Hyeonverse: The Last of the Balagans

A heartfelt thank you to my editors Xpoerotica and Decal_Last for their unvaluable hard work and insight, you guys are the best!

DESTROYER

Tommy Balagan was six when he discovered he was color blind.

He lived in a world painted in shades of brown, bronze, blue and beige.

His Dad, Carl caught him eating moldy party food leftovers and took him to a clinic; there, curiosity got the better of him and Carl requested an additional test.

When they came home later that night, the man was livid.

Dragging the boy by the arm through the front yard, you'd have trouble recognizing the once upbeat swagger of the philandering "Maestro" Carl Balagan.

HVAC technician by day and party animal by night, Brooklyn residents had long grown used to the last of the Balagans to take up residence in the old brick house of New Jersey Avenue.

The family had bought the place back in the fifties when they first arrived in America, fleeing the descent of the Iron Curtain. Unfortunately, their curse had followed them to the New World and soon became part of the neighborhood charm.

Infidelities, shouting matches, domestic abuse charges, and even a knife fight that made prime time news back in 1972.

Neighbors' hopes that Carl would be different were quickly shot down by noisy late-night parties that sometimes bled into jealous fits and street brawls.

"Swingers parties," savvy voices would whisper behind closed doors.

Into this mess and out of nowhere landed Charissa, Carl's young wife, and his polar opposite.

Where Carl was charming and festive, she was melancholic and reserved, with an hourglass figure crowned by a head of prematurely graying hair.

Not even the birth of Tommy had managed to bring a ray of sunshine into the woman's bleak demeanor. Quite the opposite, the mere sight of the boy rendered Charissa miserable. Her rare smiles were reserved for Carl only, the fruit of her devotion.

Charissa's love for Carl knew no bounds; her eyes tracked his every gesture as she drank from his words.

This, to everyone who knew them, would only make the events of that fateful night all the more surprising.

Sitting in the kitchen clutching her phone, there was no joy in Charissa's lips when she saw her husband barge through the front door hauling the boy by the arm.

"D-Daddy, you're hurting me..."

Charissa knew the jig was up before he had opened his mouth.

"You... whore!"

"Carl..." her eyes lowered under the weight of shame and remorse. "Oh, God..."

"How could you do this to me?" His voice trembled with ire. "To me!"

"I'm sorry! Please..." Charissa threw herself at her husband. "Oh, my God, what have I... I'm so sorry!"

Carl held her at length, pointing at the boy in disgust.

"You lying bitch! I gave you a shelter, a home and you do this to me? You've... you've destroyed me, Charissa," tears of despair formed in his eyes. "All my hopes, all my dreams, I'm ruined!"

Carl turned to the boy and a wave of nausea swept through his body.

"I'm finished..." he stumbled forward, mumbling like a mad man. "I'm finished..."

Hatred grew in his heart, consuming all reason. Charissa's eyes widened in horror as her husband's expression turned from anger to madness. Trembling fingers found a life of their own and traveled across the kitchen counter.

"I'm finished..."

"Carl, don't..." Charissa's plead was cut short by the sight of his hand coiling around the handle of a kitchen knife. A shiver crawled down her spine.

"You little shit," he muttered. Lifting the shiny steel, Carl lunged at the boy. "You fucked up everything, you filthy little shit!"

"No!" Charissa stood between the two.

The blade stabbed through her hand.

"Aah!"

Blood sprayed the child's face warm, brown, and metallic.

"No!" Carl screamed. "Charissa!"

"Tommy, get outta here!" Charissa shouted at her terrified boy.

"This is all your fault, you worthless little fuck," Carl roared.

Charissa sprawled her leg, tripping her husband who fell to the ground.

"Tommy, run!" Her bloodied hands held onto Carl's legs, painting his beige pants in shades of copper. "Get away from here, run!"

The boy fled upstairs; the sanctuary he was forbidden to leave during Mom and Dad's noisy parties.

"Let go of me, you backstabbing whore!"

"Carl, please! You will be arrested!"

"He's a fucking disease!"

Tommy cried, stung by those words. Why was Dad doing this, hadn't he always been a good son? He already made his own bed and had learned to moonwalk all by himself. Why, Daddy?

Reaching the first-floor landing, Tommy glanced at his fragile bedroom door before pulling down the attic stairs. Maybe it'd be safer up there if he found a way to jam the mechanism in the retracted position.

Approaching footsteps startled the young boy, time had run out.

"Lying bitch, I fucking knew it!"

"They'll put you in jail," Charissa sobbed downstairs. "I will never see you again..."

"Fucking Mike Lawrence, I knew it," Carl climbed into the dark attic. His knife drew circles in the air, probing the darkness around him. Where was that fucking kid?

Wood screeched to his left. The window!

Tommy let out a terrified squeal, vaulting outside onto the roof of the old house.

In the distance, the Swingin' Sappho Dance Club challenged the night with its loud music.

"Get your feet off the ground and give it up for 2002,

Don't you know, pump it up, you've gotta pump it up."

Leaning against the brown tiles, Tommy negotiated the narrow ledge with his heart hammering his chest.

Carl fumed, just a few feet behind him.

"Why are you doing this? W-what did I do?" Tommy cried. "Please, Daddy, just tell me, what did I do?"

"I'll tell you what you did, you piece of shit, come here!" Carl swung his blade, missing Tommy by inches.

"Aah!" the boy screamed, watching his Father gain on him.

Panicked, the boy's left sneaker slid on a rotting leaf.

"No!"

Tommy's hands grabbed air and he fell to his death.

"Aaah!"

"Hnrrgh!" a man grunted, breaking the fall with his powerful arms.

"Gotcha! I've gotcha..."

Tommy opened his eyes in shock. He wasn't dead?

"Don't you know, pump it up, you've gotta pump it up."

Mike Lawrence, the high school coach, and a family friend had saved him. His Harley's headlight lit the front yard; he had driven like a madman after Charissa's phone call.

"You're alright, kid. You're alright..." Tommy followed Mike's eyes upward and found Carl staring down at both.

His towering frame projected a colossal shadow against the roof and there were brown blood handprints on his pants and shirt. But it was the madness in Carl's expression that would render Tommy sleepless for many nights to come.

"You've gotta pump it up."

A flashbang grenade smashed through the Balagans' bay window.

"Bang!"

Light and noise shattered the night peace.

"Breaching!" a cry flew and wood splintered as both front and back doors surrendered to battering rams.

SWAT teams swarmed in, rifles at the ready. There was no need for that, Tommy had told them the spare back door key was buried in the orchids' vase at the rear.

"Clear!"

Sobbing came from the kitchen. The armoured officers converged on the Balagans hugging on the floor, crying.

Laser dots painted Carl's chest red and a cacophony of barked commands filled the house:

"Freeze, douchebag!"

"Show me your hands!"

"Motherfucker, show me your fucking hands now!"

"How could you do this to me, baby?" Carl whimpered. "The one thing I told you not to..."

"I am so sorry!" Charissa bawled. "I love you. I love you so much!"

"They never change," the neighbors smirked watching Carl being dragged away in handcuffs while paramedics tended to Charissa's hand.

Gossip spread like wildfire over the following months, knowing grins fluttering away whenever Coach Mike dropped by to fix the doors or help around the house. The boy's schoolmates were the cruelest:

"Oh, Tommy, oh, Tommy,

Can I fuck your Mommy?"

With coached testimonies from the three key witnesses, all eager to exonerate the man, the District Attorney had very little to build a case. Carl was charged with Child Endangerment and served six years.

When he was finally released, prison had changed him.

The Maestro's joyful personality faded into the bottom of a whiskey bottle and eventually, the man himself vanished from a 4th-floor rooftop.

He somehow managed to miss the pavement of West 105th street and land in a coma at the Brooklyn Mercy Rayne Clinic where he's been ever since.

"They're scum," someone whispered. "It's in their family's blood, they destroy everything they touch."

Horrified by those words, little Tommy Balagan swore that day that he would never marry or father children; his cursed family name would die with him.

Puberty was Tommy's turning point.

As a child, he had dreamt of dazzling his parents' party guests with his wicked dance moves. As a teenager, his dancing talents shifted toward cheering up his Mother.

Unfortunately, no matter how much he tried Charissa could barely stand the sight of him. Rejected by his own Mother, Tommy grew up with a deep crave for human touch.

One day, watching the sad boy dancing in front of Charissa, Mike had an epiphany. The Coach recruited him for the school football team's mascot Ray Raven and Tommy flourished.

Under the suit's anonymity, he quickly became by far the best Ray Raven to ever grace the gridiron.

Crowds cheered and laughed so hard they cried as Tommy, the Maestro of Pranks raised a storm among cheerleaders, players, coaches, and officials.

Home team or visitors, nobody was safe from his wacky antics, be it on the field or on the bleachers.

He joined the youth automotive training program to become a car mechanic.

He worked after school in his Dad's garage fixing the neighbors' cars to help out his Mother with the expenses.

He galvanized crowds on Fridays at the school's football field, cheering for the Black Birds.

And at night in bed, he'd lament the deafening silence that had taken over the old house, recalling the loud music that had once filled his childhood.

Tommy managed to stay true to his vow of celibacy until the age of eighteen when on an autumn afternoon coming out of practice in his Ray Raven suit, the tall young man bumped a brunette beauty rushing out of the girls' bathroom in tears.

Both fell on the floor.

"Are you alright?" Tommy turned to check up on her.

"Are you a bad boy, Tommy?" Madeline Poppe sat sobbing. "Do you enjoy breaking girls' hearts too?"

"Y-you know who I am?" he recoiled. As many Brooklynites, Tommy knew of the Poppe family. Thugs, thieves and troublemakers, they all knew the cells of the Metropolitan Detention Center inside out. Out of that abject cesspool came Madeline, a talented rose with a gentle heart and a limitless imagination.

"I'd recognize that swagger anywhere, Tommy," she whimpered. "You walk like Goofy."

"I... do?"

"Mascots are part of the cheering squad, right?" Her sunken chestnut brown eyes pleaded. "Do you have some cheers for me?"

Watching the once chirpy girl reduced to tears was heartbreaking.

Tommy got up and sprung into the Ray Raven dance; an old school fila punctuated by air flares and Jackhammers leading up to a robotic arm wave that peaked on a bop to her nose. Madeline burst into a delighted laughter and Cupid's arrow pierced straight through Tommy's young brown heart:

"I could listen to that sound for the rest of my life," he thought.

Brown and beige paper flowers decorated the hallway, leftovers from the homecoming party. The young man snatched the biggest one for her.

"Thank you, Ray Raven, you have a heart of gold," she grinned as Tommy pulled her off the ground. Holding onto her brown paper flower, Madeline strode away with a renewed bounce in her gait, glancing at him over her shoulder while classmates cackled.

"Look, Ray Raven is in love!"

Madeline started coming to practice, sitting on the bleachers with her sketchbook, drawing and staring at Tommy in his suit while he trained routines with the cheering squad.

A month later, the young man was eating his brown strawberries in the school cafeteria when she sat in front of him.

"So, Tomasz Izydor Balagan... do you know other moves besides the Ray Raven dance?"

Through the corner of his eye, Tommy saw Madeline's ex-boyfriend, Ricky Tinsley disengage from Kay Cordoba and glare at them. Tommy had never liked Ricky, a snob punk with a pretentious Mother who thought herself royalty.

Ricky's Dad, in an attempt to escape from under the umbrella of his filthy rich Mother-in-Law, had moved their core family back to his Brooklyn roots. There, he had opened a studio hoping to build a name for himself and instill in Ricky the ethics of a hardworking man.

Watching his Dad at work, Ricky developed a taste for the arts from a very early age and once enlisted at Marlon Merlo Brooklyn High, the boy was swept off his feet by Madeline's talent. Added to her kindness, her bubbly personality and their shared love for cartoons and he quickly fell madly in love with her.

It took longer for Madeline to return his feelings. She didn't take kindly to his critical eye for her artistic shortcomings and his pompous air, but as time progressed and she improved in her craft, Madeline grew to value his input. He was one of the few people who could hold conversations on subjects that she was passionate about. Madeline was amused to watch their bitter clashes of opinions turn into pleasant debates, fascinated to discover how much they had in common and delighted to see his eyes light up each time she floored him with her latest art piece.

Their Cinderella story was short-lived.

Once Ricky's Mother Kitty learned of the girl's family, she swiftly shut down their little fairytale. Kitty had grand plans for her son and they didn't include a lowly spawn of street criminals. Quickly, she shoved Kay Cordoba into her boy's arms. The once wealthy Cordobas had been hit hard by the Stock Market crash of 2008, but their relocation from a lavish Tribeca address to a Brownsville loft hadn't dented their standing with the woman.

Kitty saw herself in Kay's eagerness to rejoin the Manhattan socialites and was thrilled to pair her son with such an ambitious young lady.

Under her wing, Ricky and Kay became the hottest new item at school.

Now, watching his entitled sneer wither into a frown, Tommy realized that the pompous boy still had feelings for Madeline.

'Well, tough luck!' the young Balagan thought. For once he too deserved a slice of happiness.

"Why, Madeline Poppe, are you asking me to the Winter Formal?" Tommy smiled. "I dunno, I would have to check my schedule."

"Pick me up on Saturday at seven," she stole one of his brown strawberries. "Don't wear the Ray Raven suit."

Tommy feigned a pout and Madeline pecked him on the cheek, winking.

Charissa was far from elated with this development, having grown colder toward the boy since Carl's coma. Despite Coach Mike Lawrence's help around the house, the place had fallen into an untidy mess, made worse by her need to juggle two jobs to keep the family afloat. Getting her to agree to let him go to the party was a challenge, so the young Balagan poured his heart into the performance of a lifetime.

Popping and Locking in front of her in the kitchen, sliding the Typewriter across the living room, he finally managed to yank a smile out of her thin bronze lips with a Happy Feet Dance while handing her a pizza dinner.

Wearing his Dad's suit, that night the young man glided through a forest of brown and beige dresses and black and blue suits holding Madeline in his arms.

Feeling her chest pressed against him as she panted out of breath and listening to her excited laughter, for the first time in his life Tommy tasted Heaven. As he stared into her gorgeous chestnut brown eyes, he realized this was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Madeline must have read his mind because she leaned forward and her bronze lips touched with his. From the other side of the room, Ricky Tinsley glared at them livid and stormed out dragging Kay Cordoba with him.

Giggling in the backseat of Tommy's Dad's Pontiac Grand Am later that night, the lovers couldn't undress fast enough. It was Tommy's first time and having been rejected all his life, he was nervous. But he was also in love.

Madeline saw the apprehension in her lover's eyes and soothed him with a tender kiss while guiding his fingers toward her intimacy. Her flowery scent filled the car interior as she opened herself to the young man.

"Relax," Madeline smiled as she kissed him, showing him how to stimulate the sensitive hood of her love bud. "Gently."

With soft caresses from his fingers and delicate touches from his tongue, Tommy slowly licked Madeline toward her peak.

"Now," she lead him inside her. "I am ready."

Magic coursed through his body when they joined, feeling her tight and damp womanhood yield to his slow advance.

Thrusting into her for the first time with loving passion, Tommy finally found himself where he belonged. He kissed her naked body, drawing her nipples into his lips as their sexual tension increased.

"Ooh, Madeline! You are amazing!"

"Hn! Oh, Tommy! Yes!"

His first climax came too soon.

"Oh, my God, Madeline! Oh!"

"Yes! Yes, Tommy, give me all of it!"

He continued entering her long after their orgasm. Twice more they mated on that night.

So this is what being loved felt like.

They dated for the rest of the school year. The cheerleaders had to pry them apart every time Ray Raven was needed on the field. In the backseat of his Pontiac, the locker room, and his bedroom whenever Charissa was at work, every sexual encounter was a glimpse into Paradise, as Tommy watched in wonder Madeline's delicate frame writhing on top of him, the necklace with the back door spare key to the Balagan house dancing around her neck.

But alone at night in his room, the dark thoughts would trickle in.

"You're just a rebound, her heart belongs to Ricky Tinsley."

Still, the color blind lad was determined to enjoy his stint in the sun for as long as he could.

The sun set on their little tryst on a cloudy May afternoon.

Tommy was strolling down Bradford Street carrying a bouquet of brown roses in his hand when he heard shouting coming from the dingy house Madeline shared with her alcoholic Dad.

"Are you trying to ruin your future? My Dad asked me to show him your latest work but you don't even draw anymore, always hanging with that guy," Ricky Tinsley shouted. "I can't believe you're sleeping with such a loser!"

"Well, I can't believe you're sleeping with that cow," Madeline shouted back.

"I'm not sleeping with her and she's not a cow. Kay's a good girl, her family and ours have been friends for generations. Mother says..."

"Oh, you always gotta listen to Mother, don't you? God forbid her precious son was caught dead with that filthy Poppe girl from Bradford Street."

"Don't talk about my Mother like that!" Ricky burst out of the front door fuming with Madeline in tow. "At least my Mother's not a whore who cheated on her Husband and birthed another man's child!"