to take one side and bring the other around. Now Dragan’s on his own. Damma saw Sofija in church, her eyes red and puffy, clinging to their mother’s hand. He thinks Dragan should look smaller without Rado, in this suit, his eyes still red.
Dragan looks like he could personally kill everyone in the whole world.
He spits out the end of his cigarette, and Damma offers him a new one. They smoke in silence.
”Rado made a mistake. He let them up. He tried to be good.” Again, the look that makes Damma aware he’s a little afraid of Dragan. ”I’m gonna kill every devil.”
Damma nods again, knows he’s answering an unspoken question. Rado was his friend. He couldn’t do anything for his mom, but he can do this. ”Yeah,” he says.
Dragan looks satisfied, and the rock-hard mask of his face crumbles a little, his chin trembling. They watch the cars pass by as afternoon turns into evening and the cigarettes in Damma’s pack slowly run out. Damma pretends not to notice that Dragan’s knuckles turn white against the railing.